Chapter 32
Chapter
Thirty-Two
Delainey woke to Reece trailing kisses down her neck and didn’t bother to control the throaty moan that started deep in her throat.
It felt good. Too good, really.
But at this point she was powerless to resist. It was another hour or so before she and Reece finally stumbled out of bed.
While she took a quick shower, he made her breakfast, and she tried not to think about how couple-y it was starting to feel. It had been over a week since the power outage and the decision to start sleeping together.
The visit to the warehouse and Dawson’s posturing had been a threat to their peace. It hadn’t actually disrupted their relationship, for lack of a better word.
Not that she and Reece were in a relationship.
They were two people living together and sleeping in the same bed, and having breakfast together every morning. Reece knew how she liked her coffee.
Oh god, that was boyfriend shit.
Delainey rested her head against the warm tile of the shower as water rushed over her and tried not to have a freak-out, because this sure as hell did not feel like casual sex.
She wasn’t really the type who indulged in much casual sex.
She was either a one-night-stand girl or a relationship girl, nowhere in between. She liked things properly defined, not living in the nether spaces of pretending she didn’t want what she wanted.
Oh god, she really wanted Reece still, even after all these days, even after all those orgasms.
The hunger for him had not subsided. It had to all crash down around them, eventually. This thing was doomed from the start. It wasn’t even a thing. It was convenient, forced on them by their proximity and a bond neither of them wanted.
She still really didn’t want it. The top of her list of desires was breaking the tether between them, and number two was feeling Reece’s lips on her as he moved deep inside of her and she moaned out his name.
Fuck, no.
That wasn’t supposed to even be on the list.
She knew what that felt like. She had experienced it. She was supposed to be getting over it. She wasn’t Elise. She wasn’t going to fall for some fucking werewolf.
But she really liked fucking that werewolf.
Delainey got out of the shower and toweled herself off. She hesitated before going out to the living space, as if she could actually avoid Reece and he wouldn’t realize something was off with her mood.
The light on her phone was blinking with a message.
Relief flashed through her when she saw it was from Aya.
Maybe they had a chance of breaking this thing soon.
She put on real clothes and happily took her cup of coffee from Reece when she came out of the bedroom, flashing her phone at him with her free hand.
He was already dressed, a plain white t-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders, his red hair still damp and pushed back from his face, and he stood at the kitchen counter with a spatula in one hand, looking absurdly domestic for a man his size.
“Aya’s got an idea. You up for another field trip?”
He looked a bit wary, as he always did when it came to magic. Delainey wanted to ask him why.
Sure, it was normal for wolves to be wary of witches; that came with the territory, but Reece practically jumped every time she lit a candle or magically used her senses to scan the area.
The only time he hadn’t freaked out about magic was when she had informed him of the anti-STD spell she used so they didn’t need condoms. Then he had been perfectly content with the existence of magic.
But Delainey wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him in bed right now.
“What does she want?” Reece set the spatula down on the counter and leaned back against the edge, crossing his arms.
“We can go and find out,” said Delainey. “Aya doesn’t exactly waste time with long texts. And she’s not the voice note type.”
Reece still looked wary, but he nodded. They finished their breakfast, and he did not argue about her driving this time.
Aya’s text said to meet at the clearing, with no other details, but Delainey knew what that meant.
There was only one clearing that didn’t need definition.
It was a place of incredibly strong magic that sat on the edge of coven territory, right on the border with the Iron Runners, which made it a bit of a pain in the ass to use.
The Iron Runners would scent the magic and come running and harass them until they decided the spellwork wasn’t worth it. More than once it had ended in a physical fight.
But there was so much magic in the area, a confluence of ley lines and other magical artifacts, that putting up with the harassment was worth it for big magics.
The clearing itself was roughly forty feet across, a near-perfect circle of bare earth and low grass hemmed in by old-growth trees whose canopy didn’t quite close overhead, leaving a column of open sky above the center where the ley lines crossed.
Aya was already there when Delainey pulled up, a circle set up, her black hair pulled back by a headband Delainey recognized.
Aya was compact and straight-backed in a dark green jacket zipped to her sternum, her reading glasses pushed up on top of her head, and she’d drawn the circle in what looked like crushed white chalk, the line about two inches wide and unbroken around a patch of flattened grass.
“Are you stealing my stuff when I’m gone?” Delainey dropped her car keys into her jacket pocket and crossed the damp ground toward the circle, her sneakers leaving shallow impressions in the soft earth.
Aya touched the large headband covered in printed colorful flowers and shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The hospitality charm from Emerson hung heavy on her wrist. The thin braided cord with its small glass bead sat against the skin of Aya’s wrist, catching light as she moved her hand.
“He’s still here?” Delainey asked.
She’d been checking in with her sisters every other day or so, but no one had said much about Emerson, and she had hoped it meant he had decided to go back to Wallace Grove or gotten a hotel.
Aya pursed her lips. “I didn’t realize he would be staying so long when he asked, but Briana seems cool with it, and so does Elise. And Serena and…” She shrugged and trailed off. “Whatever. We can deal with him later.”
“He’s really stretching the bonds of hospitality,” Reece stood a few paces behind Delainey at the edge of the circle, his boots planted wide on the uneven ground, hands shoved deep in his pockets.
Delainey snapped her head over to him. That was not a wolfish thing to say. She hadn’t fully explained why Emerson was at their house and why they couldn’t really kick him out.
But maybe Elise had. Maybe he had heard about it somewhere.
Aya shrugged. “He’ll get bored eventually and go home, I hope. And if he decides he’s staying in town, at least we can kick him out. There are limits to this.”
Reece nodded as if he expected to hear that.
“Okay, sit, you two,” Aya dropped to her knees inside the circle. “I’ve done a bit of research and I want to see if I’m on to something.” She pointed to two spots and held out her hands. “Hold on to me, but don’t touch each other.”
Delainey reached out and took Aya’s hand. Reece hesitated. She wanted to snap at him to hold on and put up with this, but she forced herself to stay silent. Reece had come with her. He needed a minute to adjust.
She had to make allowances for his delicate, wolfish sensibilities.
Reece took Aya’s hand and flinched at the contact, but didn’t let go. His large, scarred knuckles engulfed Aya’s smaller hand, and Delainey could see the tendons along the back of his wrist standing out rigid beneath the freckled skin.
Aya closed her eyes, and Delainey felt the magic rise up out of the ground to meet them. Reece wrinkled his nose, so he must have smelled it, but he didn’t comment.
The magic was warm and welcome and shaped like Aya. Delainey accepted it into her body as Aya sent a pulse through her and straight for the tether that lived deep inside Delainey’s chest. It hurt a little bit, almost like heartburn, but she gritted her teeth against complaining.
Aya wouldn’t hurt her on purpose. The tether needed to shut the fuck up and deal with this, as far as Delainey was concerned.
Aya started humming low in her throat and swayed back and forth. Delainey swayed on old instinct. She wanted to reach for Aya’s power and share it and help with this ritual, but there was nothing for her to do.
If Aya wanted her help, she would ask for it.
The heartburn feeling in her chest got worse, and Reece made a low, pained sound in his throat. She spared him a glance and wanted to reach for him, but Aya had told her not to touch him. Delainey followed that instruction even as it physically hurt not to reach out.
Power flared against her like a punch right between her boobs. The impact buckled through her sternum, and she felt the tether yank taut inside her ribcage, a fishhook pulling hard enough that her whole torso pitched forward.
She jerked back and had to tighten her fingers around Aya’s so hard she yanked her forward, barely stopping herself from breaking the contact.
A moment later, the magic dissipated, and Aya was scowling.
“Damn it,” Aya pulled her hands free and pressed both palms flat against the ground, her fingers splayed wide in the chalk-dusted grass. “I hoped that would work.”
“What did you try?” Reece was already pulling his hand back to his side, flexing his fingers open and closed as if trying to shake off the residual tingle of magic.
“This is a place of magic confluence,” Aya told him. She held up her hand. “That means there’s a lot of magic around and it’s really easy to do spell work here.”
“I know what magic confluence is,” he said. “Assume I’m not an idiot while you explain this.”
Aya rolled her eyes and shared a glance with Delainey, but Delainey didn’t have it in her to give a sympathetic look at the snark. “Reece isn’t an idiot,” she told Aya.
Aya raised her eyebrows in surprise.
Oh crap. That was definitely going to get back to the coven, and Delainey would have some explaining to do.
“I was trying to match the resonance, the magical signature,” she added, “of the tether between you to the resonance of the magic under our feet. I hoped I could shift it out of the two of you, through me, and into the ground.”
Reece narrowed his eyes. “You were trying to trick the magic.”
“It’s what you have to do sometimes. It didn’t work.”
“No,” Aya said. “However this tether is set up, it’s got its hooks in you deep. Short of killing one of you, I don’t see how we break it.”
Delainey nodded. “Yeah. Clearly that’s not happening.”
But Reece’s mouth had dropped open and his eyes were wide. “What the fuck? Killing one of us?” He sounded shocked. Then he realized Delainey wasn’t. “Did you know that?” he demanded.
Oh crap. This was even worse.
“I may have suspected that,” she admitted.
Reece jumped up from where he was sitting and stormed back towards the car, but it was more than thirty feet away.
The tether tugged between them, and he had to freeze on the edge of the parking lot before he could make it all the way.
He stood with his back to them at the treeline where gravel met dirt, his shoulders rigid under his t-shirt, fists balled at his sides, the muscles in his forearms locked tight.
“Thanks for trying,” Delainey told Aya. “Let me know if you want to do any more science experiments.”
“I will.”
Delainey got up and jogged towards Reece. He didn’t say a word as they got back to the car and he slammed his door behind him. They got on the road in silence, Reece white-knuckling the steering wheel, his jaw set in a firm line as they pulled onto the highway.
“How long have you known about that?” he asked.
She couldn’t play dumb. There was only one thing he could be asking. “I realized it when we were in the woods that first night,” she said.
“You’ve known for weeks that one of us dying would break this thing?”
“Not with any certainty, but yes. Our life forces are bound to it in a way that suggests death would sever the bond.” She kept her gaze forward and refused to look at him.
If she looked at him, she might be tempted to apologize, and she didn’t have a damn thing to apologize for.
It still felt like she had done something wrong.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The words were a guttural growl, and she had a feeling his wolf was just as angry as he was.
Well, his wolf could fucking deal with it.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Delainey said. “Maybe because I was manacled to an angry werewolf, and there was the slightest chance that he might kill me to save himself.”
“I would never harm you.” The confession was torn out of him. “I would tear my own throat out before I did that.”
That hadn’t been true three weeks ago, and she didn’t point it out. Nor did she let herself really think about what that confession could mean.
This thing between them wasn’t real. It was magic bullshit.
It had to be because if she thought about it for even a second, well, she might do the same. Tear her own heart out before she let anyone land a blow on Reece.
No, she wasn’t going to think about what that meant.
“I know you wouldn’t hurt me,” she said.
“Honestly, I forgot about it. I forgot I didn’t tell you.
I forgot you didn’t know. And it’s irrelevant, because I’m not going to let anyone kill you to free me from this thing.
You’re not going to let anyone kill you, or kill me, to free you.
Nothing’s changed, except now you know.”
“Now I know.” If he clenched his jaw any tighter, it might break.
They drove the rest of the way in silence. Delainey went into the house and hoped she could find a way to get Reece out of his pissy mood and maybe slightly apologize for keeping him in the dark.
But he went into the bedroom, and a moment later trotted out on four feet, and let himself out the front door, where he remained for the next several hours in wolf form.
She hoped this wasn’t a return to that first week, and she tried with all her heart not to care.