44. Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Four
Chris
W e were four days into our research and we were getting nowhere. We were in our room, reading a couple of medical werewolf books, when my phone rang and I picked up without looking at the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Chris.” I heard a familiar voice.
“Hey, John. What’s going on?”
“I was returning your call.”
“I didn’t call you.” I frowned at the phone.
“You called Cade a couple of days ago?” he asked.
“Did Cade not listen to the voicemail?” I asked.
Bells said what she did was bad, but I didn’t think there was a universe in which Cade would actually be able to hate her.
“Cade is... indisposed. I’m trying to stay up to date, and I was making sure nothing bad was going on, since you mostly text.”
“What do you mean he’s indisposed?” I asked and that made Violet look up from her book.
“He’s... shit. Okay. He’s having some problems with his wolf, and he fell off his horse almost a week ago. He’s laid up in bed with a broken leg and hopped up on painkillers.”
“What problems?” I asked and put the phone on speakerphone.
“We think he’s depressed. The council keeps reminding him that he needs a Luna, and his wolf won’t take anyone but Bells, so they’ve been arguing.”
“Cade really doesn’t want Bells?” I wanted to clarify, because the man I knew would have given up everything if it meant being with Bells.
It seemed I was right, though, because John snorted at my question.
“Are you kidding? You know what happened, Chris. Cade’s been in love with Bells since they were children. It’s Bells who doesn’t love him.”
“But... didn’t he get Bells’ first message?” Violet asked.
“What message, and what do you mean first?”
“Bells called him after he left, asking for another chance, but Cade never called her back, so she figured he wanted nothing to do with her.”
A string of curses came through the phone, and I had to push it further away from me with how loud they were.
“Please tell me you’re kidding? No, actually, please tell me you’re not fucking kidding,” John pleaded.
“I’m serious. Bells was crushed when he never called her back,” Violet replied.
“He never got a voicemail. He broke his phone before he left the pack, and decided to get a new number when he got here, so he’d have a local number.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve texted and called Cade when I told him what happened to Adam.” Violet looked confused.
“You called his new number,” John insisted.
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did,” I said, my heart sinking. “I updated your phone when John gave me his new number. I thought I told you about it.”
“Oh,” Violet slumped back in her seat.
“I need to tell Cade. Maybe that’ll help his wolf. When was the second message?”
“The one you think is from me. Bells borrowed my phone when she realized her contact for Cade wasn’t working anymore." I told him.
“Shit. He’s so out of it, he hasn’t looked at his phone in almost a week.”
“Why haven’t you called Aunt Nat?” Vi asked.
“Who’s Aunt Nat?”
“Luna Natalia from Guardian Moon,” I answered.
“Why would we? Is she a healer?”
“Crud, you guys don’t know. Why didn’t you tell us?” Violet asked.
“I’m under strict orders not to tell anyone. Cade doesn’t want people to know he’s having trouble with his wolf. He feels they would attribute it to him not being born an alpha ,and try to come for his pack while he’s down.”
“But, you’re telling us, now,” Violet pointed out.
“I trust you. Besides, I’m not telling you, I’m answering Chris’ questions,” he answered, making me grin at the technicality. “Once his leg heals, and I can get him off the damn painkillers, I’ll make him listen to the voicemail and make him call Bells. If he’d known she called him, he would have been there as fast as his truck could go.”
“Ehh...” Violet stammered.
“What? Is it too late? Did she find her second-chance mate already or find someone else?”
“No. It’s just Bells isn’t available for a while. Have Cade listen to the voicemail, and then have him reach out to me. I’ll talk to my aunt. She’s a healer. I’ll have her go see him in a day or two.”
“Thanks, Vi. I-I hope they can fix this. I don’t like seeing him or Nyko like this,” he finished with a sigh.
“Trust me. No one is rooting for them more than we are.” Violet replied, a wry chuckle escaping.
No shit. They had a chance to be together and raise their pups. Cade was Bells’ chance to be happy, bond or not. Just like Violet was mine. If we could figure out what was happening to Bells and reverse it, they had a chance to talk things out, and have finally be happy.
“Alright, I gotta get back to work. I’ll talk to you later,” John replied.
“Night, man. Tell Cade we said hi,” I said.
“Will do, Chris,” he responded before hanging up.
Something about that whole interaction was nagging at me, and I couldn’t figure out what. I made Violet go to bed at two, but I stayed up a while longer, while I continued doing some research on the laptop in bed. At around five in the morning, I finally gave up and grabbed a couple hours of sleep. It was almost nine when I woke up. Violet was on the little table looking at the laptop, doing more research.
“You didn’t wake me, Little Warrior. We’re late for breakfast,” I chided.
“James mind-linked me earlier. They left us food in the microwave.”
I made a mental note to thank James for his forethought, and with the knowledge that I didn’t have to hurry to cook something for my mate, I walked to her, pulled her up and kissed her good morning.
“Why does a duck have a tail?” I asked.
“Why?”
“To cover up his butt quack,” I answered and watched her let out a little giggle.
I would take it. I knew things were dire right now, but I hated seeing her sad. I gave her another kiss and asked, “Do you choose me today?”
“Always,” she whispered instantly, looking up at me with love shining in her eyes. She gave me another small kiss, then sighed and placed her head on my chest. “Zi sent us an email. I was just about to read it.” She sat down, and I read over her shoulder.
After we came back from Montana, we took the book Violet found to Alpha Helios. He couldn’t recognize the language, so we took it to Ziomara, the gamma female of Crescent Moon and, one of the top security technologists in the pack’s company, to see if she could figure out the language and translate it, so we could begin to figure out what kind of spells Martha was doing. We knew it was blood magic. Hell, half the spells looked like they were written in blood.
“Oh, it was a cipher, not a language,” I mumbled as I read the email.
How she managed to figure that out, I had no idea, but the woman didn’t have the job title she had because she was mated to the gamma. She and Evie’s IQ were a couple of stratospheres above us normal folk.
“She’s sent what’s translated so far and she’s hoping it’s done by the end of the week,” Violet told me, as she finished reading, opening some pdf’s attached to the email.
“That’s good,” I answered, walking to the little printer we bought and turned it on.
I didn’t know how much time Bells has left and we’d found nothing but theories that didn’t connect. This was our only hope so far.
Violet printed two copies of the pages Zi sent. I set them down on the table and went to grab our food. I heated up the breakfast burritos James left for us, and brought them back into the room. We ate in silence as we started looking over the pages.
“Aunt Nat is going to Cade tomorrow morning. I want to head over to Cade’s before lunch to tell him about Bells, so he’s not blindsided if Aunt Nat mentions it. Maybe around ten thirty. Wanna go with me?”
“Of course,” I answered.
As if there was anything that could stop me from following her to the ends of the earth, if necessary. If we didn’t have a pup on the way, I’d consider quitting just so I could spend every moment with her.
“Goddess, what the heck was this woman doing?” Violet whispered under her breath.
“Huh?” I asked, wondering what made her whisper that.
It all looked pretty bad to me.
“I think this is why Vesta couldn’t use her magic in Montana.” Violet showed me one of the pages and I flipped through my stack, until I found it and read it.
“This is a really big spell. How could she keep it going for so long?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s why the pack was so broke, though,” she suggested.
That was possible. I hadn’t understood why the pack didn’t have any reserve funds, when they sold as much wine as Bells had on order to ship out, before it blew up. “But, it makes sense. This spell blocks everything. It blocks magic users. It blocks scents outside of its radius. I bet it’s what stopped the guardians from being able to sense her. Vesta said Martha had been gone for years.”
“How did she find her, then?”
“Because Martha was inside the circle herself. When she got injured by Hugh and Vesta could smell her after she shed blood? Remember what Elim said? When he checked the pack borders, he could smell scent markers while he was inside, but the moment he walked across it, they disappeared. It’s almost like my shield but over the entire pack.”
“Except, your magic is natural. There’s nothing natural about this.”
“Yeah. What a despicable woman. I don’t even want to imagine where she got all the blood she needed to keep it going for so long.”
I looked at the diagram in the picture and pulled out my phone.
“What are you doing?”
“This symbol here looks familiar,” I answered, pointing at the diagram. “I’m trying to see if I caught it on video.”
“Video?”
“When we found her secret room. I recorded the whole thing just in case.”
“Just in case, what?”
I shifted at her question, feeling a little silly voicing it out loud.
“In case something happened.”
Violet stared at me, trying to figure out what I meant before she giggled, and I felt the blush on my face.
“We watch too many horror movies,” she laughed. “But, maybe it will come in handy. Let me see?”
I put the phone between us and pressed play. We were only thirty seconds in when I paused it.
“That one.” I pointed to the corner of the video. It was a little blurry, but the shape of the diagram was clear. I folded the page and set it aside. When the next piece of the altar became visible, I stopped it and began flipping through the pictures, trying to find it.
“Oh look, this one with Bells’ bracelet,” I pointed out, then held out one of the pages. “It’s to isolate her from her loved ones.”
“Poor Bells,” Violet sniffled, and I kissed her temple.
I was disappointed when I didn’t find the next three pieces of the altar in our stack of pages, but we only had about twenty pages of a very large book. I needed to be patient.
“We’ll just have to wait until she sends more, I guess,” Violet huffed and sat back. “I’m going to shower before we leave.” She gave me a quick kiss as I continued to watch the video, hoping to catch something that might help.
As Violet showered, another email came in. This one only had a few pages in it, so I quickly printed them out and laid them out in front of me. One of them pulled at my memory, though looking through the video, I couldn’t see it, but I was so sure I remembered that symbol. It was a spell for cloaking yourself by spelling a necklace or ring to hide you from magic users. This could be how Martha hid herself from the guardians.
I found another spell, and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. If I was reading the incantation correctly, the spell could imitate a bond. Could that mean Bells wasn’t really mated to Brandon? How could someone do that?
Not imitate. I think it hijacks a bond, Titan corrected my thoughts.
Hijack?
Look at the wording. Shift, displace, transfer. It’s using something that’s already there, and directing it to someone else, he pointed out.
A sudden memory popped into my head of when I was sent out on a long mission two years ago. One of the reasons I was chosen was because they thought I didn’t have a mate, but I had just met Traci, and being separated for three months with an incomplete bond was a terrible experience. I was tired and achy, and I felt like my heart was stretched too thin. Titan had been depressed and snarled at me to go back to our mate the entire time.
At the time, I thought he was just being melodramatic, but when I returned, I found out Traci had felt the same thing. It was the reason why Traci would show up in the middle of the night every few weeks after that. She didn’t want to feel the sickness of an incomplete bond when we were apart for too long.
I grabbed my phone and texted John.
Me
When did you say Cade’s wolf started to feel lethargic?
John
Almost two weeks ago. Why?
I didn’t answer. I stood up so abruptly the chair fell behind me.
‘Cory, I need to borrow a car.’
I rarely left the pack. Everything I needed was here. Shit, I should probably get one in case Violet needed to go somewhere with our pup. Driving her car was a terrible experience. It was all bouncy and I could feel every bump on the road. That wasn’t safe for a pregnant woman.
‘Take whatever you need. Will you be gone long? I have some specialists coming tomorrow morning. I’d like you and Violet there. She’s Bells’ power of attorney, and you guys know more about what her symptoms were.’
‘Of course, Alpha. It won’t take too long.’
If I was right, we might not need the specialists at all. I paced the room, hoping against hope that I was right, and this was the way to save Bells.
“What’s wrong?” Violet startled me from my pacing, and my tongue dried up in my mouth, as I took in the small towel wrapped around her gorgeous body, droplets of water falling from her hair onto her chest.
My cock roared to life, every thought leaving my head as she walked over to her clothes and she removed the towel to get dressed.
“Chris?”
I shook my head. This wasn’t the time to get horny.
Bells.
Right. Bells in the hospital in a chemically induced coma, dying, unless I was right.
“We need to go, and you need to let Dr. Roswell know we’re going to need a bed next to Bells,” I told her.
“Are we sleeping ther—”
“No. Cade is. I think he’s her mate,” I explained.
“But, Bells said they weren’t second-chance mates.”
“I don’t think they’re second-chance mates, Violet. I think they were meant to be mates from the start.”
I showed her the pages from the new email.
“Why would this mean—”
“I texted John. Cade’s wolf didn’t start having issues until almost two weeks ago. That’s when Bells started having issues, too. The day after Bells destroyed the altar.” I pointed out and Violet paled as she followed my logic. “It’s bond sickness, Violet. It’s eight years of bond sickness. This is why she’s so close to death, so quickly. This is why Cade’s wolf can’t heal a broken leg, either. Their wolves are dying, because they have an incomplete bond that was hijacked for eight years.”
Violet’s eyes unfocused as she started mind-linking. When they cleared, she nodded at me, determination filling that face I loved so much.
“Let’s go save my sister.”
My little warrior tried to hurry down the stairs, but after the first fall, I wasn’t risking it, so I made her slow down. She tried to remind me she was pushed, but I wasn’t having it. We should have taken the elevator, but she didn’t want to wait. Still, I wasn’t going to save one sister, just to lose another. I knew I was overbearing in my need to protect Violet and our pup sometimes, but I couldn’t help it. They were my life. When we got to the SUV, I made sure she buckled herself up, despite the fact it was only a ten-minute drive once we exited the pack grounds.
We texted John and told him we were coming over. Thankfully, the guards let us through without stopping us, and we made it to the double wide Cade was using as a temporary home. John was waiting for us outside, and he took us to see our friend immediately.
Cade looked worse than I thought he would. He was pale and unconscious when we arrived. His chest was heaving erratically, either from a nightmare or from the pain. It took John more than a few tries to shake him awake, making the poor man panic the longer he failed to wake him.
Cade groaned when he woke, and without bothering to explain, I asked, “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
I was warmed by the lack of hesitation in his answer, even if he looked confused to see us there.
“Then, you’re coming with us. I think I know how to fix your wolf,” I told him.
“Wha—” Cade looked at John, who crossed his arms.
“They asked. What was I going to do? Lie? They’re our friends,” John defended, but then turned back to us. “I thought your aunt was coming to heal him?”
“She can’t heal what’s wrong with him...” Then, because I remembered he had a broken leg, I added. “Well, not the important part. She can heal his leg after we deal with his wolf. Violet, go open the back door of the SUV,” I instructed as I went to pick up Cade.
“I can walk,” Cade argued, trying to push away my hands.
“No, you can’t,” John countered.
“I don’t need people to see me being carried out like a pup,” Cade growled.
John huffed, and grabbed the blanket, throwing it over his alpha and best friend.
“Any more arguments, you stubborn asshole?” he challenged.
Cade grumbled something under his breath, but didn’t argue, so I picked him up and deposited him in the back seat, apologizing when I jostled his leg in the awkward angle it took to get him inside. John climbed in the back with him, and I jumped back into the driver’s seat and drove toward the hospital. When I put the car in park at the entrance, I took the blanket again and draped it over my friend. If a silly blanket helped him keep his dignity, who was I to deny him?
Thankfully, Dr. Roswell was waiting inside, a look of consternation on her face.
“Violet, what’s going on?” she asked.
“You have the bed ready?” Violet didn’t bother to answer her question.
“I do.”
“Good. I’ll explain inside her room.”
“Room? Who’s room?” John asked.
“Bells’ room.” Violet answered.
“What’s wrong with Bells?” Cade peeled the blanket off himself in a hurry, worry on his pale face. “Put me down, Chris. What’s wrong with Bells?”
“Alpha Cade?” Dr. Roswell finally recognized him.
“What’s wrong with Bells?” Cade barked at us.
“She’s dying,” Violet said, not beating around the bush. “And we think it’s the same reason your wolf is dying.”
“I never said—”
“We need to get inside the room,” Violet interrupted and turned to Dr. Roswell, who nodded and took us to Bells’ room.
The moment the doors opened, I felt Cade stiffen in my arms.