Chapter 16 Luca
CHAPTER 16: LUCA
Cal’s apartment emptied out around mid-afternoon. As claustrophobic as it had been having everyone ask Luca if he was okay, knowing they’d left so they could lay a trap for the family member who’d raised him was so much worse.
“Come here, baby,” Cal said from the couch, gesturing to his lap.
Luca hesitated for a moment, reluctant to show weakness, and then thought fuck it and settled into Cal’s arms. Immediately, his heart rate calmed as Cal stroked his hair and tucked him under his chin.
“If something happens to me tonight, tell Portia to get in touch with a hacker who goes by nightraven. They’ll keep doing what I do for the kids,” Luca said.
Cal’s hand stopped moving and gripped his hair tightly enough to make little sparks of pain go off in his scalp, pulling until Luca was looking up at him.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” Cal growled.
Luca’s lips tilted up, revelling in the unfamiliar sensation of welcoming someone’s protection. “You can’t promise that,” he said.
“You will not do anything that will put you more at risk,” Cal ordered, making Luca shiver at the bossy tone.
“I’ll do whatever I have to do for the pack,” Luca said.
“You’re going to try and save your uncle, aren’t you?” Cal asked, resuming his soothing strokes to Luca’s hair.
Damn the witch. How did he know him so well in such a short time?
“I have to try.”
“You really don’t,” Cal said, before sighing. “But the fact you can’t help yourself is part of why I love you.”
Luca drew in a deep, shaky breath. Love. They’d danced around the word before, but this was the first time Cal had come out and said it outright. It was crazy. Too soon. And yet he could feel the truth of the statement in his bones. Just like he could feel the truth of his own feelings that he couldn’t bring himself to speak.
Cal dipped his head and brushed his lips over his softly. Luca pushed up into the kiss. His tongue slipped out to lick across Cal’s mouth and deepen it, but Cal pulled back a little and just kept pressing light butterfly kisses across his face, his cheeks, each of his eyes, his nose.
“Tease,” Luca whispered.
“If you’re a good boy and don’t get dead, I’ll let you come tonight, not before,” Cal said, which of course made his cock go from half-hard to solid steel in 0.34 seconds.
Luca groaned. “I hate you.”
“No, you love me,” Cal said, sounding very certain and a little smug.
The stars were obscured by a thick layer of cloud when they left the club that night. Cal had extended his wards and security to avoid another ambush like they’d faced in the carpark, but even so, they snuck out an entrance on the opposite side of the building Luca hadn’t even noticed was there. When he turned back to stare at the graffiti-covered exposed brick, he couldn’t see any sign of the opening they’d just stepped through.
“Clever,” he said.
Cal shrugged. “I can’t use it often or people would eventually figure out it’s there.”
The witch waved his hand and the dumpster across from them evaporated from view, revealing Cal’s Ducati.
“Shall we?” he asked.
Luca took the offered helmet, adjusting the earpiece that connected them to the rest of the pack before pulling it on. It was muted for now. The pack didn’t need to hear his conversation with his mate. It was bad enough he could hear his sister bitching in his ear.
A tingle of magic he hadn’t noticed last time they rode together shivered across his skin as he stepped closer.
“You’ve warded the bike?” Luca asked.
Cal looked at him in surprise. “Yeah, it’s got a permanent ward anchored in the fuel tank. All the witches in the MC do the same with whatever calls to the element they use. Most people don’t notice. I put a touch of my magic in the decoy bikes as well, just in case.”
Luca kept his eyes on their surrounding as he spoke, checking for any sign of attack. “I can feel your magic all the time now. It started when you healed me, and then it got much more sensitive once we…”
“That’s not usually how that works,” Cal said, steadying the bike as Luca straddled the pillion seat.
“Yeah, well. You’re in my blood now and I’m not letting you go,” Luca said, his words drowned out by the roar of the engine starting. He knew Cal’s new shifter hearing would pick it up, regardless.
From the other side of the club, he could just hear the decoy bikes starting in tandem.
Leaning into the warmth of Cal’s body, he wrapped his arms tight around his mate as they took off toward the street. Could he really keep resisting the bond between them? Did he even want to?
As they drove through the city traffic heading out of town, he could almost forget what lay ahead. The vibration of the bike between his legs, the rush of the wind passing them by, the skill and power of Cal’s handling as he weaved through cars like the predator he now was for real. All of it made his body thrum with energy. This was freedom. The freedom to let go and live. The freedom to take the simple pleasures offered by a man his soul had always trusted and his brain had now limped to catch up.
“I love you,” he whispered into the leather of Cal’s jacket, not sure if the words would carry past the faceplate of his helmet.
Cal reached back and squeezed his thigh.
The private words reminded him he hadn’t unmuted his mic, and he pushed a button on his smartwatch to open the channel.
“Any sign of pursuit?” he asked.
“Nothing behind you, and the decoy bikes are all still in play,” Angelo’s voice sounded in his ear. He and Vin were on one of those decoy bikes. Silas and one of the enforcers he’d cleared were another.
“We scouted the road an hour ago and there’s no sign of any trouble,” Aria added.
“Bella and I are in position at The Lupinary and the doc’s on standby. All quiet here so far, but we’re ready for them,” Marco said.
The shadowed, gloomy landscape opened up around them as they reached the edge of the city. Streetlamps flashed past at increasingly long intervals as Cal let the Ducati loose on the open road until they reached the point where the only illumination came from the headlight of the bike and the reflection off the markings on the road.
Luca’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he glanced at his watch to see who was calling. His grip on Cal tightened as he saw it was his uncle.
“G’s calling me,” he told his family. “Something’s wrong.”
“Heading your way. Answer it,” Marco said.
He didn’t get the chance to because the road in front of them burst upward in a shower of tar seal and earth, too close for Cal to avoid at this speed.
“Jump!” Cal shouted, a second before he forced the bike to spin out and slide onto its side so they didn’t crash headfirst into whatever that torrent of dirt was.
Luca used the momentum to shove himself away from the bike, flying through the air for long seconds before landing in a clumsy roll in a ditch on the side of the road. His helmet gave a sickening crack as it hit a stray rock. He was lucky he’d been wearing it, or that would’ve been his skull. Tearing the thing off his head with too clumsy hands that sent his earpiece flying, he staggered to his feet, his shifted eyes searching the darkness for his mate.
“Cal!” Luca shouted, pushing down his panic.
“He knocked himself out trying to give you an extra boost,” a familiar voice called from the darkness.
It was the man who’d caught Cal in that net. The earth witch they’d been hunting.
Snarling, Luca resisted the urge to shift. The witch was too far away, and he had a feeling the only way he was getting out of this would be by delaying him with conversation. Although, that wouldn’t work long if the rustling he could hear upwind of them was D-2S humans waiting to attack. He really hoped his backup arrived soon or he was fucked. Where was Cal? If his mate was unconscious, he needed to keep their attention away from him.
The earth witch must have sensed he was stalling because a moment later Luca had to throw himself into a desperate roll on his still injured shoulder to avoid another blast of lethally swirling rocks and dirt. Groaning, he let his shift take over as he got back to his feet. They were past conversation. He was going to need his wolf’s speed and stamina to stay clear.
Darting behind a skeletal shrub to take what limited cover it offered, Luca realised too late he should’ve kept moving as the ground beneath his feet started sinking like quicksand. He was knee-deep and sinking fast.
A blur of motion to his right had him flinching away, but then familiar hands were pulling under his belly, halting his movement.
“Ethan, stop! Don’t do this,” his Uncle Gio cried.
Luca could hear the panic in his uncle’s voice carried on a surge of pure alpha dominance like a wave passing him by. The earth settled beneath his feet.
“Dammit, G. Get out of my head,” the witch, Ethan, shouted back, his frustration clear.
Only Luca called his uncle G. No one else. He’d never allowed it.
Luca whined in distress, the question clear in his tone.
“He’s my mate,” Gio admitted, tugging him free from the now loose dirt just as a hail of bullets slammed around them.
Thank fuck humans couldn’t see as well in the dark or they’d have been riddled already. His heart sank as he processed his uncle’s words, barely aware of the brush of tall grass against his body as Gio pulled them away from where the gunfire had been coming and behind a tree. Luca couldn’t help himself. He shifted back to his human form, needing to understand.
“You’ve been helping him track me,” he said.
Gio shook his head. “I fed him just enough information to keep them happy while I tried to get him free from them. I was keeping you safe.”
Snarling as he sensed a human drawing near, Luca lunged around the tree and nearly ripped his attacker’s head off as he snapped his neck and threw him back to the ground in disgust.
“He’s being held captive?” Luca asked. The vitriol in Ethan’s voice didn’t strike him as someone acting against his own will.
“Not exactly. I meant free of their influence. They’ve brainwashed him. Made him think the mating bond will enslave him. You, of all people, should understand what that belief can do to a person.”
Luca flinched away from the kindness in Gio’s eyes like he’d been struck. “What the fuck does that mean? I’m nothing like him! For one, I was actually enslaved. It wasn’t a hypothetical. And I never took my anger out on anyone other than the people directly responsible. Ethan’s been killing indiscriminately for a fucking terrorist organisation, G. You can’t save him from the consequences of that.”
“I know,” Gio said, tears in his eyes. “As soon as he attacked you directly instead of the humans taking shots I’d made sure would miss, I knew he’d gone too far.”
Luca’s heart ached for his uncle, but his judgement had been twisted beyond recognition by the mating bond. “No, G. He went too far the second he started helping the group set on killing us all.”
A branch snapped nearby and Luca twisted in time to see a face haunted with fear and anger lit up by the sinister green glow of his magic. The tree they’d been hiding behind groaned and a branch whipped out, smashing into Luca’s head and knocking him to the ground.
“I’m going to break your life apart like you broke mine,” Ethan said, his eyes on Gio, but his magic focussed on battering Luca with the branches of that damn tree.
Shifting back to his wolf form, Luca tried to wriggle his way free of the wooden cage trying to beat him to death, snapping his teeth at each stick swinging for his body, but there were too many.
With a pained howl, his uncle shifted before his eyes and lunged for Ethan. The earth witch’s eyes grew wide with surprise as if, despite everything, he couldn’t believe Gio would ever hurt him. Gio’s fangs sinking into his mate’s arm halted the assault on Luca’s body and he used the momentary pause to push free.
A flash of green magic surrounded Ethan and his uncle fell to the ground, silently choking on the dirt swirling into his lungs. Gio had been close enough to slash Ethan’s throat before the spell took hold. Close enough to do something, anything, to defend himself before it came to this. He chose not to. Luca understood. He wouldn’t have been able to kill Cal no matter what he did. He hadn’t even been able to kill Garyth.
Their eyes met in the darkness and as the green light faded and the remaining earth scattered to the ground with a sound like falling rain, Gio mouthed his final words.
“ I’m sorry .”
A howl of anguish filled the air as he died and it took Luca a moment to realise it wasn’t him or any other shifter. It was Ethan. Green light filled the air again, and the ground grew hot beneath his paws.
Oh, fuck. They’d actually completed the bond .
He’d assumed they hadn’t. But the crazed grief and guilt emanating from the witch at having murdered his mate was all too real. Being human instead of a shifter must’ve allowed him this devastating final betrayal, but it wouldn’t protect him from its effects. It was hard enough for a mate to survive the death of their bonded, but to have caused it? Ethan’s soul would be shattered forever. He was going to self-destruct. The only question was how many of them he took with him.
As the green light spread further across the barren landscape, Luca started backing away. He could hear the roar of engines approaching and the scattered sound of gunfire resumed, but Luca kept his eyes trained on Ethan as the biggest threat. He didn’t move fast enough. All sound was sucked into a sudden vacuum and then a percussive explosion throbbed into the ground, sending a blast wave hurtling toward him.
Just as he turned away to protect his face, knowing it wouldn’t be enough, a body slammed him into the ground and cool blue magic filled the air around him, protecting him. As the scent of Cal filled the air, Luca twitched underneath him and shifted back to human, the change making Cal roll clear.
“Took you long enough,” he gasped.
“Sorry, baby. There were a bunch of attackers between us who I needed to deal with,” Cal said, lying on his back panting as his voice cracked with pain and exhaustion.
Well, that explained why Luca hadn’t taken a bullet to the head yet. Although he guessed there was no reason to target him specifically now that Gio was exposed as the traitor, anyway. The D-2S members stalking the roadside would just kill him for being a supernatural the same as anyone else.
Pushing up onto his elbows, Luca crawled onto Cal’s chest, wincing as he took in the sluggishly bleeding gash to his mate’s temple and the mismatched pupils. Yeah, even with shifter healing, he was definitely concussed. As if proving him right, the blue light keeping them safe flickered alarmingly.
“You okay?” Luca asked.
“Not really. How long will this take to heal?” he asked, touching the large lump on his head.
“Depending on how many other injuries you’ve got going, the brain bruising should heal in the next ten minutes or so. Our healing prioritises essential organs,” Luca said.
“I don’t think we have that long.”
Both of them jerked as a cascade of magic like colourful fireworks blasted into the air outside their bubble of safety—reds, blues, greens, and purples ricocheted off the massive circle of death Ethan had created.
“What the?” Luca asked.
“That’s the MC. Thank fuck. I never thought I’d be grateful to see them. That guy’s only a mid-range witch, but he’s using all his life force to power that thing. It’s hard to combat,” Cal said, groaning as he managed to sit up.
The green of Ethan’s magic was finally shrinking under the assault of the four witches he still couldn’t see through the flashes of light and raw power. As it cleared their location, the surrounding scents and sounds washed over them in a tidal wave.
Not good.
Luca could scent at least fifteen humans encircling their position. Glancing over at Cal, he saw him tap his ear. Thank fuck his comms piece was still working.
“Lunettis, how far out are you?” Cal asked.
Luca shifted again as he waited to hear when his pack would arrive. The fact they weren’t here already meant something had gone very wrong. Nudging Cal back toward a tree, he crouched low to the ground in between the witch and all these terrorist bastards trying to end them .
“They’re still five minutes away. The roads were booby-trapped. The bikes got through, but not anything on four wheels. The MC witches are sitting ducks until they get Ethan under control. We need to watch their backs,” Cal said.
Luca growled. He didn’t want to watch those witches’ backs. He wanted to watch his witch’s back.
“Don’t be like that, baby. I’ll circle left, you go right,” Cal said.
Luca still hesitated as Cal shifted behind him, whining. He only just got him back. What if he lost him? Cal was injured.
A sharp nip to his flank got him moving. As he glared over his shoulder at his mate, he noticed the blue glow of Cal’s fur turn shadowy. He’d done something to stop his magic from making him a walking beacon through the dark night.
With a silent snarl of frustration as Cal darted off, Luca did as he’d been asked and circled around to the right, putting him in between the road and Ethan’s still-fading final spell.
Luca might not train for combat like the rest of his family, but his wolf instinctively knew how to hunt and those instincts were a thousand times stronger with his mate in danger nearby. Creeping through the tall grass, the first human didn’t even see him as he silently launched himself into his back and crushed his spine at the neck between his teeth. He’d been down on one knee lining up a shot at a witch whose hands were glowing a bright purple—air magic. The rifle he was using smelled wrong to Luca’s nose, reeking of Ethan’s earth magic. The bullets must’ve been spelled as well as silver. He was wearing a charm around his neck that screened his sound and scent.
Giving the limp corpse one last rending shake, Luca carried on, every sense on alert. Being forced to find his prey by sight alone was a major delay in dealing with these assholes. He didn’t even know how many there were.
The next attacker he took down with a bite to the back of the knee, collapsing her to the ground with a silent scream. Knowing they needed answers to who was leading the group and what their plans were, Luca risked taking his time to tear the tendons of both her arms as well. She wouldn’t be holding a weapon anytime soon, and he’d be surprised if she could drag herself far enough to get free.
It was weird as fuck to fight opponents who were totally silent, not even the noise of their movements in the dry grass registering in his ears. He paid for that danger as he turned away, the human kicking out at his ribs with her one remaining good leg.
Burning fire ripped down his side, and Luca snarled. She’d had a silver blade concealed in the heel of her boot, laced with silver nitrate by the feel. Dammit. Grabbing her hair in his teeth, he reared up and slammed her head down into the earth, rendering her unconscious. At least he hoped that’s all he’d done. Without the sounds of breathing or heartbeats, it was hard to tell the difference between unconsciousness and death in the dark of the night. He didn’t have time to double-check.
As he reached the far end of the circle of witches, he paused and took in the sight of eight attackers creeping up on a large man wielding fiery red power—Blaze, the President of the Elemental Mayhem MC. With a yell, a surge of red washed over the small remaining bubble of Ethan’s power and the earth witch’s body dropped to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut. True darkness fell beneath the clouded sky as the magical assault faded, leaving only sparkling afterimages behind.
Panting, Blaze spun around, sensing something despite the silence of the attackers closing in. They’d been waiting for him to tire himself out, like a wolf chasing down its prey. Two silent bullets rushed through the air as Blaze’s eyes widened in surprise. He’d let his shielding lapse in the blowback from his efforts to take Ethan down.
Time slowed and Luca watched in horror as a shining blue wolf jumped through the air right in front of the bullets meant for Blaze. By the time his body crashed to the ground, Cal was human again and bleeding out. His shift forced by whatever they’d spelled into their rounds.
Luca charged for the bastards that had dared to shoot his mate in deadly silence. A dull glow formed behind him—Blaze finally getting his shields sorted—but Luca didn’t have time to look. The asshole better have extended them over his mate after Cal had jumped in front of a fucking bullet for him.
A full-frontal assault probably wasn’t the best tactic when he was outnumbered against magical rounds, but there wasn’t anything else he could do. He needed to protect Cal. Human reactions were slow. It took them a moment to realise he was incoming, to swing their arms around to face him. He had far enough to travel that they still could’ve stopped him in his tracks, but a flicker of shadows from behind them said his pack had finally made it to the battle.
As Luca tore the throat out of one of the men whose bullets had hit Cal, Marco was right there tearing chunks out of another. Vin had ripped someone’s arm off and their lifeblood was pumping out in spurts onto the ground. Bella had done something that charred the skin of someone’s face until they were a blistered, blackened, unrecognisable mess. It didn’t take long to subdue them from there. Luca left them to it, knowing he wouldn’t be able to hold back from killing them all and needing to get to his mate.
When he swung around, the four MC witches were looming over Cal’s prone form. They’d removed the bullets from his side, or maybe Cal’s body had rejected them on his own, but the MC looked anything but caring. Running for his mate, he didn’t stop until he was standing over him protectively, lips pulled back in a snarl, his growl reverberating across the now silent space. To their credit, the witches backed off a little rather than attacking. Probably because his pack had responded to his distress by gathering at his back.
Keeping his eyes on the witches, he nosed at the still-bleeding bullet wounds on Cal’s side, lapping at the wounds to clean the silver away despite the way it made his tongue burn. The MC water witch glaring at him could’ve pulled the poison free the same way Cal had done to him, but the asshole didn’t shift a muscle to offer and Luca didn’t trust him enough to ask. Not with the aggression they were giving off in waves.
“Blaze,” Marco said in greeting from somewhere behind him. His Alpha was making no effort to hide his own aggression and dominance, not cowed in the slightest by the four witches.
“What the fuck do you call this, Marco? You changed one of the most powerful witches in the city. You may as well have declared fucking war,” Blaze snapped.
Ah. That would explain the aggression. Fuck. He’d known there would be consequences to what he’d done to Cal, but he’d hoped they could just keep it hidden. At least until they figured out how to play it. This was bad.
“He’s my cousin’s mate and he would’ve died if we hadn’t changed him,” Marco said, owning what Luca had done in the way he owned everything his pack did.
“There’s no bite on his neck,” Blaze challenged.
“The bond is there. He’s family whether they choose to complete it or not,” Marco replied.
“I don’t give a flying fuck what he is to you. He was glowing in the dark before he changed. Who knows how much more powerful he is with his shifter and witch strength combined? If you think you can steal my witches to build magical super-shifters, you’re sorely fucking mistaken.”
“Cal has never been one of yours and he saved your life,” Marco said, his voice even despite the tension.
“And he can’t be one of yours either. It goes against everything we’ve negotiated to keep the peace here,” Blaze snapped.
“He was ours the moment he was born as the soulmate to my cousin, but that has nothing to do with city politics. He’s not involved in the business, he’s family,” Marco said.
“We both know there’s no difference. He’s not going to say no to his mate’s Alpha. We can’t let this kind of threat exist,” Blaze said.
Luca’s growl turned even louder and he took a step closer to the witches, hackles raised. His distress was enough to pull Cal back to awareness. Cal groaned as he pushed himself into a sitting position and hung his head between his knees behind Luca. A moment later, the reassuring strength of Cal’s hand settled in his ruff, tugging at his fur. Cal was still too weak to hold him back, but the message was clear. He didn’t want Luca attacking anyone for him.
“If you kill my family, there’s no way we’re not going to war,” Marco warned. “We have too many shared enemies to weaken ourselves that way. This won’t be the last we see of the D-2S and Kyan has been getting bolder and bolder with the Cruor Coven’s breaches of the founding agreement. We need to show a united front.”
Blaze still looked like he’d rather fry them all where they stood, but he didn’t immediately reject Marco’s assessment. The delicate balance of power between the vampires of the Cruor Coven, the Elemental Mayhem MC, and the Lunetti Pack was just a fact of life in New Trinity City. It’s what kept everyone in check .
Changing Cal might’ve tipped the scales out of balance, but it was nothing compared to the way Kyan had been slowly turning his business into something neither the MC nor the pack could tolerate. There had been protections and rules in place for the humans the vampires trafficked since day one. It didn’t make it okay, but it had made it the least bad option to keep the peace. With their victims getting younger by the month, they were heading for a conflict fast if Kyan’s brother Darius didn’t manage to stage a coup in time.
“What do you suggest?” Blaze asked begrudgingly.
“We rebalance the relationship between us. Make it plain to both our families that Cal’s transformation doesn’t mean the pack is in an arms race with you to take over,” Marco said.
Blaze snorted. “And how the fuck are you going to convince my crew of that?”
“By making us family. Everyone knows the pack’s loyalty to its own. We tie ourselves together. Through marriage,” Marco said.
Blaze’s mouth dropped in surprise and Wyatt started whispering in his ear, clearly unhappy. Holding up a hand to stop his second, Blaze said, “Who? I don’t imagine anyone in the pack will be lining up to tie themselves for life to a witch.”
“It’s not like it will be a mating bond. Whoever we choose can negotiate the terms of their marriage between them. It doesn’t have to be a life sentence. My cousin Emilio will do it,” Marco said, sounding very certain.
Luca winced. Their cousin Emilio would do it. Just like anyone in the pack would if Marco asked them to. It didn’t mean he’d like it. Emilio was Gio’s only son. It seemed particularly cruel to expect him to do this when his father’s body was still cooling on the ground somewhere nearby. The sudden reminder of his uncle’s death had him whining and curling into Cal for comfort now the witches seemed to be less of a threat.
“The traitor’s son?” Blaze asked, one eyebrow raised, but he didn’t immediately reject the idea.
“Emilio’s loyalty was never in question. He will see this as a way to atone for his father’s mistakes,” Marco said.
Marco was right. Hopefully, it would also help avoid any murmuring from the rest of the pack about Emilio’s loyalty. This was why Marco was their Alpha. He wasn’t just the strongest and the most dominant. He thought five steps ahead and made the hard decisions needed to keep their pack safe and functioning with utter ruthlessness.
“I need to take this back to the club. It’s not a decision I can make on my own. Kyan will see it as an act of aggression,” Blaze said, finally.
Of all the crime families, the motorcycle club was the most democratic. They’d just have to wait and see how it played out.
“Kyan’s not powerful enough to take us both on and he’s not ready to make trouble when he knows we could get the supernatural council involved. Yet,” Marco said.
It was only a matter of time. At least Cal was safe for now. And if the witches decided to stay a threat, Luca knew they’d have the whole pack behind him.