Chapter Twenty-Eight
Effie…
Darius transforms back to his human form and then takes my hand, holding on as we run as fast as we can through the woods.
The trees are just a blur as we sprint around them.
The leaves flying up in the air in our wake are like a cloud of dust following a race car on a dirt track.
And the crisp fall air parts for us as we rush home to Arcadia.
By the time we get to the top of the hill overlooking the village, the moon is a barely blue orb in the night sky.
We crouch down next to an overgrown blackberry bush and take stock of the situation.
Unlike the illusion of Arcadia that Kyle had created, the real one is a brightly lit hive of activity.
A crowd of pack members are gathered at the park, several groups are walking up and down Main Street, and others are lingering near the roads that lead into town.
I don’t sense any Council witches in Arcadia, but that doesn’t mean the pack is acting of their own volition.
There’s a strong chance that the same spell Kyle used to control the other werewolves that Darius discovered is still keeping the Aetos members under control.
Of course, the several dozen of Nikos’s supporters standing guard at strategic points around the village are probably bound by fucked-up beliefs.
I’d argue that’s an even more powerful spell than any witch can weave.
A hex can be undone, but it takes more than magic to get someone to admit to themselves that they were bamboozled by a power-hungry charlatan.
All the lights hanging around the gazebo’s roof have been angled so they form a spotlight on Artemis, who stands alone on the bottom step.
Her hands are tied together with a thick rope, but her head is unbowed.
She’s lit up with the gazebo lights like a Fourth of July firework to draw Darius to where there’s no doubt a trap set up.
No sign of Nikos.
He’s probably tucked away in some hidey-hole with the plan to emerge once his henchmen have lured Darius into what is probably a not-well-thought-out trap. That, obviously, isn’t going to happen, though, so boo-hoo to the duplicitous second-in-command.
I turn to Darius. His jaw is clenched, and his eyes are narrowed into angry slits as he watches the goings-on below.
Nikos is in so much trouble.
Standing, I turn my attention back to Arcadia as I start gathering my magic so it’s at full strength when we make our move. “What’s the plan?”
Darius flinches as if he forgot for a second that I’m here. Fear flashes across his face so fast before he shuts it down, replacing it with an icy neutrality. Startled, I reach out, but he uses his shifter speed to stand and move away before I can make contact.
“No plan,” he says, looking me in the forehead instead of the eyes.
“Great.” About a bazillion what-the-fuck bells are going off in my head, but we can deal with whatever is going on later. First, we rescue Artemis. “I can improvise.”
“You aren’t coming with me,” he says, his tone colder than Alaska in January. “This is pack business, and one way or another, after tonight there won’t be a need for our marriage of convenience.”
Won’t be a need?
Marriage of convenience?
The WTF bells turn into eardrum-splitting wails. Did he get knocked in the head so hard during his fight with Nikos that he got a concussion? Why are we having this discussion again? I stride over to him and go up on my tiptoes to get a better look at his eyes, checking for any wonkiness.
He retreats again. “What are you doing?”
“Checking you for a concussion.”
“I don’t have one,” he says, sounding more like his usual snarly self.
“Your sisters are taking care of the Council witches, and even if Aunt Artemis is unharmed, Nikos isn’t going to be breathing after all this, so there’s no more danger of him ransoming you off or worse.
” He pauses his rant for a breath and drops his gaze to my feet.
“Because of all that, there’s no reason for us to get married. ”
Okay, I’m not gonna lie. That declaration hurts like a series of vicious, hard pecks on the hand from Barkley (I told you he is evil).
But I’m not buying it. If Darius really felt that way, why would he be acting all squirrelly all of a sudden, unable to stand still, pulling on his right ear, and grinding his teeth?
The man is usually an unmovable object while I’m the stream, always twisting and flowing.
Darius Aetos is lying.
“No reason at all?” I ask, moving toward him, ready to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this.
He matches me step for step, just going the opposite direction that I am. “No.”
“Then I guess I’ll just come along to watch.” I shrug my shoulders all casual, as if my not joining in the fight is even an option. “Maybe you’ll need a hex or two.”
“There’s too many of them. You could get hurt.” There’s that flash of anxiety-laced fear again. “Go home, witch.”
And that’s when it dawns on me. He thinks this is a suicide mission.
He’ll free Artemis. He’ll do what he can to break the Council’s control on the other werewolves in the pack.
He’ll fight Nikos to the death. He’ll do it all.
He just doesn’t think he can make that happen while still making it out alive.
I don’t bother to even attempt to hold in my snort. Like I am ever going to let that happen.
“Well, unless you figure out how to stop me from doing something I want to do, you’re stuck with me, Grumps,” I say, crossing my arms and lifting my chin in challenge. “Anyways, you forgot about the proximity spell. Where you go, I go.”
Darius stills for a moment and then yanks off one of the knotted leather cuffs tied around his wrist. It’s a faded burnished brown now, but there are spots where the leather’s original purple sheen is still there.
Interwoven with the leather is a single metallic purple string that glitters in the moonlight.
It’s the same shade as the Sherwood magic.
“Aunt Artemis gave me this when she gave me the Kardia tattoo on my shoulder. She said I’d need it someday and to never take it off.
” He drops the cuff into my palm and folds my fingers over it.
“If anything is the charm keeping you tethered to me, this is it. Now there’s nothing to tie you to me. Go home, Effie Sherwood—your home.”
The leather is warm in my hand, and I hold it tight as he strides away.
Like the stoic son of a bitch that he pretends to be, he doesn’t even turn around for what could be one last look at me.
The wolf inside me lets out a low growl, her ears lowered in annoyance.
Yeah, no shit, girl.
An angry heat burns its way up from the soles of my feet, filling me from my toes to my hair follicles, and I pull back my arm and then launch the cuff at Darius, hitting him square in the back of the head. He stops but doesn’t turn to face me.
“That is absolutely the fuck not gonna happen,” I tell him as I stalk over to where he is. The fact that he won’t look at me is not gonna stop me from getting in his face. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me. We made a deal.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Circumstances changed.”
“I’d say so.” I march around him and stand directly in front of him.
Frustration and confusion and hurt make my stomach tight.
“I have a wolf inside me now. A wolf! And there’s this dark sort of musky trail of power too.
I don’t know exactly what that does, but my wolf is throwing a bunch of attitude. ”
His expression remains neutral as he looks at something past my left shoulder. “Welcome to the club. It’s what they do.”
“Yeah, well, don’t you think it’s telling that I, Effie Sherwood, a witch, now have the ability to go all furry?” I wave my hand back and forth between us. “Doesn’t that say something about us?”
“We went through this already. You had a dormant gene. Anyway, you won’t transform into a werewolf,” he says, still not looking at me. “You don’t have a pack.”
“Bullshit.” I jab my finger into his unyielding chest. “You are my pack, and you know it.” My voice starts to shake, and hot tears of frustration prick at the backs of my eyes.
I suck in a deep breath because I refuse to cry.
This is not the time to fall apart. This is the time to put it all out there on the line.
“You felt it last night, just like I did. It’s fate. We’re mates.”
Finally, his gaze lands on me, and my breath catches. My chest fills with a kind of effervescent hope that is so immediate and all-encompassing that I could float away on it. Then his eyes harden and grow cold as he looks down at me, and all those tiny little bubbles pop.
“I don’t believe in fated mates,” he says, so obviously lying that I’m amazed he can even get the words out without breaking eye contact.
It’s all I can do not to throw my arms up into the air and scream—or hit him with a stop-being-a-dumbass spell. Instead, I take a deep, steadying breath because turning him into a fluorescent pink toad isn’t going to be the thing to make him understand what a stubborn fool he’s being.
“You don’t doubt for a minute that the universe has a plan for you. If you did, you wouldn’t fight so hard against it,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking so much. “You wouldn’t keep your wolf on such a tight leash. You, Darius Aetos, are scared of your own fate.”
He starts like I’ve just slapped him, his cheeks turning red with the heat of his frustration. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do, and you know it.” I press my hand to his chest above his heart, and there’s a shock of warm electricity that shoots through me followed by the sensation of his wolf’s warm, furry head rubbing against my palm. “Your wolf knows it.”
There’s nothing he can say to that because he knows it’s true.
He looks down at me with such intensity that it’s as if he’s memorizing every freckle and frizzed-out wave.
Then he dips his head down and kisses me.
No, that’s the wrong word for it. Kisses are gentle or passionate or demanding.
This is something altogether different. It’s desperation and sadness and a deep unfulfilled longing for something that he can’t have.
And here I am kissing him right back despite everything, because he already has me.
All of me.
Wolf and witch.
I’m his. He’s mine.
And he’d realize this if he could just get out of his own damn way.
Fuck me (not in the good way). I am in love with an absolute idiot.
He just needs to get his head out of his ass long enough to see that he doesn’t have to give up everything, every part of himself, to protect the people he loves.
Darius breaks the kiss but continues to cup my face in his hands. “If you ever need me, no matter the reason, no matter the job, no matter anything, if I survive tonight I’ll be there.”
Then the melodramatic alpha werewolf who loves me—because come on, we’re all seeing through this whole to-save-her-I-have-to-leave-her bullshit, right—finally transforms into his full wolf form. He shakes out his fur and gives me one last long look before galloping off and leaving me behind.
A plan for what to do next comes together in less than a thought, and I pick up his cuff off the ground and slip it into my pocket.
It may have been what tethered us before, but what ties us together now is so much stronger than any proximity charm—and Darius knows it.
Time to go save his ass and get him to admit just that.