Chapter 38
It’s a knock that stirs me from sleep, every muscle in my body tense and my head aching all over. I guess I’ve drifted off again. When I open my eyes, I find the situation in my hospital room just the way it was when I last closed them.
There’s the TV across from my bed, turned off so it doesn’t show any news of the death of a certain Professor of Divine Magic from the famous Grimm Academy.
There’s Alaric and Raven sitting at the table between my bed and the door, playing cards and waiting for every opportunity to bombard me with offers of another pillow or some other small comfort.
Then there’s the man whose warm, healed-up body I’m nestled against, whom I’ve found awake every time I stirred from sleep during the last forty eight hours and who just keeps holding me and looking at me in silence, seemingly waiting for me to finally get enough sleep and possibly even sensing all the confusion in me.
Right now, though, his entire body is tense and his eyes are fixed on the door.
It’s Alaric who gets up and checks who it is, craning his neck to say, “Professor MacArthur.”
Then he keeps standing there, raising his eyebrows at me.
I guess I should just get it over with.
First things first though. I turn to look at him, every fiber of my being recoiling at the very thought of losing contact with his body, but I can’t have him glued to me like this with Lorcan in the room. It’s confusing enough even when it’s just Raven and Alaric here with us.
He seems to understand what I want. He doesn’t like it, but he slips out from under me and gets off my bed to take a seat on the chair to my left.
Taking a deep breath, I turn to give Alaric a nod, already feeling the coldness seeping into my bones from not having him next to me. Gods, I know the bond is still newly forged, but this is just absurd.
“You’re awake,” Lorcan says as soon as my friend lets him in and goes back to sit at the table.
“I am,” I reply as I watch him come to a stop near the door. I’m surprised to see I’m not struggling with talking like I did yesterday. In fact, I seem to be all healed-up, only the headache and the tension lingering in my body.
For a second, Lorcan just looks at me. Then he walks over to my bed and comes to a stop in front of me, taking a deep breath before he grits out, “I’ve come to offer an apology, Miss Novak. If I didn’t act like such a brute that night in front of the Lycan Forest, maybe none of this would have happened.”
I observe him for a second, my eyes narrowing. “You mean, if you didn’t spend the whole of last year making a fool out of me?”
“I thought it was necessary,” he spits out. “Besides, it’s not like you Scions are known for your—”
“What, Lorcan?” I cut him off. “We’re not known for what? And am I Scion, really?” I let out a laugh. “I respected you, you know? For quite a while after we first met. All I ever wanted from you was to give some of that respect back.”
I watch him hesitate. “Well, it’s all water under the bridge now.” He clears his throat and turns all official. “I know that the path of the Aurora is not for me to foresee, but I would just like to use this opportunity to offer the Order’s gratitude and tell you that if you ever need us, we will be there.”
It’s still with such condescension that he says it all, but it’s an apology nevertheless. “Thank you.”
He nods. Then he turns on his heel and walks away.
I shake my head, turning to Raven and Alaric. “That man… I don’t know how many times I’d need to save the world for him to stop hating me.”
“Yeah,” Alaric mutters as the both of them take their seats around my bed. “I don’t think he hates you. When he brought you two back to the Academy, he actually seemed quite upset, going on and on about you stubborn girls making his life miserable.”
We stubborn girls? That makes me frown, but I dismiss it. I let out a laugh. “Of course he was upset. I don’t think I ever said I thought the man was a monster. I just rub him the wrong way and there seems to be nothing I can do to change that.”
“Well,” Alaric says with a sigh as Raven and him get off my bed and go back to their table.
“You should eat,” I hear Jericho cut in, my heart skipping a beat as I turn to look at him. “Is there anything you’re in the mood for?”
“He’s right, Anna,” Alaric agrees, “you finally look like you won’t be drifting straight back to sleep. Maybe jump on the opportunity.”
Raven nods vigorously.
Still, eating is the last thing on my mind right now. “Thank you, but I’m not hungry,” I turn to tell Jericho.
It’s so strange to me right now, this thing between us, that I immediately shift my focus back onto Alaric, trying to break the tension by smiling and demanding, “And since when are you such a mother hen?”
It surprises me, when the smile slides off his face. “Since I spent the night partying while my friend was in mortal danger,” he grumbles and looks away.
“Hey,” I protest, pushing myself up as a frown creases my forehead.
But to my surprise, it’s Raven who keeps comforting him. “We didn’t know what was going on, Alaric. Even Anna understands that,” she says, putting her hand on his. She turns to me. “Don’t you, Anna?”
My eyebrows shoot up. Are they… Then I remember to nod, doing it so vigorously, I make my headache worse. “Of course I do. In fact,” I continue in a gentle but warning tone, “I expressly forbid you from ever again entertaining a single thought like that.”
Alaric grumbles, but then Raven presses a kiss to his cheek, making him go from sullen straight to beaming.
“Alright then,” he says, warmth spreading through my chest as I watch them go back to playing cards.
Then it hits me. “Hey,” I protest, making them both turn to look at me again, “you’ve been cooped up in here for the past two days. I demand you go out, grab something to eat and maybe start packing, like, right now. You have a whole summer ahead of you.”
They exchange a look, but then they smile and come to give me hugs. The smiles they throw Jericho on their way out are a little tense, but warm.
I watch them close the door, delaying tearing my eyes away from it for another moment.
It pains me because all I really want is for him to go back to holding me, but at the same time…
I’m lost. I’m shocked. I’m mad.
Finally, I turn to look at him and I ask, “Could you leave for a bit too, maybe grab something to eat? I just need a couple of hours to myself.”
For a moment, he keeps sitting there, things visibly at war in his head. Then he gets up, says, “Of course,” and leaves the room.
***
I let my feet take me out of the harsh June sun and into the soft, bright shadows of the Lycan Forest, in the direction of the spot where I completed my first ritual.
I need solitude, so I can unwrap all the conflicting feelings about that moment back in the cave when the bond between us snapped in place. I don’t know why then and not before. Maybe because there was something more real in that moment — when we both thought the other could die — than there was in any moment that led to it.
Whatever the reason for it finally clicking, it was in that moment that I learned two things. One, Lorcan sure as hell wasn’t lying when he said that Jericho Bane was my mate.
Two, unlike me, Jericho Bane himself wasn’t in the least surprised by the fact.
What that does to me is make me feel... confusion, shock and anger all at once. So right now, it doesn’t really matter to me that I know for sure he didn’t spend the last year trying to sabotage me so I wouldn’t awaken my powers. He did something worse, or maybe it feels worse because of the kind of bond we now share, but the result is the same.
It’s way before I reach the clearing where he lit the fire that night that I sense him. It makes me let out a soft scoff — how much it doesn’t surprise me that my feet would take me straight back to him less than half an hour after I told him I needed space.
I find him getting off the tree stump he was sitting on, his eyes coming to land on me and sucking me in, just like they did the first time I ever saw them.
For a second, we just stand there, looking at each other. It makes me feel exactly how sure my wolf is about this, but me…
“Why here?” I ask.
He glances around and then turns his eyes back onto me. “It was the first time I saw you be yourself. I feel connected to you here.”
The words make me warm around the heart, which only makes things worse. I contemplate leaving and coming back after I’ve thought about it, like I planned to.
Then, my jaw starting to clench, I realize what it is that I really need. What I really need is to get him to talk and see exactly when and how the asshole will mention never telling me we were goddamn mates.
“This bond thing,” I say, “it doesn’t mean we should be together.”
It surprises me, when he just keeps standing there, all intense yet soft somehow.
Frowning, I start to pace, feeling his eyes on me. “We have completely opposing interests, ambitions, worldviews…”
When he still doesn’t say anything, I just keep talking, albeit a little more forcefully. “When you think about it, there are many more reasons for us not to do it than there are reasons for us to do it.”
His persistent silence getting me flushed, I come to a stop, turn to face him and grit out, “Will you say something, goddamn it?”
“I was waiting for you to get to what really troubles you,” he tells me in a low, soft voice. Then he starts walking over to me. “But that’s alright. I have all the patience in the world, Anna.”
I frown at him.
He takes a pen and a piece of paper from his pocket and says, “Why don’t we make a list?”
There’s something in his voice that piques my curiosity. “Yeah, why don’t we?” I agree, motioning for him to start. Put ‘lying asshole’ right on top while you’re at it, I think to myself.
He does start writing stuff down, but then he just rips the paper in half and locks eyes with me. “There,” he says as he drops the pieces to the ground. “Reasons we shouldn’t be together don’t interest me, Anna. I love you and I just want to be with you, wherever that takes me.”
The combination of ignoring the elephant in the room and all this sudden sweet-talking… It angers me. “Be that as it may, the way you see the world… It’s just so different from the way I see it and that’s important to me.”
There’s both hurt and defiance in the look he throws me, making me shake my head and soften my voice. “Look, you saved me, Jericho.”
He grits his teeth and looks away, as if he’s not exactly agreeing with the statement. “No, you did,” I insist, “selflessly, and I’ll forever be grateful for that, but you still think people should just let the world burn—”
“That’s not true,” he snaps and quickly collects himself, looking deeper into my eyes. “Not anymore at least.” He sighs and throws his arms up. “Look, I’m not gonna lie. I’d still choose you over the world and do it without a second thought, but you have made me want to be a better man and there’s no turning back now.”
“Really?”
He doesn’t say anything. He frowns, then takes his phone out and dials a number without bringing it to his ear.
It’s Colin’s voice I hear from the other side of the line. “Hello, Mister—”
“Colin, what did we talk about this morning?”
“Um, the plans for the shelters for homeless minors. Are you alright—”
“Thank you, Colin.” He hangs up and says, a touch of hesitation in his voice, “The dirty money being put to good use, I thought even the Chosen One would approve. And there’s a lot more that can be done.”
I just look at him for a second. “I’m happy for you,” I say, swallowing around a lump in my throat.
It’s sudden, the movement that ends with him pressed against me, his arms around my back and his breath tickling my ear. “I want you to be happy for us,” he whispers. “I’ll be giving you all the space you want, but you need to know, there is no end to my love for you, Anna.”
“No end, really?” I demand as I pull away and take a few steps back. I fold my arms. “Tell me then, how many times did you accuse me of hiding something?”
Surprise flashes through his eyes. Then it turns into understanding, making his eyebrows pull down and his voice drop. “Is that what—”
“Yeah, it is,” I snap. “I know I lied to you, many times, and I’m sorry for every time I did. I know I hid stuff from you, and I’m sorry about that, too.” I get in his face and I fail to stop myself from letting some of the hurt surface. “But you, you hid something so big, Jericho.”
For a second, he just blinks at me. “I could tell you were confused, Anna,” he rushes to say, taking a step closer as worry and regret start to twist his features. “I just didn’t realize you were hurt. You can’t even imagine how sorry—”
“Fine, you’re sorry,” I cut him off. “How long, that’s what I want to know. How long did you know? Did Lorcan tell you when he blackmailed you to come here?”
He looks away for a second. “MacArthur never even mentioned you to me,” he says as he turns his eyes back onto me, his teeth gritting, “but I knew from the moment I first saw you. I mean, I felt it the moment I first laid eyes on you. I only realized what was going on when you broke the glass and I felt the energy coming off you.” He gives me a pleading look. “Please believe me when I say I didn’t realize this would affect you in any way, simply because—”
“You’re not being serious,” I protest with a scoff. “You didn’t realize this would affect me? Do you know how many times during the past year I’ve found myself wondering if I’m losing my goddamn mind? But easy for you, you knew exactly what was going on with you all that time.”
“Easy for me?” he grits out as he gets in my face, swinging an arm to the side. “It was pure fucking torture. One minute I’m minding my own business, the next it’s all about Anna Novak all the fucking time,” he rants, his voice turning mocking, “replaying her words, craving her attention, dreaming about her wanting me the way I wanted her.” He shakes his head and digs his fingers into his hair only to lower his arms again. “I did so many things I really didn’t want to do, I hired people to dig up info on you, I found myself stalking you when you stopped coming to classes, I failed to resist you that night in the forest like I’ve never failed at anything else in my—”
“Yeah, I’m sorry it was hard for you,” I cut him off, his words only putting salt on my own wound, “but I want to know why you never told me.”
He lets out a pent-up breath and shrugs. “The same reason I didn’t think my not telling you would affect you. I was convinced it was a one-way street.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. While I was barely controlling myself around you, you were breezing in and out of class as if I wasn’t even there.” He lets out a frustrated laugh. “That is, when you weren’t telling me I was the worst person alive or ordering me to get away from you.” He shakes his head and looks down at the ground. “It seemed that you being my mate was right where it both started and ended.”
“You’re talking about before,” I protest. “It doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me after we started having sex, after the Ball, when it should’ve been pretty clear to you it’s not exactly one-sided.”
“Alright,” he says. “You might not like it though.”
Fighting not to groan in frustration, I just nudge him to start talking.
He takes a deep breath, looking away in search of words. “I still thought you were only attracted to me,” he starts as he locks eyes with me again, “but there was hope that it could turn into something more, and I was afraid I’d scare you off if I told you, or put a kind of pressure on you that would simply be unfair to put on you, especially under the circumstances.”
It makes my anticipation build when he pauses, wincing a little but not taking his eyes off me. “But to be honest… I was used to people not having any power over me, Anna.” His eyes soften. “Then you showed up, I took one look at you and I knew it in my bones — that I was yours to do with as you please.” His jaw clenches as he throws me an apologetic look. “So, even after the Ball, I guess there was still a part of me that just couldn’t handle it, especially for fear of this truly ending up being a one-way street, an unrequited love that would ultimately destroy me from within.”
For a moment, I just look at him, my anger dispersing and my eyes filling with tears. “Your feelings for me, do you still have a problem with them?”
He shakes his head and comes to drop on his knees before me, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing his face to my chest. “You’d started changing me even before the month of pure torture that was my life after you ended things with me. I was a stupid, stupid man, but I’d do anything for you, anything to make you forgive me, to take away the pain, to make us start over.”
At a loss for words, I just lift my hand and run my fingers through his hair, both me and my wolf reveling in his touch.
“I’ve always had this immense drive, Anna,” he says pensively, lazily, making me imagine his eyelids dropping like a cat’s in the sun, “searching for something higher and turning the more restless and bitter the longer I couldn’t find it.”
He turns his head to nuzzle his nose against my stomach, making that infuriating need for him start swelling inside me. Squirming to make him loosen his grip, I get down on my knees with him, his arms coming to wrap around my waist and mine around his shoulders.
“Then I found you,” he keeps going, tugging me closer and lowering his head to press his forehead to mine,“and that was it for me.” He starts lazily stroking my back, making my eyes flutter shut and shivers run down my spine. “It’s like everything I ever went through has been leading up to this point in time, and now all I want from the rest of my life is to make you the happiest woman alive. You’re everything to me, Anna,” he whispers against my lips, “my comfort and my passion, my dreams and my reality, my sun and my moon.”
At first, I don’t say anything. I just stay in the moment, feeling all my desire and love for him come crashing down on me. Then I take the collar of his shirt in one fist and come to whisper in his ear, my voice dripping with desire, “I need you, Jericho.” I sense him tense up, his hands freezing on my back. “Right now.”
I don’t register exactly how it happens, but I find myself on my back, breathless with his hips between my legs and his face hovering above mine, the features twisted with unconcealed lust. His nostrils flaring and his chest heaving, he takes a single, hungry inhale of my neck before our hands start fumbling in a clumsy effort to tear the clothes off each other.
There are no games being played this time. Swelling with longing for him, I shower him with bites as he mumbles sweet nothings into my ear, before he pulls away, clamps his hands around my ass and brings the core that’s already throbbing for him to his greedy mouth.
When the flicks of his tongue start threatening to push me over the edge, I pull at his hair and almost instantly get his naked weight pressing into me.
I look into his eyes, for the first time in my life feeling like I truly belong to someone. The eyes dive deep into mine, deeper than ever before, the gaze turning into a languid kiss that hides nothing and gives everything.
And the more it gives, the more I want, my body becoming restless to become one with him again. It makes a gasp escape me, when I feel him push himself inside me, my eyes rolling back, my legs wrapping tight around him and my fingers digging into the flexing muscles of his shoulders. “It’s been a whole month,” he grits out as he starts thrusting, “you can’t do this to me ever again, Anna.” Then he slides a hand between us and starts working my clit with his thumb, making my hands start blindly grabbing onto his back. I just mumble something about missing him so much, meeting each thrust with growing urgency until I’m writhing under his body, completely losing myself in finally getting to feel all of him.
It all ends quicker than ever before. When our movements become desperate, I thread my fingers through his hair, I pull his head back and I take his bottom lip between my teeth. I give it a bite and the bite turns into a deep kiss that gets us moaning into each other’s mouths and flying over the edge together.
***
It’s in this blissful haze that I keep lying beneath the tree, propped up on one elbow, playing with that lighter of his with his arms tight around me and the entire length of his body pressed against mine. I’ve told him everything there is to know about me. I think I’ll still have to have a talk with him about letting my father be, this worry gnawing at me at the very thought of him trying to get revenge on someone who is a human, sure, but still a powerful one. But right now, I’m just enjoying everything being out in the open with the man who makes me feel like I’ve come home for the first time ever. “Where did you get this?” I ask as I keep staring at the lighter, something stirring inside me at the very sight of it.
“A bazaar in Morocco,” he says as he keeps stroking the skin of my upper arm. “The guy ripped me off, but I just had to have it.” Then he leans to whisper in my ear, “I want to whisk you away, Anna, but I’ve gotten an impression that you don’t exactly like surprises.”
“As long as you get me back in time for the next Opening Ceremony,” I say with a lazy smile, “I’m up for anything really.”
“Oh I like the sound of that,” he growls as he takes a bite out of my neck. “Does that mean you’d be up for me sticking around even after the Opening Ceremony? Or would that be too much for my little she-wolf?”
This makes me stop playing with the lighter, my breath catching. It’s not like I haven’t given any thought to the actual future. Now that the whole Aurora thing is over, I’ll be able to focus on truly mastering shifting, getting that Archivist position back and finding more causes for Jericho to spend all that money on.
But this… I was avoiding thinking about this. I slide out of his arms to prop myself on both elbows and turn to frown at him, all breathless when I ask, “You’d do that?”
I find him resting his head on his palm and staring at me with eyes brimming with love. “I sure as hell am not planning on letting you out of my sight either way. If you don’t want me to come back as a professor, I’ll find some other way to be close to you.”
“No,” I say with a vigorous shake of my head, “I’d love that so much.”
“Yeah?” he groans with a lazy grin just as I feel his hand close around my ass, squeezing tight. “You’d let me follow that ass around the castle?”
I roll my eyes at him. “Just don’t call me ‘babe’ like you did in the Vein and we’ll be fine.”
“Oh I only did that because I knew you wouldn’t like it,” he says with a smirk.
“Really?” I drawl.
“Yeah,” he says as he leans to give me a kiss. “Besides, I already have a name for you.”
I raise my eyebrows.
The hand loosens its grip on my ass and starts traveling up and down my thigh, while his eyes wander over to the silent forest around us. “It’s something I stumbled on this one time I went to West Africa on business.” This piques my interest even more. “I saw this sign somewhere, and that’s not what it was written there, not exactly at least, but the writing made this other word flash through my mind. Ifeanyi or Anyi for short,” he says, pausing to look deep into my eyes as the memory explodes inside me. “It means—”
“I know what it means,” I interrupt him softly.
There’s no other. Or, my one and only.
I lift my fingers to trace the curve of his lips. “You know, you’ve called me that before.”
“I know,” he says with a smile. “And I guess I’ve always known. It was just… hard to believe.”
I let out a laugh. “You know what I can’t believe?”
“What?”
“My happiness,” I say as I let my head fall to the ground, humming with pleasure while I stretch like the carefree little she-wolf that I am.
For a second, he just looks at me. Then he grabs me, flips me over so I’m straddling him and lifts his head to whisper into the corner of my lips, “It’s really not fair, what you do to me, Anna.”
I smile and bury my face in his neck to inhale his scent, my mind rushing to what he said about whisking me away and filling with images of the kind of future I never thought I’d have.