10. CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 10
Noa
We left the Alpha’s Woods through a postern gate and followed the escape route used by alphas for centuries. Mace held my hand as we entered the dark passage, waiting while I breathed and told myself this wasn’t a tunnel beneath High Citadel. There’d be no hybrids hiding in the corners. No vampires. No pathetic piles of tattered clothing and bones to step around.
“Are you okay?” he murmured.
The breath I blew out was brisk, chilled. “I’ll get used to it.”
One dim passage led out of Westvale. Another took us into Sentinel Falls territory. A third turned north, and then we were standing in a snowy field, in front of the house of memories—Grayson’s childhood home. The house Mace helped put back together, because, he’d said, every tender wound needed a scab to protect it from pain.
“This is as far as I got him. He’s inside, Noa. He won’t hurt you.”
He… meaning the wolf.
My heart twisted, swelled as if it would break. “He can’t shift back?”
“Won’t.”
Because of Mosbach?
As Alpha, Grayson had to kill and kill again, losing part of his humanity each time he eliminated wolves he was sworn to protect. Ferals. Hybrids—who’d once had packs, families who loved them. Mosbach had been a traitor posturing in front of the pack for decades, seemingly untouchable. But to Grayson, his failure to recognize the depth of the elder’s depravity would be a personal shame, one that would eat at him.
Slowly destroy him.
“I’ll wait here,” Mace said quietly. “If you need me…”
I put my hand on Mace’s chest, where I felt his heartbeat. The ink of his alpha tattoo appeared to writhe at the base of his neck—the tattoos were slave marks. Because once both man and wolf accepted the call, they were slaves to the alpha’s obligation.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He nodded. I walked inside where a fire glowed, the embers low, turning the fireplace into a claret-colored night light. The shadowy shapes were familiar: the table where we’d held our meetings. The couch. Chairs. The kitchen, the window—shafts of moonlight drifted in to shimmer like wraiths across the floor.
The wolf was curled in the corner, his back turned toward me with the ridge of black fur bristling. He knew I was there and yet he didn’t move. His sides expanded as he breathed. The tension in him snapped with the wildness I’d felt the first night we met over Levi’s bleeding body. When he’d wanted to kill me. Then let me go.
Finding the stack of wood, I stirred up the fire. Added more split logs to the iron grate above the glowing coals. I was going on instinct. On the memory I had of the wolf, the many times he’d helped me. Finding an easier path. Being strong when I’d been weak—even though he’d killed the rabbit. Then the night of the Rite, when I’d asked him to take care of Grayson.
Promise me…
I’d talk and let him listen. Wait with his back turned. Hope he would come to me when he was ready.
I sat on the floor, turned away from the wolf and staring into the flames. In my head, I counted the endless minutes as they passed. The moments when I tried to understand what the wolf was feeling. The day he killed the rabbit, this wolf battled Grayson with ferocity. Refused to give up control. He’d always believed his actions were for the good. Feared those same actions because they could bring utter destruction.
He’d been strong for Grayson.
He’d been strong for me.
I would be strong for him.
I picked up a thin branch—aspen, I thought—cut into footlong pieces, and poked at the fire until sparks popped. Heat filtered into the room, warming the floor. The claret glow from the flames wavered, brighter than before, while from somewhere outside, I heard a tree branch scrape in the rising wind. Finally, I said, “You have always been part of me, even though you aren’t mine. But I’ve felt you, twitching beneath my skin. Through his sigil, drawn to look like you.”
The wolf growled, a soft rumbling.
“We’ve talked before,” I reminded the wolf. “Mostly, that was me, doing the talking. Either offering advice or asking for help. And you always listened. I never knew if you agreed with me or not, but you… I always knew that you understood me.”
He slowly uncoiled, lifting his enormous head. His baleful eyes—those vivid blue eyes—told me the wolf was in control and he wanted me to know. No shards of green to tell me Grayson was aware, or even listening.
I scooted around to face him. Pressed my palms to the wooden floor and waited. The wolf did not react. But his chest rose and fell, rose and fell.
“I’m actually a coward. I was never brave enough to face the judgment in your eyes. You could always see the flaws in me. The truth inside. I’ll never have a wolf. Never know what it’s like, what he shares with you. But you know that I love him. And I love you for what you mean to him.”
Those blue eyes glittered, sparked.
“I will always protect those I love.” Conviction was solid in my voice. “And I will protect you through this. I will protect him. This is my promise, the way he gave his to me through the sigil. You are honor. Courage. With such a fierce, brave heart. Protect him for me until he’s ready to come back. And when that happens, then please… let him have control.”
The wolf shuddered before he rose to his feet, padded closer to the fire—to me—and lay down again.
With my hand resting on the wolf’s shoulder, I pressed against the wiry pelt, the iron muscles, the impossible bands beneath my palm. But a thread of energy trickled when I syphoned, offered an easing. And after an hour, his breathing relaxed.
I laid down close to the wolf’s back with my arm across his ribcage, under the forelegs. During the night, I woke to movement. Grayson was sleeping beside me, not the wolf. Carefully, I slipped away, found a blanket and covered us both, my arm around him once again. I counted each time his chest rose and fell. Counted each beat of his heart while tears ran down my cheeks.
Hours later, I woke alone on the floor, my body too stiff to move. Searching for anything except why I was alone, I pushed upright. Took time to refold the blanket. We were in the house of memories, but beyond it was the private wrinkle the King of the Forest created for Grayson decades ago. All I had to do was walk through the bathroom. Cross the simple threshold no one else knew was there. Only Grayson and I… We knew…
Perhaps he was already waiting.
Frowning, I walked down the hall, but the memory of what hid on the other side of that magic doorway halted me beside the bathtub that was bone dry.
Did I want to trespass? Go through, stand in Grayson’s other house, the one Fee built? Remember those long days, secretive nights when we’d lived another life? The warmth from those hours in his arms still lingered. A whisper in the night. Like the laughter, when we ran through the summer grass, turning to shrieks when he threw me naked into a pool with a waterfall.
But no memory hit harder than when we finally understood the strength in the mating bond. When the denial collapsed, stripping every emotion bare except the truth.
I can’t breathe without you…
We’d been the perfect lovers… but we became mythic. Driven by passion, by rage, we became the ancient pair, capable of devastation. The Dread Lord and the Faille . Written about in history books, foretold in fading legends. I would burn down the world for him. And I’d done it… because of Julien. I’d tried to burn Brin, certainly burned Amal’s creatures. Knowing he would never forgive me.
Not for the burning.
For Julien… and the prophecy I’d proved was right, just as I’d proved my own vision to be wrong. When I stood on that blackened hill, I hadn’t just watched. I’d challenged Amal… changed the vision she’d shown me on the cave walls. I’d torn down that hill to fight, and my arrogance cost Julien his life.
Don’t think, Noa… Don’t sink down in that dark oil of guilt, where I’d been no different from Grayson. Hadn’t wanted to come back. Been so unaware, the healers tied me to the bed, added drugs to insure the oblivion.
“I considered it,” Grayson said from somewhere behind me. “Going through that door to oblivion. Never coming out.”
He looked utterly shattered. How long had he been listening in on my thoughts? It had been so long since he’d done that, I’d almost forgotten that he could.
But I was unable to look at him. He was speaking out loud, not through our mental bond, and I tried not to shudder beneath the lack of intimacy.
Finally, I managed, “You weren’t… I believed you might…”
“Fee’s pocket is a refuge I don’t want.”
Blood pounded through my head, my throat. The last words I’d said to him were about Amal, and Azul, burning.
The last words I’d said to his wolf were a promise of protection. As if I was closing the circle with that pledge. His sigil for mine. Sealing the magic, or the curse, or whatever the hell it was to repay all those reputed sins. The disillusionment, hatred, rivalries. I jolted as if an unseen fist crashed into my heart, stealing my breath.
You’re my mate, Bedisa. A star burning in my heart.
His mental voice was richer, deeper, so soft in my mind. I turned to study his face, sort through each emotion flitting through his eyes—green with shards of blue—then the tightening of his mouth. Was that anger? But his energy told a different story with a thrumming, steady power.
Thank you for coming, he said.
I closed my eyes, rocked with the answers I needed to give him.
“Mace came,” I said, my voice croaky. “Anson gave permission. I would have come on my own if…”
His inhale was unsteady. I swallowed before I asked, “Do you know what day it is?”
A faint smile tipped his mouth. “Christmas morning.”
“Where were you? When I woke up, and you weren’t here…”
He held out his hand. “Come and I’ll show you.”
I wrapped my fingers around his, and his lips twitched. “You might want boots.” He stared at my bare toes. The rumpled clothes I’d slept in. “A coat, too,” he said, laughing when I glared.
“Where are we going?” Not back to Westvale. Not yet.
“So impatient. Were you one of those kids who peeked before Christmas morning?”
“I suppose you were in total control,” I groused. “Never shook a present to see what was inside.”
“When I had them.”
I shoved on the boots and grabbed the coat I’d worn—I’d left it on the floor, but it was now hanging from the hook by the door. “Okay, mister I-never-peeked-at-Christmas, this better be good.”
Amusement made him look younger. “Worth the wait.”
And what waited outside was a pure, clean world covered with fresh snow. And a gang of children, young pups, some brave enough in jeans and sweaters, others bundled up by their mothers—who hovered in the trees, gossiping between themselves.
But the pups were all grinning and bouncing on their toes.
“We come to help the owl-fuh ,” one red-cheeked boy shouted, while the others cheered.
I felt something break open in my heart.
“The snow-wolf brigade,” Grayson said. He gestured toward buckets and shovels, a box with carrots and coal, a black top hat, a striped scarf. Huge fake wolf ears. “Tradition. On Christmas morning, if there’s enough snow on the ground, the alpha builds a snow-wolf.”
I looked at the sweet faces, wreathed in anticipation… joy flooded into my heart. “And all the good boys and girls come to help?”
The pups nodded. I turned back to Grayson. “How did they know?”
“Word got around that I was here.”
Mace. Bless him. I pressed a hand against Grayson’s chest. “Then we shouldn’t keep them waiting.”
He turned and said, “Ladies first.”
A cheer rang out and the first snowball hit, a wet bull’s eye smacking against my chest, spilling snow down my shirt—while children giggled and the best laugh I’d ever heard bubbled up in my mate’s throat.
After that opening salvo, the chasing erupted, the hooting and conspiring until snowballs pelted the Alpha of Sentinel Falls into submission. Young pups dog-piled on until he howled in surrender, with one determined little girl sitting on his chest and smooshing his cheeks between her small hands.
He lifted her off with one hand, set her on her feet. Slowly, a snow-wolf rose into being, perhaps a little lopsided, all three mounds of him, becoming what I could only describe as spectacular. Truly the best snow-wolf in the world, and I wished for a camera to document the achievement.
No camera appeared, but as the sun warmed, snowmobiles dragging sleds arrived with food and tables for a feast. Owen Griffith’s clan. Miranda Kirk was with him. And Albert. When I talked to them, offered to syphon, Albert shook his head, grinned when he said his wolf purred.
“Whatever you did worked,” Miranda whispered, patting my hand.
As we ate and chatted and moved about, Grayson’s tension lessened. This was what he needed—to see how the pack loved him. Supported him. Warmth flushed my cheeks. I moved from group to group, murmuring the same two words. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
They stroked their hands down my arms. Against my back. Offered food in case I was still hungry. Adriel hugged me. Catrina hugged, too, and I spoke my condolences to her privately. Holding her hand.
Her mother had died at Azul. But she was fast friends with Adriel. She used sign language as naturally as Jodan had, speaking and signing. I’d be happy to know, she’d added, that Owen came up with a special food for Burn, and the dog was moving easier now. Perhaps the wish I’d made months ago, that I’d run through the forest with Burn one day… perhaps that wish would come true.
Then the feast was over. Families disappeared into the late afternoon, some on snowmobiles. I didn’t know where they’d all come from, didn’t want to jolt the magic or the perfection of the day with logic and human concerns. Grayson and I stood to watch them all leave, his arm around me. My arm around him. As if we realized our time was fading, too. That, soon, he’d be going back to the Refuge and I’d be going back to Westvale.
We had two more magical winter days when we cooked, played, made slow love in front of the fire. Then passionate, hot sex that raged through both of us. With my back to the wall, he claimed me. I claimed him while he writhed on the floor, his head pressed back, my name on his lips as I brought him to ecstasy. Memories, each one more precious than the last.
More desperate.
Careening toward an ending.
On the third magical day, we sat in front of the fireplace, and Grayson lectured me. “Vampires can’t come inside unless invited,” he said, his fingers playing with mine.
“Yeah, yeah,” I teased. “They say that in all the vampire movies.” I’d watched one popular series on television, at midnight, while I ate ice cream out of the carton and yelled at the characters as if they were actually in the room.
“The story’s always the same. The lonely girl falling for the handsome vampire with blood dripping from his fangs—how dumb do you have to be to invite him inside?” I flicked my thumb over his. “And there’s always a gang of them, one pretending to be misunderstood while—”
“I’m serious, Noa.”
I nodded like I was some giddy teenager mocking his oh-so-serious advice, while inside, my heart was racing; these were his goodbye instructions before he left me.
He brushed the stray hair from my cheek. “I know Anson has Westvale warded. But he can’t keep everything out. At best, his wards offer a warning, so get inside if you sense vampires. And I don’t mean inside the Farmer’s Market or any restaurants or retail stores. They’re usually spelled to let everyone through because vampires haven’t been that kind of threat for decades. If your faille senses kick up, get back to Anson’s compound. And if you’re too far away, pound on apartment doors until you can get someone brave enough to let you in.”
“Wouldn’t I just be endangering innocent bystanders?”
“You’d be inside,” he said sternly, “where you’ll call Anson for help, and he’ll send men to come get you.”
“What about the old folklore about water?” Vampires, as unholy beings, were unable to cross running water, some ancient curse. I’d read about it, although the sources were unreliable.
“What if I jumped into the Claw?” I asked when Grayson did not immediately answer. The idea was plausible, at least in the moment, when I wanted to keep this conversation light and far, far away from what it was.
“You’d trade the vampires for river nymphs,” he said.
“Lorriel?” The river nymph with black hair and pointy teeth; she’d wanted to eat me.
Grayson’s hand tightened. “Worse.” The fire sputtered, and he bent to stir the burning wood. “Fee told me the leeches came from a stream in the Carmag. The rivers are connected.”
“More wonky magic?”
“Don’t trust anything around Westvale to be what it seems. Don’t take unnecessary chances.”
I frowned, twisted the hem of my shirt—one of his reeking shirts. I’d forgotten how much I loved them, wearing his scent.
“I live in a virtual spider web of spells,” I said. “Another day, another cage. Unnecessary chances break up the tedium.”
Bedisa . I hated it when his mental voice was as stern as his physical voice. Grayson was watching my face, my expressions, evaluating. We’d talked before about me going back while he returned to the Refuge. Pretending we’d never had those conversations only delayed the moment.
I said quietly, “I’ll be careful.”
“I know you will.”
Because we each had a job do to, and while his responsibilities were slowly destroying him, mine were to find a way to end his torture. Find a way to destroy Amal and everything she stood for… but not yet.
I drew up my knees, wrapped my arms tight, rocking, rocking as I stared into the fire. Pulled the pieces of myself back together. “Thank you,” I said, refusing to look at him. Knowing he was studying my face with that glinting interrogation.
“For what?” he asked.
“My mother’s box. Rescuing it from Azul.”
“Mace rescued Fallon’s box. He said she likes pink sparkly things. He sorted through it. I looked through your stuff, too. So that probably makes us official alphaholes.”
I eyed him over my shoulder. “Do you feel guilty?”
“No.”
“Official, then.” A faint smile brushed my lips. “What good is an alpha if he isn’t living up to the expectations?”
“Mace will be relieved. He’s more sensitive than I am.”
The tease was warm, but tempered by wariness. I rocked, pressed my chin against my knees. “I’m glad you did.”
He hadn’t violated my privacy; oddly, he’d shared an intimacy with me. Or I’d unknowingly shared it with him. He’d cared enough to want to look, to know, and I said, “Did you read the letter?”
He shook his head. “Your mom’s name was on the front.”
“The letter was from my father. His last words.” The breath grew heavy in my throat. “His name was Bron. He was alpha to a small pack back east. The first time they met, the mate bond kicked in…” A sad smile touched my lips while Grayson leaned forward to stir the fire. “She didn’t want to leave with him, for various reasons, but when she learned she was pregnant with me, she wrote to him. He promised he’d come back, but he never did. And then she got that letter.”
Sparks sputtered up in a small tornado before disappearing through the chimney.
“He was murdered. Pack shit, I guess. He’d warned her about it.”
Grayson twisted around to face me, his legs drawn up like mine. Firelight gleamed off the curve of his shoulder, lost itself in his dark hair. When my gaze drifted to the wolf tattoo, I thought the wolf was watching me, too.
“Does it ever end?” I asked.
“Pack violence?”
“Mosbach… the feeling that I stared evil in the eye without fully seeing it.”
“We caught him in the act, Noa. Three kids, kidnapped from out of the area. Two boys, one girl. Mace’s contacts provided the details. Phone records place Mosbach in the areas where those kids were last seen. He’s been working with Alpen smugglers, setting up Lec Rus while trying to undermine me. He used spelled triangular locks—witch magic—and it’s a good bet Mosbach recruited Autumn Paige through an Alpen connection.”
The elder had always shifted blame to others.
“Your wolf—”
“Loves you,” Grayson said, reaching out to stroke a finger across my clenched hands. “Thank you for what you did.”
“I balanced our energies. My super power.” I wiggled my fingers, then rubbed at the scarred sigil on my wrist. “I can’t feel this twitch.”
Grayson took my hand and brushed his thumb over the remnants of the design. “My promise to protect you didn’t end just because some asshole cut through the runes. Magic is too entrenched for that.”
“Then I should probably tell you.” I moistened my lips. “I offered my promise to your wolf that I’d always protect you, and he accepted.”
Skepticism arched Grayson’s eyebrows. “He can’t say words.”
“He growled.”
“And that was a yes to you?”
I swallowed once. “I’ve given you my sigil a thousand times, every time we made love. When I touched you. Or you touched me. And although you never accepted it, you let it settle in your heart.”
He rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Noa… I can’t ask you.”
“You’ve never had to ask, Grayson. This has always been my gift to you. I have no other choice, and even if I did, I would choose you again. And again. Cybelle told me you and I together were Amal’s greatest fear. Let the enemy see your ruined sigil on my wrist. Let them think they destroyed us… when my sigil is safe with the wolf. And he… is safe with you.”
Bedisa… Grayson’s thumb pressed unsteadily, rubbing against the scarred design he’d inked on my skin months ago.
I’m not sorry. I cupped his cheek. I love you. That will never change.
You are… my life. Every moment breaks my heart—
No. I pressed a gentle finger against his lips. We stay in the now. Don’t think about yesterday. Or what tomorrow brings. We live for this moment. This touch.
This love, Bedisa?
“This destin noir,” I murmured. Our black destiny. However that would play out because reality was closing in and time flowing fast. I would return to Westvale. He would go to the Refuge. I would force myself to read Amal’s journal. Help Laura with her research. Find out what Caerwen and Effa had to say after they talked to Aine, because the Queen of the Forest had been far too interested in reading the first book, finding out what an original wolf queen had to say.
And I would find a way to close the hole in my chest, stop the grief rolling in, enough to drown me. “We should build another snow-wolf before I go.”
“Make snow angels instead,” he said.
My heart clenched, but I forced a smile. Met the shadows in his eyes and knew he was doing the same, fighting back the clench.
“What?” I teased, as if the world was a perfect place and we both were blessed. “The Alpha of Sentinel Falls wants to make snow angels?”
“It’s the closest I’ll ever get to grace.”
With wings made of snow. I gripped his hand and dragged him outside. To hell with ancient sins and fate—we made these moments of grace. Held them for an instant. Or a lifetime. Held on until, like a letter hidden at the bottom of a wooden box, grace was snatched away.