Chapter 19
Declan
Fallon wasn't a woman you managed. You helped or got out of the way. Unfortunately, I had been in Fallon’s way all month with my hovering.
There was no help for it. She needed me despite our disagreements.
The bond vibrated with her panic as the Fever came and went in waves.
Sometimes an hour, sometimes a day. Holding her only hurt her but she resisted Noreen’s ministrations too.
A pile of half-full bottles sat on the side table.
When she saw I had cut myself on her skin, she refused to let me lick her again.
She was lucky I didn’t immediately toss her into the snow.
I held out the bottle Noreen said contained the mildest of sedatives.
“I don’t need it, really, Dec.” When she appeared most reasonable was when she was the most stubborn. Unfortunately, she also sounded like she gargled the Ampthean Sea so I knew she wasn’t better even after all this time.
“Fallon, the circles around your eyes are growing into pits. Gorgeous pits, but dark voids nonetheless.”
What else would she possibly expect of me? We were best friends! Or I thought we were. We certainly had never felt less like mates.
She covered her face with her hands. “Then don’t look at me. Go chase your tail in the woods or something.”
As much as I believed wrapping her up in me was helping, if this last month was any indication, she might never recognize that she was her own worst enemy. That sinking realization made for agitated conversations and endless days. It exhausted both of us.
The bottle slammed onto the bedside table, making them all rattle, and I left before I said anything I would regret. I always wielded my good humor like an unstoppable force to get what I wanted out of life and I somehow ran up against an immovable object named Fallon.
Only the hallway heard my deep breath and I worked up my courage to go back into our room.
Half the pack suddenly burst into the house, animated about a lead.
The escape was needed. Any breakthrough was a blessing at this point because all of our searching had come to nothing.
The pack wasn’t used to failing. What could hide from a massive, magical wolf? They chattered all at once.
“One at a time,” I called over the noise as I walked into the kitchen.
A staggering story finally came out about a tributary and the exact location of the discarded belt of nails they found in the Dell.
“We can go as a pack, pick up the trail from there,” Briggs said.
I cut her off before she could get the rest of them too riled up. “No. We’re not doing the same thing again. I’m going to the stream.”
The pack nervously glanced around.
“Alone?” one of the enforcers asked.
My eyes glowed with all the frustration of fighting with Fallon. “Who can resist my charm?”
That broke the tension in the room with laughter. Better than them witnessing what I really had to do.
I took Briggs’ arm. “You and Ned guard Fallon. I don’t care if you have to watch her sleep. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
I didn’t like being away from her, my hands momentarily growing claws in agitation. If something happened to me before we resolved this, I would never forgive myself.
“Whispering Woods it is,” Briggs said, running to find a deck of cards.
“I’ll be checking in through the bond. And don’t play her for money,” I warned my sister.
“I’ll make you pay me back.” Briggs winked and tapped on my bedroom door.
“Come in,” Fallon called from the bed.
Briggs dragged over a chair, and Ned settled beside the fire after collecting his pets.
She motioned to Briggs. “He didn’t send you to get me to take something, did he?”
Briggs shook her head. “Just here for a card game.”
Heat rose into Fallon’s cheeks as she looked directly at me and the bond flooded with an echo of hunger.
“I’ll be back soon. Don’t let her cheat,” I said into the room.
I left them to decide which of them I meant, smiling into the bit of chaos I threw in Fallon’s direction as her interest sharpened.
My shift settled me into a better frame of mind and I sped off into the snowy day.
Fat flakes landed on my dark fur as I pushed myself harder toward the Dell.
It was past time I ran in the woods and re-familiarize myself with my home territory.
Every pound of my paws through the snow drifts brought me back to the land.
Each scurrying creature reminded me of whom I had to protect.
But it was my insides that sloshed with fear.
What if I ended up the wrong kind of mate just like my father?
When Fallon and I left the temple, I thought we were making progress when she opened the bond further.
Watching pain wind through her hurt worse than any lash the Brothers of Zophiel wielded.
If she kept her illness from me, would she be able to reject the bond?
I didn’t have anyone to turn to. The pack didn’t know how to sort this out.
This wasn’t how Fated Mates were supposed to act.
They just loved each other, right? I had accepted that she didn’t feel it at first sight like I did, but I thought the bond would grow here where there was less pressure.
Only nowhere seemed to hold less pressure for Fallon.
I would never want us being mates to hold her back from her life, her friends.
I guess I just hoped I would convince her to stay.
To love me, even. Which she did, in a way.
So close to what I wanted, I almost had it in my teeth.
I couldn’t crack that last layer she had and I cursed her illness.
Holding her here against her will would be even worse than breaking the bond.
The Old Magic didn’t react well to coercion in any form.
Which is why I was hoping it would help me discover the Followers even when my pack came to a standstill.
I shook myself out of my unusually morose thoughts. It would work out. It had to. I would make it so. Just like I would find the missing wolves.
I prayed to the Old Magic for patience, guidance, and strength and stopped where it felt right. The stream gurgled at my back, brambles bare of leaves in front of me. I tuned into the place I had been away from for so long. At least the land was healthy.
I shifted, uncaring that I stood naked in the cold, letting my wolf warm me from the inside.
My eyes cast a frozen glow against the snow, the Old Magic filling me in the way it wanted to.
My senses sharpened. The whisper of something archaic stirred in the back of my mind.
I didn’t relish what I was about to do, but if they had no resources, they would have to show themselves.
That ancient, slithering thing that lived in all wolves peered through my eyes and bled into the soil. That was why we feared going Ajax. We were literally a blight on the land.
“Life becomes death. Sweet water turned bitter.” My voice resounded like a clear bell across the stream that began to cloud. It wasn’t loud, but the power in it rippled through the wood. “Fall to sleep to reveal my enemy.”
Branches withered. Trees crashed in the forest, their roots gone dry. A ring of decay spread out around me and I wanted to howl at the waste of it.
“What are you doing, you mongrel!” Percy appeared with a pop, stepping out of his portal. Disappointment cut me deep to see him alone.
A spike of dread accompanied his snarl and I tumbled back into the graveyard that had been my dungeon in Vinguard. It might not have had bars or a cage, but it was a prison all the same. I made myself small enough to fit in it.
I had to remember I wasn’t there anymore.
“Just came to say hi, neighbor.” I mocked his words back at him. Starting this civil would have been smart but the past still rode me hard.
His face twisted with rage. “You can’t be so stupid as to kill the forest you live in.”
I would do anything to flush them out. Even widening my circle of destruction. Ash floated alongside snowflakes. Trees crumbled and plumed into the frosty breeze. Birds took to the skies and not all of them made it.
Percy’s ring glowed, then faltered, but he didn’t produce any magic to stop me. “Cease this immediately. You’re ruining everything.”
I put my hands behind my back so I wouldn’t sprout claws. He probably wouldn’t tell me, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. “Everything is a pretty big word. If I understand it, who knows, maybe I will help.”
Looking up at me, the shadows deepening his eye sockets only made him more sinister. “Do you want to join and find out? You seem to be a powerful shifter. We could use your wisdom, your strength. Every creature and each type we recruit only summons Him faster.”
My heart thumped. No one had ever said that to me before. Funny? Yes. Strong? No. The temptation surprised me. I knew the words were empty, but the truth tangled somewhere in there. Not even Fallon really saw the whole me. Part of that was my fault for keeping secrets.
Other than that. An ill-defined “Him” was always a bad sign.
“I don’t suppose I might meet Him beforehand? Get a feel if he’s second-date material or not?”
Percy’s lack of amusement was obvious as he called a portal, his ring glowing again.
“We knew Sombermane was different when we came here. Something elemental in the air, in the earth. Turns out you’re the same non-believers as every other monster of the Harrowlands. Well, almost the same. If they knew the power you hid here, they would burn this place to ash.”
I startled back. He was right. The monsters of our land had grown used to paler magic, thinking us only wolves.
Keeping Old Magic apart from the Harrowlands became a necessity.
If the ancient enchantment turned the wolves that guarded it into death machines, then a dragon shifter like Evie would be a world-ender.
And she was quite devastating already without it.
In this monk’s hands, Old Magic would only do harm.
I attempted to cover my anxiety with a smile and a shrug. Look harmless and charming, I reminded myself.
“We’re just here because wolves tend to stick to their own and none of us are that strong. That’s why we have the pack.”
“Is that what you tell your pack? That you need them? We need you too.” The monk reached out a bony hand. “If he can do this trapped inside you.” Percy gestured to the dying forest around us. “Think what he could do should you let him out.”
That was the worst idea ever, but the beast inside me stirred anyway.
Black edged my vision. Prowling the length of my soul, I shivered with fear.
My smile turned into a grimace as I fought the legend of the wood.
A mindless howl of death. I took a deep breath.
Honey was here. My mate was here. Nothing bad was happening.
The Old Magic didn’t need to call it forth to destroy the entire wood.
I prayed as I had never pleaded before, sweat trickling down my spine.
I stepped back before he touched me. “Sorry, I’m taken.”
“Useless,” Percy said. The echo of those words through time made it hard to see straight.
“Not very nice,” I shifted to wolf to punctuate the last with a snap of my teeth and stuff down the need to release the monster he so desperately wanted.
Percy retreated into the red-rimmed portal that might have led anywhere.
The temptation to tackle him through it itched in my fur, but I was just one wolf against many monks.
Fighting them all could trigger the beast. If I were dead, I wouldn’t be able to rip that creepy smile off his face.
I should have brought my pack. If for nothing else than to tame the beating heart of darkness too close to the surface already.
Frustration surged through me. I had messed this up and had no one to blame but myself.
I latched onto his robe at the last second.
Just to be petty, I shook him back and forth like I wanted to do to every single Brother of Zophiel that had ever hit me, yelled at me or starved me.
His screams were immensely satisfying as I tossed him right through his own portal.
Okay. BYEEEEEEE!
The portal snapped shut and I huffed out a frustrated puff of steam into the cold air.
I returned home to find half the pack still in the kitchen.
I told them a quick version of the encounter and they were ready to search again.
Threaten one, you threaten us all. They surrounded my mate and, surprisingly, she looked right at home.
All that worry that they would overwhelm her, and she managed them just as easily as Momma.
Fallon stared at me as I padded to my room to get some warm clothes.
If she could be stubborn, so could I. I helped Momma in the kitchen, rolling up my sleeves to mix a batch of cookies.
Momma ruffled my hair and nudged me as she caught Fallon watching me.
“Don’t let small hurts create big chasms, bardeva.”
Right. I guess I had neglected to mention to everyone that Fallon didn’t comprehend the true consequences of my coming here. We both weren’t in the mood for baring our souls to each other.
“I know, Momma.”
I said the words, but only dread filled my heart.