Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Maddox
Iwatched Alyssa walk away, and my lion roared in my mind.
He pressed against the edges of my consciousness, a warm weight trying to reassure me that everything was as it should be.
The lion didn’t understand guilt. Not the way I did.
To him, it was simple. Rhidian had deserved a good death.
A warrior’s death. And I had given him that instead of condemning him to die at the hands of an abomination.
I wished I could see it that clearly. I wished life was that simple. But reality was never wrapped in pretty reassurances, it waited until you were at your lowest and then it pushed you even further down and laughed when you tried not to break.
Alyssa moved through the soldiers, stopping to speak with the wounded, crouching beside those too broken to stand.
I could tell she was struggling, I could always tell.
Even before the lion, even before I knew what she was to me, for some reason I felt her deeper than anyone else I’d ever met.
But even with the weight of everything she carried, she kept going anyway.
That was who she was. The woman who carried everyone else’s pain on top of her own and somehow still found the strength to keep moving.
The looks of distrust on the soldiers’ faces were already beginning to change. I watched suspicion soften into something closer to respect as she spoke to them, touched their shoulders, helped them to their feet. They were starting to see what we’d known all along.
“How is this collection of broken people supposed to go on to fight Arik,” I murmured, the thoughts slipping through my lips before I could stop them.
It wasn’t a thought I was proud of. These people had been through so much, fought so hard, it was wrong to think of them as anything less than the warriors they’d proven themselves to be.
But I could see it on their faces. I could see how close to the edge they all were. Asking them to keep fighting was far too much. But who else was left if they all walked away from this?
“They can because they must,” Dean said simply.
“Don’t rule them out just yet,” Ryder added. “People are capable of incredible things when it comes to protecting the people they love.”
“And what about when all the people they love are already dead?” I asked grimly.
“Then revenge is a powerful motivator,” Dean pointed out.
Revenge. The word settled into my chest like an ember, and my lion rumbled his approval. Yes. That was something we could both understand.
“What happens now?” Ryder asked, his gaze still tracking Alyssa across the battlefield.
Dean’s jaw tightened. “We need to get her out of here. She’s running on fumes and fury right now, and when that crashes...” He shook his head. “We need to move back to our camp. Give her space to process everything.”
“To process losing Rhidian,” I added quietly.
The name alone was enough to make my mind recoil.
My lion pushed forward again, that steady presence trying to cushion the blow, and I let him.
I couldn’t remember anymore what it had been like to be alone in my own head.
Before the shift, before everything changed.
Now there was always this other consciousness sharing space with me, and right now I was grateful for it.
The burn across my forearm flared, and I looked down without meaning to.
The mark had spread since the last time I’d checked. Intricate patterns wound across my skin like vines made of golden light, etching themselves into my flesh in swirling designs that seemed almost alive. Rhidian’s magic. The Summer Court’s legacy, passed to me in his final moments.
And smeared across all of it, dried into the grooves of the pattern, caked beneath my fingernails, darkening the lines of my palm, was Rhidian’s blood.
I stared at my hands. At the way the blood had mixed with the mark he’d given me, as if his death and his gift had become one and the same thing.
In some respects it was, one wouldn’t have been possible without the other.
But the magic felt less like an inheritance and more like an accusation.
A curse branded into my skin that I would carry forever.
You did what needed to be done, my lion reminded me. He chose you. He trusted you.
That almost made it worse.
“Maddox.”
I looked up to find Dean watching me, and I braced for the accusation. For the doubt. For someone to finally say what I’d been thinking—that I should have found another way, that I’d taken the easy path, that Rhidian might have survived if I’d just tried harder.
But there was nothing in Dean’s eyes except respect.
“We need to find somewhere quiet to talk,” he said.
“Debrief. Regroup. Everything’s changed and we need a plan for moving forward.
” His gaze flickered toward the edge of camp.
“And we need to figure out what we’re going to do about Damon.
We can’t keep him tied up forever. The immediate danger’s passed, but now we need to figure out how to stay ahead of Arik and keep Alyssa safe. ”
Damon. Another impossible problem with no good solutions.
“Alyssa is stronger than you give her credit for.”
Tank’s voice came from behind us, and I turned to find him approaching, his massive frame casting a shadow across the bloodied snow.
“She’s been in this exact position before,” he continued.
“She’s stood and seen the slaughter of thousands, and she survived.
Not only that, but she willingly came back to this place and all the ghosts that haunt her here.
” His eyes found Alyssa in the crowd, and something softened in his expression.
“She doesn’t need us to coddle her. She needs to be reminded that she’s a Queen, and we are her willing servants. ”
Despite everything, I felt my lips twitch toward a smile.
The expression felt foreign on my face, wrong somehow, but Tank was right.
Alyssa might need a moment. She might need to fall apart in private.
But after that, she’d be the first one at the war table, pushing us to hit Arik while he was weak.
Because that’s what he was right now. We might be standing amongst our injured, feeling the damage that he’d caused, but we’d hit back.
And we’d hit him hard. We weren’t the only ones hurting right now.
Dean huffed a laugh, nodding in agreement. “Still need a plan, though. It was foolish to rush into this fight without knowing what our next steps were. We can’t afford to make that mistake again.”
“Dean needs to bite Damon.”
We all turned to stare at Ryder.
He held up his hands defensively. “Just hear me out…”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Dean cut in. “Damon’s mind has enough problems without adding a wolf into the mix.”
“It’s not a terrible idea,” Tank said slowly. The words seemed to surprise even him. “If the bite takes... a beast might be strong enough to force out the nightmare. Fight it from the inside.”
Dean rounded on him. “You don’t know that.
You’re just thinking with your bear. We have no idea what turning Damon into a shifter could do.
What if it just makes the nightmare stronger?
What if it gives that thing access to a beast’s power?
” He ran a hand through his hair, frustration bleeding through his usual control.
“Damon’s been getting more lucid. Maybe he just needs time.
Maybe he’ll fight his way back on his own. ”
“Or maybe the nightmare is biding its time,” Tank countered. “Waiting for a moment of weakness. And then Damon will be gone forever.”
The words hung in the air between us. I thought of Damon, the real Damon, trapped somewhere inside his own mind, watching a monster use his body, his voice, his face. How long could anyone survive that before they simply... stopped fighting?
“We have no way of knowing who’s right,” Ryder said, his voice taking on that careful tone he used when he was trying to keep the peace.
“But this isn’t our decision to make alone.
We need to talk to Alyssa. And we need to talk to Damon.
” He looked at each of us in turn. “We know him as well as we know ourselves. There’s no way he’d live with that thing in his head, knowing it could take over at any moment.
If we want to save our brother, we need to figure out how to kill the nightmare without killing him.
And if the bite is the best option we’ve got. ..”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.
“Fuck’s sake, why is life never easy for us?” Dean grumbled.
“You’d be bored with an easy life,” I joked. “You’d have nothing to complain about.”
“I’m not going to admit that you’re right,” Dean grumbled, turning and walking away. “But I am going to check in on our girl.”
Ryder shot me a look. It was something between amusement and exhaustion, because Dean was exactly the person he’d always been and yet he’d changed so much as well.
Ryder didn’t say anything else, he just jogged after Dean, leaving me standing with Tank.
The two of us watched Alyssa as she knelt beside a weeping woman who stood over a body.
Someone she must have known. Someone else we couldn’t save.
“Are you okay?”
Tank’s question was quiet. Direct. No preamble, no dancing around it.
“No,” I admitted. There was no point in lying to him.
“What do you need?”
I thought about it for a moment. No one had ever really put my problems into those terms before. What did I need? What would make any of this bearable?
Only one word screamed through my mind, echoing with the roar of my lion.
“Revenge.”
Tank nodded slowly, like he’d expected that answer. “You’re going to get it.”
We stood in silence for a moment, both of us watching Alyssa. She’d helped the weeping woman to her feet now, was guiding her toward the others, one hand on her back. Still carrying. Still giving. Even when she had nothing left.
“She’s impressive,” I said quietly.
Tank hummed in agreement.
“About what Ryder said,” Tank started.
I felt every muscle tense as Tank tried to feel out my thoughts on Ryder’s insane idea. But then I realised it didn’t really matter what I thought because it wasn’t my decision to make. Not only that, but I already knew what Damon would say. Because what other solution was there?
“It’s Damon’s decision,” I finally said. “If it’s what he wants then it’s what we do.”
Tank nodded slowly and we stood in silence for a moment.
“I had a sleuth once,” he said quietly. “That’s like a pack for bears. But when it came time for us to move to a new city, I couldn’t leave Alyssa behind. I knew she was my mate, I just had no idea how it was possible or how she’d feel about it. But do you know what I figured out the other day?”
I looked up at him standing beside me, watching the woman we both loved as she slowly worked her way across the battlefield of broken people.
“Sometimes, when everything seems impossible, all you need to do is lean on the people you trust the most to see you through it. Because one way or another fate knows what it’s doing and there’s no point in fighting the inevitable.”
“You’re saying to just let the chips lay wherever they land?”
“I’m saying that something brought us here, brought the four of you together years before even that.
Three humans who turned into shifters even though the odds weren’t in your favour.
Three humans who came right to the door of, not only the one woman who could help them, but a fated mate they never knew was possible to have.
When you think about it in those terms, it seems pretty impossible that Damon wasn’t meant to be a shifter.
He’s always been one of you. And there’s a reason for that. For all of this. There has to be.”
I let out a long breath, not knowing what to believe anymore. But I knew one thing, I needed to be the one to talk to Damon. To give him the choice. To let him decide if he wanted to take the risk.
But something about Tank’s words stayed with me as I turned them over in my mind. Fate knows what it’s doing. The inevitable.
If Damon became a shifter... if he survived... would he be one of Alyssa’s mates too?
The thought shouldn’t have bothered me. We already shared her with Dean and Ryder and Tank.
What was one more? But something twisted in my gut at the idea, something uncomfortably close to jealousy.
Damon had been possessed. Damon had hurt people while that thing wore his face.
And now he might get to share in everything we’d built?
Might get to touch her, hold her, love her, after everything he’d…
No. That wasn’t fair. None of this was Damon’s fault.
But fair or not, the worry remained. What would it look like, sharing a mate with a man who had a monster living inside his head? Would the beast kill it or just bury it, leaving it biding its time? What would it mean for Alyssa? For all of us?
I looked down at my hands again. At Rhidian’s blood dried across Rhidian’s mark.
Some questions didn’t have easy answers, and yet they all seemed to come with the same cost. Pain. Death. Where was it going to end?