42. Chapter 42
Chapter 42
Ryder
W e walked for almost a day. The mountains in this part of Nymeria were beautiful, and it was more like a rough hike than what I’d imagined. No one was really having much difficulty apart from the tiredness of a day’s journey setting in. The trail we were following was rough, but if anything, that reassured me enough to not feel like I had to keep looking over my shoulder. Because trails got rough when they weren’t used and we were banking on not coming across any of Arik’s forces until we were ready to fight.
My wolf didn’t like this one bit, though. He was constantly at the edge of my mind, watching our pack, our mate, looking for any sign that our enemies were nearby. It was difficult to calm him down when I had the same concerns. But him being so alert was giving me some reassurance as well. No one would get close without him realising it, even if it was exhausting to deal with him.
Damon had been quiet for most of the day. The chains on his wrists and ankles clinked softly as he moved, and every single sound tore at my heart. It felt so wrong to see him this way. Especially when we’d had no sign of the nightmare all day. This was the longest time he’d stayed as Damon, and the hope that it meant he was getting stronger was going to be hard to deal with if I was proved wrong.
The deal with the nightmare hung over us, and we were all trying not to think about it. I didn’t even know Damon’s thoughts. It had to be tempting, but I guess that's why it had made it. Knowing that I had something like that in my head, though, would be hard to live with.
The wolf huffed indignantly in response. “ You know I don’t mean you, and you’re not a worm taking up residence in my brain, ” I reminded him softly.
There was no response as the wolf sulked in the back of my head. At least it gave me a break from his constant anxiety.
My gaze found Rhidian, who seemed to be subtly falling back through the group, no doubt to get closer to Alyssa. I felt sorry for the guy. We’d all known we wanted her as soon as we met her. I couldn’t even imagine how it would have felt if she hadn’t felt the same. Let alone endure it for decades, only to watch her bond with others.
“How much longer do we have until we stop for the night?” I asked Rhidian.
Maybe befriending him was cruel, but we were in this for the long haul, and if we could all get along, it would make life easier. For him as well as for us. If he got to know us, maybe knowing that how we truly felt about Alyssa would relieve some of the sting. There was no doubt in my mind that he wouldn’t become part of the pack. Rhidian just didn’t gel with us that way.
“Not much longer. I don’t want to push them so hard that they’re exhausted by the time we get there. Plus, we have some good cover a little further up we can use to our advantage,” Rhidian replied as he fell into step beside me.
“You’ve done this route before?”
“A few times when we were in the area and wanted to see what Arik’s forces were up to. We have some spies in the villages, but sometimes it’s easier to get eyes on him ourselves, especially this far out.”
I could see the logic in that. It was one thing to let people pass on information about the Endless as they came and went, but to venture into an active war zone, it was too much to put on a single person.
“Is that why you’re so sure we won’t come across any of his soldiers? Because you’ve done this before.” It was a question that had been plaguing me since we started this trek.
“That, and the fact no one comes through the mountains if they can help it.”
“Why?”
“Because, usually, they die,” Rhidian answered, completely unphased by the fact that we were now walking through the place where most of Nymeria feared to tread.
“Erm… should we be worried about that, too?” My wolf was back at the surface again and his anxiety had doubled.
“It’s always something to be worried about in Nymeria. But Arik has hunted enough of the creatures around here that most have moved down into the planes now. We should be fine.”
Why didn’t that fill me with confidence?
“I’m going to run to the front and direct us through to where we can set up camp,” Rhidian said, slapping me on the shoulder as if completely unaware of how much I was freaking out right now. And then he jogged away while I tried not to enter a spiral that ended with me grabbing Alyssa and running back for the ship.
“What was that all about?” Maddox asked as he caught up to me.
Dean and Alyssa were walking in front of us with Tank and Damon. Dean didn’t look happy about the whole thing, and I knew he wanted Alyssa as far away from Damon as he could get. His problem was that he also didn’t want to take his eyes off her, so instead he was set on sulking and growling at anyone who came near him.
Alyssa seemed to take it all in good humour, but it must have been wearing thin on Tank because he dropped back to join us, shrugging at Dean when he looked back at him in question.
Damon wasn’t going anywhere. Not that he’d get far, even if he wanted to. The nightmare seemed to be right where he wanted to be. There didn’t seem to be any love lost between it and Arik, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it had its own plan it was trying to set into motion.
“Rhidian was just telling me how no one comes through the mountains because everyone dies here, so we shouldn’t meet anyone on our lovely hike to the death fields.”
Okay, so maybe that was a bit dark for me, but my mind had little else to do while we were on this monotonous trek other than keep reminding me of the worst-case scenario. Who knew that so many things could go wrong?
Tank shrugged. “I doubt Rhidian would have brought us this way if it was going to place Alyssa at risk. Even if he didn’t have any other motives, he needs her to survive until whatever fight they believe will see the end of this and that hardly seems like it will be some skirmish on a mountain pass.”
“It baffles me how we got into a position where knowing we’re going to die some other horrible way is the sunny side of any scary situation,” I quipped, desperately trying to reach for that no worries attitude I was known for and struggling to pull it back into place again.
“The sun shines in even the most terrible of places,” Tank said with a shrug.
I resisted the urge to point out all the occasions where that wasn’t true.
I hadn’t realised the front of our line had come to a stop until we all bunched up enough that Damon’s pleading voice reached us.
“This is madness. Surely, you can see that. Coming through the mountains won’t save you. Arik has his Endless all around the palace. It doesn’t matter what direction you come from; as soon as they see you, their numbers alone will overwhelm you.”
“Shut. Up,” Dean growled.
But now that the rest of us had grown close enough to hear their conversation, Damon seemed to see this as his opportunity to win others over to his side. He looked at Alyssa, and a curious expression crossed his face before he turned to Maddox and I.
“I know you love her. You can still save her if you turn back. Take her back to the ship and just leave. The Autumn Court is lost. Go back home. Go to the portal and leave this place behind,” he pleaded.
“You need to trust us,” Maddox said softly, his voice cracking with emotion as he talked to his brother. “You’ll understand when you see what happens next.”
Damon sighed in frustration, his eyes darting around like he was searching for anyone that would listen to him. It killed me to see him like this. It was so unlike the man who would have done anything to save us when we were nothing but kids. He still cared, that much was obvious, but the Damon we knew would never have backed away from a fight, no matter how impossible it seemed. He’d have been at the front, taking the full force to save us from ourselves if need be.
The people around us were looking for places to bed down and packs were dropped on the ground as weary fighters fell next to them. These people were facing down a fight that some of them wouldn’t survive, some of them didn’t even seem to want to. The last thing they needed was to listen to Damon freaking out and making them feel worse.
This situation could easily escalate to a point where we lost control, and we needed to get Damon in hand before it approached that level.
“What’s the nightmare like?” I asked him, grasping the first topic that came to my mind and then cringing at how terrible an idea it was.
Damon looked at me in surprise, his gaze darting side to side like he was looking for the catch. Or maybe it was the voice in his head, taunting him about how he’d never be rid of it.
“It’s… it’s evil,” Damon whispered, shuffling back a step, his shoulders curling in on himself as he let himself feel the pain of his situation for a moment.
Dean dropped his pack next to a cluster of rocks before stepping up to Alyssa and helping her take the pack from her back. I saw the way he kept his eyes on Damon the entire time. He was the enemy in our midst, after all.
“Do you think it’s getting weaker?” I asked, trying to draw Damon into a conversation until we could figure out what to do with him. “You’ve been in control for the whole day now.”
He looked confused as he stared at me, his gaze darting to the sun as if to gauge if that was actually true. It troubled me that he hadn’t been able to track the passage of time, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was because we hadn’t, in fact, been walking with Damon all this time and the nightmare had just gotten better at imitating our brother.
“You’re all going to die,” he whispered sadly, instead of answering.
Stepping closer, I reached out for him, only for Damon to cringe at the idea. I let my hand drop to my side, but I didn’t back away. We were losing him. Even if it wasn’t to the nightmare, it was to the trauma of what was happening. Damon was at his limit and he was about to crack. I couldn’t let that happen.
“What do you know about the deal it’s offering?” I asked. “You know you can’t take it, right?”
It was the one thing we were all worried about. Maddox was convinced that it would never happen. He’d already said Damon would rather die than live with the possibility that he’d always be a danger to us. This was the first time I’d started to think he might actually be right.
“It says I’ll be free, but it’s a lie.” The sadness in his voice had Alyssa moving closer. I could see the heartbreak on her face. “I’ll never be free. This is all I have now.”
I wanted to reassure him we’d find a way, but maybe the nightmare was breaking me too, because right now I couldn’t see how we could. This wasn’t as easy as striding into battle to fight an enemy that could be killed. This was so much more delicate than that, and all we’d been taught in life was how to break things. Damon needed to be fixed, not cracked wide open, and we didn’t have the skills or the knowledge to know how.
“What’s it like to have the wolf?” Damon asked, taking me by surprise. “Does it… Is it like you’re losing yourself?”
This was his fear talking. He was seeing his own fate in the rest of us around him, and I knew letting him think this would take Damon one step closer to the edge. Besides, it couldn’t be further from the truth.
“I’m not losing myself,” I told him firmly. “The wolf is a part of me, yes, but I’m still here as well. It feels like I was always supposed to be this way. Like I’ve spent my entire life walking around with a piece of me missing and I’ve finally found it. I feel whole.”
It wasn’t the right thing to say. A look of sadness swept over Damon, and I wished there was something I could do to take it away. I wished there was a way to show him what this was like, that he’d been there and gone through the change with us.
And then the thought struck me. What if he did? What if Damon went through the change as well? Dean and Maddox were both alphas now. They could give him the bite, and Damon could become a shifter. What if this was the answer? I’d thought it before that Damon should have been with us. I was convinced that had he not been sent to Nymeria ahead of us, he would have shared the same fate. He was like us. I knew it in my core. But if we could give him his wolf now, maybe it would make him strong enough to fight the nightmare. Maybe this was what he needed to take back control finally. Would the wolf be enough to push the nightmare out?
The more I thought about it, the more questions I had, and for the first time since we’d got Damon back, I had a plan. Well, it was a theory at most, but it was still a possibility. Something to look into. Hope sparked back to life inside of me.
We couldn’t do it now. It was too dangerous to think about doing something like that so close to a fight. Not to mention we needed to give the nightmare as little warning as possible, so we’d need to wait until just before the next full moon.
Fizzle would be my best option for answers. There was the book Alyssa’s father had left her, too. Maybe there was something in there. I wished we still had access to all the books back at the palace, but the likelihood of us going back there was slim. I’d have to make do with what I could get my hands on out here. Maybe the other palaces would have resources we could scavenge if we made it to them.
“Just hold on for a little longer,” I told Damon. “I’ve got an idea, and I think it’s a good one. Don’t take the deal, don’t do anything stupid. We can…”
Damon laughed. He threw back his head as loud laughter raked through his body, and I knew something was wrong.
“What makes you think he has any choice in the matter, little wolf?” the nightmare asked through Damon’s lips, and then he continued to laugh like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
I wanted to reach out and wrap my hands around his throat. I couldn’t see that this was Damon anymore, it was just the thing that had taken him from me, and red-hot rage clouded my mind.
Before I could even react, Dean strode up to Damon and slammed his sword into the back of his head. The laughter cut off abruptly as Damon crumpled to the ground. No one even attempted to stop his fall as we stared down at his unconscious form in the grass.
“We can’t afford the noise,” Dean said grumpily, as if any of us would have criticised him for what he’d done.