Chapter 27
TIPPY
It’s very late when Jax and Otis arrive home.
I’m still awake, reading on the couch. Jax looks exhausted, his hair messy, his skin pale under his scruff. I jump up and run to him and we kiss.
“Gods, you are a sight for tired eyes,” he murmurs against my cheek.
“Get a room,” Otis grumbles good-naturedly. “There’s enough of them in this old place. I’m going to turn in,” And then he ambles off to his and Clem’s room.
“I’ve already set up one of the bedrooms for us,” I say, dragging Jax down the corridor with me.
As I snuggle into my mate, wrapping my tail around his waist and hugging him close, he tells me what has been planned for tomorrow morning. How we have to get up at some ungodly hour to travel to One Moonbeam Lake and collect the Golden Book.
I have only been to the lake a handful of times, as part of my training with Auntie. (Vixen shifters do not go there, they’ve always viewed the lake as a place that could lead the young astray.) I have swum in the water, and danced on the rocks amid the ferns and fairy flies.
I’ve always sensed it was a deeply magical place, but I guess I didn’t know just how magical. That it was the spot where the Dawnwrought Coven secretly shared their magic with the monster folks, so that they could return to living on Earth someday.
It seems that day is almost upon us.
As we lie face to face on the bed, Jax smooths my hair, gazes into my eyes.
I feel the heat in his body, and the swell of his arousal against my belly, but we don’t take it further. We’re simply too exhausted right now for our bodies to go where our minds would like to.
So we just lie here, me in my lace nightgown, Jax in his boxers, as he strokes my tail and winds it around his long fingers.
“Your tail is so sensitive.” He laughs softly.
“It’s my most erogenous zone.” I laugh. I try to still it, but it refuses to comply. Jax’s touch can ignite a fire in me even through the fog of fatigue.
I mewl as he licks the bite marks on my neck.
“Do they still hurt?”
“Only a little, and when it stings, it reminds me that I am your mate.”
“Good,” he growls. “That’s exactly how it should be.” His kisses trace lower, trailing over my breast, and he captures my taut nipple and laves it. And despite everything, desire coils inside me and I want more.
I lie waiting, barely breathing.
And then I hear the rasp of… a little snore.
I chuckle softly. My poor mate is so tired that even his wolf’s appetites can’t keep him awake.
Well, so be it.
I am bone weary too. There has been so much to take in today. It feels like a whole truckload of secrets have come to light, things that I’ve wondered about for years that are finally coming to pass.
My feelings for Jax, which once defied logic, now make perfect sense.
Finding out that my aunt was trying her best to re-ignite the magic—Traggar, too—and that Otis’s father had been entrusted with the Golden Book.
The vital role the portal cape has played throughout.
It brought Sammy and Arlo together. Then it brought Clem down here.
And now it’s found Aurora. All of the strands are tying together through the weft and weave of magic.
I don’t doubt now that we can overthrow Marsha Winters’ malediction.
What happens after that—the dismantling of the domes, the freeing of monsters, the rehabilitation of humans—it’s all too much to contemplate tonight.
With a sigh, I curl into my beloved mate’s sleeping form. His arm is slung loosely over my belly, his hand resting close to the soft red fur of my sacred place.
Remembering how those long fingers first stroked me to my blinding release, I can’t help a smile, and a soft moan.
I want so badly to relive that experience.
But sadly, now is not the moment.
I must let Jax sleep, and I must sleep, too. We need our energy for tomorrow, because I sense it is going to be another portentous day.
Finally, I close my eyes and join my beloved in slumber.
JAX
“Wake up, you bastard.”
I cover my ears and try to roll over, but the voice continues to growl in my ear.
Finally, I open a bleary eye to see a big green face and two red eyes staring at me. “Fuck, you sleep like the dead,” Otis grunts.
“What’s the time?” I yawn.
“Four am. It’s a long way to the lake and we must be there as the sun rises.”
I sit up and rub my eyes.
Otis leaves the room, throwing over his shoulder, “Sally has cooked breakfast. So get your sleepy heads out of bed and into the kitchen, pronto.”
Tippy stirs beside me and I glance longingly at the perfect pink nipple exposed over the top of her lace nightgown.
I sense my wolf’s lascivious grin inside me. Sleep has clearly replenished its energy and now it’s ready for action, if the hard rod between my legs is anything to go by.
Go on, rut her until she begs for mercy, my wolf goads. I slap it down, but with humor now, and it chuckles low in my belly. We’re getting used to each other’s different ways of expressing our feelings toward our mate.
I kiss Tippy and tell her we have to get up. She rolls into me and snuggles close, and it takes all my willpower to resist my wolf’s advice.
You can’t keep magic waiting.
When we get to the kitchen, Mom and Clem are already there with Otis, eating breakfast. Well, to be precise, Clem is nibbling on a piece of dry toast and looking almost as green as Otis. The cape is slung over the back of a chair, letting out the occasional spark. Sally is making packed lunches.
I go over to Mom. “How did you sleep?”
She smirks. “Sleep wasn’t really high on my agenda. I’ve been doing a lot of it lately. But I have done a lot of thinking.”
“What about?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
When I lean down to give her a kiss, the cape suddenly arcs up. Mom grimaces. “I think it’s a little overprotective. It hasn’t been able to look after me for the past fifteen years.”
“It’s not a bloody guard dog.” I glare at it. The cape does a weird little movement that I swear is a huffy shrug, before it drapes itself back down. I sense it’s still watching, waiting for Mom to give it a command.
When we’re all seated and eating, Otis, in his usual sheriff fashion, outlines the plan for the day.
“The drive will take about two hours. Now, some important housekeeping. When we arrive, I will be staying at the lake’s edge with Clem.
We can’t guarantee that she can breathe Earth air, her part-human heritage may not allow it.
And I’m sure as fuck not taking a risk with her health, or that of our youngling. ”
“You’re sure I can breathe it?” I query.
“Yep, we know you can, Jax. I’ve consulted with Traggar on that.
With your wolf and your mom’s genes, you will have no problems at all.
The rest of you will climb up through the fallen rocks until you reach Earth.
Aurora will call for the Golden Book just before sunrise.
And it will be brought forth by its guardians. Everyone got that?”
“Got it,” we chorus.
We pile into two jeeps and drive through the quiet tunnels. It’s too early for most of the workers to be up and about, but already there are some crates of goods waiting to be transported up to Sparkle.
“What happens to Sparkle and the other domes afterward?” Tippy asks me, frowning.
“They will continue to operate on reduced capacity.”
“And the humans, they won’t starve or lose out on essential medicine?”
“No, we will never allow that to happen.”
“Good. Because that would make us just as bad as Marsha.”
“We want freedom, Tip,” I say firmly, “not vengeance.” And she nods and rests her head on my shoulder as we drive on.
Finally, we see light in the distance.
“Is that the dawn?” I ask, craning my neck.
“Not yet. It’s the light around One Moonbeam Lake,” Otis explains.
And then the jeep rounds the corner, and the lake stretches ahead of us.
A great expanse of deep green water, with soft light illuminating ferns and water lilies.
I’ve heard monsters speak of it as a special place to visit during family times and festivals.
I was never party to these customs, hence I’ve never visited this sacred place.
But now… now I belong. This is my sacred place, too.
Its beauty takes my breath away, but I can’t work out the source of the light. Does it come from lumen lamps? I don’t see any.
“Look closer,” Tippy points out, seeing my confusion, and suddenly I see tiny moving beams of light, so close together it appears to come from one source.
“What are they?”
“Fairy moths. They make light from feeding off a special plant here. It’s a symbiotic relationship, and used to be the only source of light in here.”
“Until the recent rockfall,” Otis points upward.
We all look up at the gaping hole in the cave above, the deep blue of Earth’s pre-dawn sky above it.
“I guess we’re heading up there,” I say wryly.
“I guess we are,” Tippy says.