Mara
Kade’s still yelling somewhere above us when Aaron pushes himself up to sitting.
I’m still sprawled across his lap, my heart slamming and my lion clawing at the inside of me, both of us caught in a panic I can’t get ahead of.
He doesn’t even look at Kade. His hands come up and cup my face, his dark eyes raking over me like he’s counting every part of me that could be broken.
“Are you hurt, baby?” His voice is wrecked.
I try to turn my head out of his hold. “I’m fine, Aaron. Could you calm down, please?”
He doesn’t hear a word of it. His hands leave my face and move lower, down my neck and over my shoulders, then along both arms, pressing and checking, frantic.
“Aaron—“
He catches my wrist when I push at him. “I need to make sure you’re okay.”
Behind him Kade paces the Market, her hands flying. “Of all the people you could’ve called on to help you,” she snaps, “you go and call on Jo. Are you stupid or something?”
Aaron doesn’t so much as glance at her. His hands slide down to my belly, his palm flattening there.
That’s when something in me eases. My tail lifts off the ground and wraps around his wrist, my tassel coming to rest soft over the back of his hand.
It’s my lion telling him that we’re alright, both of us, whatever he’s so afraid he lost. The breath goes out of him all at once. His shoulders drop, and he lets me go.
I push up onto my feet, grab his hand, and haul him up after me. He comes off the ground and pulls me straight into his chest, both arms locking around me, holding me so tight I can feel his heart going.
“Aaron,” I murmur into him.
“I can’t keep doing this to you.” His mouth is in my hair. “Putting you in danger. You and our cub are far too important to me for that.”
Kade’s voice cuts off mid-rant. Her head tips back, her nostrils flaring. Her bright blue eyes swing to me, brows pulling together. “Wait.” She sniffs again. “You’re pregnant?”
I wrench myself out of Aaron’s arms. “No. Not yet.” I cut a glare up at him. “He’s being ridiculous. It’s too soon.”
Kade’s mouth curves into a smirk, and she looks away from us, off toward the other two.
Josiah’s grinning at Layla, wide and wicked, and Layla looks like she’s about to put him in the ground.
“How many times have I told you,” she says, her voice low and shaking, “we die together or not at all.”
Josiah only shrugs. “I love it when you get angry with me, beautiful Layla.”
She’s in his face in an instant, hissing, her fangs out. He just grins down at her, the split across his cheek already knitting shut while I watch, the skin sealing over until there’s nothing left of it.
Josiah is a confusing vampire to me. Some of his wounds heal clean, like they were never there, while others don’t heal at all. There’s an old scar running from his temple down to his cheekbone, one that just sits and never fades. What does that mean?
I cock my head and watch them. I shouldn’t understand her. But I do. My lion wanted to claw Aaron’s eyes out for scaring me the way he did back there, and so did I.
“You want to play with me?” Layla’s fuming now, her chest heaving. Josiah looks back at her with so much love it doesn’t fit anywhere on his face. The man’s insane. “Okay...” Her voice drops, sweet and awful. “I’ll show you.”
She turns and storms off. Josiah watches her go, then lifts both hands at us. “What? Keeps the spice in our mate bond alive.” His grin sharpens. “I love it when my Layla wants to torture me.”
A sharp length of wood comes spinning across the Market straight for his chest. I gasp. His hand snaps up and catches it an inch from his heart. The grin drops off his face.
“Beautiful Layla,” he calls. “That was too close.”
She’s already stalking back toward him with a fresh plank in her hands. She lifts her knee and breaks it clean across her leg, tosses the dull half over her shoulder, and keeps the jagged end pointed at him.
“You want to die, huh?” She comes at him, slow and certain. “Well, the only way you’re dying is through me. Come here, Jo. Let me take care of that for you.”
Josiah looks over at the three of us, at me, Aaron and Kade, and finds nothing but flat stares waiting for him.
He lowers the stake in his hand and dips his head to me, quick and courtly.
“It’s been lovely spending time with such a new mate bond.
” His eyes warm on me. “A pleasure being in your company, beautiful lioness.”
Layla hurls the stake. Josiah’s gone in a blur before it crosses the space where he stood, and the wood clatters.
She stops. She turns on us, her eyes narrowing to slits. “What!”
The three of us find very interesting things to look at in the other direction. “Nothing, Layla,” we say together.
She plants her hands on her hips. “Men.” She bends and scoops the fallen stake off the ground.
A laugh rolls up out of her, low and delighted—not right.
“Sometimes you can’t live without them.” She rests the long end against her shoulder and starts to walk, slow, her voice lifting into a singsong.
“Sometimes... you just have to kill them.”
“Joooo. Oh, joooo, where are you?” Her wicked laugh carries the length of the Market. “Come play with me. You said you’d die for me. Come on, baby. Show me.”
Up and down the square, the shifters hauling broken boards and resetting the stalls stop, every head turning to watch Layla coo for her mate through the wreckage.
Kade drags a hand down her face. “I really wish we could keep those two locked up in Medina Shadow.” Her voice climbs. “They cause more harm than GOOD!”
Layla doesn’t slow. “Jooo... oh, jooo...”
Josiah doesn’t make her hunt long. He blurs into being on top of an overturned cart, both arms spread wide like he’s offering her the whole of himself.
“Here I am, beautiful Layla.” His grin is all fang. “Come take what’s yours.”
She doesn’t answer him. She throws.
The stake leaves her hand. Josiah tips his head a fraction and lets it pass close enough to skim his temple. It buries itself in a support beam behind him with a deep wooden thunk. He laughs, delighted, and that’s the wrong thing to do. Layla’s already moving.
She crosses the square in a black blur and hits him at the waist. A wolf hauling a beam out of the rubble drops it and throws himself clear just before they land.
They go through the cart together, the wood blowing apart around them, apples and broken slats scattering.
My tail snaps tight against my leg. When the dust thins she’s straddling his chest with a fresh shard of cart in her fist, the point of it pressed dead center over his heart, her hair hanging loose around both their faces.
“You scared me.” The play drops clean out of her voice for the first time. “Don’t you ever let me think I almost lost you again.”
Josiah goes still beneath her. He lifts one hand, slow, and gently strokes her cheek with a tenderness that doesn’t match the stake aimed at his heart.
“Then put it through me, my love.” His voice goes soft, reverent, completely sincere. “If it’ll make you feel better. I’d be honored to die for you.”
She drives it down.
I gasp, but he catches her wrist a breath before the point breaks his skin and holds it there, the two of them trembling against each other, the wood quivering over his heart.
He’s grinning up at her, helpless with it.
She’s snarling down at him. And I can’t tell whether they’re about to kill each other or fall into the rubble and do something I’d rather not watch.
My lion stays fixed on them, fascinated and uneasy all at once. I understand it more than I want to. I felt the same ugly thing earlier, the want to hurt the one I love most for the crime of almost leaving me. But my lion would never go through with it.
“Children.” Kade snaps it from beside me, and neither of them so much as glances over. “I mean it.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Crack one more stall and I’m telling Amari you’re both banned from the mainland.”
That, Layla hears. Her head turns slow, her eyes burning, and she holds Kade’s stare for a long moment. Then she presses one last kiss to the tip of the stake, climbs off Josiah, and tosses the wood over her shoulder.
“We’re finished.” She smooths her gown down like she didn’t just take a man through a cart. “For now.”
Josiah springs up behind her, brushing splinters off his coat, beaming at the back of her head.
Beside me Aaron doubles forward with his hands braced on his knees. My attention snaps to him. I reach for his back, careful, but my fingers barely land before he flinches under them.
I look up at Kade.
She crosses to us, her humor gone. “Should we take you to Wintermoon Medical?”
Aaron shakes his head. “No.” He drags in a breath. “Where’s my mother?”
“At House of Zorah.” Kade’s eyes stay on him. “Jacob thought she needed a cool-off period.”
Aaron’s head turns toward the old cottage at the edge of the Market, still bound in the chains he wove around it, white and blue-gold light humming low through the wood. “How’s the Witching Glen holding?”
“I check it hourly.” Kade follows his look. “Still holding. But I can feel them in there, pooling what they’ve got, trying to break it from the inside.”
Aaron straightens by inches, his hand lifting, and he tears a portal open in the air beside us. Through it I can see the cabins of House of Zorah ringed around their quiet cul-de-sac. “I need to talk to my mom.”
“Did something happen back in Detroit?” Kade asks.
Aaron meets her eyes. “Yes. Eric’s working with Henry, and he has dark magic now. We’ve got to stop him.” His voice drops. “But I don’t think I can do it alone.”
I step through the portal first, my tail lashing the air behind me. Aaron comes through after, and Kade leaps through on her heels just before the light folds shut.
Aaron looks back at her, worn down to nothing. “What are you doing?”
“If this reaches the Witching Glen, I’m helping.” Kade lifts her chin. “You don’t know those witches and warlocks the way I do.”
He groans. He looks to his cabin across the cul-de-sac, then to the porch opposite it, where Kane, Levi, Gabriel, and Micah stand in a row, watching us arrive. Levi comes off the porch in one long leap, and Aaron drags a hand down his face.
My lion surges up in me. My ears go flat. My tail snaps high and alert, and a hiss tears out of me at the wolf coming for my mate. Their scents reach me on the air, disappointment laid sharp and sour over a thick base of worry. I can’t tell if they mean to help him or hurt him.
Aaron’s hand closes around my arm. “Stop, Mara.”
I frown at him.
“If they’re upset with me, let them be.” His voice is quiet. “I did make a mistake.”
I snatch my arm out of his grip. “No...”
He grins at me.
“Go inside, both of you.” Kade’s already moving. “I’ll deal with the pack.” She crosses the cul-de-sac toward Levi. Gabriel and Micah drop off the porch to meet her.
Aaron watches them go. “I don’t know why this feels like the last time I’ll see them.”
I press into his side, hissing, hating those words in his mouth. “Don’t say that, Aaron.”
He pulls me up the steps of the cabin and pushes the door open, drawing me in behind him.
His mother’s behind the counter with a knife in her hand, fussing over a board of cut fruit with Seth at her elbow. She looks up the second we cross the threshold. The knife clatters out of her hand. She’s around the counter and across the room, her arms thrown around her son.
“My baby.” She pulls back and cups his face in both hands, turning it side to side, reading him.
“I’m fine, Ma,” Aaron says.
She slaps her palm flat against his chest. He winces, and she scowls. “I should beat your ass.”
Then her gaze slides to me, and I drop my head.
Angie groans and shakes her head. “What am I going to do with you two?”
I lift my eyes to her, my tail swaying, unsure. And then she does the last thing I expect. She crosses to me in her apron and pulls me into her arms. “Come here, silly girl.”
I gasp. But I don’t push her away. My lips start to tremble, and the tears come up fast and hot.
“I know I’ve got a shitty way of showing it.” Her hand strokes slow circles over my back. “But I worried about you too. I’m so happy you’re safe. Home with us.”
I suck in a sharp breath and look over her shoulder at Aaron. He’s just watching the two of us, the smile on his face soft. He gives me a nod, and I let my head come down to rest on his mother’s shoulder.
A portal splits the air across the room, and Tiana, Kiara, and Samara step through in their cloaks. Tiana takes in Angie wrapped around me, and a grin breaks across her face. “Good. Now I don’t have to hate you anymore.”
Seth breaks the moment from behind the counter, lifting the board of fresh-cut fruit over his head. “Y’all want some or what?”
Something heavy thuds onto the porch, and I jump. My nose catches the scent. My lion settles before the door even opens. Jacob steps inside and shuts it behind him. His blue eyes find me and Aaron, and they brighten.
I don’t know what gets into me. I pull out of Angie’s arms, cross the room, and go straight into Jacob’s. He laughs, low and warm, and folds me against his chest.
“Welcome home, lioness.” He looks up over my head at Aaron, and Aaron just looks back. The scent rolling off Jacob is relief, and something happier underneath it, that I’ve been folded into this family for good.
And so am I.
“Alright.” Tiana claps her hands once and cracks the whole moment open. “Let’s eat, and figure out what we’re doing about Eric and Henry.” Her eyes cut to her brother. “I have a plan.”
Aaron’s head turns to his sister. He lets out a long breath. And under everything else in this room, I can feel it in him, my mate is relieved he doesn’t have to do this alone.