10. Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Maddox
I felt the moment she surrendered to sleep as the last of the tension seeped from her body. The others had fallen asleep just as quickly. We were all running on the adrenaline of the day and the crash had been inevitable. I’d seen it in her eyes as she’d struggled to even tell us what was happening. Some would have tried to force the answer out of her, but we had all the time in the world, and Alyssa wasn’t the only one who needed a break from the chaos that seemed to follow our every step.
Dean was out like a light. It was a relief to see that the injury to his side was healing, even if it was completely impossible. I’d been so sure I was going to lose him today.
Damon.
I still couldn’t believe he’d done what he did. I knew deep inside that he hadn’t been trying to kill Dean. He was aiming for Alyssa, and it was only because Dean stepped into his path that he’d been injured instead.
Yet there hadn’t been a single emotion that crossed his face when he saw what he did. There wasn’t an ounce of regret or horror. Whoever that person was that we’d encountered at the Winter Palace, it wasn’t my brother. The problem was, I had no idea how we were supposed to get him back.
I rolled onto my back, staring up at the canopy above me. The material looked like an autumn leaf that had rotted to nothing but a fragile lace of veins. It was more beautiful than I had the wits to appreciate right now.
I should be sleeping. If recent events were anything to go by, this could be my only opportunity to get some decent sleep for a while. My training screamed at me that I should rest while I could. But that didn’t help my eyes to close or my mind to stop forcing visions of my brother plunging a blade deep into Dean’s side.
The lion inside me was just as agitated as I was, but his perspective was far simpler. A threat to our mate existed, and that was unacceptable to him. It didn’t matter to him that he was our brother. The only label that mattered was threat and there was only one way to deal with him.
But it did matter to my human side.
Damon mattered.
I knew him as well as I knew myself. He was the type of man who stood for what was right, no matter the cost. There had to be a reason for him to align himself with Arik that we couldn’t see. Something forcing his hand.
The alternative was impossible.
So that left me with only one question. What happened next?
Alyssa couldn’t walk away from the Spring Court and whatever people Rhidian had hidden here. Not to mention that there was clearly more going on than we knew or even understood. Tomorrow would be a day for answers, and whatever I was walking into, I needed to do it with at least a plan of what I wanted for Damon.
Giving up on him was a possibility I couldn’t let myself consider.
Arik was the common problem. He’d terrorised this realm and its people, and now Damon was involved somehow. What if this was like The Endless? What if Arik had his hooks into Damon and he had no choice in what he was doing?
It was a convenient theory that I happily clung to, even if it felt a lot like lying to myself.
The only way forward that left us was Rhidian’s plan. We came here knowing we wouldn’t abandon Nymeria. If that was the case, then we had to stand against Arik. It was a fight we could never avoid, and it was a necessary one if we were going to save the people here who so desperately needed it.
Rhidian’s plan might have seemed ridiculous to Alyssa, but it wasn’t any worse than ours. We were only five people. Rhidian said he had an army. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea to hear him out. The Spring Court had hidden these people for long enough. It could work the same for us. We could seek shelter here while we healed, while we trained. All we needed was time to regroup and time to find a plan to deal with Arik. One that wouldn’t see us, and everyone Rhidian had worked so hard to save, dead at the end.
So, basically the impossible.
A frustrated sigh gusted out of me. There had to be something I wasn’t considering. An option that could swing the tide in our favour. A weakness. A weapon.
There was always a way. We just had to find it.
A thudding on the outer door had me bolting up in bed. I didn’t even realise I’d fallen asleep. If the darkness outside of the window was any indication, at least some time had passed. It definitely wasn’t morning though, so what the hell could be so urgent to have someone hammering on the door?
Alyssa was still dead asleep, but Dean was out of bed and striding towards the door like he was itching for a fight. Given how volatile he’d been in our life back in the human realm, and the added contribution of the alpha wolf he now held, it was possibly exactly what he was hoping would happen.
I slipped out of the bed, trying not to wake anyone else as I did. To be fair, if the hammering on the door hadn’t done it yet, I doubted my jostling the mattress slightly would. It was better that Alyssa got the sleep she needed, and from the way she snuggled into Ryder’s side, she obviously needed some of us with her as well.
Jogging quietly across the bedroom floor, I gently closed the bedroom door and made it to Dean’s side just as he was throwing open the main doors. Rhidian didn’t even look guilty about standing there, his fist still raised in the air as he prepared to knock again.
“Finally, do you know how long I’ve been standing here?”
“Not long enough,” Dean snarked. “She’s sleeping, and it’s still night. Fuck off.”
Rhidian’s grin had me considering punching him in the face, so I had no idea how Dean was holding himself back right now. It was definitely unlike him. Perhaps having to keep the wolf under control was helping with his own restraint as well.
“Well, I hate to disturb your beauty sleep, but you’re all needed in the war room.”
“I don’t give a fuck where you think we need to be. Like I said, Alyssa is asleep, and the least you can do is let her have it.” Okay, maybe he was closer to punching Rhidian in the face than I realised.
Finally, something that seemed familiar!
Rhidian held up his hands as if he thought that was going to placate Dean. “I get it. You’ve had a hard time getting to this point, but our scouts have just come in and we have updated movements on Arik’s forces.”
“Are they at our door?” Dean snapped.
Rhidian looked confused, but then answered, “Well, no. They’re…”
“Are they moving to surround us or launch an attack?”
Rhidian squinted. He no doubt could see where this was heading and didn’t like it. “Again, no, but…”
“ But, fuck off.” Dean slammed the door in Rhidian’s face and then started back towards the bedroom.
Apparently, I hadn’t been needed after all.
I waited a beat to see if the hammering would start on the door again, and when it didn’t, I followed in Dean’s footsteps. Surprisingly, he came to a stop in the sitting room and sank down into the chair he’d sat in before. As he sagged back into the seat with a sigh, I knew exactly how he felt. There was a constant edge I felt like I was holding myself on. A tension I couldn’t quite shake and I didn’t know why.
“This is going to get real complicated, real fast,” I commented as I took the seat opposite him.
Dean hummed in agreement, his hands coming to the bandage that wrapped around his middle as he slowly fidgeted with the binding. From the way he was staring off into the distance, I knew he had something on his mind. And as usual, I was going to have to wait him out…
“Something is off about this place,” Dean suddenly said, surprising the hell out of me.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what to say. I was so used to waiting in anticipation of his—admittedly not very big—reveal that I realised I was completely unprepared to respond. “Yeah.”
Dean looked at me like I’d lost my mind, but then he continued on, anyway. “All these years, Rhidian has been hiding the people he’s managed to save, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what he said.”
“So, where are they?”
“I dunno. This is a big place. Maybe they’re further into the palace or something?”
“But Alyssa has been in our realm for decades. Even if he didn’t start right away, which it seemed from the way he was talking like he did, he still had to get, what? Like, fifty years in? That’s got to be a couple of hundred people, at least. Can you really hide that many people and there not be a single sign of them at the only point of entry?”
“Well, we don’t know it’s the only point of entry,” I argued, not even sure why I was trying to play devil’s advocate, because he was right. This place seemed dead and from the way the guards had been so afraid of the forest outside, I doubted all these people were hiding outside the palace walls.
Dean sighed, his eyes cutting a glare in my direction before he unwrapped the bandage, giving up all pretence that he was actually considering keeping it on.
“Rhidian’s hiding something, and apparently it’s a couple of hundred people and an army he thinks can take down Arik. But why? Why not have them waiting for Alyssa when she got here? Show her that there’s still hope in this place, still some life inside these walls.”
He had a point.
“Do you think Fizzle can be trusted?” I asked.
It was a complete change of subject, but it was one of the screaming issues we had that could at least lead to some kind of resolution for the others.
“I don’t know. I never thought my life would involve having a fluffy little bird cat calling the shots. But, damn, we wouldn’t have made it this far without him. If he wanted to hurt Alyssa, he had more than enough opportunity to walk us into something we couldn’t survive. He kept her safe. He tried to make her leave. That has to count for something. He’s definitely working with Rhidian. There’s no doubt about that. But I think he’s questioning Alyssa’s role. I think we could still persuade him to get her out of here if we needed.”
It was exactly the same conclusion I’d come to. We could maybe trust him to help her run. The problem was that I doubted Alyssa would accept it as a solution to any problem we currently faced.
“I doubt he’d stand against whatever Rhidian has going on here. Anything we get from him, it’s going to need to be under the table without him knowing,” I pointed out.
Dean hummed in agreement. “So the question really is, can we trust Rhidian?”
I wanted to say no. But really, what had he done to prove to us that we couldn’t? Rhidian helped back at the cave. He took that woman and her children to safety when we called for help. He didn’t even ask for anything in return. Clearly, he and Alyssa had enough history that she didn’t even question his involvement. From the sounds of it, he wasn’t one to fit into court politics, and if anything, that just made him more like us than anything else. Politics were never any of our strong points. We were soldiers. None of us had even excelled at negotiations training.
“What do you think about Tank being her king?” It hadn’t bothered me at the time. It made sense. He’d been by her side for so long, of course, it would be him.
“It doesn’t matter. We all know she’s ours. Titles mean nothing.” Dean sounded so sure, so convinced, that I wished I could walk through life with an ounce of the confidence he possessed.
“Are you going to mate with her?”
Dean looked up from the roll of bandages he’d been tightly winding back together in his hands, making sure all the edges lined up so it looked almost unused. I couldn’t work out the look on his face, though. Maybe it was the phrasing. Mate—it was a word that had meant nothing to us in the life before Alyssa. Now it felt like it echoed through my body in time with every heartbeat.
“Of course.” Then, like an afterthought, he added. “She’s mine.”
The corner of my lips ticked up in a smile at the surety in his voice. “You’re going to have to share her, you know?”
I saw the way he slightly bared his teeth before turning back to the material in his hands like he was the picture of control.
“How do you do that?” I asked, truly interested. Even if only because I knew it wouldn’t be long before I needed the help. Mostly, though, we hadn’t talked about the changes we’d been through and I wanted to know how he felt about them.
“Do what?” he asked gruffly, even though I knew he understood. It was his way of deflecting. If I let it slide, he’d know it wasn’t important to me. But if I pushed, he’d tell me absolutely everything. It was how we worked. How we waded through the day to day bullshit.
“How do you hold back the wolf when he’s screaming to be released?”
His eyes came back to mine as he placed the discarded bandages on the table beside him and then turned slightly in his seat so he could give me his full attention. He was moving so much easier, and now that I was thinking about it, his colour was nearly back to normal as well.
“He knows we need to work together if we’re going to protect her. She’s the only reason. Alyssa is his mate and I… I think she’s mine as well. It’s strange. I can feel his emotions and they’re mine, but they’re not. I can’t feel the edges of us anymore. It’s less like he’s the extra thing sitting at the side of my mind and more like we’re the same.”
It sounded terrifying. And yet… it sounded like a dream I’d spent my entire life fighting for. That missing part of yourself that people constantly searched for.
“Doesn’t it scare you that you’re going to lose yourself?”
“No. He is me. I can’t lose myself to that. You must feel it. You feel that place he sits inside you that felt like a void for so long. All that’s happening is that the jagged edges are finally smoothing out.”
My eyes ached at the thought, at the relief that I wasn’t the only one. Because that hole inside me had felt like one day it would consume me whole. The longer we’d spent in the army, the wider it had stretched. Fighting for a cause that hadn’t been our own, being nothing but a weapon picked up and wielded by a general who long lost sight of our country’s needs, had started to break us all. Even when we were too blind to see it happening. The fighting, the killing, was grinding us down into nothing.
“I wish Damon could feel this.” We hadn’t really spoken of him since fleeing the Winter Palace. There were no plans to save him anymore, and I didn’t know how I felt about that.
“He will.” The certainty in Dean’s voice had my attention, but more than that, it sparked that flame of hope. “We’ll get him out, Maddox. We just need to separate him from Arik. Once we have his body back, we’ll work on rescuing his mind.”
I nodded. It sounded so simple, but I knew it would be anything but. We had no idea how to do that, let alone if it was even possible. This world was too unfamiliar to us, but maybe that was a good thing. We didn’t know its limitations yet and what better way to break boundaries than to be completely unaware they existed in the first place?
Damon was coming home. I wouldn’t stop until I made it happen.