28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
“It’s nice to have you back,” I said quietly as Jasper walked into the common room.
“It’s nice to be back,” he said with a small smile. He still didn’t look like the vampire I knew, still a little shellshocked, but I couldn’t blame him after everything he’d been through with Mordecai. “Where’s Lori?”
“She’s coming. Fenris has been with her but I’m sure she will be glad to see you up and about. Although, I’ll bet she’ll be pissed you discharged yourself against Levi’s orders.”
“I’m fine,” he said, brushing me off.
“Really?”
He smiled sheepishly. “Well, almost fine. Another day and another feed and I will be back to my normal crabby self.”
I laughed. It really was good to have him back. It also meant I wasn’t in charge anymore and that was a welcome relief. We fell into a quiet moment, the silence a little awkward. So much had changed. Jasper had been tortured for days, and I now felt something about that. It made me sad, that my friend had undergone such a horrendous experience, and it made me angry that he’d had to go through it. I was still getting to grips on all my emotions, but I was a swirling mess of all sorts most of the time and right now, I had the most overwhelming urge to hug him.
I threw my arms around him, catching him by surprise. “I’m so sorry, Jasper.”
“Um… okay,” he said warily, his arms out by his sides, unsure of where to put them.
I squeezed him tighter, relieved at the thought that I actually could squeeze him. There were moments where nothing but despair had creeped in and I didn’t think we’d find him and bring him back, let alone that he would be here, in my arms and—
“What the Hell are you doing?” Lori barked as she entered the room.
I dropped my arms immediately. “I was just—”
“Not you Alec, him!” She pointed an accusatory finger at Jasper.
“Told you,” I said with a snigger, but he just rolled his eyes at me.
Lori stormed further into the room, not stopping until she was toe-to-toe with him. “Levi messaged to say you were awake, but you’d taken yourself out of his care. How could you be so stu—”
He cut her off with his mouth, sealing it over hers and swallowing her words, turning them into the most delicious sounding moans. Fuck, it was making my dick hard, and I wasn’t even the one kissing her. A lance of jealousy, so hot and potent, sliced through me. Before I’d got my heart back, seeing something like this would have stoked my desire but now, I wanted to be the one kissing her because I wanted her too. So did my Hound. I could feel him clawing at my insides, chomping and snarling with a need to break free. I wanted to claim her and mark her as my own. But now wasn’t the right time. There was too much to do.
Cassian entered then and marched straight to her side, wrapping her in his arms and pulling her onto his lap on the sofa. Such a caveman. Jasper just smiled as she laughed at Cassian and Fenris looked very well satisfied. There went the jealousy again. There I was, working my ass off trying to figure everything out, keeping the team together and fighting off the fucking Circle and there they all were, happy as fucking pie. How the Hell was that fair?
It wasn’t.
A growl reverberated around the room.
“Alec?” Lori said softly.
“What?” I snapped. Jeez, I was moodier than a fucking teenager.
Lori flinched backwards and Cassian hissed at me for hurting her.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “It’s been a long few days.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a few deep breaths. I hated emotions sometimes. At moments like this I wasn’t sure if I were coming or going and punching the wall seemed like a semi-reasonable thing to do. Or screaming. Yeah, that. I wanted to do that.
I sat on the sofa opposite the others and waited until Saskia and Rae had joined us. I looked around all the faces and realised this was the first time we’d all been together in a long time. Had it really only been a week since Mordecai had taken Lori?
“So, you stole the lapis lunae,” I said to Lori who blanched a little at my words.
“Yes. I had to in order to keep Jasper safe.” She reached out and wrapped her hand around his. “I couldn’t tell you because Selene had cast a Silencing Spell on Iver and me.”
“Do you know what he wants to do with it?” I asked.
She nodded. “He intends to use it on the Blood Moon to destroy the Underworld and kill Lucifer. It was Mordecai who has syphoned the witches magic and he’s using Selene to store it until he needs it.”
Fenris leant forwards, his elbows resting on his knees. “But only a Celestial can strip power so that begs the question, who is working with Mordecai? Camael?”
“I didn’t see any Celestials in Mordecai’s lair,” Jasper added. “But I was kept in the same room for most of the time I was there.”
“Doesn’t mean he isn’t communicating with one somehow,” I added. “What about Iver?”
“He stayed when Jasper and I escaped,” Lori said, biting her bottom lip. “I think he’s trying to be our eyes and ears down there.”
“Do you trust him?” Cassian asked, his mouth ridiculously close to her ear. I mean, was that really necessary? And there I went almost growling again.
“Yes,” she replied with a nod.
“Then we do too.”
What was happening here? Since when was Cassian, of all people, so trusting?
“Are you okay, Alec? Your face is all…” Lori made a circling motion with her finger, “…confused.”
I snapped out of it. “Just adjusting to all this. Anyway, moving back to the problems at hand. It’s only two days until the Blood Moon and we need to figure out where he’s going to be.”
“Do we?” Saskia asked, her brows drawn down in a frown.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Saskia’s eyes blazed with her excitement, her red curls bouncing around her face. “Well, think about it. Mordecai needs Lori and he’s her Sire now. I’m pretty sure he will just mind call her or something.”
“Mind call her?” Jasper scoffed. “You know that’s not a thing, right?”
“I don’t,” Lori mused, snuggling back into Cassian, “seems a pretty accurate description to me.”
“Is it possible?” I asked, looking at Jasper.
He cocked his head to one side. “Yes. Sires have the ability to communicate telepathically with their sirelings. It’s entirely possible that Mordecai will send her a vision or a location of where he wants her to be.”
“Okay, so what, we just sit around and wait?” Lori asked, her voice and shoulders tense.
“No,” I replied firmly. “I’ve sent for Edwin to give you a crash course in being a Shadow Mage.” Her ears perked up at that. We’d been remiss in not training her mage abilities and my theory was, that if she could control every part of her, she’d be able to unite all the elements that made up the Triune. At the moment, it seemed like she was acting as one part or another, never as the three sides of her altogether. I believed that was the key to saving her and defeating Mordecai. “The rest of us will resume training, and I am going to take a visit to the Witch Queen. I want to look her in the eye to ask her how she feels about the sacrifice of her witches.”
Violette had told me at the Yule Ball that the sacrifice of a few outweighed the loss of the whole. Even now, those words still haunted me. I’d seen the devastation the mages had caused when stealing the witches and I wanted to know if Violette knew what Mordecai’s plans were all along. I wanted her to look me in the eye and tell me that she knew what she was doing. And then, I was going to invoke the abdicare legem. The abdication law. That bitch was going down.