28. CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 28
Grayson
Bedisa. If she hadn’t realized I was there, I didn’t want to startle her. But as I crossed the square, as she remained silent through our mental bond, I wondered if her shields were up.
She sat at a table warmed by the outdoor heaters. Near her hand, a candle guttered, a jewel inside red glass; she’d been tracing the pattern of light cast on the table. Centered in the light was a figurine made of sticks.
I signaled to the waitress as I sat down, had Noa’s cold coffee removed. Two glasses of the Chanti she favored took the coffee’s place a minute later.
Noa said nothing. I might not even exist where she was, lost in thought. But my throat constricted each time she breathed. Was she withdrawing into the silence? Was she losing a dream? Had I destroyed… us ?
I was out of my depth. Whatever I said would be wrong because everything in this moment had to come from her. What she wanted to know. Needed to hear from me. I would not sit here, telling her what to feel. What to understand.
Part of her had questioned the source of her emotions. If she could trust the mating bond, the sigils, when magic influenced her life in a way she couldn’t control. Even I had trouble putting things in an order that made sense. What the nymphs told her about the seidr magic added to the strain. The very probable connection to the Gemini Witches and all of their prophesies. The damn runes I’d inked on her skin—even those were fueled by magic she couldn’t rely on, not if it came from an ancient cycle, driven by deceit.
Then to be blindsided by my former lover in a place she’d thought was safe—I understood how betrayal worked. Denial came first, disbelief, then anger, the cutting hurt. With her faille sensitivities, every emotion was magnified. I’d never felt so impotent. Useless.
“She’s a beautiful woman, Grayson.” Her voice was remote. The lack of eye contact made it worse.
“Lila said that about you,” I admitted.
“Smart. Gracious.”
“She also said that.”
Noa picked up the wine, sampled. “She’s the perfect woman for you. Emotionally wounded. Someone you can save. A woman who understands the demands of your work and won’t complain.”
“Yes.” I toyed with the wineglass. “Perfect. But for someone other than me.”
Her mouth twisted to the side. “Is that your guilt talking?”
No, it’s my heart, Bedisa.
She didn’t answer through the bond. I watched her throat move as she swallowed more wine. “Did she love you?”
“Yes.”
“She’s still in love with you. Did she hear your voice in her head?”
My throat dried up. “She said she did.”
“Fallon hears Mace.” Noa’s lips trembled. She pressed them together. “But he doesn’t hear her.”
“I know.”
“It’s tragic, really. When one person hears and the other… refuses.”
“I’ve never heard her through a bond, Noa.” I slid my fingers around her icy hand, offered my warmth. “She said she heard me, but I didn’t believe her.”
“Did you love her?”
The question hung in the air like the snowflakes slowly falling.
“I was fond of her.”
“A sad insult, don’t you think? To only be fond of someone after sleeping with them.”
“Noa…”
“That’s why Anson didn’t want you here. Not for me, but to protect her.”
I cleared my throat. “Anson’s reasons are his own. I wanted to protect you.”
After a moment, while she turned her head toward the musician setting up in the square, Noa admonished, “Drink your wine, Grayson. This is going to be a long conversation.”
“Would you like to eat?”
“Dinner would be nice.”
I signaled the waitress, ordered the creamy chicken Alfredo Noa liked. Asked for a bottle of wine at the table.
As I topped off Noa’s glass, she said, “Start at the beginning.”
“I met her through Anson.”
“When?”
“During the war with Alpen. We were fighting in the eastern territory. Casualties were mounting, and Anson sent reinforcements, along with healers for the injured. Lila was talented, young, full of enthusiasm. She reminded me of myself, and we’d talk when she had questions about war wounds.”
“In the evenings,” Noa said, as if framing the image through her camera lens. “Sitting around a fire. Watching sparks flare up.”
I reached for the wine. “Close enough.”
The waitress slid the dinner plates onto the table with an apology over the interruption. Noa murmured a “thank you,” and picked up her fork. I waited until she’d eaten more than a few bites. I didn’t like the weight she’d lost, the bruised look in her eyes.
She put another bite in her mouth, her lips closing around the fork the way I’d seen them close around me many times. “You were intimate?” she asked after she’d swallowed.
“Yes.” We’d already covered this, but she needed the pain. Wanted to punish herself for some reason.
“Was she a magnificent lover, Grayson? This woman you were fond of? One you’ll never forget?”
I growled with annoyance I didn’t bother to control. The bite in her tone had been deliberate, and to get even, I asked, “Was that boy in the motel room a magnificent lover, Noa? Did he make you scream his name? Or have you forgotten it?”
Pink invaded her cheeks. “You know he wasn’t.”
“Are we through, or do you want it, blow-by-blow?”
“She did that for you?” Noa’s fork waggled in the air between us, almost as if she’d stab the subject in question. I grinned at the possessive light in her eyes.
“No.” Flashing some canines, I turned pure alphahole. “I never wanted that kind of intimacy with her.”
“What kind?”
“Profound.”
“Good answer.” Noa attacked her Alfredo. “Laura mentioned an accident.”
“We were evacuating the wounded, using surplus army trucks someone found in Spokane. They were cumbersome, noisy. Clearly marked with red crosses on the sides. Lila was driving a jeep at the head of the convoy. No one expected an attack. Mace discovered where the Alpen got the weapons, some underground network. Destroyed, now.”
“But Lila’s jeep?”
“Targeted with an explosive device.”
The explosion crippled the jeep and blocked the road while the Alpen attacked the convoy. We fought them back. I ran through the details quickly, watching the way the fork in Noa’s hand trembled.
“We put her leg back together.”
“You did,” she said.
“I was part of the team. I got the bones to knit together fast enough for the surgeons to put in the titanium pins, but Lila freaked when she woke up. Tolerated the pins for three days and then ordered the surgeons to take them out. She refused to do that to her wolf.”
“She can still shift when she needs to?” I asked.
“She’s stronger when she does. But her leg will always be weak. And her face will always have scars.”
“The burns?”
“Yes.”
“She blamed you?”
“She didn’t need to—I blamed myself. The explosion was meant for me, but last-minute, I changed the plans, told her to drive. I sent her to that jeep. Wanted her away from the front.”
We paused as the waitress returned to check on the food, then she turned up the outdoor heaters to offset the growing chill. The snowflakes that floated to the ground melted away, although on the streets, away from the heat, the dusting of snow was sticking.
Noa sighed, staring at the light through her wine. “Did your relationship last after that?”
“Through the months while she was recovering.”
“Who broke it off?”
“She did.”
“Why?”
“Lila suffered nightmares. Bouts of anger. She wanted me to love her the way she loved me. And I couldn’t. She said I refused to hear her because she was scarred and useless. I told her no, I’d never see her as scarred and useless. But I also couldn’t love her, and she told me to leave. Anson said it for the best. He didn’t want me in Westvale because it might trigger another episode.”
Noa licked the wine from her lips. “Did it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What now?”
I refilled her glass to have something normal to do with my hands. Kept my voice casual. “I learned that she’d stopped by the archive to meet you. I wanted to talk to you about it.”
“But you saw her first.”
I held Noa’s steady gaze until she turned to study the people crowding the snowy sidewalk. “I would have helped her cross the street, too,” my mate said.
“She put herself where I’d see her struggle.”
“She knows the man you are.” Another pause. “Is she upset that I’m here?”
“She’s upset that I’m here.”
“With me?”
“There’s no other place I want to be.”
Noa pushed aside the dinner plate. “We should go home. It will be dark soon.”
I paid the bill, helped her stand. We walked along the river for a distance, perhaps the same distance she’d covered, running from Ago and his hybrids. I tightened my hand against her back.
“Why were you at the Farmer’s Market?” I asked.
“I wanted to talk to the witch. Ask her about seidr magic.”
“You think she knows?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t made the connection.” As Noa stepped gingerly through an icy patch, I held her arm, offering support. Relieved when she didn’t flinch away.
“I wanted to know about the rituals,” she continued as we cut across toward Anson’s compound. The apartment building came into view. Three stories, a beautiful sandstone building with a modern design and constant security. A doorman held open the glass entrance door and nodded as we passed through. Noa’s apartment was on the ground floor, one of the luxury suites with access to the Alpha’s Woods.
“If Amal remembers anything,” Noa said, “she might stumble onto the seidr traditions. The ritual. She’ll discover how to steal wolves.”
“Maybe Amal is completely oblivious,” I said, “and cutting off the alpha tattoos is nothing more than sickness.”
“Maybe we’re just talking too much,” Noa said as she opened her hand and revealed the effigy. “Why do you suppose the witch left this for me?”
“To frighten you.”
“Or to protect me in some way.”
She disappeared into her room and closed the door. Minutes later, the rush of the shower warned me we’d talk no more tonight. I found the guest bedroom. Most of my clothes—the few I’d brought, and those Fallon had delivered—were in the closet. I showered, laid naked on the bed, trying to sleep. But I hoped Noa would tap on my closed door and come inside.
Her door was still closed in the morning. I stood in the hall with my palm pressed against the wood, sensing her energy. She radiated both pain and determination. I wanted to reach her through our mental connection. The intimacy of speaking mind-to-mind was often easier for her when she was hurting. But the closed door meant she wasn’t ready to talk. I took a step back, turned away. Glad I had the Gathering to distract me. At least there, no one would question my foul mood.
Anson was in the middle of an argument when I arrived. Lec Rus, as usual, was being an ass. His belligerence was nothing new. But the urgency was edged with the concern stiffening his shoulders.
“Two settlements wiped out overnight.” Rus spoke to the men gathered around a wall map. Piercing the map’s surface were small red pins; each pin marked a creature sighting. The black pins marked battles. Even from a distance, the pin pattern was obvious: more pins clustered in Alpen territory this morning than had been there yesterday.
I grabbed a mug from the serving cart. Hoped the thermal jug meant the coffee would be warmer than tepid. It wasn’t but arriving late meant making do with the hospitality.
“Overrun with nothing left,” the Alpen continued. “High mountains with heavy snow. Means the winter isn’t slowing them down.”
“What defenses?” The question came from a Cariboo wolf—Jade Pike, the man who’d been on his knees. Beside him stood William Cashel, the fighter, and their elder, Donnelly.
Lec Rus inhaled. Everyone in the room waited for the explosion over being questioned by a non-Alpha, a man from Cariboo, no less, where all this shit started. Fucked up Gathering no matter what Anson did.
“Standard,” Rus said with a lip-curl. “For trading outposts.”
“Warded?” The smirk in Pike’s question hit home. The Alpen’s face reddened. While the moment overflowed with entertainment value, it was a delay I didn’t want. Sure, I wanted to see Lec Rus get his ass kicked, preferably by someone other than me. I had a need for violence. It came from being forced into this room with these alphaholes and not home, talking to Noa. Working through the strain between us.
The Alpen was posturing. His canines were out. “Are you implying that I’m careless?”
“I’m asking because what I see here is Amal, probing for weakness. If you’re trying to break into a secure compound, you look for the hole where the rats get in.”
Anson stepped in before the Gathering got out of hand. His snarl rattled a few chairs. I stared down at the coffee to hide my smirk. Pike had balls; I’d give him that. Alpha material if he survived the next few months or years. However long it took us to claw Amal out of her fortress beneath the glaciers and into the open, where we’d face the battle and end it. No more hiding in plain sight and attacking later. Something she’d done for centuries.
Cavell—Adriel’s father and the new leader of the Sutter rebels—spoke up. “Did they open new passages, or use existing ones?”
“They attacked in the dark.”
“Did you send a team to investigate or rely on victim statements?”
The Alpen flashed his canines a few more times, but then said, “No surviving victims means I obviously sent a team. They followed the scents. Led to an old passage no one uses because of an avalanche decades ago. Closed off the entrance in the mountains.”
“Where?” Anson asked, turning to the map.
“Here.” Rus stabbed with his finger, then traced a route to the small red pin. “Comes out here.”
“Then anywhere along this stretch…” Anson dragged his finger along the route Rus had traced. “There’s a breach. We need to find it. And if it’s a passage Amal opened on her own, and if it’s still open, we have to follow it back to the source.”
Arguments broke the silence while I caught Anson’s attention and arched a brow. “How many men?”
“Limited patrols, infiltrators, while we create distractions,” he said quietly. “If this is her way in, we can attack before she realizes we’ve broken through. But I’m interested in your gut impressions. You’ve fought more hybrids than we have.”
Everyone sat at the polished table. The food delivery reestablished decorum, at least for a little while. I stood at the wall of monitors, watching the silent loop, the sacking of Azul. Dozens of Amal’s abominations, shock troops charging through a slit in the air. Sending wolves in every direction, leaving a clear path for Amal. She didn’t engage in physical attacks. She preferred her enemies shackled to the walls.
“Amal is a hybrid,” I said without turning. “She has the strength of both wolf and vampire, but also their weaknesses. She keeps her enemies at a physical distance. Take that a leap further and say she doesn’t want to be touched.”
“The queens could syphon,” Mace pointed out. “She’d be wary of Barend’s hybrids, his preference for failles . He told Noa what he wanted. Another weapon equal to Amal.”
“Noa’s not going in with the infiltrators,” I said.
“Why?” Lec Rus placed both hands palms down on the table. “She’s our best chance.”
“Because we don’t know where Amal is—or if that passage leads into a trap. Amal will kill Noa if she can’t turn her into a hybrid. I don’t see another faille to replace the loss. Do you?”
“You can’t keep her out of this when she’s probably the cause.”
My anger pulsed toward the television monitors, and as one, they all went black. “Expensive equipment,” murmured Anson.
“Solar flares.” I stalked back to the table. “You should have surge protectors in place.”
Jade Pike pushed his sandwich remains aside. “Either way, Cash and I are Cariboo. The only men here, other than Donnelly, who’ve been to her fortress. You’ll be going in blind without us on that team.”
Cavell agreed. “Sutter can recognize the Alpen wards and passages.” His eyes narrowed as he stared at the Mule. “Might be more reliable than some.”
The Mule flashed his canines. “Alpen has a stake in this.”
“Let’s just say you’re known for hunting your own, killing them even when they’re innocent.”
“Fuck you.”
Cavell shrugged. “It’s easier to eliminate the unreliable at the source.”
Elijah Stone snorted. “Any mixed group we send out will be a risk.”
“Then we keep the packs together.” Anson didn’t bother hiding his animosity. “Alphas can veto any volunteer. Wolves who don’t meet standards end up on the diversionary teams. An alliance means you keep it off the battlefield. The man at your side is your brother, no matter who he calls alpha. Are we clear?”
Lec Rus bristled. “This is bullshit.”
“Listening to you is bullshit,” Mace said distinctly. “All it takes is one alpha challenge, and the Alpen can find a new leader.”
Lec Rus, who had no second with him today, made a show of sizing Mace up—like he was almost considering it. Then he sneered, “Your boss can’t take it?”
Mace grinned. “With Sutter offering, we don’t need you.”
“My wards—”
“Meant crap to the hybrids and even less to me,” I said, while thunder reverberated in the far distance. My nerves were churning. Time was racing toward a finish line we were unprepared for, and all the Alpen did was create problems that revolved around himself. But Cavell was right. Coming from Sutter, he was part of the Alpen pack. Cavell knew how to manipulate the wards. He recognized the magic protecting their passages. Understood the terrain the way the Cariboo men understood their home territories. The lack of leadership from Rus would only cause more defections from his ranks. And if Amal’s creations somehow ended him without me having to do the work, I wouldn’t cry about it.
The afternoon crept endlessly as we agreed upon plans and issued the orders. Chairs scraped back when Anson finally adjourned the Gathering, without Lec Rus throwing another tantrum. And judging by how swiftly he disappeared, the odds were on Mace’s warning, getting beneath his skin.
“I’m sorry you won’t have more time,” Anson murmured as we walked along the hall toward the double exit doors. The Conference center was only a ten-minute walk to Noa’s apartment building, with the Alpha’s Woods a backdrop for both buildings.
While I didn’t like it, I’d agreed with the plan. I’d leave in the morning with Mace. I hated the necessity, but with the fresh attacks in the Alpen, we had one chance of finding a way into Amal’s backyard. One we might not have again.
I parted ways with Anson outside the glass doors of the sandstone building, nodded to the doorman as I walked inside. It was nearly dusk when I opened the door of the apartment. Followed the clattering sounds that led to the kitchen.
Fee stood at the stove. “Just in time for dinner,” he said cheerily.
“Dinner?”
He turned with two bowls of stew in his hands. Set them on the table. “Sit down and eat while it’s hot.”
“Where’s Noa?”
“Sit down, son.”
I couldn’t, not while anxiety hammered harder than my heart. Not while I slowly glanced around Noa’s apartment. The pristine living room, the dining area that held a chilling loneliness, as if she’d never lived here. Laughed here. Loved.
The only trace of her was a book on the coffee table: Use of Magical Objects and Tools in Seidr Traditions.
A folded paper separated two pages like a bookmark.
My voice thickened. “Where is she?”
“Doing what she’s meant to do.” Silverware clattered as Fee tried to make the table presentable. Plates on mats. White napkins folded. Water glasses above the spoon, the knife pointing the fuck up toward twelve, like the hand on a clock…
Fire burned at the base of my spine. A sense of dread far graver than the black hole she’d been in when she almost burned herself out. My voice was rough enough to splinter. “Where is she, Fee?”
“Aine recalled the location of the Bone Woman’s wrinkle. Noa went to find her, set the seidr magic right. Caerwen and Effa are with her. None of them have wolves, so there’s no danger to them in being… um… collected. It’s not too far from here, and—”
“You were here when she left?”
Fee’s eyes darkened with sympathy. “I know this is difficult—”
“You fucking don’t know the meaning of that word.”
“I’ve always told you. Been honest. You knew this was coming. It’s what she’s here to do, Grayson. She has the witch’s effigy with her.”
“A gods-damn toy?” I lunged away from him, knocked over the chair.
“That toy is protection. The strongest protection possible.”
Rain was streaming off the roof three stories overhead, pouring in sheets, overflowing the rain gutters. In the Alpha’s Woods, the piles of shoveled snow looked like icebergs in a growing sea.
Rage had me pacing, unable to stop. My head echoed with the same thunder battering the sky overhead, and I didn’t know which one was more powerful as the thunder boomed again and again and again until the building lights flickered.
Fee’s throat bobbed. He straightened awkwardly as the fury settled in to a dull rolling in the distance.
She will leave you… and you must let her go…
The witchy warning flashed on the heels of all the warnings Fee had ever given me.
“You were here when she left.” An accusation, not a question this time.
“Yes.”
“Did she have anything to say?”
“She said that wherever you are, she is there.”
The King of the Forest sighed when he grabbed my hand and held it in both of his. “She is following her path, dear boy. While you have a path of your own that must… must diverge from hers. Your job is to clear the path to Amal. Hers is to strike the killing blow. If she cannot do this, all is lost.”
I stared at the rain-lashed landscape, the darkening sky, torn by jagged lightning. “It’s already lost. More than you will ever grasp.”