Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Luna
When Damien woke, most of his legs dangling off the cot, he fixed his gaze on the surrounding jungle and then turned his head toward me so quickly that I jumped.
Watery morning light filtered through the canopy, casting marbled patterns across our small camp, but I could still see the strain in his features, the slight hollowing beneath his cheekbones, the tightness around his eyes.
“There’s not a polite way to say this, but you look like hell.” I reached for my water bottle. “The Wolf Queen’s magic worked you over pretty good, didn’t it?”
“I should stabilize once we’re deeper in her territory,” he rasped out.
“Or get worse,” I said, stretching my stiff muscles. “You don’t actually know.”
“We don’t have the luxury of turning back.” He lifted to his feet and stretched his arms over his head, the movement displaying the lean power in his frame.
I tried not to notice how his shirt hitched up, revealing chiseled abs and a fine trail of dark hair that disappeared inside his pants.
God. Damn. And now I couldn’t unsee it.
“We should get moving. According to the map, we need to cross that ridgeline by midday,” I said, more to distract myself than anything else.
We packed up our shit. Damien watched my every movement as I readied myself, his gaze even drilling through the tree I crouched behind to pee. For some reason, it didn’t bother me, his steady presence a comfort. Soon, we set out.
The jungle seemed different in the morning, more vibrant somehow, with colors too rich to be natural.
A flowering vine near my foot bore blossoms shaped like perfect spirals, their centers pulsing with a soft bioluminescence.
I took a picture of it with my phone, for no other reason than I thought it was pretty.
I found myself instinctively choosing our path through the dense vegetation, not following any visible trail but some inner compass that seemed attuned to the flow of the jungle itself.
Twice I steered us around areas that looked passable but felt wrong somehow, the air hanging too still or the scent carrying an undertone of decay.
“You sense something,” Damien said after the second detour.
I chewed my lip, uncertain how to explain. “It’s like…listening to music and hearing when a note is off-key. Some places here feel wrong.”
“The boundary wards?”
“Maybe. Or maybe just natural dangers.” I pushed aside a curtain of hanging vines. “Either way, I’d rather not find out the hard way.”
“Your instincts are sharper than most humans’ I’ve encountered,” he said, his gaze assessing. “Even before your banishment, you must have been exceptional among your pack.”
“Nah, just average. Below average, according to my father.”
“Then your father was a fool,” Damien said with such matter-of-fact certainty that I almost tripped over a root.
But he was a fool, though. My father, I mean.
We continued for another hour, climbing toward the ridgeline. The ascent should have been grueling in the heat and humidity, but I found myself moving with surprising ease, as if the jungle itself were helping me find footholds and stable paths.
Damien, by contrast, struggled increasingly, his movements becoming less fluid. I caught him steadying himself against tree trunks several times, his knuckles white with the effort of appearing unaffected.
When I suggested stopping to rest, his refusal came with a flash of pride that might have annoyed me days ago but now seemed almost endearing in its stubbornness.
I slowed my pace anyway, finding convenient reasons to pause—adjusting my pack, consulting the GPS, or examining more interesting plants and taking pictures.
If Damien recognized my transparent accommodations, he didn’t say anything.
We were nearing the top of the ridge when we encountered a barrier.
It appeared without warning. One moment the path ahead was clear, and the next I stopped abruptly before what seemed like a shimmering curtain of heat distortion, visible only because of how it bent the light passing through.
It cut across our path like a vertical river, flowing from ground to canopy.
“What is it?” Damien asked, coming to stand beside me.
“You can’t see it?” I turned to him, my eyes wide.
“See what?” He looked directly at the distortion with no recognition.
I reached toward the barrier. My hand passed through with nothing more than a warm tingling sensation. I took a full step forward, turning back to see Damien still watching me with confusion.
“It’s some kind of boundary,” I explained. “Invisible to you but visible to me. Try to cross.”
He moved forward, only to freeze mid-step, his body going rigid. A grimace of pain flashed across his face, and he stumbled backward as if physically repelled.
“Damien?” I stepped back through the barrier, again feeling only mild warmth, and moved to his side. “What happened?”
“A barrier specifically calibrated against vampires.” He gritted his teeth, one hand braced against a tree trunk. “The legends weren’t exaggerating the Wolf Queen’s thoroughness.”
“Can you push through it?”
His jaw worked, the muscles there flexing beneath his pale skin. “I could try. But there’s a significant risk I’ll be completely incapacitated if I fail.” His eyes met mine, intense and direct. “And I won’t leave you unprotected in this place.”
He didn’t say it condescendingly—just a simple acknowledgment of partnership.
I considered our options. The barrier appeared to stretch in both directions as far as I could see, so finding a way around would cost us days we couldn’t spare. Going back was unthinkable.
“If I’m unaffected, maybe I can help you cross,” I said.
Skepticism etched lines around his mouth. “How?”
“I don’t know… Physically.” I held out my hand. “Let’s try.”
Damien eyed my offered hand, then he reached out, his cool fingers wrapping around mine.
“Your heartbeat increases when we touch,” he said quietly, flicking his gaze to mine.
“Because you’re freezing,” I deflected. “Now concentrate. We go on three.”
I tightened my grip on his hand and counted. As we approached the barrier, I felt the magical boundary pushing against him like an invisible wall. His hand clenched painfully around mine, his features tight with concentration.
“It’s not working,” he gritted out.
“Wait.” I moved closer, acting on instinct, and slipped my arm around his waist. “More contact might help. Try to focus on me, not the barrier.”
The position forced an intimacy that spiked my pulse. It roared inside my head as his body pressed against my side, circling my arm around him in what might otherwise be an embrace. The unnatural coolness of his skin seeped through his shirt, as did the rigid control in every taut muscle.
“Ready?” I asked.
He nodded once, his jaw clenched. “Luna, if this doesn’t work—“
“It will. Just don’t let go.”
His expression hardened with determination.
We moved forward together. The moment we touched the barrier, Damien’s entire body froze, a barely suppressed sound of pain escaping him. I tightened my hold, dragging him forward.
“Almost through. Just a few more steps,” I grunted out. “Stay with me, Damien.”
For a suspended moment, we were both within the barrier, enveloped in that strange warmth that seemed to affect me so differently than him. I could feel him fighting against whatever pain or pressure the magic exerted, his typically graceful movements reduced to jagged resistance.
Then we were through, stumbling together onto the other side before collapsing in an ungraceful heap on the jungle floor. My body pressed against his, solid and unyielding, my thighs bracketing his hips, my fingers splayed against the hard planes of his chest.
“We did it,” I said, breathing hard, suddenly aware of how close his face was to mine.
Our eyes locked, and the air charged with electric pulses between us.
Damien’s gaze dropped to my mouth for several heartbeats before he closed his eyes, his jaw clenched.
“Uh, sorry.” I disentangled myself, moving to give him space, ignoring the lingering hum where our bodies had touched.
Did he feel it too?
Never mind. Not important.
After a moment, he pushed himself to a sitting position.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice rough and gravelly.
“Don’t mention it. Partners, remember?” I busied myself checking our packs, which had fortunately made it through the barrier intact.
“The Wolf Queen was thorough in her hatred of my kind.”
“Yeah. What did vampires ever do to her?” I wondered aloud. “Eduardo mentioned seven vampire princes she buried alive, but that sounds like she was already at war with vampires.”
“The conflict between shifters and vampires predates written history. Most accounts suggest she emerged during a particularly bloody period when vampire lords were hunting shifters to near extinction.”
“Why?”
“Shifter blood, particularly from alphas, was believed to temporarily enhance vampire powers. Some ancient texts suggest consuming the heart of an alpha wolf shifter could allow a vampire to walk in daylight without harm for a full year.”
I stared at him. “Really? Is that true?”
“I don’t know.” A shadow passed over his features. “The practice was outlawed by the Vampire Council over a millennium ago.”
“How progressive of them,” I muttered.
“Necessity, not altruism,” he said. “The shifter packs were organizing, developing powerful magic specifically targeted at vampires. The Wolf Queen was among the first to successfully implement such defenses.” He gestured toward the barrier we’d crossed.
“Her innovations nearly destroyed vampire-kind entirely.”
“But there are atrocities on both sides of our shared history that neither species cares to remember.” His eyes met mine. “Not all of us are enemies, though.”
The frank admission surprised me. Most vampires’ accounts in books tended to sanitize their history or present it as more enlightened than it was, that the war was all the shifters’ fault.