Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
K ade stared at his phone, more than a little shocked to see the name on the screen. It had been over a day, and he hadn’t thought he’d get a reply.
“Everything okay?” Liam asked, glancing up from the book they’d pulled from the attic for his research.
“Pierce replied.” Kade opened the message.
Pierce
Yeah, man, it's been forever. We should catch up one-on-one. How does tomorrow sound?
He was playing along with Kade’s casual tone, like their packs hadn’t been moments away from fighting the last time they’d seen each other.
“He’s willing to meet up?” Liam’s surprise flared bright through their bond. “Would he try to trick you?”
“The Pierce I knew in school? Never. The Pierce who’s affected by some evil spirit of paranoia? No idea. But also, don’t we need someone from their pack if we’re going to do anything about what’s happening to them?”
“I’m pretty sure there’s no getting around that.” Liam didn’t sound happy, but there was nothing else to do.
Kade typed out his response, hesitated, then hit send.
Kade
Name the time and place, and I'll be there.
“Let’s go find Victor and Elijah,” he said.
Liam shut his book, and they headed downstairs.
They found Victor and Elijah in the office. Victor was sitting at his desk, with Elijah standing beside him and Grant in the chair across from them. Grant still looked exhausted—dark circles were smudged under his blue eyes, and he was thinner than Kade had ever seen him—but sleeping for the better part of a day and some food had made a difference. His enhanced shifter healing had kicked in, and he no longer appeared hours from death.
If their recovery was like Kade’s, it’d be about a week before Grant and his pack regained their full strength, but they’d get there.
“Good,” Victor said as they walked in, “I was just going to send you a message. Grant wants to help us defeat these things, and we need a plan.”
“I can help with that,” Kade said. “Pierce contacted me.”
Victor cocked an eyebrow. “Okay. Let’s get Grant up to speed first, then we’ll decide what to do about that. Liam, can you explain the spirits to Grant?”
Liam launched into a brief, for him, explanation of his theory about the spirits. Kade leaned against the wall, enjoying the sight of him lighting up like he always did when he discussed his research.
“Pandora’s box, or jar, or whatever? Isn’t that a myth?” Grant asked.
“Should werewolves and wizards be calling anything a myth?” Liam countered.
Grant dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Fair point.”
Victor then gave Grant a rundown of everything that had occurred on their territory. How the decay spirit had affected them and how Elijah had captured it. How his friends were there to trap the rest and destroy them.
He glossed over Kade’s role in their battle against the spirit, but that wouldn’t benefit anyone but Kade.
“The decay spirit possessed me,” Kade said, interrupting Victor.
Victor assessed him for a beat, then explained the situation to Grant.
Kade sensed Liam’s concern brush against him in his mind, checking he was alright. While he wouldn’t go that far— alright was a ways off—it was information Grant needed to know. Kade was done holding everyone back.
“That’s what happened to Jessie?” Grant asked. “Why she attacked Remy?”
“Yes,” Elijah said. “Miles confirmed there are no traces of the spirit left in her. Kade…” He looked over, and Kade nodded. They needed to be on the same page. Elijah continued. “The spirit that possessed Kade decayed him from the inside out, but according to Miles, the nightmare spirit didn’t have the same effect on Jessie. He believes the spirits with physical effects cause the most damage to the people they possess, but he wants to check her again when she’s awake. And he suggested we keep her under observation in case there are any psychological effects. At minimum, PTSD is likely.”
It figured, Kade thought. Of course he’d stumbled into one of the worst spirits.
Grant took everything in, then asked, “Who set them loose on our territories?”
Victor grimaced. “We don’t have confirmation, but the most probable suspects are that fucking bastard of a mage who owned the shop before Elijah. And my father.”
There was a hint of sorrow in Grant’s expression when he replied. “For your sake, I hope your father isn’t involved. But that mage, I believe it. He always smelled wrong. Why though?”
“I thought it was revenge for me taking over the pack and running them out, but that was when we assumed the spirits were only infesting my territory. Now that we know they’re attacking your pack and Niall’s too, it doesn’t feel as personal anymore.”
That statement hung in the air. If they wanted revenge against Victor, why would they attack Grant’s and Niall’s packs? It had to be something bigger, didn’t it?
“It’s possible they got caught in the crossfire,” Liam said. “The spirits seem attracted to shifter energy. They might have been let loose outside Victor’s territory, with the knowledge they’d be drawn inside, but given how close your territories are, some spirits might have gone in the wrong direction. Though, if they’d wanted to avoid that, they could have released the spirits on the side of Victor’s land farthest from yours and Niall’s.”
“So someone is targeting all three packs, or Grant’s and Niall’s packs are collateral damage,” Elijah said.
Kade didn’t like either of those options.
Liam looked at Grant. “How did the spirit affect your pack?”
Grant’s eyes went distant, and he shivered. “It started this summer, but none of us realized what was happening at first. A few of us were having nightmares. Then it spread to everyone, and the nightmares kept getting worse. It was harder to wake up from them. Harder to tell when we were awake and when we were asleep.”
Liam’s voice was gentle when he spoke. “They seem to feed off us, off any living thing, plants included. So the more nightmares you had, the stronger it became, allowing it to create even more nightmares.”
“That aligns with what we experienced.”
“You tried to warn me at the grocery store the last time I saw you,” Victor said. “You knew something was going on with Niall.”
“The week before the nightmares started, I found him testing our wards. He was acting strange. Very twitchy. I thought he was trying to take over our territory. I wanted to warn you, but I was also unsure whose side you’d be on, and you seemed fine.”
“You didn’t go to anyone else for help?” Elijah asked.
“With Niall? No. There aren’t many people willing to get in the middle of a territory war. With the nightmares? Honestly, I wondered if they weren’t caused by my pack being stressed about Niall, since it corresponded with his more aggressive behavior. But when it got really bad, I didn’t know who to trust. It was impossible to sort out what was real.”
There weren’t many shifters who’d eagerly ask for help. Asking revealed weakness, and it was better to hide that lest it be exploited. Kade doubted Victor would have gone to Elijah if he’d had any other options.
Grant’s brow furrowed, then he looked at Elijah. “Did you contact me? To see if I needed help?”
“No. I wish I would have though.”
“I swear…” Grant pulled his phone out and opened his call history. There was a series of private numbers calling him, starting a month earlier and stopping a week ago. “My battery went dead. I was too out of it to charge it. That message I sent you, Victor, is the last thing I recall doing with it. But before that, I kept getting these blocked calls. I vaguely remember answering one.”
He scrolled through the list, and sure enough, one had connected for about five minutes.
Kade’s eyebrows rose. “Who was it?”
Grant shook his head. “It’s a blur. I have this fuzzy memory of them asking if I needed assistance from a mage. But the timing was too suspicious, so I turned them down. That’s all I remember.”
Elijah’s phone buzzed, and he checked the notification. “Aran and Miles are here. Can they join us?”
Victor and Grant nodded, and Elijah sent a quick message to his friends. A minute later, they walked into the room. It was a tight fit with the seven of them in there, the alphas sitting and the rest standing around the desk.
Miles’s gaze immediately found Grant, and he walked up to him. “How are you feeling?” He held out his hand, and Grant inclined his head, giving him permission.
Miles rested his palm against Grant’s neck, his eyes glowing blue as his magic scanned Grant’s body. Kade’s nose twitched. It wasn’t that Miles’s magic reeked; it just wasn’t the scent of pack magic. Though Kade was still too relieved that his sense of smell had returned to be bothered by it.
But what he found interesting was that Grant didn’t flinch at the scent. Miles dropped his hand, his fingers flexing.
“You’re healing well. I don’t sense any issues that more food and rest won’t take care of. How’s your pack?”
“Recovering. Everyone here is feeling better, and our two members currently living away from us—Aiden and his mate, Zayn—are doing alright. They’d been suffering from nightmares too, but it didn’t seem as bad for them, and they were blaming it on stress from their first year at grad school. I sent them a message this morning, and they confirmed they didn’t have any nightmares last night.”
Distance from one’s pack could dull the connections between them, stretching the threads of energy that bound them together thin. That might have created a buffer between Aiden and Zayn and the spirit, but not enough to fully insulate them from its effects.
“Would you mind if I checked everyone over after this?” Miles asked. “Especially Jessie, Remy, and the younger, weaker members.”
Grant studied him before saying, “I’d appreciate that.”
Miles seemed relieved, and he stepped away. Grant’s eyes followed him before he faced Victor again.
“You can help clear these spirits off my territory?”
“I can’t, but they can.” Victor gestured to the mages.
“We’ll help you.” Elijah cocked his head at Liam. “The bigger spirits need pack energy to capture. What about the smaller ones?”
Liam shrugged. “I’d guess it’s only the spirits hooked into the packs, but that’s just a theory. We’ll have to test it.”
Elijah considered that, then looked at Grant. “Either way, we’ll need shifters from your pack to guide us. We may also require their energy. Ideally, it’d be you and your betas helping. Whoever’s the strongest. Particularly for the largest spirits.”
Miles opened his mouth to protest, a concerned expression crossing his face.
“After Miles clears everyone for it,” Elijah amended.
That seemed to mollify Miles. “Given the rate Alpha Lucas is healing, he should be fine after a few more days of rest. That’ll allow his energy reserves to replenish themselves to the point they’ll be safe to use for magic.”
“Whatever you need. I want these things off my land.”
“We’ll make it happen,” Elijah said, “but it’ll take a while since we have to track them down and identify them one at a time.”
Kade frowned. “Don’t we know what they are now though? What did you call them, Liam? Nosoi?”
“That’s only the diseases and sicknesses. There are other categories, not just physical. Emotional, moral, environmental.”
“Can you trap them by category?”
“I…” Liam faltered, thinking it through before he spoke again. “I have no idea. We can try? We’d still need to see them for the binding contracts to latch on, but if the general categories work instead of naming them specifically, we wouldn’t have to make a sigil for each one.”
We . Right. Like anyone there but Liam was capable of doing what he’d been doing.
“That would be extremely helpful,” Elijah said. “When we tracked down the smallest ones, we had a difficult time figuring out what they were since they weren’t large enough to affect us. We thought we’d have to wait until they grew stronger to identify them. If we could capture them by category, it’d save time and effort.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with. Maybe I could design a set of seals that encompasses all four categories and…” Liam trailed off.
Kade sensed Liam’s brain slotting things together, clicking pieces into place. He felt like he was seconds from wandering out of the room to grab his sigil codex.
Clearly used to Liam not finishing his thoughts when he got like this, Elijah turned back to Grant. “We’ll give it a try, but if it doesn’t work, we’ll do it the same way we did here.”
“Can you reset my wards as well?” Grant asked.
Victor growled, and every head in the room whipped toward him. Kade snorted. Somehow, it was reassuring that Victor didn’t have complete control over his more wolfy instincts when it came to Elijah.
“Sorry.” Victor winced. “I’m aware that was an overreaction, but that ritual was intense.”
Elijah chuckled, patting him on the arm. “I only want to do intense rituals with you. Besides, I don’t think I even could do them with anyone else. I’m not positive I know how not to use your energy. It mixes so easily with my magic. I’ll have to practice until I can guarantee I can keep them separate when needed.”
“Why’s that a problem?” Kade asked.
“Because I doubt Grant wants wards made with at least as much of Victor’s energy as his own.”
That made sense. No alpha would feel comfortable with that.
“Ah,” Grant said. “I trust Victor, but yeah. I’d rather not have wards made with Mills pack energy.”
“So there’s no need for you to get all growly,” Elijah told Victor. “Your energy is keeping me from doing anything intense with another shifter at the moment.”
Victor smirked, pleased with himself.
“Don’t look so smug about that, you ass.” Elijah’s words were warm and fond.
“It’s that big metaphorical shifter knot keeping you full of his energy like I theorized,” Aran said. “There’s no room for another shifter dick to get into your channels.”
Elijah slapped a hand against his face. “Do you still think Kade is worse?”
“Yes,” Victor replied without hesitation.
“Hey!” That was uncalled for. Kade didn’t use dick analogies during important meetings. Often.
“Do I want to know?” Grant asked.
“No,” Liam, Elijah, and Miles said in unison.
“Okay then. I suppose this metaphorical… shifter anatomy means you can’t do it either, Liam?”
The other mages burst into laughter.
“Oh, shut up,” Liam snapped.
Grant glanced at Kade in confusion, but Kade couldn’t provide much clarification. “Something about him setting a ward that failed to block a cat?”
That only confused Grant more.
“In all fairness,” Elijah said, “when he’s using Kade’s energy, his wards aren’t half bad. But no, you don’t want Liam doing it.”
“I can do it,” Miles offered.
Elijah seemed surprised, and Kade bit the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. Miles doing an intense ritual with Grant sounded like a wonderful idea.
“I’m slightly better at wards than Aran,” Miles said quickly, trying to justify himself. “Though neither of us is anywhere near Elijah’s level. But I can use Alpha Lucas’s energy, and it will save us from Aran talking endlessly about the size of the shifter dick he took a night-long pounding from.”
Grant sat up straighter. “Wait. It’s that kind of ritual?”
“It isn’t.” Elijah sounded exasperated. “Well. It could be. If you both consent to that. But no, we’re talking about metaphorical dicks. Still. Because apparently dick metaphors can be used in every situation.”
“Like all the best dicks, metaphorical shifter dicks are highly vers,” Aran said.
Kade huffed out a laugh and exchanged a decisive nod with Aran.
“ Anyways ,” Elijah said. “Moving on. Miles can reset your wards on the next full moon, which means we’ve got a month to get everything else taken care of. In the meantime, we’ll clear your territory of spirits. But that leaves us with three other problems. Who’s behind this, how to destroy the captured spirits, and what to do about Niall.”
“I’m researching the second,” Liam said. “No solid theories yet, but I’ll keep you updated.”
“I’ll leave it to you.”
Kade’s phone vibrated, and he opened the message.
Pierce
Tomorrow at noon? Where the three territories meet?
That was deep in the forest, almost as far from Niall’s house as Pierce could get.
Liam leaned over to read the screen. “Is that safe?”
Probably not, but Kade was convinced he had to do it anyway.
“Pierce replied,” Kade told the group. “He wants to meet tomorrow.”
“Alright,” Victor said. “We’ll meet him then.”
“No. He said one-on-one.”
“I don’t want you meeting him alone. I don’t want anyone near that pack alone.”
“I’ll go with him but hang back so Pierce can’t see me. Our bond isn’t as strong as yours, but if something goes wrong, I should feel it.” There was no question in Liam’s voice. He would be going. Kade reminded himself that offer held no deeper meaning.
“That’s better, but I’d still like someone else with you. What if it’s a trap and he brings his entire pack with him?”
“I can chaperone them,” Aran said. “I have the least to do here anyway.”
Liam shot Elijah a look Kade could only interpret as ‘Please, no.’
But Elijah shook his head. “He’s right. I’ll be making more boxes, and Miles needs to monitor how Grant’s pack is healing and learn the ward ritual.”
Liam sighed. “Fine. I will subject myself to hours with these two for you. Oh, also. I was correct about your tether with Victor. It started during that ritual because you two are so compatible. After this is over, you’re helping me avoid the next three dates my mother tries to arrange with whatever ‘nice young man’ she bumped into at the store.”
Kade kept his face neutral, but Victor’s and Grant’s gazes weighed heavy on his skin.
Elijah’s eyes darted to Kade, then back to Liam. “If I need to, I will.”
“Okay,” Victor said. “You three will meet Pierce. Kade, get as much information as you can out of him and try to get him to help us capture the spirit. Grant, are you sure you want to be involved? This could get messy.”
“If you’re helping us, I’m helping you. We seem to be connected in this, and none of us will be safe until the threat is eliminated. Whatever my pack and I can do, we’ll do it.”
“Hopefully Pierce feels the same. If he’ll help, what do you need?” Victor asked the mages.
“We’ll need his permission to enter their territory,” Elijah said. “He should be able to let us through their wards, but won’t Niall sense that?”
“He will, but if we do it as far from their pack house as possible, that should give you an hour to capture the spirit. Will that be enough?”
Elijah grimaced. “It’ll have to be. Even though the nightmare spirit was stronger than the decay spirit, having Liam and Kade’s combined power offset that. If I’ve got access to energy from the three of you plus Pierce—four mages, two alphas, and two seconds-in-command—it should be doable. And if all goes well, once that spirit is off their land, they’ll be more reasonable.”
Kade didn’t love the idea of capturing something so massive while a hostile pack was bearing down on them, but that seemed like what they’d have to do.
“What if we do it on the new moon?” Liam asked. “Given its size and the fact that we’re fairly certain it has hooks in the pack, it might help. If it’s tied to pack energy, it might be at its weakest then, but would it endanger their pack further if we waited that long?”
“They didn’t appear unhealthy,” Miles said. “Not like Alpha Lucas’s pack, though—”
“You don’t need to use my title. Call me Grant.”
Miles looked flustered, but continued. “I don’t know what the spirit is doing to them mentally, but physically, they should be fine. Plus it’d give Al—Grant plenty of time to recover.”
Aran tilted his head, thinking it through. “It’d be a trade-off. The spirit would have another two weeks to feed off the pack’s paranoia, and our shifters would also be at their weakest.”
“It might be worth the risk,” Elijah said. “We can use the downtime to clean up Grant’s territory, then tackle Niall’s after that. And most of his pack will be in their house that night, right?”
“That’s generally protocol on a new moon,” Victor said. “There’d be less chance of someone being close to us when we start. Anyone willing in my pack can guard us.”
“Same with mine,” Grant said.
“Kade, see if you can get Pierce to agree to that.”
“Will do, Alpha.”
“But if anything about the situation feels off, get out of there.”
“Absolutely.” Kade would haul Liam away the moment he sensed danger.
“Which leaves one problem.” Elijah’s lips tightened. He was obviously less than thrilled to be broaching the subject.
“My father called me and told me to call him back when I was ready to ask for help. Should I do that now?” The reluctance in Victor’s words was easy to hear.
Kade winced, knowing how much that would cost Victor and that they couldn’t trust anything his father said or did.
Silence fell in the room.
Finally, Grant spoke. “Do you have proof it’s your father?”
“No, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else. Just him and that fucking mage.”
“Can we deal with them right now?” Aran asked. “Do we have the resources? If we need to clear the spirits off Grant’s territory and prepare to break into Niall’s, can we afford to split our focus to a third area and try to determine what’s going on with Victor’s father? It’ll take us the majority of the two weeks to get the worst of the spirits off Grant’s land. Wouldn’t it be better to take care of the imminent threats, get Niall’s pack sane and safe, then face whatever that mage is doing as a united front?”
“That assumes they won’t attack us while we do all that,” Liam said, his worry gnawing at Kade’s mind.
“Do we want to divert our attention from the actual problems we know the scope of and can address in order to deal with a theoretical problem we lack information on? We don’t know where they are or if they’re working with anyone else, and there are no clues to help us figure those things out. We can keep an eye out and watch our backs, but if they were going to attack, wouldn’t they have done that already?”
“That’s the assumption we’ve been operating under,” Elijah said. “We’ve been concentrating on the spirits from the beginning because they’re the most direct threat to the pack and we don’t have any true leads, just suspicions. I think it’s better to ensure the packs are safe, then track down whoever the fuck is behind this and make it so they can never do it again.”
Victor rolled his shoulders, clearly uncomfortable. “I’d rather focus on the direct threat, but you shouldn’t trust my judgment on that.”
Elijah placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “That’s my vote too. Once Niall is on our side, the spirits are captured, and all three packs are healthy, then Victor contacts his father and we try to find that mage.”
Kade agreed. If Victor’s father truly was behind this, he wasn’t eager for that confrontation. There was no way Victor fighting his father again wouldn’t end in death for one of them.
That settled, they finalized their plans, and Grant led Miles off to see his pack. Liam, Elijah, and Aran left to make more boxes for the spirits they’d be trapping on Grant’s territory, leaving Kade alone with Victor.
“Time to deal with my shit?” Victor asked.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Victor sighed. “Because I was ashamed of myself. Of my wolf. Of my lack of control. That asshole mage. I knew he smelled wrong, but my wolf wanted to let him use us. To let him do anything he wanted to us. If he had suggested it, my wolf would have bonded him then and there. Hell, it would have been happy letting that bastard tether himself to us—no reciprocal bond necessary.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, Victor. You wouldn’t do that.”
“That night, I would have.”
“But you didn’t. He must have used magic on you. Put a spell on you. Something.”
“No. I would have smelled active magic. He wasn’t using any. It was my wolf.”
“If you were in your right mind, you wouldn’t have even considered a transactional bond, or whatever the fuck he was after.”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see how out of control I was. How much my wolf wanted it.”
“I don’t know how he did it, but he put some spell on you. I’m going to need proof to believe otherwise.” Victor started to protest, but Kade didn’t let him get a word out. “That’s why you were avoiding magic? Why you didn’t trust yourself around Elijah?”
“I still don’t trust my wolf around magic, but I trust Elijah and his friends. Beyond that…” He shrugged.
“And you honestly thought this was your fault?”
Victor cringed.
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but it isn’t. The world doesn’t revolve around your broody ass.”
“I should have stopped it. Should have guaranteed that bastard would never get near our pack again.”
“You aren’t responsible for his actions. Or your father’s actions. Their shitty behavior is their own.”
“But—”
Kade cut him off. “Elijah was right. If you’d told me this sooner, I would have kicked your ass until you regained some sense. None of this is your fault. And whatever you think, your wolf can be trusted.”
Victor pulled a face. “I don’t—”
“Oh, shut up. What did you tell me yesterday about being possessed? If I’d been the one that asshole had targeted, would you blame me for this entire situation?”
“Of course not.”
“So give yourself a fucking break. Your head hasn’t been wedged up your ass since you and Elijah bonded. Don’t cram it back in there now.”
Victor snorted. “Such loving advice. Really enjoying your delicate handling of my shit.”
“I can still kick your ass if you prefer.”
“The only way you could kick my ass is if I let you.”
He wasn’t entirely full of shit—it had been a good decade-plus since Kade had come out of one of their sparring matches victorious. That didn’t mean he had to admit it. “Big words. Wanna prove it?”
Victor rolled his eyes. “No. I will try not to… How did you put it? Cram my head back up my ass?”
“Excellent. Elijah will appreciate it. It’d be terribly hard for him to fuck you like that.”
“Why are you my cousin?”
“Because the powers that be decided to bless you with my presence?”
Victor huffed. “More like cursed.”
They settled into silence until Victor spoke again.
“Be careful tomorrow. I’m okay with you running off to be with Liam, if that’s what you need to do. I’m not okay with losing you any other way.”
That hit Kade harder than he would have expected. “I will.”
“And keep Liam and Aran safe. I didn’t like how Niall was looking at them yesterday.”
That made two of them. Niall had been talking about the mages as if they were things to be possessed, and it creeped him out.
“I will,” Kade said again with conviction. He’d keep them both safe, no matter what he had to do.
“So…” Aran fell into step beside Kade as they hiked toward the area where they were meeting Pierce. A nice, neutral location, if more secluded than Kade would have preferred. “I heard you couldn’t come up with a decent innuendo about Liam being an archivist.”
Behind them, Liam groaned. “I told Elijah that in private.”
Aran scoffed. “Like the four of us have ever kept secrets from each other.”
Liam grumbled, but didn’t refute it.
“I mean,” Aran said, “the glove jokes alone.”
“Could we not do this?” Liam asked.
“Oh, no. Mr. KnottyWolf69 here and I have been friends for too long. I was under the mistaken impression that he was better than that. If he wants to get his shifter dick—metaphorical or otherwise—all up in your channels, he needs to prove himself worthy.”
Liam sputtered. “He doesn’t want to do any such thing.”
Aran side-eyed Kade, raising a brow, and Kade tried not to squirm.
“And how does coming up with bad pickup lines make him worthy or not?” Liam’s question interrupted Aran’s knowing look.
Aran waved his hand dismissively. “Because I’m aware of how much you love my brand of humor, and I need to ensure your shifter is capable of a good dick joke no matter the circumstances. Someone who can’t make a naughty librarian joke about you isn’t up to my standards.”
“I’m not a librarian!”
“Hey!” Kade said. “Any other job, and I wouldn’t have had any problem.”
“Prove it. What if he were a plumber?”
“Too easy. I’d ask about laying pipe.”
“Baseball player.”
“Are you serious?”
“True. The jokes about the bases alone. Flight attendant.”
“Join the mile-high club.”
“Cashier.”
“Check him out.”
“Priest.”
“Get him on his knees and make him see god. You aren’t even trying to challenge me.”
“Politician.”
“I’d get his opinion on my poll, then stuff his ballot box.”
“Not bad. Farmer.”
“Offer to plow his field.”
“Lawyer.”
“Ask him if he’d like to see my briefs.”
“Firefight—”
“OH MY GOD. STOP IT!” Liam’s cheeks were taking on a pink tint. “Why are we friends? This is why I can’t take you anywhere, Aran.”
“Aww.” Aran looked over his shoulder at Liam with a wicked smile. “Admit it. You love me.”
“Things that will never happen.”
Aran looped an arm around Kade’s shoulders, leaning in to stage-whisper, “He says that, but I know the truth. He’s going to pretend he doesn’t enjoy you talking about dicks, but deep down, he loves it. Like, one hundred percent, he’ll deny it, but he’s totally the type to get all hot and bothered if you tell him every dirty thing you want to do to him.”
“ Aran .” The warning in Liam’s voice was clear, but Kade sensed him squirming through their bond.
Aran paid him zero mind. “Words and information are a total turn-on for him. So use that to your advantage.”
A ball of fire whizzed between their heads. Kade reflexively snagged it out of the air as Aran jumped away from him.
“Dude!” Aran spun to face Liam. “Not cool! You singed my hair with that thing.”
It had been quite close to their faces.
“I wasn’t aiming to hit you with it. But stop hanging all over him and saying shit like that.”
“Interesting choice of which complaint came first there.” Aran smirked and turned away, only to freeze when he saw the ball of fire in Kade’s hand. It’d dimmed, but it was holding on. “…What?” he asked eloquently.
Kade felt the urge to hide the fireball behind his back, like it was a secret meant for him and Liam.
“Oh.” Liam deflated. “That’s how we’ve been practicing so I can get used to his energy. He has some of my magic in his system and can sustain the fire. If I feed him more magic, the flame will get bigger.”
“Seriously? Do that. I want to see.”
Kade cleared his throat. “Um. No.”
“Yeah, no. We’re not doing that in front of other people.”
“Ooh. Is this the finger stretching Elijah was talking about?”
“What now?” Kade asked.
Aran leaned closer again, though he didn’t touch Kade this time. “Apparently he needs to transfer his magic into you when he stretches you open.”
Kade’s eyebrows attempted to climb to his hairline. If it felt good when Liam did it through the tether, how much better would it be if his fingers were buried in Kade’s ass? He swallowed, his gaze darting over to Liam.
“Uh,” Kade managed to say, “I’ll remember that.”
His brain had already latched on to the thought so thoroughly that he doubted it would leave even if he wanted it to.
Aran seemed satisfied with the chaos he’d caused, and the rest of the hike was uneventful.
As they neared the territory border, Kade paused. “You guys wait here. It’s far enough away, and the wind is blowing in the right direction. He shouldn’t be able to smell you.”
They weren’t thrilled about it, but they stayed there, and Kade finished the hike on his own, passing through Victor’s wards as Pierce stepped up to Niall’s, though he didn’t cross that boundary. Probably for the best. Niall would feel that and question why Pierce had left their territory.
Pierce’s gaze bounced around the forest. He cast a quick look behind him as well. “You’re alone?”
“Yes. We want to help you.”
“Niall won’t trust you. He’s been ranting nonstop about how unfair it is that you have four mages.”
“We don’t have four mages. Victor and Elijah are bonded. The rest aren’t part of our pack.”
Pierce breathed in deeply, his eyes narrowing. “But you’re bonded to one of them. It’s a true bond, isn’t it? Why are you lying about that?”
He was too suspicious for half-truths. Kade needed to be honest, even if that meant talking about this. “It’s complicated. Yes, it’s a true bond. Or it should be. It’s fucked up. He doesn’t want it.”
“But you do?”
“Only if he does.”
Pierce inhaled again, frowning. “Why do you smell like the other mage too? The one with the tattoos.”
“We’re friends. I’ve known him for years. Met him on MateHub’s forums.”
Pierce’s expression was still pinched, but his shoulders relaxed a fraction. “No one would lie about something that stupid.”
“Hey, don’t knock Richard Knotz just because you’re too straight to appreciate his awesomeness.”
“You… haven’t changed since high school, have you?” Pierce asked, but it seemed to set him at ease. He cast another look behind him, then inched closer to his pack’s wards. “What’s happening?”
Kade pulled out the map he’d tucked in his back pocket and unfolded it. Victor’s territory was relatively spirit-free—just a handful of small ones zipping around—while Grant’s had dozens of spirits of various sizes roaming over it, and Niall’s was almost completely covered by the spirit of paranoia.
Pierce stared at the map. “What are those?”
“Evil spirits are attacking our packs. All of them, not just your pack. The mages are here to help us. We’ve trapped most of the spirits on our territory, and we’re helping Grant clean up his. But we need to be on pack territory to capture them, and we need pack energy to do it.”
“Niall will never agree to that.”
“It doesn’t have to be him.”
Pierce flinched. “What would I need to do?”
“The mages want to capture the main spirit affecting your pack on the new moon. You’d need to let us into your territory. Preferably out here, so we can get the spirit captured before Niall brings the pack to attack us. And one of the mages would need to channel your energy.”
Pierce narrowed his eyes, studying him. “That will fix my pack?”
“Once the spirits are trapped, they no longer affect people, but Grant’s pack needs time to recover from what their spirit did to them. Yours might be the same.”
“What happened to your packs?”
“Our worst spirit was decay. It corrupted our wards before Elijah fixed them. When it couldn’t feed on the wards anymore, it spread to the plants and animals, then our pack. For Grant’s pack, it was nightmares. What about you? When did you notice something was wrong?”
“One day, this summer, when Niall returned from a patrol, he seemed different—paranoid and controlling. And it’s only gotten worse since then. He doesn’t trust anyone. Not even his betas or me. He’s using his alpha command almost constantly to make sure we follow his orders. When someone doesn’t do what he says, he lashes out. At first, it was just him, but now, the other betas are acting the same. Our pack members are terrified of Niall and what he might do to them. We keep looking over our shoulders, expecting to see him there.”
As if to prove his point, he glanced behind him again.
“It’s affecting the other betas, but not you?”
“It comes and goes. When I’m away from Niall, it’s better. I can sort out which thoughts are mine and which are… I don’t know. Foreign?”
“If you aren’t prone to feeling a certain emotion, it seems easier to identify the ones that aren’t your own.”
In school, Pierce had always been a genuinely nice guy. Kade didn’t think he’d had a paranoid bone in his body.
Pierce squeezed his eyelids shut and steadied his breathing as he tried to gather himself. When he opened his eyes, he nodded. “I’ll help you if that’s how I can save my pack. I’ll meet you here at midnight on the new moon. But don’t contact me again. Niall checks our phones.”
Kade nearly sighed with relief. “We’ll see you then. Stay safe. Try to keep your head straight.”
“I will.” Pierce checked his surroundings once more, then slipped into the forest behind him.
Kade did sigh then. They had to hope Pierce could hold out for two more weeks. He walked back to where Liam and Aran were waiting.
“How’d it go?” Liam asked as soon as he saw Kade.
“He’s definitely affected by the spirit, but he agreed to our plan.”
“Can we trust him?” Aran asked.
“I don’t think we have a choice. Let’s head back to the pack house.”
“Actually,” Liam said, “can we look around a bit? That area out there, it’s the neutral land between the three packs, right?”
“Niall’s is straight ahead, and Grant’s is to the north.” Kade gestured to both.
“And it’s possible to get there without triggering any of your wards?”
“It’d be a pain in the ass to hike between the wards, but yeah. You could do it if you knew the area.”
“So if someone wanted to open a jar of evil spirits that would affect the packs equally, this would be the best place to do it?”
“It would. What are we searching for?”
“A jar would be traditional, but it could be a box or any kind of container.”
They crossed into the unclaimed territory and started to search. As they did, Kade told them what Pierce had said.
“If Niall was the first possessed, that can’t be good,” Liam said. “If the spirit had alpha energy to feed it from the beginning, it must have gotten powerful fast.”
“Hey!” Aran called from a few feet ahead of them. “Over here.”
Kade followed Liam to where he was standing. In the underbrush, a clay jar lay on its side. It was covered in symbols, and Kade had no clue what they meant. “Is it empty?”
“I don’t know,” Liam admitted.
“Even the smallest spirits were visible. Just little balls of light,” Aran said. “And I don’t see any around here.”
“Still, I’d rather not risk touching it.”
Kade inhaled, catching a whiff of a scent he’d never wanted to smell again. “It’s faded from months out in the elements, but that’s got the same reek to it as that asshole mage.”
Liam snapped half a dozen pictures with his phone, though he stayed well away from the thing.
“This supports my theory, but beyond that, it doesn’t help us much.” He slid his phone back into his pocket.
“You don’t think the spirits will crawl into that jar if we ask nicely?”
“You never know,” Aran said. “Stranger things have happened.”
Liam shook his head. “I’ll stick with Elijah’s boxes. Let’s get back home and tell everyone what we’ve found.”
Kade’s heart skipped a beat at Liam calling the pack house home so casually.
If only Liam wanted it to be his actual home.