Chapter 10 #3
Lachlan nodded. “Mystic Hollow has been a magically active site for a very long time, but the town has grown lately. The wards that protect it, the ones renewed at Letha, they don’t run on nothing.
The magic that makes them and keeps them is not in a vacuum.
” He gestured at the map, at her notes, at all of it, “The forest and its plants and herbs carry that resonance naturally.” He paused.
“In theory, it’s a balanced system. The magic sustains the wards, the wards protect the town, the town protects the forests and the environment, so it all exists in harmony with what sustains it. ”
“In theory,” Rex said.
“In theory.” Lachlan sat back slightly. “But balance needs to be maintained, and maintaining it requires attention. Awareness. Someone keeping an eye on the books, so to speak.” He looked at the map again, and something almost uncomfortable moved across his face.
“This year’s Letha was the largest we’ve had in decades.
More participants, more renewals, more wards strengthened or added than any year I can remember. ”
The fog that had been sitting over the whole problem since she’d first opened those test results began, finally, to lift, and the pieces started to get into their place. “The plants are part of the system, they’re connected to the town’s magic.”
“Aye.”
“So when Letha draws on that energy—” She was thinking out loud now, working through it the way she worked through a formula, following the idea as it strengthened, “—the whole system draws on what is connected to it. The wards pull from the ambient magic. The ambient magic pulls from the source. And the source is—”
“Everything,” Lachlan said quietly. “The forest. The water. The soil. The plants. The herbs.”
“And nobody noticed because in a normal year the draw is proportional. The system recovers.” She looked at the map, at the neat, punishing band of depleted things running along the edge of town.
“But this year wasn’t a normal year. This year, the town asked too much, and the plants closest to town, the ones most integrated into the magical ecosystem, they took the full weight of it. ”
“Exactly right, lass,” Lachlan said.
Rex pressed a kiss to her hair, pride swelling through the bond.
Lachlan caught the gesture, and his eyes softened for an instant before his attention went back to the map. “The collection day ye ran with the pack,” he asked no one in particular. “Can ye do another one? I can get the wards temporarily suspended, and see if we’re on the right side of things.”
Rex didn’t even stop to think. “Our pack will be ready for whatever she needs.”
Our pack.
Whatever she needs.
Well, now.
It sat with her... right. Just right.
She hadn’t thought about the collection day in those terms, hadn’t realized there was more underneath.
She’d been thinking about the forest, about the data, about the problem in front of her.
She’d shown up with samples and instructions, and it had felt like work—good, meaningful work, but work nonetheless.
She hadn’t thought about what it looked like from the other side.
Hadn’t realized, really, that there was another side.
But the pack had come. All of them, even wolves she hadn’t recognized had turned up at the tree line mid-morning because word had apparently traveled.
They’d taken her instructions without question.
They’d brought back everything she’d asked for and then some, neatly bagged, carefully handled.
The bigger ones had covered more ground.
Someone had brought her coffee at noon, appearing at her elbow without announcement and disappearing to go back to the task.
She’d thought they were being kind. Polite. Welcoming Rex’s mate the way you welcomed anyone new. She hadn’t understood that they were doing something else entirely—something deeper. Accepting her. Their Omega.
Lachlan grinned at the confusion that must have been clear on her face. “Glad the pack took ye.”
“I —” She stopped to turn and look at Rex—who was, suspiciously, looking hard at the computer. “Is that what it was?”
“Yeah,” he dragged out.
She stared at him, her mouth slightly open. “And you didn’t think about giving me, I don’t know, a heads-up?”
He didn’t even have the grace to look too apologetic. “Normally, everyone would know what was happening and with whom as things go. There would be some kind of...”
“Prior evaluation,” Lachlan offered.
“Yes. Thank you, man. The Omega is known; the pack has context.” He shrugged.
“But you’re human. If I’d told you, you would have been aware of it and maybe performed for it, even without meaning to.
I needed to see it happen on instinct—yours and theirs.
I needed to see what they’d do when it was just you.
” A warm, bright wave came through the bond.
“And they saw what I see. Loved what I love.”
She... glitched.
Literally.
Her mouth opened.
Closed.
He just said... he did, didn’t he? And oh, God, of course she loved him too.
Screw the unreasonably short time they have been together—she would not think of that.
Screw the bond, too. She brought a hand to her mouth, found it reasonably trembling.
She was going to need a second. She was going to need several seconds, possibly arranged in a row long enough to resemble a minute, during which she could locate her brain and reboot it.
The bond was doing that thing, that full, bright, overwhelming thing it did when it was overloaded with feelings, and she was sitting in the middle of it trying to remember how words worked.
Lachlan was determined to mind his business, his attention completely focused on his phone.
Rex was looking at her, patiently, as if he was waiting for her to catch up with something he’d known forever.
And she was... the most messed-up version of herself.
She swallowed. “Mr Fraser, would you, um, excuse us one second?”
Lachlan waved her away without taking his eyes off the phone. “Aye, dinnae mind me.”
“Rex?” Shrilly. Her voice was shrill. At best. But also, what the hell?
She took him to her office without running. Closed the door carefully. Then looked at him. “Did you just say,” she went closer to whisper, “The L word?”
He leaned in. “Yeah. Why?”
“... what do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Of course I love you. What do you think we were doing?”
She had to look at him, in silence, for a full minute. “The bond?”
“Yeah, the bond’s the bond. I love you on top of that.”
Uh. Kind of easy, when put that way. “They are not the same thing.”
“I wouldn’t say they are, exactly. The bond is about our souls.
Love is about, well, everything else. I also thought it was obvious.
Was wrong, apparently. But yes, Zoe.” He gathered her into his arms, crooked shirt and all.
“I love you. I think I have since you kicked my tail at the restaurant that first night. Not many people have the guts to do it so thoroughly.”
“I love you,” she said, almost in awe of how true, and easy, and right it was.
“I know.” He chuckled when she made a face. “I feel it. Here,” he said, touching his chest. “And here.” He touched his temple. “Don’t cry, Moonbeam.”
“I’m not–oh, I am. Oh. It’s just that this is so... beautiful. All of this. And I was so worried, and I still have no idea what to do because of the pack and all and–”
He stopped the rant by putting his mouth on hers. “It’ll be alright,” he said. “I—we—want nothing else than learning with you.”
She took a long breath in and rested her head on his chest, where his heart was beating strong and steady. “Do you think Lachlan will curse us if we, um, take more than a few minutes?” she asked.
And was answered by none other than the Mayor himself. “I just might, lass.”
Rex chuckled, kissed the tip of her nose. “Let’s go.”
“You’re back, good.” Lachlan’s voice was gentler despite the distinct possibility of a curse. “Here’s what I propose.”
He turned back to the map, all business again—which was very, very good for her system.
“Give me a few days. Melisandre and I will pull the wards down. All of them, every piece of active magic running through the town’s system.
A full suspension.” He looked at Zoe. “How quickly do ye think the plants would respond?”
She pulled herself back to the problem. Eighty percent of her, anyway.
But numbers, compounds, and guesses, she could do with only part of her brain.
“The drop was fast—days, not weeks. If you remove the draw entirely, I’d expect some recovery within a similar timeframe.
A week should give us a readable change, one way or the other. ”
Lachlan nodded. “Another collection run in a week, then.” He looked at Rex. “Can you manage it?”
Rex nodded. “Yes.”
“Then we have a plan.” Lachlan got to his feet and dusted off his knees.
And looked at them both for just a moment—long enough that it meant something, not long enough to make it a thing.
“I’ll be in touch. And Rex?” He paused at the door.
“Fix yer shirt before ye go outside. Ye represent the bloody park service.”
The door swung shut behind him on a chuckle.