Chapter Seventeen
Effie…
I’m a shit sleeper. Always have been. But last night? I woke up once. Darius mumbled something that sounded a lot like “too early,” pulled me closer to the warm brick wall of his chest, and the weirdest thing happened.
I fell asleep.
Hard.
To the point that what finally wakes me up isn’t my own batshit crazy internal alarm clock, but Darius’s chest hair tickling my nose.
I’m still coming into the here and now while fighting off a sneeze, but it’s too much.
I roll over just in time to keep from putting Darius in the splash zone, grab the corner of the blanket, and let loose with the biggest sneeze of my life.
And then I do it again and again, one giant goose honk of a sneeze after another, until I’m considering giving up breathing just to make it stop.
Luckily, it doesn’t come to that, and the sneezefest finally ends.
“I hope that doesn’t mean you’re allergic to me,” Darius says, his voice a low, warm rumble.
“Only your chest hair, but don’t worry, you can shave,” I tease as I sit up facing the cave entrance and what had been the waterfall beyond it, which is now a bunch of pine trees.
He rubs circles into my back with his palm in soothing slow motion. “Anything for you.”
And for half a second, I think he actually means it. I mean, he sounds like he does, but of course, it’s just more of the whole banter thing we’ve got going. It’s what we do. We’re shit-talkers. Except I would swear that the sincerity in his tone is real and that he really would do anything for me.
Effie girl, you are losing it. You have got to figure out how to break this proximity charm before you get back to Arcadia and say your I dos—even if they’re only temporary. Darius Aetos is dangerous for your state of mind—and your nose.
Fine. Yes. I’m being a little dramatic, but still, if these aren’t dramatic times, I’m not sure when there ever will be any.
Lying down, I snuggle back into the spot along Darius’s side that seems made for me, making sure to angle my head so the dark hair on his chest isn’t near my nostrils.
He wraps an arm around me, his hand coming to rest on my waist. It’s not a small dainty dip—not when you have a rounded stomach and hips like I do—but his palm spans nearly the entire space, fitting perfectly.
The steady rise and fall of his chest is almost enough to lull me back to sleep, but my mind is whirling too much for that.
After Artemis’s visit, I’m utterly convinced of two things.
One, no matter what Darius believes, that woman is a witch.
She may well be a werewolf too—no, I have no idea how such a thing is possible either—but she’s definitely a witch or mystic or some kind of being that has magic.
Two, whatever is happening with the Aetos pack, if Nikos takes control, it won’t just be bad for me; all of Witchingdom will suffer, because that man is in it with the Council right up to the whiskers on his chinny-chin-chin.
“I’ll fix it,” Darius says, his eyes still closed.
Propping myself up on one elbow, I look down at him, barely managing not to look way down at him, because I can’t afford to get dick distracted. “Fix what?”
He cracks an eye open and gives me a grin that is all cocky alpha. “All of it.”
I am not going to fall for that. I mean, Fates preserve me, how nice would it be to have someone who would just fix things for me? Really fucking nice. However, that is not how things work in Witchingdom, and Darius and I both know that. Still, it’s kinda comforting to pretend.
“It’s that simple, huh?” I settle back down, resting my head in the pocket of his shoulder. “You’re just Mr. Fix It.”
He lays his hand on my hip and squeezes. “Always.”
“Spoken like a true alpha werewolf,” I scoff.
“Oh, you’ve known a lot of us?”
“A few.” Even though I’m not the Sherwood heir, I still have to attend society functions and political events, some of which include various shifter families. “Although you’re definitely the cutest.”
He lets out a low rumble of an almost-growl that sends the best kind of shiver through me. “ ‘Cute’ isn’t exactly what I’m going for.”
“Would you rather be adorable?” I ask just to really bust his chops. “Or absolutely darling? Or the most precious? Or just a total sweetheart?”
“You better watch it, witch,” he says, his tone gruff, but it’s too late, I see all the way through that.
“Mmmmm, you know I like it when you get all grumpy.”
He dips his head down and buries his face in my hair and gives me exactly what I want, a low snarly sound that seems to vibrate out of his chest. My core clenches in reaction, and I have to bite down on my bottom lip to keep from responding with a pleading moan to follow that sound up with some action.
There’s a whole battle of want versus need going on inside me right now.
I want to swing my leg over his bare hips, slide down the full length of his hard cock, and ride him until we both come so hard we pass out.
However, I need for both of us to get up and get dressed before Nikos has enough time to put his plans into action.
Darius brushes a kiss against my hair. “I can actually feel the thoughts bouncing around your brain right now.”
Lifting my chin, I look up at him. “No, you can’t.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” He shoots me a smug you-can’t-lie-to-me-witch look. “It’s okay to admit it, even though I’m sure it’s painful for you.”
I don’t bother not rolling my eyes at that. “Has anyone ever told you that your ego is out of control?”
He laughs, a big, full sound that makes me smile all the way down to my toes.
“Do you really think that’s something Aunt Artemis would keep to herself?” he asks.
“Fair point.” The woman isn’t exactly the holding-things-back type (minus the fact that she’s partly a witch—or something). “And speaking of Artemis, after what she said yesterday, do you have a plan for what you’re going to do about Nikos once we get back?” I ask. “What is that guy’s deal anyway?”
Darius lets out a long, tired sigh. “He thought he was going to be in charge when my father died. The pack alpha is the werewolf standing after a battle royale–style brawl. The past several, however, have not been fought fair. Let’s just say my family hasn’t exactly been known for being fans of fair play.
I don’t do that shit, though, and Nikos figured that by getting everyone to go after me at once in a coordinated attack, which isn’t exactly following the rules, he’d win.
His plan didn’t work, and I became alpha. ”
“And he holds a grudge.” I purse my lips together and roll the play-by-play of how all that has happened has ended up with the current situation.
It probably started out small, little comments and challenges, but it built.
And now he has somehow partnered up—at least Nikos probably thinks it is a partnership, when it is anything but—with the Council to get rid of Darius.
“So why don’t you just take him out? The Fates know he’s obviously planned that for you by sending the Council’s welcome wolves yesterday. ”
“That’s what would have happened in my father’s time and my grandmother’s before that”—his whole body tenses—“but I’ve seen firsthand what happens to a pack when an alpha lets their wolf run the show.”
His eyes go dark and his jaw tightens. All the warmth in his expression fades into a coldness that hurts to see. I wrap my arm around him and curl my top leg over his as if I can protect him by physically blocking whatever memories are tormenting him.
“When my grandmother was alpha, it was bad. When my dad took over, it was even worse. Most of the pack had to scramble for a share of any score. Backstabbing to get an edge wasn’t just a part of everyday life, it was encouraged.
There was a fuck-over-others-before-they-can-fuck-you-over mentality.
When I took over, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to be like them,” he says, his tone as cold as the look in his eyes as he stares at a spot of nothing on the cave’s wall.
“I wasn’t going to let my wolf take over so that everything was all about getting mine and fuck everyone else.
So I shut down that part of me as much as I could.
Oh, he still prowls around inside me and lets me know his opinion, but he’s not in charge and won’t ever be. I can’t do that to the pack.”
I don’t say anything for a minute, which is a record for me.
There are a million things I want to say, another billion that I wish I could, but I can’t give in to the impulse.
There is no spell for this, no hex to take it all away.
We all have to come to grips with who we are and the fact that it’s not always who we want to be.
We can fight it. We can hide from it. Or we can find a way to accept it and make it work.
Learning that lesson sucked, but it’s a canon event. Now it’s Darius’s turn.
“When I was ten, I thought I’d figured out what was wrong with me, why my family’s magic picked my sister Leona to be the heir instead of me,” I tell him.
I have to stop for a second. It’s been years since I thought about how lost I’d felt.
How angry. How sad. How confused. It’s like I’m that girl all over again, and it hurts so fucking bad.
I suck in a shaky breath and blink away the hot tears in my eyes.
Darius doesn’t say anything, but he moves me so that instead of lying beside him, I’m draped over him.
He wraps both arms around me, cloaking me from the outside world and all of its bullshit.
I take in a breath, soak up his strength while double fisting my own, and continue.
“I had become obsessed with finding the answer. I researched and compared and charted and gathered data, and one day it hit me. The magic chose Leona because she’s the responsible one, and I was too reckless to be entrusted with our family magic.
So I decided to mend my ways. I ignored that part of myself that took risks, tried new things, and embraced Witchingdom as a place where anything could happen if you put your mind to it.
For six months, I kept that part of me stuffed into the deepest, darkest corner I could find and pretended it didn’t exist.”
He starts rubbing steady, comforting circles on my back. “What happened?”
“I was fucking miserable,” I say with a strained laugh.
“Seriously, it was the worst spring and summer of my life. Do you know how long a day is when it’s nothing but obligations and no joy, when you’re not you, but you’re the person people think you should be?
Really fucking long. Then my dad pulled me into his study one day and got me to spill the whole story.
” I kiss the wolf tattoo over his heart.
“He told me life is too short to hide from yourself. He wasn’t wrong then, and he isn’t wrong now. ”
I pull out of Darius’s hold. It kills me a little, because I swear I can feel the freckles on my wrist that match his Kardia tattoo warm whenever he’s near.
Touching Darius is starting to feel as necessary as breathing, but I need to see his face for what I’m about to say next.
He’s not going to like it, but it needs to be said. I just hope he’ll be able to hear it.
“Just because your grandmother and dad were awful alphas doesn’t mean you should deny a part of yourself so you don’t turn into them any more than I should have ever tried denying part of myself so the Sherwood magic would decide I was worthy.
” I press on despite the way he’s squared his jaw and is looking a lot more annoyed grumpy than sexy grumpy.
“Now, I’m just a witch, but we are in a situation where nature is always shifting, and the only way to navigate those changes is by instinct.
So you have to admit that in times like this, a werewolf’s greatest asset is his wolf.
” I reach out and take his hand, bringing it close to my heart and holding it there.
“Aren’t the stakes here high enough to make it worth loosening your hold on the leash so we make it back in time? ”