Chapter 7 Ghost
This is why I don’t do people. I don’t like this feeling. Worry. Anxiety.
I like control, organization. Plans.
Fuck my life.
They’ve been practically locked together for two days. The moment I walked into that cabin and saw Silas in a rut, completely lost, eyes black, I knew we were fucked.
It’s taken everything I have to keep him from killing her. He fucks her too hard, for too long. But she keeps begging for it. I wonder if this is our fault. If we held off too long. Maybe her omega wouldn’t have been so desperate for it when she finally got a knot.
I force-feed them both water and bits of raw meat, using magic to leak some of the pheromones from the cabin. It helps a little. Long enough to keep them hydrated and fed.
Mona is covered in bruises. She’s so depleted from the heat that she’s not healing fast enough, and her body is a mess of fingerprints and bite marks, skin rashed from scraping against the wood floor and wall, whichever way he takes her.
It’s painful to watch, but also… I’m ashamed to admit I want to join them. When I enter the room, her eyes shoot to me, and she reaches for me, and in those moments, I feel… wanted. Desired in a way I’ve never been. And fuck, do I want her back.
But I keep my scent locked behind my shield, so she doesn’t do something even more reckless, like try to bond me.
Besides, Silas is too possessive right now to let her do anything beyond accepting food and water from me. It’s for the best. I don’t actually want Mona. I don’t want a relationship, or a pack. I’ll get them through this heat, then we’ll find our way to Silent Peak. Then I’ll be rid of them both.
I just finished killing a squirrel. To be safe, I kept the ward from letting any creature in or out, so we’re running out of animals to kill. I gut the body and peel off the skin, pulling out the organs, leaving them for other animals to eat.
When I walk back to the cabin, it takes me a second to notice the silence.
Mona’s been screaming for so long, her voice had grown hoarse. But she’s quiet now. I listen closer, honing my senses. She’s sleeping. Silas’s breaths are quicker. Her heat seems to be slowing down, but I’ve never witnessed one, I’ve no idea, really, when it’ll stop.
I rinse off the squirrel meat, refill the pitcher of water, and cautiously step inside the cabin. The scent of sex and pheromones is overwhelming. I leave the door open to let the air and heat out.
His expression is blank, but he watches me move about the cabin. I pour a cup of water and hand it over. He takes it, drinks it down in one gulp. I refill it and hand it back, tilting my chin toward the sleeping omega.
It takes every effort not to look. Not to enjoy her naked form. I’ve seen naked bodies before, but not like this. Not like hers.
Silas shakes his head. I argue, “She needs to drink. She isn’t healing.”
His expression tightens, but he shakes it off. He’s definitely more lucid now. “She needs sleep. If I wake her, she’ll try to fuck.”
I can’t argue with that. So, I walk to the other side of the cabin and lean against a small counter. Then, I let myself look.
She’s curled into a ball, her back to me. Her round ass is a perfect shape, like a painting. If she were draped in fabrics and wore a floral crown, I’d mistake her for a goddess. Maybe she is. Nothing less could make me this… distracted.
I look away before my erection strains harder.
If I could use magic on myself to take away this feeling of unrelenting want and need, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
It’s been difficult enough to refuse over the last few days, and I’ve only indulged in jerking off a few times.
Considering I just met my fated mate and her scent is the sweetest most enticing thing I’ve ever encountered in my entire fucking life, and, on top of that, she was in fucking heat, her perfume intoxicating—I’d say I held off quite well.
It’s only, I suspect, because I’m half-witch that I didn’t fall into a rut right alongside Silas.
The fact that my heart feels like it’s torn into a million pieces, that rejecting her feels like I’m dragging myself across broken glass while carrying the weight of a fucking redwood, has only added to my torment.
Even the sound of her voice—God, her voice, low and soft, raspy from all the pleasure—makes me want to curl up next to her and beg for forgiveness.
To tell her I changed my mind, please let me in.
But I won’t. I can’t. I don’t deserve a mate like her, and I’m better off alone, anyway.
I tear off pieces of the squirrel meat, arranging them in a bowl for when she wakes. I don’t know if she’d prefer it cooked, but she needs the nutrients, so I’ll leave it raw.
“You need to get control of yourself,” I tell him without looking up.
Carefully, he leans away from Mona, coming to sit at the edge of the bed. He’s still hard, somehow.
“I didn’t mean to rut her,” he says shamefully.
I shake my head. “That’s not what I mean.”
His brow furrows.
“You’re bonded now. She can feel what you feel.”
“I know that—” he starts, then, reading between the lines, he hangs his head in his hands and whispers, “Fuck.”
I feel uncomfortable. His scent changes from possessive and threatening to something more bitter. Hatred, or something like it. Self-hatred, maybe. More nuance tacks onto it. Disgust. Anger.
I shouldn’t care. He means nothing to me, I don’t know him. And he’s obviously a fucking mess.
Silas might be used to burying his emotions, but he won’t be able to hide all his darkness from her now that they’re bonded.
Omegas are natural empaths. Add in a fated mating bond—if she can connect with all his darkness, all that toxic rage inside him, it’ll flood her system. I don’t want that for her, not after everything she’s already endured. My alpha demands we find a solution.
Strictly speaking, the trek back to Silent Peak would be an even bigger pain in the ass if she’s breaking down under the weight of Silas’s emotional baggage. Really, that’s all this is. Efficiency. We’re in a rush, after all, and I’ve got other shit I need to deal with.
“I need to find a way to block her,” he says, coming to the same conclusion.
“I think you can.” I filter back through things I’ve read about omegas, about fated mates and mating bonds, piecing bits of knowledge together with my own understanding of how threads of magic work. Things I see other shifters can’t.
An idea forms. “Try to picture the bond… it’s like a thread, right?” He nods. “Look at it. Inside yourself, find the bond.”
He scoffs. “Easy enough. It’s the brightest thing inside me.”
“Right. Well… you should be able to pluck it—don’t, though,” I raise my hand quickly, and his gaze lifts to meet mine. His eyes are still black, but a ring of green iris shows. He’s more present than he’s been in days. “Don’t pluck the bond, you’ll wake her up.”
He nods in understanding.
“Wait until she’s awake. But, mates check in with each other by plucking the bond.
So, imagine stepping on a garden hose, cutting off the flow.
Instead of activating it by plucking it, visualize stepping on it, cutting it off.
It won’t break the bond completely—mating bonds can’t be broken. Actually, that isn’t strictly true.”
Then a thought occurs to me. “Is that what you want?” I ask carefully, even as my chest tightens with an unexpected fury at the thought of him hurting her like that.
He doesn’t reply, expression still blank.
“Practice closing the bond when she’s awake. For now, just… try not to think shitty thoughts toward her.”
“I don’t think shitty—fuck,” he grunts, dropping his head in his hands. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. She bit me. This is her fucking fault.”
My alpha growls back at him. Surprised by my protectiveness, I shake it off, grabbing the bowl of squirrel meat.
“She didn’t know what she was doing, don’t blame her.
It was an accident. Besides, you were there, you bit her right back.
And it would have happened, anyway. Right?
You’re fated, it was only a matter of time. ”
Silas pins me with a glare. “No. I wasn’t planning on mating with her. Like you, I wanted to get as far from this fucking shit show as possible. I wanted her safe, with Grayson and Orion, where they can be a happy, normal fucking family, together. I just wanted to get her home, that’s it.”
I stare at him in disappointment.
But am I so different? I don’t want her either.
I want to fuck her. I want to feel her eyes on me, just once. To feel her omega nature kiss my heart and then let me go. I don’t want a family, I don’t want to be tied to one place. To a mate.
Stagnation is death.
Not bothering to call him out for being an asshole, I slowly nod. “We’re in agreement then. Get her home to her alphas. Go our separate ways.”
I drink the water in the cup, then hand the bowl to Silas. But when he agrees it’s time to wake her, at least to get her to eat, there’s a disturbance at my wards.
Silas can’t hear them, it’s magical interference, but he notices my reaction and freezes. The cabin door is already swung open, so I step outside into the night. The moon is still bright, and this far from the city, the light pollution is non-existent. The sky is full of stars.
It’s the height of summer, the air is humid. I take a deep inhale, using all my senses. And that’s when I feel it.
“Grab her, we need to leave now!”
Silas doesn’t wait for an explanation. I must have woken her when I yelled, because Mona asks what’s happening, surprisingly coherent. Her heat is further gone from her system than I realized.
Silas follows me out of the cabin, naked, with Mona in his arms. She looks at me, eyes glassy and red. “What’s out there?”
I shake my head and look around.
There, to the south. I throw my arms up, creating a shield around the three of us. Just in time. A blast of magic hits us, but it bounces off my protective spell, splintering the cabin door. Mona screams.