Aaron
Iopen a portal home and we step through onto the community lands, the cabin dark ahead of us with no light on.
Mara’s gone the moment her feet hit the porch, straight up the stairs and into the bathroom before I’ve even shut the portal behind us.
By the time I get inside, I can hear the water running.
I leave her to it and head for the kitchen, because right now I need something in my hands that isn’t magic.
I take a glass down, fill it at the sink, and stand there holding it, looking at nothing while the whole night comes down on me at once.
She’d warned me, planted her feet at those doors and told me something was wrong, and I walked her in anyway.
None of it had to happen, not Hella or the creatures or any of it, if I’d just listened to my own mate.
I turn and lean back against the counter and take a drink, but it doesn’t touch the weight of any of it. I started this, so I’m the one who has to finish it. That means going back into the Glen, and before that, I have to find Eric.
I set the glass down on the counter and lift my hand, because I already know what’s coming.
A portal tears open in the middle of the kitchen, a clean line of blue and gold that gives onto my mother’s cabin at House of Zorah.
She comes through it already swinging, that long thick stick cocked back over her shoulder, the one Amir and Seth both swore she’d come at me with.
“Yes, I’m dealing with your hard-headed ass right now,” she says, and brings it down.
I catch it with my magic before it lands, holding it still a foot from my head.
Then I think about it being gone, and it vanishes out of her grip entirely.
My mother stays frozen for a moment with her arm still raised and her hand still curled around a stick that isn’t there.
She turns it over and stares at her empty fingers, the swing caught in her arm with nothing on the end of it.
Behind her, through the open portal, my sisters are crowded into the cabin with Seth wedged between them, and every one of them is snickering.
Tiana’s the worst of them, both hands clapped over her mouth and failing to hold it in.
I shoot them a look, and they scatter the moment Jacob appears behind them.
He groans like he already regrets every part of this and steps through after my mother. The portal seals shut behind him.
My mother pulls her hand back and plants it on her hip, looking from her empty fingers to my face. “How did you do that? And what in the hell happened tonight?”
I open my mouth to answer, but she pops me on the back of the head before I get a word out, quick and sharp, the way she’s done since I was a boy. I grunt and step out of her reach, a hand clapped over the sting of it. “Damn, Ma.”
“I knew there were answers in the Glen.” I move past Jacob and out of the kitchen, and she’s right behind me. “Apparently you knew too.”
“You don’t have a clue what’s going on, Aaron.” She stays on my heels, not letting me walk away from it. “The Witching Glen is a wasteland.”
I stop and turn around. I’ve been carrying this since I felt every soul in that realm at once. “Because you gave up on them, the same way Eric gave up on me.”
The breath goes out of her, and her mouth drops open. For a moment she’s got nothing at all. “What did you just say to me?”
“Something happened to me in there, Ma.” My voice cracks on it and I let it.
“I felt all of it when I siphoned their magic, every soul in that realm at once, and you want to know what I felt more than anything? Abandonment. The exact thing I’ve carried my whole life. So tell me why you turned on them.”
She groans and plants her hands on her hips.
Then she has the nerve to shrug at me. “I didn’t want to, Aaron.
They got it in their heads I was carrying some kind of prophecy, that I was meant to come back and rule the Glen, and I’ve got a pup to raise and a whole realm that needs me here. I couldn’t.”
“You’ve got three grown kids besides me. Tiana and Kiara and Samara, and you could’ve said something to any of us.”
She throws her hands up. “Well, now you know the truth. Are you happy now? I didn’t want you stuck in that swamp of a realm for the rest of your life. I did what any mother would do, Aaron. I protected my children.”
“And look at what your protection just got us.”
Her finger comes up at my face. “You watch your mouth.”
“And did you have any dealings with Eric when you went to see him in the Glen, and never told me about it?”
I groan and look to Jacob, but he gives me nothing. He just stands there with his arms folded, not saying a word. We both know he won’t take a side in this. He isn’t here for me, he’s here for her.
Then I hear the stairs. I look up, and my mother hears them too—she clears her throat and pulls her shoulders back, smoothing the temper off her face before Mara even comes into view.
Mara reaches the bottom in one of her nightgowns, her hair still damp from the shower. She crosses straight to me and slides her hand into mine, her tail curling slow around my leg as she looks up at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, baby.” I lean down and kiss the top of her head. “Just me and my mother getting some things straight.”
Mara looks over at my mother and dips her head, and my mother dips hers right back. The two of them are careful with each other. Then Mara’s nose twitches. “I’m thirsty.”
“I’ll get you some water.” I start to turn, but she catches my wrist. “No. I’ve got it.”
I watch her go. On her way past Jacob she smiles at him, and he bows his head. Then she disappears into the kitchen.
My mother’s shoulders drop. “They wanted to keep me there, Aaron. They wanted me to stay and rule them.”
“Then they shouldn’t be locked in there alone,” I say.
“I didn’t know how to help them.” Some of the fight goes out of her with it.
“They need a leader who’ll be patient with them, that’s all.
” I keep my voice steady, even when nothing else about me is.
“Witches and warlocks might have ended up on the wrong side of the war against the rest of us, but they suffered, Ma, every bit as much as anyone, and you don’t get to make them the black sheep just because they’re hard to love. ”
She plants her hands back on her hips. “Don’t you dare tell me you’re going to rule over that Glen.”
“I don’t know what I want, Ma. I don’t know anything right now.
” I shake my head, and I have to push the rest out.
“All I’ve ever wanted is to settle down with Mara and build a life, to be the father to my own cubs that Eric never was to me.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing I’ve ever asked for.
And every time I reach for it, Fate puts something bigger in the way. ”
My throat closes around the last of it, and the tears are right there, ready to come. I’m not doing this here, not in front of her and Jacob and least of all in front of my mate. “I need some air.”
“Aaron—“
I’m already moving for the door. Mara calls my name behind me, sharp and worried, but I get it open and step out before it can get the better of me. As the door swings shut, I hear Jacob catch her, low and gentle, telling her to give me a minute.
I go down the porch steps into the dark. Out here, with no one left to see me, I stop holding it back. “Mother Fate.” I can barely get it out. “What do you want from me? I’ve gone without for so long. I just want to be happy. That’s all I’m asking. What do you want me to do?”
Nothing comes back. No answer, no sign, nothing but the cold and the sound of my own breathing.
I scrub the wet off my face. All of it, everything I did in that realm, and it came to nothing.
Now I’m carrying more than I ever asked for.
I shut my eyes and pray I didn’t break something tonight I can’t put back.
A portal tears open a few yards in front of me, black and empty.
I can’t see a thing on the other side, and magic floods my palms on instinct before I’ve even turned all the way toward it.
Then Eric comes flying out of it and hits the ground at my feet.
He slides to a stop face-first in the grass, his face a bloodied ruin.
I’m still staring down at him when Josiah steps through behind him, unhurried, and snaps his fingers. The portal closes at his back.
“I got him for you.” He’s grinning down at Eric, proud as anything. He spreads his arms a little. “You’re welcome.”
I stare at the two of them, too thrown to get a word out. I asked Mother Fate for an answer out here not a minute ago. I guess this is what she had in mind.
“How—“ I look up at him. “Josiah, you found him already?”
“I told you I wouldn’t need a location spell.
” He says it gently, almost wounded that I doubted him, and crouches down beside Eric.
“The moment you tore the magic out of that realm, I could feel the one place it stayed, a little knot of it where everything around it had gone dark. That told me the direction. But knowing where a man’s magic is only gets you so close.
Knowing the man is what told me exactly where to look. ”
He straightens and brushes off the knee of his trousers, in no rush at all, enjoying every bit of this.
“I told you back in the Glen that he reminded me of Dorian Gray. A man this vain doesn’t crawl off into a hole to lick his wounds where no one can see him.
That isn’t what they’re made for. He needs eyes on him.
He needs a room. So I asked myself where a vain man goes once he’s been cast out and left with nothing but a pretty face and no power behind it, and the answer’s the simplest thing, Aaron.
He goes somewhere he can buy his way back to strength. ”