Chapter Thirty-Six
Patch
Flynn’s head jerks up when someone knocks on the door. I bite back a sigh. He’s been drifting around the flat with me for the past few days, as we both wait for the hammer to fall.
I don’t know why. This is what he wanted, wasn’t it? Well, not this. That’s not charitable of me. He wanted me to tell Em, I mean. Which doesn’t mean it was his fault, but—
I drop my head into my hands. Flynn has gone to answer the door anyway, and as he shuts it, I get a whiff of our visitor.
Dax.
My wolf perks up even as I try to calm him. Dax isn’t part of our pack anymore. Of course I know he already rang Millie. She’s called every day since it happened, but I haven’t answered.
“Hey,” he says when he comes into the room. It’s smaller with three of us in it. I don’t get off the sofa.
“Hey.”
Dax sighs, then comes and sits down anyway, budging me over with his hip. “Hey!”
“You weren’t going to move.”
Flynn snorts. “Want something to drink? We’ve got beer.”
Not like it does us any good. Can’t get drunk even if I want to, and at night I kind of want to. Has to be better than not sleeping, my thoughts spiralling about Em and Jamie and the fact that they’re my mates and now I might never see them again.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Flynn grabs three beers, though the look he gives me before he hands me one is speculative. I shrug at him. I don’t know what he wants from me.
I don’t know what they all want from me.
Dax is silent as he opens his beer and takes a drink. None of us talk, in fact, and for those few minutes, the anxious twisting in my chest eases.
“What’s the plan, then?” Dax asks. That feeling returns with a vengeance. I sigh and shake my head before I down the rest of my beer.
“There is no plan,” I say. “Well, not one that I have any say in. I think Alpha Deacon’s still debating it with Alpha Axel.”
“They might still let you stay?” Dax ventures. Flynn shakes his head. We all know that won’t work. If I’d been in Alpha Kieran’s pack, maybe, but I’m not even certain of that. Alpha Deacon’s favouritism can only extend so far.
“No, I have to go. If I’m lucky, they’ll let me join Millie’s pack. But that’s if her alpha will take me. Otherwise, I think there’s some rural pack Alpha Deacon knows. Last resort kind of thing.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Dax says.
“Whose else could it be?” I shrug. I wanted to blame Em for a minute.
He streamed it, after all, and that was a foolish move.
But how could he know it was true? I’ve seen the video that was sent to him— Alpha Axel has been trying to track down the wolf in it, but Alpha Deacon thinks he might be a lone wolf who moved on weeks ago.
“I should have just sat him down and told him.”
“Does he know?” Dax asks.
“No.”
He sits up straight, and I smell his surprise. “You haven’t told him?”
“I mean, I said it. About Em, back in Alpha Axel’s office. But no, I haven’t told either of them.”
Even Flynn blinks at that, though I’m sure he has to have worked it out already.
All the pieces have fallen into place, and although my wolf has spent the last few days scrabbling at the edges of my mind, trying to get free and shift and take me there regardless of what I think about it, I haven’t allowed him to.
There are limits to what fate can provide, despite what we’ve been led to believe.
I can’t stay in London. Jamie is from here.
He’s part of a pack here. And Em… Em can’t stay here either, but he’s hardly had a chance to even adjust to the idea that magic is real.
I can’t drag him off to some random pack somewhere, not when I don’t know where I’m going.
Maybe it would work a few years from now, but if Em doesn’t know, he might be better off never knowing. The bond still isn’t truly forged. Even I might end up falling in love.
Again.
I suck in a breath and place my beer bottle firmly down on the table.
“Jamie will know,” Dax says. “You know he’ll work it out. He’s around enough mated pairs to see the signs.”
“He knows. I think he worked it out before I did,” I say. “He’s human. He’ll move on.”
“You’re being an arse.”
“I don’t know how else I’m supposed to be right now.”
Dax sighs. Flynn is suspiciously silent, just watching the two of us. I get the distinct impression he wants to leave, but also that he can’t bring himself to miss the conversation.
“Well, Millie’s leaning hard on her alpha, at least,” Dax says. “Have you spoken to your parents?”
I shake my head. Their pack is rural enough that they might take me—I was born there, after all—but I almost think I’d prefer somewhere new instead of going back there.
“I asked Kieran,” he says, and I look over at him with a frown.
“Dax…”
“You think I wouldn’t? I don’t want you to go. Not at all, but not like this.”
I swallow around a lump in my throat. Flynn ducks his head, staring at the floor now. “I… Thank you. But he can’t—he can’t help me. Fuck, he’s in enough shit anyway, and this all had nothing to do with him.”
“I know. They all—Sam argued for you too, you know. Says it’ll all blow over soon enough, but the alphas… I don’t know. They’re keeping me out of it, a bit.”
“Probably better that way.” I reach over and squeeze his arm. “Thank you, though. And thank Sam for me. That’s more than I deserve.”
Flynn makes an irritated sound in the back of his throat. “Fuck that,” he mutters.
“What?”
“Oh, come on. All the alphas are—” He glances around, then lowers his voice.
Dax and I exchange amused glances. We all know the flats are soundproofed to high hell; can’t fit this many wolves in a block of them, otherwise.
“So fucking old and out of touch. I know you shouldn’t have done that, but if Em hadn’t been streaming the entire fucking thing, it never would have mattered.
If he’d taken it well, it would have been some cute story, and you know none of them would have cared. ”
“But that’s not what happened.”
“Yeah, and they’re right.” Flynn flaps his hand. “The mages, witches, whatever. I’ve been checking every day, you know. There are a few people saying it’s real, still, but people will say any old shit is real on the internet. No one believes it.”
“Someone sent Em here, though,” I say. “They believe it.”
“Yeah, and instead of actually investigating that, they’re trying to work out where to put you and what to do with him—like they can do a fucking thing to an unaffiliated human; it’s like they’ve never even read the treaty—which is just ridiculous because doesn’t it seem suspicious that they got video that close of a lone wolf and he never noticed? ”
I blink, stunned. Dax looks just as confused, but then I don’t know that he’s ever heard Flynn really unleash like that.
I have, just never— “You’ve read the treaty?”
He levels me with an incredulous look. “It applies to me. Of course I’ve read it.”
“You say that like you read the terms and conditions on everything you agree to,” I mutter.
Flynn nods, nonplussed. “Do you not?”
“Sam said that Felix has someone looking for whoever sent the email, but it just bounced around,” Dax says. “Said Felix was worried, though.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t understand why he wouldn’t get the email, too.” When I frown, he shakes his head. “He’s big on social media. Does all this occult stuff from his shop.”
“Occult?” Flynn asks.
“He’s a necromancer,” Dax says and ignores the faces we both pull.
Not that wolves have to worry that much about necromancers.
That’s really more a vampire thing. Still.
They’re rare. “But he asked around. No one in the space got an email. Not even the people doing the same stuff as Em. It was just him.”
“So… Someone targeted him, specifically?”
Dax nods. Flynn leans forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “Okay, what are you thinking?” he asks.
Dax blushes. “Well, not me, but… Either someone already knew about the mate connection, which would mean…”
“Fae,” Flynn and I say as one.
“Yeah,” Dax says. “But the Hunt aren’t involved, and the alphas don’t seem panicked enough for that.”
“The other option?” I ask. I already know, and now I’m cursing the fact that I’m stuck here because I can’t get out and help him.
“Someone was targeting Em specifically.” Dax sighs. “It’s what Sam said to Kieran. It’s not about revealing us. We’ve been caught out enough times, had enough near misses. It feels more like someone’s after Em, and if he leaves our protection…”
“He might be in danger,” Flynn says.
My wolf howls. And Jamie lives with him. And I can’t go there; I’m not allowed to leave the flat, never mind our territory, but—
“I don’t want to disobey my alpha,” Dax says, and his voice shakes, “but yeah, I think he is.”