15. Deacon
Chapter fifteen
Deacon
It’s a few minutes of arguing back and forth before we come to an agreement on who should go to help Quinn. Drew is insistent—Quinn will trust no one else but him, not even Kieran. That’s fair. His entire pack may have been manipulated by Tamesis, and I know precisely how that feels.
Sam says he’ll go, too, because of the high chance of a mage attacking, and Ophelia should come in case there’s been any wolfsbane used.
The entire time, Vasile stares at me.
Kieran shakes his head. “Let me come too, then. Sam’s great in a fight, and so am I.”
“No,” I say when I see Drew’s face begin to soften. “You don’t head into an unknown situation with your second, not if you can help it. What if you’re both taken out at once?”
Kieran’s face darkens, a mutinous expression I’m coming to recognise, and I know will cause us plenty of trouble in the future. “I’ll go,” I say quickly and hear Vasile’s faint huff of laughter.
The moment Drew said he had to help his friend, I knew I would go with him.
“You’ll be in danger, too,” Kieran says. “That’s not—”
“We don’t have time for this,” Drew says. He’s heading for the door already, pausing just long enough to tug on his shoes. Sam kisses Adam’s cheek before he’s right on his mate’s heels. “We’ll call you when we’ve got him, okay?”
“Fine,” Kieran says, though clearly none of it is fine with him at all. “Bring him back here.”
“Is that wise?” Moreau asks.
He’s not wrong to ask, as much as I hate to admit it. Kieran’s flat is the most protected place in London. Bringing someone inside those wards who might have a hidden agenda…
“It’ll be fine,” Sam says. He opens the door, and Drew steps out into the hall. “I’ve got it, okay?”
For the first time, Kieran’s shoulders relax. His faith in his second is not unwarranted, and I’m glad to see they truly trust one another. Sam’s gaze darts to Adam, and Kieran nods. “Okay. Be careful.”
Sam’s smile is more a baring of his teeth than anything else. “We always are.”
I lean into Vasile’s side. “You’ll look out for them, too?”
He huffs, but there’s some surprise in his expression. “Of course.”
I follow the three of them out of the flat and down to the street, where there’s already a taxi waiting. Sam ushers us all inside, taking the front seat, which means it’s a tight fit in the back, Ophelia squashed between me and Drew.
Drew has his phone in his hands, constantly checking the pin Quinn has sent him and firing off what I assume are increasingly concerned texts. His leg shakes, and Ophelia places one hand on his arm.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“He’s not moved since we left the flat. And he’s not answering any texts.”
I catch Sam’s frown in the rear-view mirror and pull out my own phone to ask Chaya to ready a car to pick us up. We’re going to need more room than we’ll get in a taxi if we’re planning to bring another wolf back with us. And if he’s been killed…
I’ll take him back to our pack house, in that case. Kieran and Drew might not like it, but they’ve got nowhere to keep a body, and it’s not like he’ll be in danger from Tamesis anymore.
We pull up and pile out of the car. Drew looks around with a frown. We’re at the edge of a park, the street quiet except for a couple of people passing by. He turns in a circle.
“He should be here.” The taxi pulls away. “He should be here, but—”
Sam reaches for him before I can, one hand landing firmly on the back of Drew’s neck. I’m already sniffing the air, and I can smell wolves, but I don’t know Quinn’s scent to pick it out of the rest.
“Take a breath, sweetheart. You’re the only one of us who can find him.”
Drew nods. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” He stuffs his phone back in his pocket and breathes deep, just like I’ve been doing. For all they were both raised as alpha sons—because Kieran was too, wolf or not—they’re wilder than most of the wolves we get in London these days. More in touch with their instincts.
“This way,” Drew says, leading us unerringly into the park.
The scent of wolves is stronger in here, though beginning to fade. One scent rises above the others, and when Drew breaks into a run, I know his friend is still here.
I stay alert as we follow him through a maze of bushes and trees, then across to where a shadowed shape is lying still in the grass. I breathe in deep, picking out the wolf’s scent. The others are beginning to fade, and as Drew drops to his knees next to Quinn, I turn in a circle, making sure we’re alone.
Ophelia drops with Drew on Quinn’s other side, and they gently roll him onto his back. He’s still alive, though his scent is soaked in pain and blood, and he lets out a groan, eyes fluttering as he tries to open them.
“Quinn?” Drew says, voice high and a little panicked. Sam hovers close to him, but he’s just as alert as I am. Something isn’t right here. Why would they leave him? Their scents are fading too fast for them to have run when we arrived.
“D-Drew?” The wolf’s voice is hoarse. I look him over briefly as I turn again. He’s around Kieran’s size, with sandy hair and a face that might be pretty under all those bruises. The skin on his knuckles is broken.
At least he gave as good as he got.
“Yeah, we need to get you out of here.”
“Drew,” Sam says, a note of warning in his voice. “They just left him here.”
“We have to help him.”
“Let me heal him,” Ophelia interrupts, and Drew nods, sitting back on his heels. Sam sighs, meeting my gaze and shaking his head.
Yeah, I know. Just taking Quinn back, without establishing whether or not the trap is here or once we get him in the wards… It’s dangerous.
A sound to my left has me turning, and a wolf bursts out of the shadows, taking all of us by surprise. His paws land on my shoulders, and we topple to the ground, but I have enough about me to roll us even as I hear Drew’s cry of dismay.
“Wait!” Sam shouts. I assume he’s not talking to me. I shove the wolf off me—he’s not strong, not even shifted as he is—and scramble to my feet, feeling my own wolf push to the surface.
We’re not about to roll over and show our belly to a weak wolf like this. Not in our territory, not with pups we have to protect only a few feet away.
Sam moves his hands, and I don’t know what he’s doing, but I don’t care. The wolf adjusts his stance, ready to leap at me again, and I shift, tearing out of my clothes as I meet him. He yelps when my teeth close around his throat and I bring him easily to the ground.
I should have shifted as soon as I got out of the taxi. Their scents might have been shielded before, but I can smell them now—three more of them, all of them carrying traces of Quinn’s blood.
They’re part of his pack, too. Well, they were. Now that I’ve shifted, his broken pack bond shines like a beacon in the dark, begging me to fold him into our pack, or at least shelter him until he decides what he wants to do. Another wolf bounds out of the shadows, and I leap at her, claws grazing her side as she ducks and runs for Sam and the others.
I watch as she hits Sam’s shield and yelps, tumbling backwards. Ophelia kneels next to Quinn, never taking her attention from him, but Drew—
I growl.
Where’s Drew?
A yelp from my left answers the question. It’s not his. No. He’s a large human and his wolf is massive, too, and he’s pinning a smaller one with ease. He growls when the wolf tries to wriggle out from under him and I search for the other I’ve scented.
The one I’ve dealt with has already run off, and the wolf who hit the shield eyes us warily before she scarpers, too. I growl. One more…
Claws rake down my side and I snarl, catching the final wolf with a swipe of my paw. She growls right back, and she’s small, but fast, clearly smarter than the others. Drew growls again behind me as I circle her.
We need to get out of here. Quinn isn’t planning anything; I’m certain of it now that I’ve seen his broken bond. I need to end this.
She darts aside as I run at her, but I can be fast too, and I bring her down quickly. She shakes when I growl, tempted to dig my teeth into her throat, to tear it out and make sure no one will ever come after this pack—
“Deacon,” Drew says, and I startle, growling at him as I lift my head. He doesn’t flinch, and he doesn’t drop his eyes. “Let her go. We need to get back.”
He holds my gaze for a few seconds—far longer than I’m expecting—before he finally gives in. He darts his eyes down to the grass and tilts his head to one side in apology. It’s enough. The display drives home just how serious he is and how correct.
Tamesis is probably manipulating her. That doesn’t excuse what they’ve all done to Quinn, but if I kill her, I achieve nothing. I growl again and let her go. She stares at Drew for a moment, for too long, considering he’s back in his human form, naked and kneeling in the grass, but Sam moves his hand again, and she yelps, and then she’s running away.
Drew gets to his feet and heads back over to the others. I follow without shifting. I need the security of this form, the knowledge that I’ll be more than a match for anyone who might sneak up on us.
“He needs to rest,” Ophelia says. “But he should be okay. I think he broke the pack bond on his own.”
Rest. We need to get him back. We need a car. I sigh and shift back, then pick up my tattered trousers and retrieve my phone from the pocket.
“Chaya,” I say when she answers, “I need that car.”
She hums down the line. “Send me your location. Is everyone okay?”
“No one’s injured,” I say, eyeing Drew. He’s back in his jogging bottoms and is tugging his T-shirt over his head under Sam’s watchful eye. There’s not a mark on him. “Though I need clothes, too. One of the wolves left his pack.”
“Do you need anything for him?”
Quinn’s dressed, though his clothes are ripped in places—he didn’t shift to try to fight his packmates off.
“No.”
“All right. Orion will be with you in fifteen minutes. He’s tracking where you are in case you need to move.”
I don’t like that Orion’s the one on the way, just in case we’re attacked again tonight, but there’s no point in arguing with her. “All right. Thank you.”
“Not a problem. Let him know if you want him to wait at Kieran’s and drive you back.”
“Will do.”
I tug on what’s left of my trousers and turn to the others. “Car’s coming. We need to move toward the road.”
Sam looks me over, pursing his lips when I pick up my shirt and fold it in my arms. It’s not like I really feel the cold; most wolves don’t. “You’re going to stand out.”
I shrug. “That’s the least of our worries.”
“Here.” Drew passes me his hoodie. It’s big enough to fit me, certainly, and I sigh before I pull the fabric over my head. Sam frowns, and I pick up the possessiveness that bleeds into his scent before he jerks his gaze away.
There’s no point in discussing it. He can’t help it, and I can’t blame him for it. If I saw someone wearing Vasile’s clothes or, worse, Vasile in someone else’s…
I cut off that train of thought. Nothing productive can come of it. “Can you carry him?” I ask Drew. I’m happy to do it, but Quinn is his friend, and I don’t want to overstep that boundary.
“Yeah, I’ve got him.” Drew kneels and lifts the other wolf into his arms, Ophelia following as he gets to his feet. She sticks close to his side as we make our way back through the park, and Sam and I keep a lookout, though I’m tempted to shift again.
It takes us long enough to get back that we’re only waiting for a few minutes before Orion pulls up in the car. Sam, Drew, and Ophelia pile into the back, and we lay Quinn’s unconscious form across the three of them, his head resting in Ophelia’s lap. She frowns, running her fingers over his brow.
I climb into the front. Orion breathes in deeply and shakes his head. I don’t think it’s because of Drew’s hoodie.
I can feel it, of course. The mating bond. And I’m not sure what to do about it.
Not that I don’t know how I feel about him. But the bond has sparked again, and I can’t trust myself not to push for too much, too soon. Did Vasile even feel it?
What if we beat Tamesis and, after everything, things still don’t work out between us? I turn my head to look out the window, ignoring the looks Orion keeps darting my way.
“What’re you going to do with him?” he asks quietly after a few minutes. The others in the back can hear us; they’re not talking at all.
“We’ll see what Kieran wants to do first,” I say. It’s not what we should do. Lone wolves come to our pack. We have protocols to deal with them, to keep them within our rules without stifling that freedom they clearly seek.
But I don’t think it’s freedom Quinn was after. Not in the way most lone wolves are.
Orion simply nods. “Got a bag for you in the boot. Shifted out of your clothes, huh?”
The corner of his mouth twitches when I roll my eyes. He says nothing else, though, keeping his gaze fixed on the road.
It’s been a long time since I had to shift so quickly. After Chaya brought me back to take my place among the packs, there was an… adjustment period. Orion took the brunt of it—Chaya was too busy making sure my way forward was clear.
When he pulls up outside Kieran’s building, I reach over and put a hand on his forearm. “Thank you.”
“Anytime, alpha.” He means it, I know. He’d mean it even if I weren’t his alpha.
I nod once and help the others out of the car before I grab the bag from the boot. I change quickly, part of me not wanting Vasile to see me like that, not wanting him to worry before we can explain what happened.
He worries as soon as we walk in the door. He can’t hover over Quinn—Kieran’s already doing that, brow furrowed as Sam tries to push him aside, letting Drew set Quinn down on the sofa—and so he corners me instead, frowning when he takes in my change of trousers and shirt.
Realisation flickers across his face all at once. “You shifted.”
“We had to,” I say and flinch when Kieran’s head jerks up across the room.
“We?”
Drew sighs, and Sam rolls his eyes. “There were some wolves lying in wait for us,” he says. “Drew and Deacon helped me protect Ophelia and Quinn.”
“He still needs some healing,” Ophelia points out, and Kieran’s attention snaps back to her, though I know he’ll still have more questions for us later.
I look around the room. “Moreau?”
“He left,” Vasile says. “Did you find anything out?”
I brush my fingers against the back of his hand as I step past him, further into the room. “Drew says the wolves waiting for us were from your pack.”
Drew nods when Kieran looks at him. “Yeah, all of them.”
“What did you do?” Kieran asks.
“They’re all still alive,” I say and don’t mention that it’s likely only due to Drew that they are. “I believe our suspicions about Tamesis affecting their pack bonds are correct. They hurt Quinn but didn’t fight us for long.”
“They didn’t fight me at all,” Drew says, and I frown at the truth of it. He pinned one, but they were after me and the mages.
“The fae blood, you think?” Vasile asks. Is he thinking about the night it happened to us?
“I guess so,” Ophelia replies. She’s kneeling next to Quinn, but there seems to be nothing she can do as she turns to face us. “Moreau said that Tamesis might use the blood to affect pack bonds.”
“That could be how he got to them,” Lucien points out, looking at Kieran.
It could be how he got to Kieran’s father, none of us say. It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s one thing for a wolf to hurt their mate. It’s another to work with their mate’s killer.
“Dad really started acting weird about seven months ago,” Drew says, darting a look at Lucien and Adam.
Lucien swallows. “When Nathan…?”
“From what you’ve said, yeah.”
“But you didn’t give up your pack bonds until you joined me a month ago,” Kieran says. “Why wouldn’t Tamesis have affected you, too?”
“How big is your pack?” Ophelia asks.
Drew shrugs. “There’s a couple of hundred of us, I guess. Not all wolves, but…”
She raises her eyebrows, and I get it. Outside of London, a pack that large is rare. It requires too much room, too many resources.
“It would take time,” Dante agrees when Ophelia looks at him.
“So what? It just didn’t get to me?” Drew asks.
“You were distancing yourself from the pack for a bit before you left, weren’t you?” Adam asks, and Drew nods.
Kieran shakes his head. “He wasn’t after you,” he says. “Not then.”
Not now either, it seems. Drew is no easier a target than anyone else, but Elliot left him alone, and it would appear the wolves are doing the same. All on Tamesis’ orders? I can’t see it.
I swallow hard before I look at Ophelia and ask, “How out of control would the wolves be, with Tamesis influencing their bond?”
She looks at Dante, who shakes his head. “It’s really more about fae magic if he’s using fae blood,” she says, “but considering how many wolves seem to be here and the fact that we think he doesn’t have all that much… He can’t be controlling everything they do every hour of every day. Not through the magic alone.”
Drew lets out a pained whine, gaze flicking to his friend on the sofa. Quinn managed to fight it enough to break his pack bond—not an easy feat even under normal circumstances. And I remember how it felt when Tamesis controlled me, but that was different. I think he was influenced by fae magic back then, but he used his and Vasile’s connection against Vasile’s and my mating bond.
It’s different.
Still. I look at Kieran. “Your father could well be fighting it.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “It doesn’t matter, does it? He’s still here. They’re all still here.”
He’s not wrong. “Yes. But now we know who we are, and we have an idea of the numbers we’re up against.” I look at Vasile, who’s come to stand by me. “We just have to figure out what to do about it.”