Chapter 29
KAI
Kai didn’t think he’d gotten an hour of sleep, nor had Isla. It hadn’t been because of nightmares, though. There wasn’t any opportunity for that. Instead, the moment both of their heads hit their pillows, their minds ran away from them.
There was just too much to discuss, and Rhydian was right: they were stubborn workaholic bastards.
They had spoken of the upcoming conflicts, the other packs, these growing rebellions, and all Eli had said. Then came contemplating who’d killed him and what Callan’s bloody shirt meant. Whoever had him, dead or alive, had been taunting the general.
“It could be the witch,” Isla had whispered from where she’d been sitting cross-legged on their bed, unable to lie down anymore. “Even if she doesn’t have… certain people… doing her dirty work for her anymore, we know she has control over some rogues.”
That would’ve meant the rogues had found a way to slip out of their territory and walk through the pack again without being noticed. But if she already had them with her in the Wilds…
Not understanding the full scope of the tunnel system between Deimos and Phobos was going to be a problem, especially if the witch was hiding behind the Wall.
Kai had ordered searches for tunnel openings and had them sealed up or guarded, but he hadn’t sent anyone on excursions deep within to create a new map.
It was too dangerous, especially as there weren’t many trained to handle the bak or the effect of the dark magic of the Wilds.
“We’re caught in the middle of two battles,” Isla said. “She hates Cassius, Cassius hates us, and we’re trying to fend them both off.”
What a mess. “We need a better understanding of her motives,” Kai said. “If she has Raana, even if she helped us once, we don’t know her, and she’s a witch. She’s a fae.” An idea struck him. One that may have been mad—or just agitating. “I think it’s time to pay Ezekiel a visit.”
“Ezekiel?” Isla jumped back. “But he hasn’t been talking.”
Kai wouldn’t look at her as he answered, “If it came down to it, he wouldn’t need to.”
Isla’s brows lifted in shock and understanding.
Kai didn’t want to do it, and he felt disgusted for even thinking it.
But the pack and his family were in danger, so if he had to debase himself to protect them, he’d do it.
Though going through Ezekiel’s mind would be his last resort, reserved as a threat more than anything.
Hopefully, having the wolfsbane in his system would help his control… if the power would work at all with it.
“It would help if you were there,” Kai said.
Isla snorted. “You think I’d actually let you go without me?”
No, not really.
Once the exhaustion became too much to battle, Isla nuzzled beside him, tucked beneath his arm, her head atop his chest, and very much on his side of the bed.
He didn’t mind at all. It wasn’t long before she cried.
Not violent gasping sobs, but those silent, despondent tears as she drifted somewhere cold and dark inside herself.
He hated that all he could do was hold her.
Kai didn’t manage to see Olyvia in the Healer’s Sanctuary until midday, even though he was wrenched from bed an hour after the crack of dawn to meet with Marin, who’d been pacing the floor when he made it to his office.
He’d left Isla since she’d finally been getting some rest. At least the secretary had brought tea, easing the blow as she greeted him with three words: this is bad.
From where he now sat on the ecru-colored examination cot, Kai reached for one of the wolfsbane elixir vials perched on Olyvia’s rolling worktable.
Four remained, tucked neatly in the velvety material of a compact wooden box—one each for the next few days.
His lip curled as he shook the slurry, watching its dark, sludgy form fold over itself.
“It will taste better than it looks,” Olyvia said, finishing cleaning out her granite mortar and pestle. “Not by much, but I added some peppermint leaves.”
Kai brought the vial back down to the table. “Thanks.”
Olyvia turned off the faucet, the drain gurgling as it flushed the remnants of the mixture away. She wiped her hands on her pale blue apron, shaking an ebony strand loose from her braid out of her face.
A couple of years older than him, she’d been the protege of the former head healer when Kai was growing up.
She ascended above her mentor only last year when the elderly mender stepped down.
He, Ameera, Rhydian, and Jonah had gotten to know Olyvia well in their youth, their appointments with the former head healer frequent due to the ruthlessness of the Academy—as well as when Rhydian and Jonah’s parents had died long ago, and they moved in with his family here in the hall.
Though his father had never approved of the arrangement, having balked at housing the sons of a criminal from a farming village, Zahra had been a great friend of their mother’s and strong-armed him into it.
They’d lived here until they graduated from the Academy at eighteen.
“The bane won’t kill you,” Olyvia said, tightening the lid on her jar of wolfsbane flowers.
“It might not work at all, not entirely hampering your shifting, but it should still quiet these surges of power. We just don’t know.
” When Kai met her emerald eyes, wary and amused by her uncertainties, she elaborated, “Alphas typically don’t dose themselves with bane voluntarily. ”
“Fair enough.” Kai leaned back on the cot.
He likely should’ve been somewhere else, but it was quiet here, and he knew Marin had Isla.
He gazed out at the rolling hillside, at the way the sunlight caressed the swaying grasses.
No storms yet, and he couldn’t sense any rain.
Maybe the goddesses had decided to grant them a reprieve.
He turned back, saying as Olyvia crossed the room to him, “I appreciate your discretion.”
A gentle smile slid across her lips that hadn’t changed in the near decade he’d known her.
“Of course, Alpha.” She pointed to the box of elixirs.
“Take this for a few days and come back to me. I’ll assess, and we can adjust the dosage from there if need be.
” She closed the rest of the distance between them, her eyes trailing over his face.
With her jaw set and brow pinched, she touched two fingers to his forehead, drawing them across and down to his temple, following a path of energy.
When she’d drawn the trail to his neck, she paused, laughing.
“I see Luna Isla has gotten her fangs back.”
Luna Isla. He’d never get sick of hearing that.
Kai chuckled as the healer kept moving lower until she reached his heart. “That she did.”
She lay her palm flat atop his chest and closed her eyes. Kai hoped they’d truly been shut so she couldn't see the slight grimace cross his face, remembering when Raana had done this to find Isla beneath the arena. Maybe it had been the same technique.
“Anything else return?” she asked, the corner of her eye twitching as if she sensed something. It was like a gift she had—to perceive their wolves’ energies—which was likely what made her such a skilled healer.
“Her claws,” he said. “And her eyes and lumerosi are glowing again.” Olyvia hummed, and Kai’s voice rang in admiration. “She’s resilient.”
She needed to be with all the shit going on around them that she didn’t deserve.
A lift of Olyvia’s lips. “A wonderful quality for a luna.”
“Indeed.”
Olyvia slowly dropped her hand and took a healthy step back. With her hand smoothing out her braid, she eyed him skeptically. Before he could question, she asked, “Can you call on your wolf for me?”
Kai did. From one breath to the next, he brought his wolf forward, just enough that his eyes and lumerosi burned, canines and claws threatening but contained.
She placed her hand on his chest again. “Do you feel abnormal?”
“I became alpha less than a year ago, and I’m newly mated. Nothing feels normal.” Olyvia breathed a laugh, continuing whatever assessment this was. Kai braced himself before finally inquiring, “Would you be able to tell if it was magic?”
Olyvia’s hand seized, her uptilted eyes wide as she scanned his face, seeing his sincerity, his uncertainty.
Maybe he had been too trusting. Maybe he should’ve kept that in. Died with it, perhaps. Others may have assumed he had some gifts after the way the challenge had ended, but being gifted and having magic were different beasts.
Olyvia’s features softened, and she stepped back again, half-sitting on the worktable. “I don’t know much about magic. How does it feel to Isla? Mate bonds are powerful. Sometimes, they tell us more about ourselves and our wolves than we could ever glean in our lifetime.”
Kai pursed his lips, running his hand over his jaw. “When it gets bad, when I lose control, she can’t feel me through the bond. Yesterday, she thought I was dying.”
“And you were shifted?”
“Completely wolf.”
She fiddled with her braid again, a nervous habit she’d never gotten rid of. “What do you remember?”
Kai lowered his gaze, feeling his insides twist, and a dark cloud cast over his thoughts.
A part of him didn’t want to recall any of it.
“After I shifted, it became hazy, but I remember feeling myself losing control, and I got this horrible headache like my head was splitting, and my senses were heightened. There was too much of the world to take in. It was overwhelming.”
Olyvia tapped on the table, thinking. “And that’s unusual?”
“Compared to how I was before. Typical now.”
“How you were before as a common wolf or as an alpha?”
“Alpha.”
The healer narrowed her eyes like she’d struck something. “Did it start becoming unusual after you were mated?”