Chapter 35 #2
I walked over to the spot he’d chosen to isolate himself in and knelt at his feet.
“You don’t need to keep any distance from me, Damon.
And I don’t think you need to worry about this.
The bonds that we share have nothing to do with control.
They’re not one sided. Besides, if the shadows were going to sever them, they would have done it already.
They’ve had more than enough opportunity. ”
“Plus,” Ryder added with a smirk on his face, “It’s not exactly a chore to forge a bond with Alyssa. I wouldn’t mind repeating it.”
The guys laughed and Damon shook his head, a soft smile on his face that screamed of a relief he wasn’t ready to talk about.
It was going to take time for Damon to trust himself. To trust that the nightmare really was gone. It wasn’t fair that this had happened to him, and it wasn’t fair that we were stuck in this fight rather than him having the time to deal with the trauma he’d been through.
I gently squeezed Damon’s knee and stood up to look at the others only for Damon to grip my waist with his hands and pull me down into his lap. I sagged into his embrace, letting my eyes close as I relished the feeling of having my mate so close.
“This is good though, right?” Maddox said quietly. “This feels like the first thing that’s gone our way for a long time. Arik has no idea that Damon can do this, and we finally have an advantage if we can separate him from the Endless.”
“But how do we do it?” Ryder asked. “Damon can’t go around separating them all one at a time. It would take far too long and as soon as Arik figured out what was happening he’d throw everything he had at Damon.”
I felt myself tense at the thought. At the realization that Damon could not only be harmed, but end up back in Arik’s hands once more. Damon’s arms tightened every so slightly around me in response and he softly kissed my shoulder.
“He needs a bridge,” Dean said pushing away from where he was leaning against a wall and starting to pace. “If we can find a way for Damon to reach everyone at once, Arik would never know what was happening until it was too late.”
“I could do that,” I realised aloud. “I could connect with all the chains. I’ve done it before when I freed the Endless at the Ice Falls. I could do it again and act as a bridge for Damon’s magic to follow.”
“The Ice Falls took everything you had,” Dean said quietly.
He’d stopped in his pacing and turned to look at me in Damon’s lap.
The corner of his lips ticked up slightly in smile and the sight and then he frowned as he no doubt started to run all of the scenarios through his head.
Ever the soldier running the tactics. “You were drained more than you admitted afterward. And we’re talking hundreds more this time, simultaneously, that’s not something you have the capacity for. ”
“She could.” Maddox spoke from the other side of the room, and we all turned to look at him.
He was leaning forwards in his chair, elbows on his knees, and there was colour rising in his cheeks that had nothing to do with Summer magic. He glanced at me. A silent question.
I nodded.
He took a breath.
“Alyssa and I talked earlier. About what I’ve been feeling through the bond.
There’s this... pull. Has been for days.
Building since we left the Fifth Court.” He ran a hand through his hair.
“I think the bonds want to merge. The five connections we each have with her are trying to weave into a single current and they can’t do it on their own. The magic needs us to help it.”
Silence. Different in quality from the one before. This one was charged because we all knew how bonds were forged.
I gently extracted myself from Damon’s lap and started to pace, because I knew where this was going and I wanted to be able to see all of their faces when it was eventually said aloud. We weren’t doing this is even one of them wasn’t fully on board.
“Help it how?” Ryder asked, very slowly, but I could see him trying to suppress a grin from making it’s way to his lips.
“However bonds get made. Which is how they’ve been made with each of us along the way. Intimacy. Magic. The two together.” Maddox’s voice stayed level but the pink in his cheeks deepened. “Except this time it has to be all of us. At the same time. With her.”
Nobody moved.
I watched the understanding land in each of them.
Tank took a slow breath in and let it out.
Dean’s arms stayed folded but his jaw tightened.
Damon’s shadows had gone completely still, which was somehow louder than if they’d been flailing.
Ryder was staring at the ceiling as though it had become the most fascinating ceiling in Nymeria.
Heat was crawling up my neck. I had thought about this a dozen times before I’d let Maddox bring it up. I’d thought I was prepared. I was not.
“It isn’t only about the Endless,” Maddox added, softer.
“Alyssa’s carrying more magic every day.
The realm is settling onto her and the five separate bonds are being stretched to hold what’s pouring through her.
They aren’t going to hold for much longer.
Not through a battle. Not through what comes after.
If we don’t braid them, they could break.
And if they break… we all saw the widow at the hissing swamp. I won’t let that happen to her.”
That point did something to the air in the room.
“Well,” Ryder said eventually. He was still looking at the ceiling. “That’s a sentence I did not have on my list for today.”
“Shut up,” Tank said mildly.
“I’m not saying no. I’m saying it’s a lot.”
“It’s a lot,” I agreed.
“A lot is one word for it,” Dean muttered.
I took a breath and tried to pull myself together. If anyone was going to give the moment its dignity it was going to have to be me.
“I know this isn’t...”
“I’m in.”
Damon. The shadows around him flared once and settled again.
I blinked at him.
“Whatever you need.” His voice had gone low and even.
“Whatever it takes. I spent far too long watching myself hurt people through my own eyes. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life watching you fight a war with one hand tied behind your back because we didn’t give you the chance to be as strong as you could possibly be. I’m in.”
Maddox had tears in his eyes. I could feel them through the bond.
“I’m in.” That was Tank. Steady as ever, quiet as ever, but his voice had a weight to it that was new.
He was looking right at me. “Sweetheart. I told you a long time ago that I was yours. That hasn’t changed and it’s not going to change.
If the magic needs all of us at once to give you what you need to survive this, then that’s what it gets. ”
“Tank...”
“We’re not losing you.” He said it like a fact.
“That isn’t on the table. Whatever has to happen to make sure you walk out of this fight on your own two feet, it happens.
I want what comes after. I want the years.
I want the quiet house and the ordinary mornings and you asleep beside me when I wake up.
I’m not negotiating the route we take to get there. ”
My throat had closed up. I couldn’t speak.
Ryder had stopped staring at the ceiling. He was looking at me now, and the smile was gone. The humour was gone. There was just him underneath, the Ryder I’d seen in flashes over the past few months, the one without the mask.
“I’m in,” he said. “For the record. I was in before Damon spoke. I was in before Maddox finished the sentence. I’m just bad at stillness, so I had to fill the air with something.”
“Ryder...”
“I love you.” He said it plainly. “I want the whole messy life with you. A ridiculous house with a dog that Tank will pretend to be annoyed by and secretly love more than the rest of us. I want the arguments about dishes. I want growing old. If getting there means the five of us have to work out how to share a bedroom for one night, we will work it out.”
I laughed. I hadn’t meant to. It came out wet and broken.
Maddox’s hand found mine. He squeezed.
“You know where I stand,” he said quietly. “I’ve already been the one talking about it. I want you alive. I want the life. There’s nothing I won’t do to keep both of them.”
Four of them.
I looked at Dean.
He hadn’t uncrossed his arms. He was back against the wall, in the half-shadow, and for a long moment I thought he wasn’t going to speak.
Then he did.
“I’m in.” His voice was rough. “I was in the second I looked in your eyes back at that dive bar.”
“Dean...”
“Don’t.” He pushed off the wall, his eyes fixed on me. “I’m not letting you die. I’m not letting this realm take you because the magic wasn’t strong enough to hold. Whatever that means. Whatever it costs.”
He came across the room then, and he took my other hand. His fingers were cold but steady.
“I want the life too,” he said, quietly. “I want it with you. I want it with them. All of us. When this is done and you’re on the other side of it, I want the quiet years. I’m not walking away from that because I have to share a room.”
I was crying. Properly crying. The tears were running down my face and I hadn’t given them permission to start.
“Okay.” My voice cracked. “Okay.”
Maddox lifted my hand and pressed his lips to my knuckles.
Dean brought his mouth to my temple and held it there.
I could feel them all through the bond now, all five, and underneath the nervousness and the heat and the slightly stunned quality of having just agreed in principle to the strangest evening of our lives, there was something else.
Love. Enormous, unambiguous love. Five shades of it. Woven together and pulling me up.
Ryder finally spoke again.
“Right.” His voice was soft. “So. Practical question. When?”
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and laughed again, shaky.
“Tonight.”