Chapter 30
thirty
KAT
We made it to our seats uneventfully and watched the men warm up for a few minutes. Callum's thumb dragged slowly over my hipbone while I sat on his lap like that pretty little werewolf they'd originally told me I was supposed to be.
What we had now was so much more than that.
The contentment radiating through our bond was enough to make me feel just as comfortable as he was.
Sable snored within me, completely unconcerned with the possibility of losing our beta. We wouldn't technically have a pack after the fight, but we did have a family. The fae royals had become that to us, as crazy as it was.
Jonah's eyes met mine for a moment, and I felt the pack's link brush over my mind for what may potentially be the last time.
If Jonah left my pack, I wasn't going to bring anyone else in.
I didn't want to be an alpha, and I didn't want the noise of any other existing pack.
If Sable got lonely, I'd just convince some other wolves to go for a run with me or something.
"I still don't know if I want this," Jonah said into my mind.
My chest squeezed. "This is why you started fighting in the first place. It's okay if you still love Gwen. You know that, right?"
"Admitting that I have feelings for her would feel like an excuse for what she did to us."
"Then don't admit it yet. Just accept that you aren't willing to let anyone else protect her in your place."
He jerked his head in a nod.
"You can always quit being the beta later if you don't like it, or if you're ready to move on completely," I added.
"True."
"And regardless of anything else, you'd regret walking away while the demon king is trying to force her to mate with him."
He didn't know about the soulmate thing, so he didn't know the full extent of the problem it would be, but I was pretty sure he was against forced matings.
"It worked for you. The forced mate bond."
...or he'd be in favor of them.
Shit.
"Just fight for now to buy yourself time to figure it out."
"Alright. Thanks. For what it's worth, you were the best alpha I ever had."
"I still refuse to accept that title."
"Exactly." He paused for a moment before continuing. "When I win, don't let Liv think it's going to change anything for us. It's nice to have a workout buddy, and I'm pretty addicted to the energy boost from her magic."
"The what from her magic?"
Gwen got up and started talking to the crowd, effectively ending the conversation.
"What did Jonah say?" Callum asked me.
"He doesn't know if he wants this, but he's going to fight anyway."
"It's a good call."
I nodded. "What does Liv's magic feel like to you?"
"Passively, it's similar to a light, continuous electric shock. Your hair stands on end. Your skin tingles. If you weren't acquainted with my magic or Merrily's, you might find it slightly painful. She can channel it a handful of other ways as well, but that’s how it feels consistently."
"Does it energize you? Jonah called it an energy boost."
"What? No."
I held an arm out toward Liv and whispered, "Can you hit me with your magic?"
"Shut up. I'm watching," she whispered back, gesturing toward Jonah. He wasn't fighting yet.
Gwen was still going on about the privilege of running the challenges.
"Do it." I put a hand on her arm and swore under my breath when her magic zapped me, indeed feeling like an electric shock.
"Shit." I all but breathed the word into Callum's mind.
"He said it was an energy boost? That's the opposite of what it—oh, fuck."
Callum had just realized what I had.
"Tell her to get her phone out."
I relayed the message while Callum texted her quickly with one hand. She looked irritated but pulled it from the pocket of her running shorts, reading the messages she'd missed in the group chat until his text came through.
Callum
Jonah told Kat your magic is an energy boost
She read the message, and her gaze jerked up to ours.
"No," she said. "That can't be right."
"That's what he said," I told her quietly.
The blood drained from her face.
He was hers.
He had to be, if Liv's magic felt the same to every other person but him.
Right?
The fight began, and we all looked back at the pit.
Jonah and his opponent circled each other, both of them dressed only in workout shorts. There would be two fights today. One in human form, and one in wolf. If the winners were different, they would fight a tie breaker, with shifting allowed.
Jonah threw the first punch.
The other man dodged it, and threw one of his own.
Jonah ducked easily, hitting him with a hook to the side of his face before taking the man to the ground.
I could barely track their motions.
A few punches.
A hard roll.
The other guy had Jonah pinned for a few seconds, but Jonah managed to use the position to break the other guy's nose with his forehead and retake control of the fight.
With two solid, consecutive punches after he broke the other bastard's nose, he had his opponent slumped over on the hard, packed dirt beneath them.
Roaring cheers echoed around the pit, but ours weren't among them.
When I looked back at Liv, her face was even paler than usual.
She wasn't just watching our friend fight anymore. She was watching her potential fated mate battle for the right to make vows to protect his ex-fiancée.
I took her hand.
She held on for dear life as someone roused Jonah's opponent with what looked like some kind of smelling salts. He looked dazed when he got up.
Both men dropped their shorts, and shifted. While fur exploded out of Jonah, his wolf taking control, the other man's transformation was slower.
The fight was over before it began.
Jonah's gray wolf slammed his shoulder into the other wolf's face, then went for his throat. Blood dripped to the dirt, visible enough from where we sat above the pit, as Jonah's wolf held the other in place with his teeth. If the pinned wolf tried to get away, he would die.
"He calls me Zap. I should've put it together," Liv whispered, as we watched Jonah calmly lift his fist in the air while Gwen announced him as Rumor's new Beta.
"None of us knew," Callum said quietly.
I knew he was regretting not trying his magic on me earlier. He tended to blame himself, even for things that weren't his fault.
Zap was the name of my cafe's version of energy drinks. I'd worked with the Nymphs to get the plants we needed to make them, because they were a twist on magically-enhanced tea leaves with a few other things added.
I'd heard him call her that too, and had assumed he was talking about her energy. Not some energy she accidentally gave him.
Jonah climbed the ladder that led out of the pit.
I wanted to ask Liv what she was going to do now—but I knew she didn't know.
When Jonah's head cleared the pit, his gaze went to Gwen, and lingered.
Then it turned to me.
I managed a small smile and a thumbs-up.
Liv made a strangled noise as Jonah walked up to the chair Gwen had occupied throughout the fights.
If Liv had been Callum, she would've waltzed up next to my sister and told Jonah that she was the only woman he'd be making vows to, claiming him in an entirely public and unhinged way.
She wasn't Callum, though.
I could hear how fast she was breathing, too.
Merrily asked quietly if Liv was okay.
Callum told Mer she wasn't.
God, what a mess.
None of us spoke as Jonah took Gwen's hand and made the simple vow to protect her. The magic that bound a pack together was natural. Instinctual. Uncontrollable.
The power tying me and Jonah together snapped, and I sucked in a breath as that space in my subconscious was suddenly just a little more free.
Sable woke up long enough to ask, "He's out of the pack?"
"Yeah."
"Finally."
She was back asleep almost immediately.
Callum's thumb stroked my hip slowly, trying to comfort me from a loss that he probably assumed would hurt me in some way.
"I'm fine," I said into his mind.
"Good. We need to get Liv to the car as soon as possible."
The crowd roared, and music started to play.
Gwen was waving me toward her and Jonah. Our parents were behind her, beaming.
Shit.
I knew fixing burnt bridges was a bad idea.
"Go. We'll get her out of here," Callum told me.
"I want to help."
"You can help by making sure Jonah doesn't see her spiral. I'll be back as soon as I can." His lips brushed my temple.
I gave Liv's hand one last squeeze before striding toward the group of wolves in front of me.
Jonah didn't look nearly as excited as my family members, though he wore a polite expression as my mom and dad hugged him, welcoming him back into the family as if they hadn't rejected him when Gwen did.
"I'm glad we can all be together again," Gwen admitted, giving me a cautious hug when I reached them.
I obviously wouldn't be joining her pack, but this was the wrong moment to tell her that.
"We planned a celebration at the villa," my mom gushed, pulling me in for a hug after Jonah.
She and I had never been extremely close.
I didn't plan on developing a stronger relationship with her, but as Callum had told me, immortality was a long time.
I didn't want to distance myself from her completely.
So, I hugged her back, inhaling the familiar scent and trying to move past the hurt I had carried for so long.
The past was in the past.
We didn't need to be best friends who talked about everything to be family. I couldn't trust them to have my back, but maybe in another century or two, that would change.
"You're coming, right?" my dad asked me.
"That depends on whether or not my mate is invited."
Gwen replied, barely missing a beat. "Of course he is. He's family."
I was family, and I hadn't been invited to years' worth of parties and dinners.
"Where did he go?" my mom asked, scanning the crowd around me. "It seems like he rarely leaves your side."
Luckily, someone came up to the group, distracting my mom from her question and inspiring another round of hugs. Gwen led the rest of us toward the path that led to the villa after a few minutes.
I could already hear music playing from inside, and could smell the familiar scent of farm-fresh, grilled food.
God, I'd missed that.
Jonah and I were in the center of Gwen's group, at the very back of the crowd that was heading for the villa, but everyone around us was talking excitedly
"Where did she go?" he murmured, since our pack link was now gone.
"On another run. She had too much energy." I didn't think she'd mind the lie.
"Make sure she knows she's invited to this thing too."
My mom interrupted the conversation. "Jonah, tell us how you got started fighting," she commanded.
He launched into the story while we all walked together.
Callum slipped an arm around my waist as we neared the villa, his icy gaze sweeping over the people around us. They gave him significantly more space than they'd given me, but otherwise ignored him.
"How is she?" I asked him.
"Trying to work through it. We'll come up with a plan. If it comes down to it, abduction is always an option."
"If you abduct the Beta, there will be a war."
"We'll do whatever we have to for her fated mate, Kitten. Even a war, if that's what she wants. For now, no decisions have been made. I imagine she'll try to win him over the normal way first. They're friends."
"Is Liv coming?" Jonah asked us, as we reached the party.
"She's otherwise occupied, but she sends her congratulations," Callum said smoothly
"Liv?" Gwen asked, looking at all of us with confusion.
"The spring fae queen. They're friends," I said.
"I'm going to once again recommend that you start looking for someone else to replace Darke as your mate." Callum's voice was neutral, but there was a bit of a threat hanging behind the words.
"He can be friends with her and still mate with me," Gwen murmured, turning around and striding after Jonah.
"Your sister is going to get herself killed, Kitten." There was a sharpness behind my mate's amusement that would've scared pretty much anyone outside our circle.
"It's starting to look that way."
What a fucking mess.