Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Olivia
The pack found a strange sort of unspoken equilibrium after that.
The males formed up around Lucien, protecting him from himself as much as from us.
The females gravitated back into the bedroom, giving us all as much space as possible.
It wasn’t lost on me that Samuel stayed as physically far away from me as possible on the same aircraft and wouldn’t even face my direction, let alone make eye contact as we left the front of the jet.
It was a bit like being snubbed, even though instinctively I knew he was trying to prove himself nonthreatening to Lucien’s damaged wolf.
The idea that another male could be a threat to a bond that Lucien so clearly wasn’t sure he wanted… Well, it was ironic. It might even have been hopeful to that na?ve part of me that wanted my mate’s open-armed acceptance and devotion. The wolf knew he wanted me, even if the man didn’t yet.
But the wolf was in danger, and I couldn’t see that as a good thing. It made my own wolf restless in my chest, where she was usually quiet and meek. The whole thing was unsettling and had me on the back foot.
“Here.” Elodie pressed a set of fresh clothes into my hand. “You’ve got a little—” She gestured to my neck and chest, and I absently lifted a hand to see what she was referring to. Sticky. I looked down, seeing the redness staining my fingers.
Blood.
“There’s no shower on the jet, but there is a sink nearly big enough to bathe in. Once you get cleaned up, we should all get some sleep. There’s no telling what kind of reception we’ll get once we land in Greece, and we should be in fighting shape as much as possible.”
“Smart,” I whispered, forcing a smile I didn’t feel. “At this rate I’m going to have to work off damage to this jet for Kane and Brielle.” The joke wasn’t really funny, but I didn’t really feel like joking, so that tracked.
“Hey.” She stopped me, hand on my shoulder, eyes serious.
“It’s okay to be fucked-up over this. You don’t have to pretend with me.
I can only imagine that finding a mate is tumultuous in the best of times, and these aren’t that.
This is… difficult. No one expects you to be okay. You’re not a robot.”
Tears rimmed my lower eyelids, threatening to fall in half a second flat. How did she see right through me like that? Was I so obvious, or—
She shook her head, not waiting for a response, just pulling me into her chest for a tight hug.
“You’re going to get blood on your tunic,” I protested, even as the contact settled me immediately. Exhaustion, heavy and thick, flooded my system now that I was safe and the crisis had passed.
Well, imminent crisis, anyway. No one had said how we were fending off the ODL now that we were outside the protection of the enclave.
I tried really hard not to think that was because they didn’t know how we were going to manage it.
That thought was terrifying. If they found us and killed Brielle or, Goddess help us, Leigh and Poppy…
It didn’t bear thinking about.
Elodie snorted, squeezing me tighter. “Oh, Oli. These uniforms are a dark color on purpose. The little bit of blood on you isn’t going to hurt anything.”
I melted into the comforting hug until she started to laugh. I pulled back, confused.
“This one time Lyna and I were sparring, and my bo staff slipped—”
“You bitch, it did not slip. That was entirely intentional!” Galyna groused from the bed, where she still lay looking pale and exhausted.
Elodie threw her head back and cackled like a cartoon villain, clearly not worried by her partner’s ire.
Galyna’s eyes narrowed, and I couldn’t stop the giggle that bubbled up in my chest. They were ridiculous, the ensuing argument clearly friendly, even though the story unfolded that Galyna’s broken nose had not been at the time.
As tight as the two of them were now, I’d never have guessed their early partnership had been so contentious.
They were still playfully ribbing each other as I slipped into the bathroom, a tiny flicker of hope sparking in my stupid, betraying heart.
But I couldn’t help but find reassurance in the fact that they’d had such a rocky beginning, like Lucien and me. Perhaps we could still find a little beauty in our own brokenness, eventually.
It was a single shred of hope, and I needed one of those with a desperation I didn’t want to examine too closely.
To my surprise, sleep took me easily that night, propped in a chair in the corner of the little bedroom with the hum of jet engines as a lullaby. My dreams were vivid nonsense, images of Lucien’s feral-tainted eyes looming in dark forests, hunting me.
The one that finally woke me was of me surrendering to the beast. I woke with a gasp on my lips, frozen in half terror, half arousal as the fresh memory sent goose bumps flowing over my skin.
“Oli?” Fiona’s soft voice snapped me out of the lingering dream, and I resisted the urge to shake myself to ditch the rest of it.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
I sighed. “Yes, I’m fine. Just a weird dream.”
She laughed quietly, and when I finally sat up straight in the chair, I saw it was because Leigh and Brielle were both passed out on the bed, still snoring softly.
“What time is it?”
She blinked at me, then pulled her phone from the counter next to her. “Later than it feels. Leigh pulled down blocker shades on all the windows back here since it was so late by the time we were all ready to pass out.”
That explained why it was still pitch black, but I felt like I’d slept for ten years.
“How long until we land in Greece, do you think?” I asked on a yawn.
“Less than half an hour, actually. If you want to get cleaned up now, we’re going to have to wake them soon too.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. One bathroom for four females meant you had to get in when you could. Especially when one of them was Leigh, who was a force of nature when pregnant.
By the time I’d cleaned up as well as I could and brushed my teeth with a spare toothbrush from the bathroom cabinet, everyone was awake and sipping coffees, and it was nearly time to land.
I paused before leaving the bedroom and going back out with the males. Galyna looked better this morning, sitting up on the edge of the bed, and the other women all seemed upbeat, but the question of the ODL still weighed on me.
“How are we going to stay under the radar if we’re no longer protected at the enclave? Won’t the ODL and the Hungarians be able to track us straight to the island?”
Brielle paused, midsip of her coffee. “We were worried about that, but Kane told me this morning that Nisí Mythou has a special kind of ward on it to protect the centaurs. It’s not that they won’t be able to detect omega power through it—they will.
But the centaurs’ wards work by putting out so many power signatures that it scrambles and overloads any tracking equipment.
And because there isn’t a being alive who can sense an omega without the aid of a tracking tool or spell…
” She shrugged. “My omega signature will get lost in the overload.”
“And also”—Galyna interjected, wincing as she pulled her tunic over her head—“the trackers aren’t so pinpoint specific that they’ll know exactly where they lost us.
They’re general and only get more accurate if they’re already close to you.
So, they’ll likely know we landed in Greece.
But until they get to Greece, they won’t be close enough to tell where we disappeared.
Now, they might suspect the island, but there are enough other species with barriers nearby that they won’t know for sure.
Hopefully, that gives us time to get in, get the piece, and get back in the air before they can catch us. ”
I nodded, appreciating the explanation. It was something. But the worry was still there. “It’s a pretty neat solution, instead of dampening the signals, to just amplify them all.”
Brielle grinned, wrapping an arm around my shoulders in a half hug as we walked out of the bedroom. “Yes, it is. Ingenuity, huh?”
Lucien didn’t say a word to me or make eye contact as we filed off the jet, and I tried not to take it personally. He had been through so much, and the stuff with his wolf last night was just one more blow to endure.
And pushing right now when we didn’t have any privacy to work through things? Not the right time. Two large black SUVs waited for us on the tarmac, the drivers nodding to Reed, who presumably hired them. I hesitated until I saw which one Samuel was heading toward, and then climbed into the other.
If Lucien’s wolf had been triggered by thinking Samuel was a threat, the least I could do was keep my distance until things worked themselves out.
I tried not to feel hurt a second time when Lucien sent a pointed look my way and then chose the lead SUV with Samuel.
But when Fiona slid into the seat next to me, muttering, “Dick,” under her breath, the tangle of emotions only choked me further. I hated that our mate bond seemed to be dividing the pack at a time when we could least afford to be divided.
However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love her for being so firmly on my side. I’d never had that kind of ride-or-die friendship before meeting the women of Pack Blackwater, who’d so easily taken me in and folded me right into their pack with grace and acceptance.
To my surprise, our time in the cars was short, straight to a dock where a pair of speedboats waited.
Although, Kane had told us the centaurs lived on an island.
Somehow in the haze of the last few days, I’d lost that particular detail until faced with the little boats.
Once again, Lucien chose the boat I wasn’t in, and it stung.
The mist of the sea hitting my face was a small consolation, and I tried to let it all fall out of my mind. We were here on pack business, on the run, and my relationship or lack thereof wasn’t the point of this. Our survival was.