Chapter 16
Valens
The woman who strode down the dark, quiet street at my side wasn’t the same one I’d just kissed senseless. She wore invisible armor underneath her sword. As if she bolted it around her heart when I wasn’t looking.
She strode up the steps of the pack mansion just ahead of me instead of at my side, and I knew I wasn’t imagining the wall she’d rebuilt between us.
One step forward, two steps back. But we’d shared a real moment, and she might have been running scared, but there was no way she could forget that.
When we stepped through the doors, I had to shove my personal life aside to focus on the packs. The room was filled with panicked faces, and it didn’t take long to see why.
The omega stone sat in the middle of the desk, its usual crystalline beauty marred by thin red spiderweb cracks of light. It looked like evil was trying to choke the goodness right out of it.
“What in the nine hells,” I murmured under my breath, leaning down to get a closer look, but careful not to touch it.
There were no physical cracks—it was still as whole as the women’s power had made it—but something had clearly gone sideways.
“What happened?” Elodie asked, frowning as she studied the stone by my side.
“I don’t know,” Brielle admitted, voice wobbly as she stood at Kane’s side, his arm tucked tightly around her, as if the great Alpha was afraid to let her go.
“We were eating dinner, and I just got this sudden, sharp pain in my chest, like somebody was trying to tear something out of me.” She lifted a shaking hand and rubbed the area over her heart. “Kane panicked and shoved his power into me when he felt it through the bond, and then… we saw the stone.”
“We need to call the head priestess,” Elodie said, turning to Galyna. “She or Lisanne might know what’s going on.”
Galyna nodded gravely, whipping out a slim black cell phone and pressing it to her ear. As soon as the priestess picked up, she put it on speaker and held it out for us to hear.
“Lisanne. We have a problem.”
“Speak, sister.” A rich, sonorous female voice I didn’t recognize poured from the speaker.
Galyna quickly summed up what was happening with the stone, and Brielle repeated her description of what she’d felt.
Heavy silence was the priestess’s only response for a long moment.
“You need to get back to the pack castle. Something is wrong, but you won’t be able to fix it away from your ancestral seat.”
I furrowed my brow, utterly confused why the advice to fix a magical rock would be to leave a comfortable, functional pack and go to a burned-out husk of a castle.
Or perhaps that was just my shame at what my old Alpha had done. I wanted to hide my head and not see the destruction my pack mates had wreaked, but that was cowardice. I was no coward.
“Because of the ley lines?” Kane asked, clearly knowing more about his own castle than I did.
“Yes. Your ancestry has long fed from that power, and whatever has gripped the stone may require greater strength than even you have to defeat it,” Lisanne said. I didn’t like the somber timbre of her voice, the gravity of what she left unsaid.
What the fuck was attacking this stone, and how could it be too powerful for the strongest shifter on the planet to fight?
But the evidence sat on the mahogany desk, clear as day. What was beautiful, pure energy was now tainted, despite his instinctive reaction to fight it.
Kane scanned the room, eyes dark with worry. “We’ll leave at first light, then.”
“As quickly as you can, Alpha. I and a few of the other priestesses will meet you there.”
“Thank you, priestess.” Galyna hung up the phone, turning her own stormy expression on Elodie.
The whole room broke into sidebar conversations, while I stood alone, watching. The Blackwater pack had welcomed me into the fold as Lucien’s second, but in many ways, I was still an outsider looking in. Sometimes, though, that gave me the clearest view. And something was off about Galyna.
It’s like she knows something she isn’t sharing. My wolf’s read of the situation startled me, but he was on high alert with a new, unmarked, and unbonded mate at our side, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
Elodie’s partner means her no harm, I responded, studying the two of them carefully.
The maiden partner does not think Elodie’s separation from us is harmful.
Hmm. Was he right? Probably. He usually was.
But… what did that have to do with the stone? And what could Galyna be keeping from the rest of us?
A throat clearing pulled our attention toward Gael, his arm wrapped possessively around his pregnant mate.
“We need a plan if we’re going to the castle. Has Cristian reported in with an update on the castle’s condition? It was a burned-out husk last I saw. Not fit for our mates to stay in.”
“Splitting up is not an option,” Lucien all but snarled, pulling Olivia tightly into his side as if someone might try to snatch her.
Gael raised both hands in a peacekeeping gesture. “I have no more desire to leave my pregnant mate than you do your new one. I was only suggesting we make alternate sleeping arrangements, and Cristian knows everyone and everywhere on Caelestis pack lands.”
Lucien, looking somewhat appeased, stayed quiet.
“He sent me some updates earlier this week,” Reed interjected.
“It’s still burned, most of it is unusable, but they’ve been working on the family wing first. It’s been cleaned, and while most of the original furniture wasn’t salvageable, they’ve got new furniture in most of the wing.
If I tell him we’re coming in the morning, I’m sure they can get enough rooms opened up for those of us who are going. ”
“Cristian has always been the determined sort,” Dirge said with a grin.
“But who’s going?” Leigh asked, scanning the gathered crowd with apprehension in every line of her body.
“It’s bad enough that the Blackwater pack has been basically running itself for months, but Lucien and Oli just took over the Hungarian pack.
We can’t necessarily take them away, but we can’t leave them alone and unprotected either.
There’s still tension in the pack, and Oli’s marked. ”
All heads turned to Lucien and me. I turned to face my Alpha, dreading the question I knew he was about to ask me. To stay and watch over our pack as second and watch my mate walk away on the verge of going into heat.
I couldn’t do that, though. I couldn’t let her walk away. I couldn’t let her go knowing she was about to need me.
My gaze sharpened, and I knew my wolf was peering out of my eyes, giving away my tenuous grasp on my control.
“Easy, man. Nobody’s going to make a decision until we’re all in agreement.” He laid a hand on my shoulder, and my wolf calmed at his promise. Sometimes I forgot that this was a good Alpha, one who cared about his pack’s needs. But even I could see no good solution to this problem.
Lucien turned back to the group, keeping his hand on my shoulder. “Normally, I would ask Valens to stand here in my stead as second of the Hungarian pack.”
I tensed. My wolf snarling in my chest meant I couldn’t help it, but Lucien squeezed my shoulder, urging me to keep my calm.
“But in this case, I agree, our leadership is too new to abandon our duties. Olivia and I need to stay and cement the bonds between Packs Blackwater and Hungary. I would like to send Valens in my stead, to represent our pack.”
All the breath whooshed out of my chest. I could stay with Elodie, and that was the most important thing.
Reed tugged at the cuff of his shirtsleeve, agitated by all the talk of splitting up. “So we’re splitting the maidens? Or are they both going to stay here and let Gael and Leigh stay too?”
No, no, no, no…
“We’ll have to split up,” Galyna answered. “All the females need protection, and Brielle has to go with the stone. I can ask the priestesses to send another maiden to stay here temporarily until we figure out what’s going on with the stone.”
A long-drawn-out conversation ensued, but in the end, it was decided.
Olivia, Lucien, Reed, Fiona, and Galyna would stay here and keep working on the diplomacy between our packs, as well as with other packs from around the world.
The rest of us—including the very pregnant Leigh, who seemed less than enthused about more travel—were going to secure the Pack Caelestis castle and figure out what was attacking the stone.
By the time I crawled into my bed that night after packing a duffel bag, it was late, but I still couldn’t seem to fall asleep. When the chirping birds heralded the start of the new day, I rose and grabbed my bag.