23. CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 23
Grayson
“What are you doing?” I growled at Noa a week later. I wasn’t really mad, but she seemed too engrossed in her phone instead of listening to me, and I was alphahole enough to react.
We’d returned to Westvale days ago. She’d smuggled me past Anson’s so-called wards. Insisted I wear a ball cap pulled low, as if that would hide my face as we walked past the cameras monitoring Anson’s secure compound and into her apartment.
The Alpha of Carmag deserved credit. The apartment he provided was modern and bright, with more security surrounding it than I had hoped. Caerwen and Effa came and went. The two nymphs had an apartment of their own, next to Noa’s, and they’d spent more time there than here since I’d arrived.
It was nice, settling in with Noa, cooking with her in the well-stocked kitchen. Sitting on the couch in the evening watching the dating reality show she enjoyed. I would roll my eyes at some of it. She’d elbow me with some sassy retort, like I’d learn something if I paid attention. Which usually led to me paying attention to her in a way that earned praise and few complaints.
She had settled on the white couch and wrapped a jewel-toned blanket around her legs because she insisted on walking barefoot and then complained because her feet were cold. Her attention was on the cell in her hands, and the way she bit her lower lip told me she was laughing or totally engrossed in what she was doing.
“I’m filling out an online compatibility test,” she said after a moment. “To see if our relationship will last beyond the infatuation phase.”
I scowled, focused on pouring the cognac we were going to share, with the lights turned low enough to enjoy the darkened view outside her glass doors, illuminated by the moon. “Do I have to answer questions?”
“I’m answering them for you,” she said. “You’re a night owl, not an early bird worm guy because they don’t give an option for both.”
“If you’re answering all the questions, doesn’t that make the outcome predictable?”
“Yes,” she agreed impishly, “but then we can relax about the whole mate bond thing.”
I held out a balloon-shaped crystal glass, which she waved aside, so I placed it on the side table. “Does the mate bond still bother you?”
She said she’d gotten over it, but if she hadn’t, I didn’t want her hiding her worries from me.
“I want to trust my emotions with you,” she said, her thumbs working furiously across the phone. “Not think they’re manufactured by fate. Trust your emotions when you say you want me.”
I sat in a chair opposite from her. Leaned forward and cradled my glass between my palms. “I’m here with you, disobeying every rule Anson has in place.”
Her smile turned sly, although her focus remained on her phone. “He is a little stuffy with the rules.”
“I risked a pack war to be here with you.” An exaggeration, but I wasn’t comfortable with the way my back had stiffened over the trust issue. What I felt for her.
Noa quipped, “Only because I get in trouble when you’re not around.”
I raised the cognac, sniffed, swallowed. “Now who isn’t trusting her emotions?”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
I set aside the drink, rose to my feet and gently pried the phone from her hands.
Stop thinking so hard, Bedisa . I found it easier to issue orders through our private bond because they didn’t sound as dominating. Think about how your heart races when I hold you.
When I pulled her into my arms, she came willingly .
Safe . Her mental voice was a caress. I feel safe.
She pressed her palm against my chest, above my beating heart.
I covered her hand with mine. Yes.
She snuggled in, setting off my imagination, how we would share the cognac, and what would come after—but someone was pounding a fist against Noa’s apartment door, and I knew who it was before I found him standing stiffly in the hall, his arms crossed, legs braced, auburn hair catching the light from the overhead fixtures.
“Alpha,” I said, trying not to grin because Noa’s “stuffy” observation was still in my mind.
Anson scowled. “You’re staying here, then?”
I nodded, since it should be obvious. And he’d known I was here the minute I crossed his wards. Only for Noa had he refrained from a confrontation. For the debt he owed her over the hybrid attack.
I glanced over my shoulder, toward the two glasses on the side table. The expensive bottle of cognac. My shirt tossed over a chair from earlier, and while I didn’t want my mate thinking I was a slob, I hadn’t gotten around to moving it yet.
“We had an agreement,” said Anson, as if I couldn’t have forgotten.
Behind him, two men lounged in the hall, part of his security detail pretending nonchalance by leaning awkwardly against the wall.
“I have pack problems of my own, Anson,” I said, loud enough for all to hear. “I’m not fighting you in the street for dominance.”
His chin tipped up. “You’d fecking lose, man.”
The smile gave him away, and I slapped him on the shoulder, held the door wider so he wouldn’t miss Noa, hovering with her bare toes pressing against the floor.
“Are you coming in, Anson?” she asked, feisty as ever, and I secretly hoped she was as unhappy over the interruption as I was. “Or do you two boys need a moment to finish the pissing contest?”
“You’ll probably join that contest,” he told her, “once you hear why I’m here.”
Noa straightened, crossed her arms. “Why?”
“The packs have agreed to a Gathering. Lec Rus will arrive in the morning.”
“I probably shouldn’t go to your Gathering,” she said hours later. Her voice was soft with the drowsy, heavy-lidded lethargy she savored after sex. “Not if Lec Rus is here.”
Her body was warm and supple beside mine, and I propped my head high enough to watch the expressions cross her face.
“Why not?” I asked, drawing a circle on her shoulder with my thumb. “Tear his throat out if you want. I’d enjoy watching.”
She huffed out a laugh. “Hard to get his cooperation that way.”
Earlier, Anson wasted the evening explaining what we already knew. This was a war, and the packs needed to cooperate in the fight against Amal. While I’d been hunting creatures and hybrids, Anson had been negotiating with the Alpen. He’d finally broken the impasse.
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard about Anson talking to Lec Rus. We needed the Alpen, and not only for the fighting men. We needed access to their passages and their pack lands. Because the fight covered the entire Selkirk territory. Rebels from Cariboo were sending a representative. I’d mentioned that men from Sutter had organized and should be in attendance. Anson agreed. We would approach the nymphs, witches, and friendly vampires once the packs were a united front.
“I’m a red flag,” Noa said. “Seeing me will set the Alpen off. Besides, I’d rather be talking to Aine and Metis.”
I rolled onto my back. “I don’t like it.”
Our evening had been busier than planned because, as Anson left, Laura arrived. She’d brought Amal’s journal and explained what the computer had churned out about the scribbled drawings, additional material after she’d made another search. Definitely runic. Still no interpretation for meaning. With dozens of experts, the opinions were varied. I agreed with some, not all. To me, the drawings signaled an unhinged mind, while Noa said Julien agreed with the obsessive part. He’d also discovered a code—or claimed he had—where Amal had written the nymph queen knows .
I’d poured more cognac and said it proved nothing, which launched us into a contentious discussion on the merits of Julien’s code-breaking abilities, and the subsequent risk in asking the current nymph queens for details.
Since Noa was determined, I reminded her we were discussing a woman descended from an ocean god who also hated her sister—the other nymph queen involved—and getting the two of them together in the same space would be a disaster, given their sibling animosity.
Noa had not so kindly pointed out how I’d thrown a priceless blade into the sacred pool—a blade Aine had and Metis wanted—and with the right lure, they would talk to her. To which I’d countered with not her, but us . Those words triggered another contentious discussion that eventually drove Laura out the door with a comment about worse than being married.
We’d argued until well past midnight, and what followed had been bright and passionate and as hard to explain as it was to experience, other than it was more meaningful than anything I’d experienced in life.
“We’ll be a team,” she said, rolling over to study my face with her eyes narrowed. “You’ll go to your boring meetings and I’ll be finding out what the nymph queens know.”
I glared at the darkened ceiling. “Wasn’t Julien attacked because of what he learned?”
“What if the attack was a message for Set?” she argued. “She was Amal’s friend at one point. She could tell us more than anyone, and that makes her dangerous.”
I turned my head to stare at my mate. “You’d risk another vampire attack from Barend?”
“He can’t accidentally turn me, Grayson. I’d syphon him into oblivion.”
“He can accidentally kill you.”
She stroked a warm finger down my cold arm. “The nymphs hate the vampires as much as vampires hate the nymphs. Effa told me. Some old feud, and it’s not likely that Barend would find out about the meeting. Not unless he’s watching with an army of spies. Really, all you’re doing is throwing excuses against the wall to see which one sticks.”
“That’s what the males do on that show you’re so fond of watching.”
“It’s beneath you.”
“Agreeing to this plan is beneath me.”
“I can’t stomach sitting around, doing nothing,” she said, her hand clenching. “I can’t be a reluctant hero, crashing the party at the last minute with my bag of tricks. I can syphon. Burn things. Sometimes, I can hear Amal. I can touch her journal without cringing now, and I can ask, female-to-female, what Aine and Metis know about Amal.”
“They may be completely ignorant.”
“They’re ancient. Look at Fee. How long has he been around—a demigod?”
“A garden ornament, you said.”
“Did you see the armor he was wearing during that fight? Any museum in the world would pay millions for it. And stop. Please, I don’t want to keep arguing about this.”
My inhale was slow. Her palm pressed against my chest as if she was measuring how intensely I breathed.
I can’t ignore this, she murmured through the mate bond. I have to do something.
Can I talk you out of it?
Would you… if I discover something to help you?
Bedisa…
“However you want me,” she said. “I’ll meet you there.”
“I want you safe.”
Her palm cupped my cheek as she brushed my lips with her thumb. “You will always keep me safe through our bond. And I won’t be alone. Caerwen and Effa agreed to come with me.”
My mouth twitched. “A sneaky way to get what you want.”
“Just covering all the bases, dread lord.” She leaned in to brush her lips against mine, the curtain of her hair drifting like silk against my shoulder. “I love how you worry when you can’t destroy something.”
“Have you settled on your lure?”
“I thought I’d tear a page out of Amal’s journal and give it to the Guardian in the sacred pool. Send another to Aine and tell them we have to talk.”
“That should win them over.”
“What would you offer?” she asked.
“Tell them you won’t burn their precious forest down, or collapse the waterfall at the sacred pool the way you did with a witch’s cave. In my experience, nymphs only pay attention when their own habitats are at risk.”
“You’re not suggesting that I actually destroy habitats?”
“How do you think the ancient kings won that war all those centuries ago? They coerced the queens into destroying habitats, opening fissures, syphoning the life force from every being. And afterward, once the danger had passed, the kings destroyed the queens. You are descended from those queens. Amal is one of those queens. Both of you, wanting vengeance. Rekindle that fear in the nymphs if it’s a truth that you want.”
She smiled, kissed my chin in triumph. “See, already we’re a team.”
“I’d rather be reckless and do it alone.”
Her laugh held the sexy purr I loved. “Is that why you like showers?”
My growl sparked a fire that I was happy to let burn.