19. Chapter 19
Chapter 19
Maddox
T he sunlight was only just touching the windows when my eyes finally opened. My body felt like I’d run a marathon and gone ten rounds with someone the size of Tank.
Slowly slipping out from the tangle of limbs, my feet met the cold tile of the floor, and I stretched, hearing the audible pop of my spine as I did. I couldn’t help but look down at the beautiful woman at the centre of the bed. My mate. It felt so right that I couldn't believe I’d made it this far in life without her.
I could feel Alyssa’s bond at the centre of my chest like a comforting warmth, reminding me she was mine. Beside it, each of the guys sat. A pride. It was almost like we’d been working towards this our whole lives without even realising. But something was still missing.
Damon.
He should be here. He should be a part of this.
It didn’t feel right to let this loneliness and pain flow over me when I was standing over the others. I didn’t want to taint what had happened here with my grief over my brother. So, I silently stalked across the bedroom, slipping out of the door and into the sitting room instead.
As soon as I was two steps into the room, I paused. The lion went on full alert as a scent reached me that didn’t belong.
Someone had been here while we’d all been sleeping. If the scent hadn’t been enough, the new tray of food on the table and the bundles of clothes were definitely enough to give it away.
I moved to the main door, testing the lock and finding it locked. Whoever had been inside had a key, which troubled me even more. No one should have been able to come inside here without us knowing. We shouldn’t have let our guard down enough for them to get that close to our sleeping mate.
The lion inside me roared out his rage. It echoed around my mind, building my agitation even higher. With it came a need to hunt, to remove the threat to our mate and our pride.
My hand gripped the handle of the door and I was moments away from ripping it open and giving into my urge when a noise behind me had me turning, bracing for an attack. Only it wasn’t an interloper. It was Alyssa, leaning against the bedroom door with a silly grin on her face.
I moved towards her without a second thought, pulling her into my arms and kissing her as the lion purred in happiness at having her close.
“I thought you were asleep.” The lion was pissed at me for having woken her, and the furry fuck was practically pouting at me.
“I was. But then I felt your anger through the bond and I wanted to make sure that you were all right.”
If he could have, I had no doubt the lion would be clawing at my mind in punishment right now, and I pointed out to him that this was actually his fault as well. “Mate should be asleep,” he grumbled.
I wasn’t getting used to that anytime soon.
It was strange enough knowing that he was always present, watching, assessing. But to actually hear his thoughts as well, it would take a lot of getting used to.
“Someone was in our rooms while we were asleep,” I told her, knowing that she would have already realised the same thing.
Now that I said it aloud, I could see how ridiculous I was being. It didn’t stop the lions need to hunt them down, though.
“Get mate back to bed, then hunt,” the lion grumbled, not willing to let it go.
I shook my head gently, willing him to the back of my mind, and he slunk back into the depths, not happy about being denied.
Alyssa smiled again, slipping out of my arms and going to investigate the things that had been delivered. She seemed fairly happy to see it all, reaching out and grabbing some of the bread without giving it a second thought.
As she raised it to her lips, my hand darted out, slapping it out of her grasp and the bread tumbled to the floor.
She slowly turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised, and I knew I was about to get it full force if I didn’t explain myself quickly.
“It could be poisoned,” I pointed out, realising the lion was still more in control than I’d realised. “We don’t know where it came from or who brought it,” I tried to reason.
Alyssa looked amused. The little smile on her face made her all kinds of cute and that had the lion obsessing over something completely different to poison and betrayal. Then she pointed at the tray, or more specifically, the note from Rhidian that sat on it.
“It could still be poisoned,” I grumbled.
I didn’t trust that fucker. I was convinced he knew more than he was telling us, and until he could prove that he was without question on our side, there was no way I’d let him near Alyssa alone.
Knowing that I might be bordering on the ridiculous, I quickly picked up another piece of bread and shoved it in my mouth, chewing quickly before swallowing. There . Now we’d find out if poison was going to be a problem and it finally appeased the lion enough for him to back off and let me feel like myself again. Or at least whatever this new version of me was supposed to be.
Alyssa laughed, sitting down on the seat behind her and then patting the cushion for me to join her. “Are you quite done with all your male posturing?”
“I just want to keep you safe. I… the lion… we need to know that you’re safe.” I didn’t know how to explain the urges that were rushing through me. They weren’t exactly new, it was more like they were heightened. But I was so entangled with the lion inside me now that I didn’t know where I ended and he began. Or if we were even supposed to be separate.
I needed to talk to Tank. He’d tried to explain some of this to us before, but I hadn’t known what questions to ask back then. Besides, if I was being honest, I hadn’t entirely been listening. It was hard to concentrate when you were realising you weren’t alone in your body anymore.
“You know I can protect myself, right?” She reached for a plate and loaded up some food onto it before looking at me as if asking permission to eat.
The lion surged to the front of my mind again, gleefully happy at the way his mate was deferring to us. In reality, I knew she was just waiting to see if I was going to slap it out of her hand again like a madman, but I didn’t have the heart to tell the fluffy fucker who was practically making heart eyes at Alyssa right now.
I shook my head again and when she started to lower the plate, thinking I was about to deny her, I picked up a piece of cheese that she’d put on her plate and brought it to her lips. Unfortunately, this didn’t exactly convince the lion to back off. As her lips closed over the food, brushing the tips of my fingers, I felt my body ache for the shift as he tried to take control.
“Back off,” I snarled into my mind, only to be met with an answering roar. “ We can’t shift in here. I need to talk to her first, anyway, and see how she’s doing. A lot happened last night. A lot changed. We need to make sure she’s okay.”
I knew it was the only thing that would make him accept defeat, and I was right, because, as he withdrew this time, my mind felt clearer than it had since the moment I’d awoken.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her hand coming to my knee and drawing my attention back to her. “You seem like you’re having a… I don’t exactly know how to describe it without potentially insulting you.”
I grinned, realising exactly how I must look to an outside observer.
“It’s not easy sharing a body when you’re used to being alone in your head,” I admitted. “But… It’s strange. It’s not that he was always there in the background, but he doesn’t feel like a stranger. I don’t even know if that makes sense.”
It was true, though. The lion hadn’t always been with me, but it felt like I knew him. It scared me how much he felt like a part of me rather than a separate being. Was it supposed to be that way? It was almost like he was the part of me that thought the things I’d always felt guilty about feeling. The aggression, my basest needs. The things society had taught me to suppress because it didn’t belong in the human realm. But we weren’t in the human realm anymore. This was Nymeria, and only the strongest survived here.
“We’re all changing,” Alyssa muttered, lifting her arm and examining the mark which now extended from her hairline to cover her neck, shoulder and right arm. It was a beautiful pattern of swirling vine, symbols nestled between the leaves, one in particular catching my eye. When I reached out to touch it with my fingertips, I felt it like a caress inside my chest and I knew it represented the bond I had with her.
“My magic feels so different now,” she admitted.
“How so?”
“It’s stronger to start with. I feel like a wall has finally cracked and crumbled inside of me and whatever potential I once had is just at my fingertips. I don’t even feel like I need to reach for the magic anymore. It’s like electricity flowing through my body, waiting to be unleashed. It wants to be set free. Almost like it has a specific purpose, and I just don’t know what it is yet,” she calmly explained.
Personally, I’d be freaking the fuck out if I felt the way she was describing. She sounded like a person-shaped bomb, and that could never be a good thing.
“Do you think it’s dangerous? For you, I mean.”
She thought for a moment and then shook her head. “No. It will always be my magic. It would never do anything to hurt me. Like when you summoned the flames back at the Winter Palace. You felt the warmth, right? But being that close to the flames should have burned you. It should have burned us all.”
She was right. I hadn’t realised it before.
“Your magic is still you, like your animal is you,” she added.
She leaned forward then, grabbing the note from Rhidian I’d been trying to ignore. “It seems the rest of the palace felt the wave of magic when we completed the bond last night. Fizzle is going to be pissed about that.”
It probably should have pissed me off that Rhidian had felt the magic of our bond being formed. Instead, I got a smug satisfaction out of him knowing Alyssa was even further out of his reach. I’d seen the way he looked at her, even if Alyssa seemed oblivious to it.
“Should we be worried that anyone else felt it?” I asked, wondering how far the wave had actually travelled.
“No. It will have been contained within the court but I doubt it reached as far as the outer edges.” She seemed so unphased about the whole thing and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a facade and deep down, she was freaking the fuck out.
I could feel Alyssa through our bond and she seemed calm, but could she block things from our connection? This felt like something the woman I’d first met would freak out about.
“Alyssa?” She looked at me curiously when she heard the question in my voice. “The widow back at the swamp… was she…?”
“She had the same bond that I have with you, with the others,” Alyssa confirmed, already knowing what I was talking about. “I think if one of us… I think the bond with the others would sustain us.”
“So we only need to worry about you if we all die?” It was a morbid question, but I needed the answer.
“No one is dying,” Alyssa growled. Then her face softened, and she smiled. “We’re getting through this together.”
I nodded, pulling her close and wrapped my arm around her. We both ate quietly from the plate she held, and I traced the pattern of her mark with my fingertips as we soaked up the comfort of just being together.
When the others finally emerged from the bedroom, it was like they could tell we’d reached a moment of peace and they all joined us at the seating area, eating their fill to prepare for the day ahead.
Rhidian had told us yesterday that we could start training with him and some of his men today out at the sparring grounds. They were apparently the only outside space anyone at the palace was comfortable using because it was an internal courtyard.
I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be stuck inside, afraid to leave the palace. Never really feeling the sunlight on your skin. Never having the chance to stretch out your muscles as you embraced what it was to be free.
“How many people do you think live inside the palace?” I asked, breaking the comfortable silence we’d all fallen into.
The guys looked around at each other and shrugged. Of course, they didn’t have the answer. They had no more information about this place than I did. Still, it was something worth thinking about. If we were going to protect these people, we needed to know not only how many of them there were, but where the hell Rhidian was hiding them.
“The palace can hold over six hundred people across the various levels. And that doesn’t include the barracks. Rhidian mentioned that the people here had taken to living in the barracks and the palace workers’ quarters because they didn’t want to roam too far into the palace. Apparently, the whispers of restless spirits were enough to keep them away.”
Tank frowned. “That’s not right.”
I knew what he meant. These people had lost everything. They deserved to live with whatever comfort they could find, not be relegated to some hidden places.
“I know, but Rhidian assures me it was their decision and no one else’s. Hopefully, it’s something we can change. Ideally, we need to get the town workable for them again. At least that way they have the chance to have their own homes and not have to share. Assuming Rhidian has the number of people here that I’m assuming he does.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Dean told her grimly.
I knew why he didn’t sound happy about it. Because the only way to find out was to find Rhidian and get on with the day. Staying here in our happy bubble of denial wasn’t an option. Not when we had a prophecy to prove wrong and a realm to save.