Chapter 5
Jessie
I yanked away from my mate in surprise. I was out of breath from that kiss, and my gargoyle was urging me to drag Austin into the trees to celebrate his victory with our bodies.
A dozen basajaunak ran toward the resident shifters, their hackles raised and their teeth bared. They were going for blood.
The shifters exploded into their animals without hesitation. Their readiness spoke well of them, but it was not conducive to calming things down.
“No, no, no!” I pulled back from Austin’s body and pivoted, throwing out my hands. “No, no! Don’t attack!”
Broken Sue and Tristan exploded into their animals. Thankfully, they were with the resident shifters. I threw up a wall as I ran, and Sebastian caught up to me and helped.
Tristan slammed into Dave, who tried to wrestle the gargoyle-monster out of the way. Phil batted at Broken Sue’s gorilla, but his arm was grabbed, and he was spun around. I ran into the fray. My wall shoved back as two basajaunak ran into it and tried to break through.
I hit them with a stinging spell. “Knock it off, it’s done!” I bellowed, my voice amplified. “Stand down!”
Ulric and Jasper dropped down in front of Her, whose name she had yet to make up on the sly, and somersaulted in the air. Her knocked them away, making a beeline for the resident beta, somehow knowing that shifter had the most power of those still standing.
“Good God,” I ground out, pointing at Drex. “Someone make sure he isn’t moved or bothered.”
I hit another basajaun with a spell, then another, and planted myself in front of the resident shifters.
“Would you stop?” I yelled, blasting another basajaun and sending him flying backwards.
Slowly—much too slowly—the scene calmed down. Tristan flew just out of reach of Dave with his hands in the air, claws glistening. Broken Sue had his thick gorilla arms wrapped around Phil’s middle to keep him from joining the fray, and Ulric and Jasper picked themselves out of the dirt.
I put my hands out to the sides, exasperated. “What in the hell is going on, guys?”
The basajaunak all looked around at each other. It was Dave who spoke up.
“The vampire said you’d need him and started off toward you. You tasked me with making sure no one followed you, so I figured I’d better follow him and try to stop him.”
“I followed him”—Phil pointed at Dave— “because that seemed like the right thing to do.”
“I followed Phil—“
“Okay, okay.” I held up my hands.
“And then we heard a battle through the trees,” Dave went on. “You had our connections closed, which meant you didn’t want us to know about it. We figured you needed us, because you always do that when the odds are tough and you’re afraid we’ll get hurt.”
“You do,” Her agreed. “It’s a big flaw. We’ve thought for some time that you should work on it.”
“Do you like this guy?” Indigo called. She was standing beside Niamh, who’d brought over a fold-out chair and her cooler and was currently watching the prone alpha.
“Niamh says you like this guy, and you want him healed, but Austin Steele looks banged up, and I’d rather help him if I have a choice. ”
“Oh.” Phil scratched his chest. “And we brought Indigo because…well, she asked.”
“Does this mean I can come out now?” Fred called from the roof of a van down the way.
“Why?” I said to myself, wilting. And then, because there were certain things you really didn’t want to lose sight of, I looked skyward. “Where’s Cyra?”
Everyone looked around. Ripping open the connections, I took stock of the situation. I spotted her and pointed. She was going to their homestead, I’d bet.
“Onnn it,” Tristan said through his gargoyle teeth before blasting skyward.
The gargoyles, at least, had kinda followed directions, as had most of the shifters.
“Yes, heal him, please,” I told Indigo, shooing the basajaunak away from the resident shifters.
“I’ll work on Austin.” To the basajaunak I said, “It was a challenge between Austin and the other alpha, which is normal, and the connections were closed so that you didn’t overreact and come here when you shouldn’t. ”
“Ah.” Dave nodded. “Well, if you didn’t have that terrible habit of cutting our connections when you’re in grave danger, we wouldn’t have been confused.”
“True,” Her said.
I shook my head, motioning them away. “Give these people some space. They’ve probably had enough by now.
” I turned to the beta, who was still in her animal form.
“I’m really very sorry. I’m the weak link in this leadership outfit.
We work great together in battle, and they do what I say, but outside of that…
” I flared my arms. “I mean, we can’t even form a straight line. It is what it is.”
None of them shifted into their human forms, and I didn’t blame them.
“The line thing is embarrassing,” Phil said. “I heard about that.”
I pointed at all of them, my face stern. “Back off. Go hang out in the trees and wait for us to put this to rights.”
They complied, and I turned to the resident alpha. Neither the beta nor their shifters tried to stop me. Then again, they probably didn’t want to incite the basajaunak again.
Indigo sat cross-legged beside Drex, her hand on his shoulder. I knelt by his side.
His eyes fluttered open, tightened from pain.
“Hey,” I said softly, using my bedside manner. “You’re going to be okay. I left the pain because I don’t want you moving around. You need to lie still for a while longer so your wounds and broken bone can properly stitch, but if you promise to do that, Indigo can make you feel okay while you heal.”
His eyes focused on mine before roaming over my face and landing on my lips. “Alpha Steele is incredibly lucky to have found an angel like you.”
I gave him a smile. People always let their guards down when they were hurting and grateful to be healed…until sense crept back in. “Stay still, okay?” I said. “Indigo is going to take over from here.”
Austin was standing near the Jeep, straight and broad and hurting like hell. How he looked so composed when he could barely stand, I would never know.
“Here you go, miss.” Mr. Tom met me at the Jeep and held out a purple cloth. A muumuu, obviously. He wore one currently, having shifted at some point to help out.
“Thanks, Mr. Tom. Can you grab some water?”
“Of course.” He turned back for the vans.
After I slipped on the muumuu, I assessed Austin with my magic. Gashes and teeth marks and a broken pinky. He had blood all over, carving out the cut muscle and glistening in the low light where it was still flowing.
I set to healing immediately, not yet stopping his pain. I wanted him to get comfortable first.
“Here we go.” Mr. Tom laid a blanket beside the road on a tuft of grass before setting a water bottle on top of it. “Just what you need, miss, a little rest and some water to quench your thirst. Why don’t you have a break while the other pack composes themselves.”
Behind Austin’s back, he made an arc with his hand before pointing. “That is really for him,” he mouthed, only it came out in a whisper, and he wasn’t fooling anyone.
“Thanks, Mr. Tom.” I put my hand on Austin’s arm to direct him that way.
“Protocol says I should stay standing if I am able,” Austin grunted.
“Protocol doesn’t trump your mate asking you to please sit on the blanket with me while I rest for a moment. I’ve done a lot of magic, and I’m tired. I could use your company.”
He issued a little smile before acquiescing. “If it pleases milady.”
I let him painfully situate himself before sitting down next to him and slipping my hand in his. My touch helped him heal faster, and it also gave him a pass for lounging.
“I couldn’t have stopped the fight any sooner, right?
” I asked, looking at everyone else. The basajaunak were all lounging in the trees, mostly out of sight and content.
The other pack was still clustered together in their animal forms, closer now to their alpha.
The beta was watching over him. He lay as he had, his eyes closed.
Tristan had flown back to the other gargoyles.
Cyra was with him, and the rest of my crew were idle, waiting, except for Edgar, who was randomly wandering around in the woods for some reason.
“No,” Austin replied, leaning a little harder into me.
He turned his head for a kiss, and I met his lips, falling in and losing myself for a moment. He pulled back and grunted. The pain was getting to him. I eased it a little, but just enough to make him comfortable. He clearly needed a reminder that he was a long way from being healed.
“You did perfectly. Exactly as we needed and better than anyone else could’ve.” He smiled at me and then let his gaze roam toward the others. “That was a hard fight.”
“The hardest ever?”
He huffed out a laugh and then winced. “It was just one guy. A tough guy, with a powerful beast, but still just one guy. A shifter guy, at that. The toughest ever might be Cyra…or it might be one of those hunting parties back in the day. Cyra certainly hurt worse.” He took a deep breath.
“No, Drex wasn’t the hardest, by far. I wondered if he could take Brochan or Tristan, but now I don’t think he could.
He has the potential to be exceptional, but it hasn’t yet been realized.
He lacks experience. Hiding up here, for whatever reason, has stunted him.
He’s been out of the game for a while, and it shows.
I didn’t need to take so much damage, but I wanted to see his range.
His kill shots. He had some good moves, but he couldn’t tell when I was baiting him.
Still, he’s a damn powerful shifter with an inspiring drive to keep going at all costs, and his people showed courage in the face of half a dozen charging basajaunak. ”
“Yeah, I noticed you didn’t bother running to help with that,” I teased.
“I didn’t want to be dragged behind one of them like Brochan.” He laughed. “I wish I’d gotten a picture of that.”
“So, you were testing him, baiting him, and then you nearly killed him to prove a point? Because I very nearly didn’t get there in time. I don’t think you realize how close it came.”
“Yeah. That.” Austin rubbed his thumb across the bottom of his lip. “I baited him, and he reacted a little better than I expected. He got too close to my jugular and…”
“The beast took over.”
“The beast dragged me all the way in and swallowed me whole.” He dropped his hand again.
Love soaked through the bonds, and he looked at me with reverence in his eyes.
“And only one person in the world can stand in front of me and use mere words to bring me back to the surface. To bring me back to her.”
“Well…a spell that covered half of you in burns and some words, sure.”
He gave me a cute lopsided grin and shrugged before wincing.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “Cyra might’ve been the hardest fight, certainly one-on-one, but she wasn’t the most pain I’ve ever felt.
That honor goes to the spell that closed off the cave where you met Dave.
Do you remember? It burned off an entire layer of skin.
Not blacking out was a miracle. I still have nightmares sometimes. ”
I did remember, and I had blacked out. I’d been out for a day or two while he’d gotten up and kept going. His pain tolerance was legendary, and the fact that it came from a hard life before this choked me up. Still, he was here now. It had all led to this. I said as much.
“Yes, and I’d do it all again to be sitting beside you right now, taking in this somewhat decent day in a desolate part of North Carolina while Edgar hides in the foliage staring at everyone.”
“What?” I looked around and saw Edgar. He was standing in the middle of a bush with the leaves of a tree branch framing his upper half, doing just as Austin had said—staring at everyone, his gaze unblinking.
It was incredibly creepy. “It must be a joke. There are levels to weirdness and that one just doesn’t exist.”
“He’s created an entirely different plane of weirdness,” Austin agreed.
“And for some reason, Drex thought he was as dangerous as Cyra.” I shook my head slowly. “Joke is on him.”
“Joke is on all of us.”