Chapter 18 Julian
Julian
My wolf had always protected me, even when I hadn’t deserved it.
It had healed my body hundreds of times.
I knew now it had been forced to work harder over the years as my witch magic festered and pooled beneath the tattoos, as I struggled with my exposure to silver. As the mate sickness took its toll.
But now I was injured far past the healing my wolf could provide, even with the moon’s cool beams falling on me.
I’d closed my eyes with nothing but regret that I hadn’t told my boys how much I loved them.
That I hadn’t made certain my mate knew that finding her had been worth all the pain that came before.
At least I hadn’t bitten her, claimed her. She would live, and my boys would take care of her. We would run together under the moon someday, after she’d lived her full life, and…
A sharp jolt of alarm surged from my wolf, waking me.
What had happened? I could feel his panic. It was her; she was in danger. She was…
Here? I opened my eyes, fighting past the pain, to see what had happened. Zinnia sat beside me, one hand on my chest, the area there warm while all the rest of me was ice cold. Her face was tear-streaked, though her body looked unharmed, and her eyes when they met mine frightened me.
They were darker than I’d ever seen, a deep gray—the color of the mountain stone—instead of the warm brown of before. And something else had changed, something that had my injured wolf whimpering silently. Her wolf, that ghostly presence I’d sensed before, was absent now.
“What have you done?” My voice was a death’s rattle, the words garbled. One of my lungs sounded and felt as if it was filling with fluid. My magic had far too much to heal and not enough blood left to do the work.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. Her eyes were bracketed with lines of pain, sweat running down her brow as she pressed on my chest, pushing energy into me.
“What I had to.” Her flint-gray eyes dropped to her hand, and I felt a surge of intense power move from her fingers into me. Or try to. “Your boys need you. Your pack needs you.” Another surge battered into me like a fist the size of a mountain.
It was the most powerful magic I’d ever felt, and I knew it might have saved me, if she’d used this before I’d fallen. But not now. I’d been dying already, and there was no way for my body to heal.
“Love, let me go,” I rasped, my words were almost unintelligible.
Her gaze hardened. “I will not. You made a vow. Anything I asked of you, you promised. I am asking you to stay and fight for me. For us. Stay alive, no matter how it hurts. If not for me, then for the boys. They need you.”
“Not… the boys,” I managed. If I died, I needed them to know what was in my heart. How much I loved them. “My… sons.”
From my other side, I heard the word, “Sergeant,” buried in a sob, and knew Leroy was there. Then there was the sound of bare, running feet slapping on rock and something dropping beside me, though I couldn’t move my head to see.
“Alpha,” Bo panted breathlessly. “Sergeant, I’m beggin’ ya. Don’t leave us.”
“I’ll try,” I rasped at last.
Zinnia’s eyes sparkled with dark fire, flecks of crystals buried in stone, as she placed her other hand next to the one on my chest. I didn’t have breath to speak again, or words.
The power inside her was vast, and she poured it into me with her hands, my body bowing with the force of it.
My physical wounds responded, but only in the places where she had healed me before, in the garden.
My organs, my heart, my forearms—the places where our lovemaking and her gentle earth magic had wrought changes before—all stopped bleeding, and hurting.
But the wounds beneath my tattoos were unreachable, even now. Even with this power.
I felt her tears land on my face and neck as she crouched over me, her eyes boring into my chest as if she could force the healing there to move beyond.
“Heal,” she insisted, and there was something in her tone that was close to an Alpha’s command.
I let my gaze rise past her to the sky, to the moon.
The moon. If I’d had the energy to gasp, I would have.
A silver spirit wolf ran there, circling the moon, faint on the still-blue sky. It was a wisp of moonlight, as if one of its beams had escaped its tether and was seeking something below…
My breathing stuttered.
Her wolf. It was there, in the moon, waiting for me. It called to me.
“Heal, Julian!” Zinnia commanded again, and something sharp tugged and clawed at my soul. I knew what it was: I’d made a vow to the moon to obey her, if I could. And I could heal, or at least a part of me could. Not the part of me that was the Alpha, the wolf.
But Julian. The part of me she loved and commanded. It was possible that I could obey her, but only if—
My thoughts went white, and a high-pitched ringing filled my ears. I’d asked him for so much, for so long. Could I…
Yes. My wolf’s assent wasn’t a word, but a gift. He lifted his head in our shared spirit and howled, calling on the moon, sending his power into my body. Giving his own magic to the task of closing wounds and erasing scars. Giving his life.
Yes, I repeated, acknowledging what this would cost me. Half of my soul, of my being. For her. For us.
With my acceptance, the tattoos on my body began to flatten, the tainted magic beneath them dissipating. Even the scars from the silver blades that had cut me flared with heat before the tight skin became smooth.
Her power, the magic of the earth and of healing, began to fill me as the physical and magical wounds I’d carried began to close.
I heard a shout—“Boys! Straighten his legs, his arms! He’s healing too fast!”—and then what felt like bolts of lightning at my arms that moved down my legs. Blackness threatened to pull me away from consciousness, but I fought it, knowing I had to be awake to do this.
To let go of the pack bonds I held and move them to another.
To give up being Alpha.
To say goodbye to my wolf.