Chapter 6 #2
The only silver lining is that the stink completely overpowers the lingering scent of magic.
I lay sprawled on the ground where I fell, staring at the exposed beams of the warehouse and panting through choked breaths.
I hear Gav peeling himself out from behind the chunk of metal wall he used as cover. I turn my head—which weighs about a billion pounds now—and realize the metal wall is bent and shoved back at least ten feet. It’s now living permanently in the foundation of the warehouse.
Huh. Guess those Bone Blades have more velocity to them than I remember.
“Fates, Vaelenor. Are you alive?” Gav’s panting, trying not to slip in pools of all that remains of our enemies.
It doesn’t matter how many times I see it; there is never a way to mentally prepare for the aftermath of my Curse going nuclear.
Gav doesn’t even flinch at the piles of flesh, bone, and brain. I’m weirdly grateful for it. Nothing makes me feel like more of a freak than witnessing others’ reactions to my destruction.
“Yup,” I groan, trying and failing to stand up. “I’m great. Never better.”
I finally get my feet under me and flick my eyes to the drone hovering five feet above us.
I look right into the lens where I know my brother’s watching, and flip him off.
“Hey, Dax?” I call out, my voice sugary sweet and seriously fake. “Any more charming surprises you want to send my way tonight, or was that the grand finale?”
There’s a tense beat of silence followed by the sound of Dax clearing his throat. “Ah, nope. That about covers it. Want me to send some trainees to dispose of the…”
“Bodies?” I suggest with a glare.
“Sure.” He coughs, but it sounds like he’s covering up a laugh.
I scowl.
“No,” Gav replies, surveying the area. “Just send someone to torch the place. There was nothing here anyway.”
Gav’s looking at me like he knows something I don’t. He doesn’t ask any questions or, worse, offer any condemnations. Just holds my gaze steadily, and gives me a single, decisive nod. Like we’ve both agreed in a conversation I’m unaware we’re having.
“I’m gonna get Vae and myself back to HQ.” He says, kicking over a mostly intact Deadwalker to check for signs of life. “Go ahead and call in the team for a debrief—after Vae takes a shower. He smells like rotted meat. I’m gonna have to get my damn car detailed. Again.”
I huff, still leaning over with my hands on my thighs as I try to prevent the world from spinning. “Hell, I’m just grateful you’re letting me in your car. Last time you made me wait for Ford.”
He scoffs. “That’s because last time, it was 1983, and I was in a ‘69 Charger. You think I was letting your bloody ass into that?” His lips tip up at the corners, and so do mine.
I need a stiff drink.
I can probably con Ford into letting me break out the good stuff tonight.
He’s in Chicago, but I can always send him a text and really appeal to those grandfatherly instincts he has.
The guy was only thirty-nine when he was turned, but he’s under the impression that it somehow makes him ancient compared to us, just because he currently looks ten years older.
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more appealing my plan sounds. Get home, shower, then make Ford feel sorry enough for me to break out the ‘50 Macallen.
He always says you only bring that out when somebody’s born, dies, or does something so colossally stupid that it circles back around to being impressive.
I glance around the warehouse one last time as I make my slow, limping way out the side door behind Gav.
Severed bodies are scattered like trash, shredded all to hell, and leaking everywhere.
I watch in disgust mixed with amusement as one of the bodies gives a final twitch and a spray of red mist arcs from its chest. The blood squirts a few feet through the air and lands on an arm that’s half-attached to another body by nothing more than a few strings of bloody sinew.
Yup.
I’ll file this under “Impressive.”
Right next to “What the fuck?”
Leaning my forearms against the shower tile, steam rises in the air as I let the hot water pound into the tense muscles of my back.
I’ve been standing here for too long, watching blood and brain matter swirl down the drain.
Exhaustion pulls at every limb, and I’m debating saying fuck it and crawling into bed.
I know everyone is waiting for me to debrief. I should already be in the War Room, letting Dax pick apart every moment of the evening and reliving my epic failure in High Def as he replays the drone footage.
Instead, I grab the soap and start scrubbing myself down. Again.
There’s a gentle prod from Caelan down the Bond. It’s light, barely more than a brush. Enough so I know he’s there. An offer to lean on him if I need to.
He and Dax have been fielding my self-loathing for the last hour, but I don’t have the energy to put up a block tonight. I’m too tired.
Lavender and ozone haunt me. The phantom scent swirls through the air like it’s embedded in the steam itself. Maybe it followed me back here from that fucking warehouse.
Maybe it’s haunting me.
Even through the layers of dirt and grime of that building, I was able to pick it out instantly. The scent of magic that old rarely fades away if the area isn’t cleansed properly. After my parents forced me through the ritual that changed my life, I could smell it for months.
This scent is slightly different, though. There is a very faint undertone of amber that is… new. I can’t help but wonder what it means.
To be fair, I already know what it means in a general sense.
Nothing good.
I rinse the shampoo out of my dark auburn hair and send a wave of reassurance to my packmates. Just enough to let them know I’m good. Still standing, at least.
There will be no hiding this from the team. I’ll have to explain exactly why I randomly went off like a porcupine on cocaine. What I don’t need are the pitying looks. The ones that scream, ‘It’s okay, you can try again. Hey! Maybe you’ll hold it together longer than thirty years this time!’
I grab a towel off the hook, wrap it around my waist, and run a smaller one through my hair. One long swipe of my hand across the mirror clears it of condensation.
The face staring back at me looks wrong.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s healed. Perfect. Symmetrical. Technically fucking flawless. High cheekbones, straight nose, clean jawline, sharp enough to cut. Eyes dark and hooded that have seen too much, and looked away from more.
It’s fine. Too fine. This fucking Curse puts everything back in its beautiful, perfect place, like nothing ever happened. I scowl and wonder if anyone would comment on my good looks if they saw my skull trying to torpedo its way out of my face through my flesh.
I hate that, most of all. The fact that every single time this happens, my first instinct isn’t relief when it’s over. It’s a gut-punch of fear:
Fates, what if I didn’t heal this time? Did it leave a mark?
I’ll never admit it. Not even to my pack. But when the blood clears, and the pain starts to fade, the first thing I always check… is my face.
The vanity of it disgusts me. What I look like shouldn’t matter.
But there’s always that feeling in the back of my head that if we ever meet our Fated Mate and she finds out about my Bone Curse, the only things I’ll have to combat her disgust are my good looks and charm.
The charm is basically dependent on my good looks at this point.
So yeah, I’m clearly a walking fucking billboard for well-adjusted males.
I look away from the mirror, disgusted with myself as usual. Grabbing clothes from my room, I get dressed and head down the hall and out of our pack’s private wing, into the central area of HQ.
The compound is designed to look like a fortress, with the main house at its heart, ‘reminiscent’ of a castle. Gav’s words, not mine.
I still think he needs to look up the definition of reminiscent, because as I’ve pointed out a thousand times—this is a fucking castle.
My footfalls don’t echo around the long hallways, but that’s thanks to exposed wood beams, matte-finished paneling, and thick dark green runners that snake through the estate. You can scream in here, and the thick stone walls will just absorb the sound.
Every Omega’s dream.
Fates, why do I keep thinking about Omegas tonight?
I swear that magic has rearranged my brain cells. It’s like my instincts are pushing forward and won’t take no for an answer.
Something inside of me keeps bubbling up, making me weirdly melancholy for the Fated Mate we still haven’t found.
I need to get over it. There are a thousand more important things to worry about.
I make my way through HQ, watching the sconces that line the walls as they flicker with a flame that never seems to go out.
They’re the only sign of opulence here. Evander’s been complaining for years that they’re a fire hazard, and Dax says they’re pretentious and creep him out, but Gav always shrugs them off.
Nothing else in this mansion is for show. You aren’t going to find any oversized portraits of dead Bastards; Gav would sooner punch someone in the throat than let them immortalize him in oils. Everything here has a purpose, and in a house full of soldiers, that purpose is war.
My team’s already there when I walk into the War Room, all of them sitting around the huge old oak table that’s littered with empty blood bags, dossiers, and electronics.
This is where we’ve spent decades planning attacks, rescue missions, going over patrols, and running damage control when diplomacy fails.
Caelan is still as stone, like always, with a weird, faraway look in his eyes. He’s been muting himself in the Bond more often over the last day or so, and I make a mental note to check in with him.
Dax, of course, is reviewing something on a tablet, pretending his eye isn’t twitching in perfect rhythm to the pen Silas is clicking repeatedly.
The only ones missing are Ford and Evander, who left for Chicago this morning.