Cage Me: A Wolf Shifter Romantasy (Immortal Vices and Virtues: Shadow Shifter Bonds Book 1)

Chapter 15

The moment I tell Spencer that we need to talk, I feel her walls start to come back up. Not just by the physical way she pushes me away and stands to get dressed, but there’s a dampening in our new bond connection. As if she’s closing me out, taking away the one thing I will cherish above all else for the rest of my life.

Still, there’s something she needs to know before anything else. Something I didn’t know until our bond began solidifying.

I follow her movements and dress, but the moment she pulls her shirt over her head, I grab her shoulders and force her to look at me. “Spencer.”

“What?” There’s a darkness within her tone that reminds me a little too much of myself.

“When I said we needed to talk, nothing I want us to discuss changes the fact that you’re my mate and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.” My eyes watch her face the entire time I speak, but she’s pulling farther and farther away from me by the second. “I mean that.”

She tears out of my hold and gives me her back. Her shoulders are rising and falling rapidly as she seems to be struggling for control.

I step closer again but don’t touch her as I whisper, “Don’t push me away again. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Her hands shake at her side, and the harshness of her voice breaks my heart. “All I can think about is killing Kel. The longer I stand here, the worse…”

She can’t finish her sentence, but she doesn’t need to. I close my eyes and focus on the newly formed connection between us. The pulsing light I sensed before that ties us together is now tinged with a darkness that I never wanted Spencer to know of. At least not on such a personal level. Yet, it seems the rage I carried with me from Tartarus is quickly consuming her.

Closing off my emotions from the bond is the last thing that I thought I would do soon, but I won’t destroy my mate. Even if that means I can’t fully have her yet.

With my gaze focused on the back of Spencer’s head, I put up a mental wall between us. The more fortified the separation becomes, the easier she begins to breathe. My heart breaks while I force myself to smile as she turns around.

“What did you do?” Her fingers rub circles over her temples.

“You were feeling my rage,” I tell her honestly. “I took it back.”

The lie burns through my body, scorching my insides, but I won’t tell her that I’ve blocked her out unless I have to. She’ll demand that I stop, and I won’t hurt her with my past.

Maybe this is exactly what Natalia was speaking of when she said that I was destruction. I try not to think too hard on that, because if my fate is destroying Spencer, I’d sooner die than let that happen.

She rolls her shoulders and shakes her arms out. “How are you so calm when you have all that fury lying just beneath the surface? I couldn’t even last two minutes with it.”

Her arms wrap around my waist when I step closer to hold her. If I can’t feel the beat of her inside me any longer, then I at least need physical contact.

“The pain is something I’ve learned how to live with,” I tell her, doing my best to hide the worst of my frustrations.

Spencer pulls back to look at me. “You said before that we need to talk about your wolf. What about him?”

I don’t want to keep anything else from my mate, and my thoughts from earlier no longer seem all that important. I start to tell her we can discuss this later, but she shakes her head and glares.

“Nope. You had something to say and you’re going to do so now,” she says assuredly, her face no longer tainted with my darkness. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

A smile forms on my face. Her commanding tone makes me want to strip her naked again, but I shove the imagery to the back of my mind. I want my mate to know me, and she needs to be prepared in case I lose control.

“When I froze earlier, it was for two reasons,” I start to explain. “The first and most important was because for the first time since scenting you, I truly understood what the bond between us meant to me. I’d heard that for those like me—shifters seeped in the shadows from Tartarus—meeting our mates can make one feral, but I didn’t experience that with you at first. I had desperation, but the wildness wasn’t there. I think it might be because of the spell still attached to my wolf and the moment you gave yourself to me, you freed him. Not completely, but temporarily enough for me to truly grasp the intensity of how much I need you.”

She holds me tighter, her face softening. “How so?”

“I needed your touch so fiercely that I thought I would die without holding you,” I tell her honestly. “Being inside you, feeling our bond expand and take root, watching your walls come down, all of that brought out the best and worst in me. I knew right then that you are all I need in this world, that everything else could disappear besides you and I would still be fine.”

Her hand reaches up, and I lean my cheek into her gentle touch as she says, “But? Something else happened. You were hurting and that doesn’t line up with what you’re saying now.”

At least she isn’t pulling away, knowing that there’s more, because she’s right. My curse is even worse than I understood before meeting Spencer.

“Kel didn’t just trap me inside my body,” I tell her. “She linked herself to me. She knows I’m bonded with you now.”

The moment the words leave my mouth, I wish I could take them back, but Spencer needs to know even if the truth hurts us both.

“How?” she practically growls, her shoulders stiffening beneath my touch and a deep crease forming between her narrowing eyes.

I double-check the wall I’ve erected is still up and I’m not making matters worse for her. The block is still present between the worst of my rage and Spencer. Though, it’s not hard for me to remember that she was angry when I first met her. I’m sure whatever epiphanies she’s experienced today can’t have completely changed that, nor can I control all of her emotions.

“I assume she’s somehow tied herself to me using whatever curse she placed on me,” I say, because all we can do is guess at this point. “But the one thing I am certain about is that any spell can be broken by the death of its creator. Whatever Kel did to me, it will be undone when I kill her.”

“Not if I get my claws around her throat first.” Spencer snarls, but this time, her rage feels more controlled and not all-encompassing like it was just moments ago. “But what did you mean that she’s linked to you? Can you feel her?”

The way her eyes turn to slits tells me that her wolf is lurking just beneath the surface and the way I answer this question needs to be done carefully.

“I can’t feel her,” I say honestly. “I merely sensed her energy when our bond first started to solidify. She’s angry, and I have a feeling that means she’s going to come after us sooner rather than later.”

“Not if we go after her first.” Spencer picks up my boots and tosses them at me. “Get your shoes on. We’re going to see Natalia again.”

My brow scrunches. “She made it pretty clear that she isn’t going to help us.”

“And I’m going to make it pretty clear that she doesn’t have a choice.”

When I first met Spencer, I had no doubts about her strength. She’s a fighter through and through. But seeing her eyes glow with the force of her fury tells me she’s been holding back—or maybe my wall isn’t working as well as I hope. Either way, this is going to be interesting.

By the time I have my boots on, Spencer is waiting at the door with a dagger sheathed at her hip and some sort of spell in her hand.

“Are you going to use the witch’s own magic against her?” I ask as we exit the shed.

“Natalia isn’t the only witch I’ve done business with.” She looks up at the bright moon sitting high in the sky and grins before glancing over at me. “Do shadow shifters go into heat?”

I nod, a little confused with the rapid change in subject. “Why?”

“I didn’t think about it earlier, but tonight is a full moon,” she explains. “I have two weeks until my first heat cycle now that we’ve met. Guess that gives us a deadline because, from my understanding, now that I’ve met you, I’ll be pretty much useless for anything other than sex for two days once my heat starts.”

The lower half of my body can only think about the fun that will be, but the more logical part of me knows we will either need a powerful cloaking spell or Kel will need to be dead by then.

My hope is for the latter.

“Good to know,” I tell Spencer, then gesture toward the house. “Should we let them know we’re leaving?”

She shakes her head and frowns. “It’s been a shitty enough day for my mom and Peter already. They should sleep. I have my phone on me if they need to reach us.”

I take her word for it since it’s her family and she’s not wrong about the day. I just hope the boy isn’t having nightmares.

We leave Kasha’s property and walk toward the center of town. It’s the middle of the night, but there are still people out and about. Though, nobody pays us any attention, which I find odd given the rumblings I heard while waiting to pass through the portal. Others that had already come back talked about how they were the center of attention. Most didn’t like that and came back to Tartarus quickly, while others had seemed to take advantage.

When we get nearer to the portal, there’s a draw to go closer toward the swirling vortex, but the desire isn’t anything I can’t ignore. If I have my way, I’ll never step foot in that dark world again. Though, if Spencer finds herself curious about my old home, I just might have to make an exception.

She gives me a onceover, a crease between her eyes, but doesn’t say anything.

“What’s wrong?” I glance around us, but don’t sense anything abnormal.

“Nobody is paying attention to you.”

And here I thought that was a good thing.

“Would you rather they were?” I ask, hoping I already know the answer to that.

Her lips flatten as she pokes at me, blinking and looking closely at my skin. “I wonder…”

She keeps staring at me like she expects to see something, yet nothing about me has changed. At least, not that I can tell.

Spencer shakes her head. “Never mind.”

I want to press her further, but I can see the witch’s shop from here and I’m instantly on guard. Coming to Natalia seems like a bad idea, but Spencer has known her longer and I’m not going to stand in my mate’s way when she wants to do something. I don’t intend to, anyway.

We enter the shop, and tension builds inside me as my eyes move constantly, a part of me expecting there to be a trap waiting for us. The place is quiet, not even the songbird above the door making a noise.

I grab Spencer’s hand. “We should go.”

“Fuck that.” She snickers. “This witch doesn’t scare me.”

“I should,” Natalia’s voice calls out, seeming to come from nowhere yet everywhere all at the same time.

There’s no movement within the shop. I can’t even scent the witch, which is a problem that makes me worry more about my mate than it does myself, even though I’m the one Natalia wants gone.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” Natalia adds, still keeping herself hidden.

“And you shouldn’t have pissed me off earlier,” Spencer replies with a rumble. “We had a deal and you’re breaking your end of it.”

“I did no such thing,” the witch replies. “I gave you what you asked for, even when I didn’t get full payment. Now, it’s time for you to leave.”

Spencer’s arms cross. “No. I want to know what has you so scared. Whatever you think you found with my mate’s blood, you need to take a second look and tell us everything.”

Natalia’s shimmering ebony hair appears first, followed quickly by the rest of her until she’s standing right in front of Spencer. “You don’t tell me what to do, wolf. I’ve put up with your attitude because it served me at the time, but you have no idea what I’m capable of.”

Spencer doesn’t back down even for a second. “I have some idea, which is why I’m not going anywhere. Drake was cursed by a witch, and we know curses can be broken. Given you’ve just admitted how powerful you are, you’re going to break it and tell us where we can find Kel so we can kill her.”

I thought the plan would be to kill Kel so that her death would break the curse, but if there’s something Natalia can do, that works as well.

The witch wraps her hand around Spencer’s throat, and in the next second, I have her pinned against the farthest wall from my mate, snarling in her face. “Touch her again and I will rip your head from your shoulders.”

Natalia merely smirks. “You’re physically strong, but your wolf is still trapped. You’ll do no such thing. Now, release me.”

Before I can consider complying with her command, she presses one finger against my chest and sends me flying back across the room.

I land on my ass at Spencer’s feet and find her grinning at me.

“Well, this just might be more fun than I could have predicted,” she says, and I realize our versions of fun are vastly different.