Chapter 20 Valens
Valens
We stood in the forest just before twilight, not far from the burned castle.
I could still scent a bit of ash lingering in the air, over the sweet scent of pine and the rich perfume of the damp earth underfoot.
There was nothing to mark the spot as special, not even so much as a notch in tree bark or an oddly shaped stone.
Waning light filtered through the leaves overhead, and a brisk breeze did its best to slice through my shirt.
It was just nature. Not that nature wasn’t grand, but… we had plenty of it back in Hungary.
I cleared my throat and tried to look positive as the women approached, but I didn’t see what all the fuss with the ley lines was about when the elderly butler had marched us all out here, hemming and hawing as we walked for quite some time until Kane had declared that this was the spot.
I closed my eyes for a moment, focusing on my wolf.
Can you tell anything different about this place?
Yes.
With a sigh, I reopened my eyes. He wasn’t feeling chatty today.
Which was fine. We weren’t on our home turf, our mate was about to go into heat, and oh yeah, there was an impending threat to everyone’s safety.
Brielle’s failing shield potion was basically a ticking time bomb, set to explode when we least expected it.
No biggie.
My wolf growled his annoyance into my mind before curling up and intentionally turning his back on me.
I stifled a chuckle at his annoyance as the other mates greeted one another, happy to be reunited even after only a short time apart. Elodie kept her distance, but the simple nod of acknowledgment she sent my way felt like a victory.
Tiny steps. Tiny steps were still progress.
I lifted my chin too, holding her gaze until the pack began to circle up and I had to move to join them.
Did I linger and let Elodie get into place first so I could slip in beside her? Yes, yes, I did.
Did I regret my subterfuge as I got the first sweet whiff of her mate scent? Never. Vanilla and warm, sweet hazelnut filled my lungs, and I reveled in the fact that it was all for me. A little bit of proof that she was mine, and I was hers.
She stiffened when my arm brushed hers, eyes narrowed as she glared at me. “What are you doing?” she hissed under her breath.
“Standing next to my mate, like everybody else.” I leaned down to her ear, whispering so softly, the others shouldn’t have been able to pick it up over the rustling leaves.
I resisted the urge to run my fingertips over her back, knowing she wanted to keep things professional.
A desire I would always honor, even if it ran exactly opposite to my own.
But I could be as professional standing next to her as I could across the circle. So I straightened and focused on Kane and Brielle and the mottled stone she held between her palms. It glowed softly, the gentle blue marred by sharp red lines.
“What do we do?” the omega asked, her worry evident from her stiff stance to her furrowed eyebrows.
Kane shrugged. “The intersection of the ley lines is below us, which means the earth’s magic is more easily accessible here. Or… that there’s more of it here?” He tilted his head to one side in a very canine gesture. Perhaps his wolf was correcting him.
“Either way, I think you and I pour energy into it, the same as we did when the red first appeared. Our wolves should do the rest.”
“And the rest of us?” Dirge asked, arms crossed. His skeptical expression made me feel slightly better about my own inability to sense anything special about this particular patch of trees.
“There’s power in pack. Your presence is enough.” Kane’s smile was genuine as he made eye contact with each and every person who’d come to support them. For the most powerful wolf in the world, he had stayed remarkably grounded.
Kane placed his hands over Brielle’s on the stone, and both of them shut their eyes.
We waited.
And we waited.
The stone flickered, shafts of light burning through the deepening twilight before quickly fading away. But the stubborn red lines didn’t budge a centimeter, no matter how much power they funneled into the stone.
A low growl filled the clearing, and to my surprise, it came from the little omega.
Her eyes flew open, shining frosty brown with her wolf’s influence.
“Nothing is happening. The stone is resisting. I don’t know why, but it’s the stone itself pushing back, as if we’re stretching a rubber band to its limit before it snaps back into place.
It’s like it wants whatever is happening.
” Frustration colored her tone as she looked down at the stone they’d worked so hard for with equal parts despair and fury.
Quiet chatter rose around the circle, everyone offering suggestions and opinions.
Well, almost everyone. Elodie stood silent as a statue by my side, her face a mask of tortured indecision.
She knows something.
I’d no sooner had the thought than I nudged her, tipping my head to the side, silently asking her to step away from the group with me.
She nodded, and the two of us slipped deeper into the forest, out of earshot of the increasingly frustrated and noisy wolves, sheltered further by the soft darkness.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as soon as the others’ conversation had faded to a distant hum.
“I can’t tell you.”
“I’m your mate. I know we haven’t known each other long, but I promise I will never betray your confidence. You can tell me anything, good or bad.”
She shook her head, color rising in her cheeks. “No, you’re misunderstanding. I actually want to tell you. But I can’t.”
Shit. “You have orders from the enclave to keep information from the pack?”
She nodded, biting her bottom lip and staring off into the distance. The stress rolling off her was palpable, and my wolf didn’t like it.
“And you don’t like the orders?”
“Not one bit. This pack feels more like family than an assignment. But if I betray my orders… I’ll get permanently reassigned elsewhere. I’ll never see them again as long as I live. And the conditions for me sharing the information haven’t been met.”
Bingo. “So, there are circumstances in which you’d be allowed to tell us?”
She hesitated, running a hand through her shiny, dark hair. “I… yes. Yes, there are.”
“Can you tell me what those are?”
Elodie groaned, covering her face and turning away.
“You’re missing the point. I can’t intentionally circumvent my orders either!
Life was so simple in the early years. Train.
Sleep. Eat. Repeat. Now? Now everything is in the shitter, and I’m keeping valuable information from the people I care about most in the world. But I can’t tell them.”
A dilemma.
“What if I guess it? Can you confirm?”
She shrugged one shoulder helplessly, and I knew she felt duty bound not to share any more specifics with me than she already had. But that was okay, because knowing she could help might be enough to figure it out.
I started to pace, my usual tactic when I had to process something difficult. Movement helped the thoughts flow too, somehow. “Okay, so the maidens know something more about this stone that they haven’t shared with the pack who holds it.”
A quick glance at Elodie’s carefully neutral face, and I knew she wasn’t going to give up the information easily.
“The red obviously means something that concerns you, based on how much it’s bothering you to keep it to yourself.
So what could red mean that’s trouble, but that keeping it silent doesn’t violate the oath of the maidens to protect their omega charges?
You clearly don’t think their lives are in immediate danger, or else you’d be forced to act, secrets or no. ”
She crossed her arms, nodding that I was correct on that guess. “I will always protect them first and deal with consequences later.”
Yes, so I’d learned, given she’d already almost died to protect them once, according to Lucien. “Is the stone going to break again? It was weakened by being destroyed and put back together? It’s rejecting a bond with Brielle?”
Elodie flinched at that last one, avoiding my gaze but neither confirming nor denying what I’d said.
But it was enough.
“Come on.”
We walked back to the others to find them quiet, all heads turned toward Cristian.
“Ahh, there you two are. I’ve just received word that the maiden priestesses have arrived and would like to speak with the pack and examine the stone.
Shall I bring them here, or would you like to return to the castle and receive them in your rooms? ”
“Being here didn’t do anything, so I vote we go back indoors,” Leigh groused, rubbing her lower back with a petulant twist of her lower lip.
“Seconded,” Brielle voted, looping her arm through Leigh’s as they began the short walk back to the castle.
My own mate stood alone, observant, on the fringes. It struck me as sad. She was their protector, their friend, but never quite part of the pack. Not so long as she chose to keep herself apart. But if she chose me, we could change that together.
The question was, did she want to be part of the pack?
She hid her emotions well, always dodging the hard subjects behind cheer and humor. But deep down, I suspected she wanted much more than she was willing to admit, even as she called them family when they weren’t listening.
What I didn’t know was if I’d made the list of things she wanted.
My heart was hers, served up on a silver platter.