Chapter Six
Mads
Everything inside of him, from lips to intestines, burned. Fire roared through him. “I didn’t know they’d come this far with spicy food…”
“Did you find your match? You seemed content while eating it.” Marquis walked along the riverbank with Mads. He picked up a stick on the ground and examined it, holding it up to the light. “Not this one…”
“It was too much, but I enjoyed every bite of it. The rest of me is protesting.” Mads sighed with a mix of annoyance and delight.
“Perhaps we ask for something a little lighter in spice next time.” Marquis chuckled.
“Never admit weakness in the face of your enemy!” Mads scoured the bank and found a piece of driftwood. He plucked it up neatly and wielded it like a sword, prodding Marquis’s bottom with it.
“What the devil?” Marquis whipped around as Mads hid the stick behind his back, lips pursed innocently.
“Must have been a goose.” He bounced the stick on his hip and grinned.
“I see no geese around.”
“A very small goose? Or perhaps it’s hiding in the rushes?” Mads feigned looking around with pursed lips and wide eyes. “Or an invisible goose! Perhaps someone cast an invisibility spell on a goose! The dastardly fiend! How will it find a mate?”
Marquis swept in, his grace undeniable, plucking the stick out of his hands with a keen eye. The violet in them gleamed as he stared at the wood. “A goose that gave you this fine wandwood, yes? Or perhaps you’re the silly goose?”
“Is it a good stick?” Mads glanced at it hopefully.
“The tree is young and alive. The stick was felled by ice the winter before. A post oak. Good choice. It’s naturally straight through the nodes. It’ll have a knot—”
Mads snickered. “Knot.”
“The wood will have a kno—” Marquis sighed heavily. “That’s no better, I’m afraid.”
“Not in the least, Covenmaster.” Mads chuckled.
“Anyway! This is a good stick. The mother of it is due north a few miles.” Marquis pulled his phone from his pocket and examined the screen. “We have a few hours, yet. Would you like to go visit your wand’s tree, or no?”
“As long as you’re with me, I’ll go anywhere you like.” Mads rocked on his heels and beamed as Marquis guided him back to the car, stick in hand. “Though, are you certain you don’t have any spare clothes in the trunk? If we’re searching for a mother tree, it might get warm on our hike.”
Marquis shrugged. “My suit is enchanted to repel dirt and stay cool. I need nothing else.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to sleeze down a bit once in a while.” Mads pouted. “You’re absolutely gorgeous under that suit.”
Marquis ignored the comment as they trudged back to the car, but his cheeks lit with a pink flush.
“I’ve been known to don my leathers occasionally and ride my motorbike. It’s been a while.” Marquis didn’t elaborate, but Mads lit up with delight.
“A motorbike? You wear leather.” Mads couldn’t contain the gasp that wracked his chest.
“I’ve woke a monster, have I?”
“A rather large one, I’d say. Not my penis.” Mads cleared his throat. He was rather well endowed for an omega, though.
Marquis dipped his gaze for a second but said nothing, cheeks still flushed. For an alpha, he did enjoy bottoming on the occasion, and the memorable times they’d spent in bed made Mads’s heart ache. He missed that level of closeness. Only one male in his bed, sex that he wanted.
“I do not enjoy the silence. You are thinking.” Marquis cleared his throat. Evidently, his mind was in a similar place.
“I am. I wanted to be naughty and rude, but thought better of it. It’s been a long while since…” Mads waved his hand dismissively. “Since Damien died, at least.”
“Not even you and Baron?” He said it with no jealousy or barbs, but it still stung.
“With as much wish as he snorted, he couldn’t get either of his wands up for the occasion.” Mads huffed and didn’t look at him. “He tried. Always acted like it was my fault. Slapped me around a little, then went off to get high again.”
“I apologize. I shouldn’t have said anything.” Marquis deflated.
“Yeah. But it’s okay. My stomach burns so bad, I can’t even entertain taking a male to my bed.” Mads shrugged it off but stumbled when Marquis turned back and slid a hand around his waist. “Marquis?”
The expression in his violet eyes glimmered with sorrow. No jealousy. No anger, only regret. “It’s all my fault. If I had bucked my father’s will, fought harder…”
“I should never have left. I should have demanded he bring Justin to our home. I should have run the first time the spells ran thin. I could have come back if I wasn’t so afraid. I didn’t trust you’d want me.”
Marquis brought him in for a hug. “It is in the past. If you can forgive me, I can forgive you.”
“But we need to forgive ourselves.” Mads pushed back, smiling up at him. “And we both carry a huge guilt.”
“I agree.” Marquis walked with him, and when they reached the car, they set off in silence to find the tree’s matron.
Four miles up the road, upriver along the way, they found a nature reserve, one that would be unlikely to be disturbed for years to come.
They exited the car at a nearby park and trudged forward, letting Marquis lead the way as he held the wood.
They’d find their post oak, and it would be the start of his wand.
“A Penumbra wand in the making. How do you know it’s the right tree?” Mads followed, stepping over a littered forest floor.
“I’m uncertain. It’s likely another race that’s interbred with our line. Perhaps a wood nymph or a forest spirit. Some bloodline lingers in us that makes us capable of sensing life through wood.” Marquis wandered around in a serpentine pattern to dodge trees and the occasional web.
“My father was supposedly a shifter, but I never had a hint of animal about me.” Mads shrugged.
“We should introduce you to Izohr, Rexford’s second-in-command. He’s half wolf and is quite good at detecting the blood. He’s even managed to become a shifter, himself.”
Mads stared at Marquis in open-mouthed disbelief as he explained how he’d pulled the canid from the child of an immoral pairing to let a little girl shift.
She took some of his flesh and traded for fur.
It was so interesting. And it filled in many blanks about Baron’s theory about mages interbreeding with shifters and omegas being the consequence of it.
The theory stood that only certain males were attracted to omegas, probably alpha by nature.
Some delineation between alpha and beta.
It also made sense that if a coupling produced a male attracted to omegas, they’d also produce omegas.
So, it made sense that multiple brothers in a family would be gay.
Mads’s train of thought came to an abrupt halt as Marquis trekked his way farther, determination flashing across his face as his eyes lit with power.
By the time the sound of rushing water met Mads’s ears, Marquis had already spotted the tree. A spindly post oak about forty years old missing a lower branch with a clean break at a node. “Found the source.”
Marquis held the stick in front of him, letting it drape across his hands as he knelt. He gingerly presented the stick to the tree as if it were an offering and spoke an incantation.
Mads had seen Baron do it countless times before, asking the tree for permission to use its limb, to link its life to magic and the cycle of a mage.
When Baron did it, it seemed performative.
As Marquis concentrated and spoke the words, the tree itself bowed in the breeze.
Nature itself responded to Marquis as the world around him whispered.
“I thank you, noble oak. You are young and mighty, and as long as you live, you will know magic.” He bowed his head once and stood, his face transforming into a wide grin.
“This is your wandwood tree. The wood was shed by natural causes, and the tree thanks you for bringing it back and says you may use it as a conduit.”
“What does the tree get from it? I always wondered.” Mads accepted the branch and smiled as the barest hum of magic purred under his fingertips.
“It gets to sense the magic you use. And if you do something wicked, it can hinder you. Trees have their own morals.”
“What are these morals?” Mads asked, staring the tree down.
“Every tree has their own. You’ll learn your wand in time.
My wand, for instance, doesn’t like to work cold spells.
Rexford’s absolutely will not do anything to harm plants.
Very specific. Not that there’s ever been a reason for him to try, save for killing some weeds.
” Marquis waved his hand dismissively, as if the science behind wandmaking were nothing.
Marquis had never done so while they were together, but watching him work the craft made Baron’s skill seem inadequate.
“You’re gifted. Wandmaking is your calling, Marquis.” Mads clutched the stick to his chest.
“Father and Baron were always better than me. I taught Rexford, and he’s got the skill, too. He may have to take up the calling. He’s better than me.” Marquis shrugged.
“No. Baron wasn’t as good as you. I never heard the trees respond. I never saw him ask for permission. This wandwood feels alive, now. The quality of his wands had gone so far downhill that Justin had to take over, and even his were failing fast.” Mads shrugged.
“Then it was due to their addictions.” Marquis walked past Mads and paused for a second.
“If it hurts you to bring them up, don’t, and I won’t, either.
” Marquis brushed his hands off on the front of his jacket, the dirt leaving his hands and falling off his suit jacket.
He was right, nothing stuck to the suit.
Mads thought about it for a moment. “I’d like to forget they exist. They’re dead and gone.
I can’t ignore the consequences of their actions.
I can’t wash them off me. I can still smell them on me.
You know I shaved my head the second they gave me a safety razor?
I could still smell them in my hair. And every now and again, I’d catch a whiff of them, and it’d make my walls crumble again.
Eventually I figured out it was that lady. Doris…”
Marquis had known his head had been shaved, but not why. He took a few steps forward and hugged Mads, wrapping his arms tight. “I can’t smell a thing. There’s no mark on you, no brand or tattoo. No scent or sigil but my own.”
Mads swallowed a sob and took a deep breath. “Nice of you to say that.”
“Nice would be me telling you that I was madly in love with you, that you are perfect, were perfect, still are. Nice would be me making you a wand; would be taking you out to dinner. That’s nice.
What I said was the truth. If I were nice, I’d have tried to woo you.
And that isn’t happening, not yet. I could have you in my bed, but that’s not what I want.
I want my love back.” Marquis released him and walked away.
“Now, let’s get you home. Would you like a coffee on the way? ”
Mads stopped in his tracks and frowned. “One of the special freezy blendy ones?”
“If that’s what you want.” Marquis kept walking.
“I keep seeing the nurses with them, and I want one so bad. I’ve only had sugar and creamer, but coffee milkshakes?
Please!” Mads followed happily as they made their way to the car, put the stick in the trunk, and headed off to the first coffee place they found on the side of the road in a seedy area with a little shack.
The girl in the booth wore nothing but a bikini, and they glanced up at the shack name. Bikini Babe Baristas.
Marquis rifled through his wallet and handed cash over as they ordered the blendy coffees.
The girl handed their order over with a smile. “Leave a tip?”
Marquis handed over a ten-dollar bill before turning his head to put the car into gear.
“Thanks bunches!” As she announced it, she whipped her top up, exposing a rather full set of breasts with pierced, dark nipples.
“Oh, good gods! Please put those away, miss!” Marquis fumbled and hit the gas, zooming off.
Mads sat there with wide eyes and pursed lips. “Did you pay her to whip her tits out?”
“It said coffee! I ordered coffee.”
“That was a big tip for only coffee…” Mads took a sip of the concoction and noticed writing on the cup. He squinted at it. “Bikini Babe Baristas. Ten for a flash, twenty for a bounce.”
“What?” Marquis didn’t look at his cup, fingers clutching the wheel.
“Yeah, you paid her to show her tits.” Mads snorted, the half chuckle caught in his throat, making him choke on his coffee drink. The coughing led to full-on laughter.
“I most certainly did not!”
“Says on the cup. Ten for a flash.” Mads took a long draw of the sweet and bitter concoction. It wasn’t that bad. Delicious, even. The laughter made it better.
“Anyways, I’m calling Rexford to give him an update.” Marquis cleared his throat.
“Be sure to tell him you took me to a titty coffee place and paid for me to see boobs.” Mads beamed.
“I’ll wait to make the call, then. And I did not pay her to see her breasts! I would have paid twenty for her to keep the top on.” He cleared his throat.
“What would you pay to see my tits? Eh?” Mads lifted the edge of his shirt, and Marquis glanced over for a blink before focusing on the road.
“If I had to pay to see them, it would sully what we share. But suffice it to say, there were days in my life I would have given every penny I owned to see you or your tits once again.” Marquis wilted in his seat. Always the perfect gentleman.
And all those years ago, Mads had chosen not to leave, and he didn’t regret it.
Even if he’d lived through hell.