CHAPTER 17
Ifelt a tug on my scalp and risked a glance through my fingers. Michael had grabbed hold of a long strand of my hair. He faced the fire, idly twirling it. The teasing edge of his mood disappeared, replaced by deep concentration.
“I still don’t understand or fully believe what just happened,” he said, staring into the flames. “The MacKenzie wolves spent hundreds of years breeding this strength and power into you. It’s genetics. How is it possible that I’ve simply… absorbed some of it because of our bond?”
I shrugged. “Magic.”
He looked at me. “Magic? Just like that?”
“Like you said, we’re creatures of magic. Who’s to say our very genetic code isn’t ingrained with it, allowing it to be shared via the bond just like our emotions and now our thoughts? You accepted those pretty easily. Why not this?”
His face was half bathed in the glow from the fire, half in shadow. It painted his features in sharp angles and made his lips look impossibly soft. “I believe, much like you did earlier, I’ve finally reached my threshold for the amount of shock I can sustain.”
I barked a humorless laugh. “Trust me, I get it.”
“Does the mental connection continue even in our human forms?”
“I don’t know. Want to test it?”
He frowned in response and closed his eyes, those long lashes fluttering shut to kiss the top of his cheeks. His power licked over me, and then I felt a small brush against my psyche. Layla?
I let out a shaky breath. Hi, Michael.
He opened his eyes. Well. That answers that question.
I drew my power back in and cut the connection.
Regardless of the fact that I believed what I had told him—that this newfound ability was gifted to us via magic—I still wasn’t comfortable with it.
Before, I’d at least had my own thoughts to myself.
Now I had to worry about accidentally projecting my inner monologue all over him when I was stressed.
Or horny.
We needed to learn how to control this, now.
“You can’t go back to the city leaking power everywhere,” I said.
“Agreed. How do you contain yours?”
I explained the mental cage within my mind.
While I talked, Michael continued to twirl my hair absently, like a worry stone.
When I was done, I assumed the role Audrey had played in my youth.
I talked him through the formation of his own cage, how at first he would need to picture it there almost constantly until it became fixed in his mind, a part of himself.
I told him how to shrink and expand it with a thought.
Or at least I tried to.
I wasn’t a great teacher, and this concept was new to Michael.
He kept his cool time and time again as he slowly drew his newly expanded psyche into himself, only for it to explode outward again.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that each of those explosions was more powerful than the last, splashing me with metaphysical heat that sparked like a downed power line.
He shook his head. “This isn’t working. What if I…” His eyes unfocused, and he stared past me. Slowly, his power began to recede, but along with it, so did Michael.
I grabbed his arm. Our skin-to-skin contact snapped him out of it, and he came roaring back. “You said you wouldn’t do this to me again,” I reminded him.
“I didn’t plan to disappear altogether, just to mute the power in the same way I do the wolf.”
“Your wolf form,” I said. “Please don’t start reverting.”
He let out a frustrated sound and shook me off so he could stand.
The fire danced over his stocky frame as he paced.
His fingers went to his temples. I felt a small echo of pain in my own.
His heightened senses must be giving him a headache.
Outside, a night bird called, far in the distance.
He stopped in his tracks and turned to gaze toward the mouth of the cave, eyes reflecting the firelight like quicksilver.
I didn’t envy his position. I’d lived with this power my entire life, and I was still distracted by it at times.
To have it suddenly dumped on him must have been damn near all-consuming.
A lesser wolf would have lost themself to it by now.
I was suddenly angry. I should have been warned about this.
Told about my powers and the way they would bleed through the bond.
Shown how to use them by someone who understood them.
My parents and Audrey had done the best they could to teach me control of the abilities I’d manifested in my youth, but how much more did I still have to learn?
What else might rear its ugly head now that I was bonded?
And what if something major, like this power share, happened when we were in the city?
We might not have time to contain it before someone detected the change in Michael.
Any weirdness in me could be explained away by my heritage, but he was a known commodity, and if he lost control and let his power flare all over the next wolf to piss him off, the jig would be up.
If my birth parents had told me anything, I didn’t remember it. But then, I’d been so young when they died that they probably hadn’t seen a reason to tell me anything yet, trusting there would be plenty of time later.
If not them, then someone else should have warned me.
A surviving adult. Another wolf who had already been through this.
Anyone. All this secrecy surrounding the MacKenzie wolves was turning into a huge liability.
How many others of my kind had been bonded only to learn these same things the hard way?
Wouldn’t it be so much easier, and hell, safer, if we were allowed to warn each other?
I felt like I should apologize again. For my ignorance. For upending Michael’s life in such a disastrous way. For putting him in danger.
He stopped pacing and looked at me. “Don’t.”
I dragged in a shaky breath. “Did I just project all of that to you?”
He nodded.
Son of a bitch.
“This isn’t your fault,” he said.
I stared into the fire, feeling miserable. “I still feel like shit about it.”
“Now you know how I’ve felt since dropping my mate into a city on the brink of war.”
I wrapped my arms around myself and buried my nose into the collar of his sweater, breathing deeply, distracting myself with his scent. “Maybe we can hide out here until we figure everything out. Become hermits.”
He cocked a brow at me. “Do you think my mother will let us?”
In my head, I saw her ordering a full-scale invasion of the White Mountains to find him. I sighed. “No.” He needed to learn control. Tonight. We couldn’t stay here and we couldn’t go back to the city until he did. “I have an idea.”
He waved a hand at me. “By all means.”
“What if I tried going to full power and showed you how to cage it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t… I don’t really know. You remember during the security meeting when I turned my focus to you and the bond flared up between us?”
He nodded.
“I just did the same thing to snap you out of your lunacy. Maybe if I blow it wide open, I might be able to… I don’t know, draw you into my mind and have you learn how the cage works through me, if that makes sense? It might not even work, but desperate times…” I shrugged.
He folded himself down beside me. “It’s worth a try.”
I scooted closer, so we were pressed together again. “Give me your hands.”
He reached out. I threaded my fingers through his.
A now familiar heat sparked between us and suffused my body, flooding me with awareness.
I closed my eyes and retreated into the back of my mind, where that small piece of him had taken up residence.
I had no idea what I was doing, and was more than a little worried that what I was about to attempt might somehow blow up in our faces.
This was sheer bluff and blunder, but there was an instinctual drive behind it that spurred me on, and I put my faith in that like I did the Goddess.
She wouldn’t have dropped us into this without a way through it.
I had known before being bonded that mated pairs were put through the ringer, but I also knew that there was always a way forward for them, if only they were bold enough to search it out.
I focused on Michael’s presence in my mind and dropped all of my shields—both the ones on my power and the ones on my thoughts.
The world around me came alive. Michael’s heart hiccupped as my power crashed over him, and my own skipped a beat as well.
Then they thundered forward together like we were back in the forest, racing through the trees.
Goddess, the smell of him. The feel of him.
I wanted more. No, I needed more. This awareness of him was like a drug, and me an addict.
With my walls down, I was left open to him in a way I hadn’t been before.
His presence seemed to expand, pushing into my mind, taking up even more space than it had a moment before, and in a way that made me feel like it might be a permanent change.
I decided to worry about that later as I traced the connection, bridging the gap between us until my mind brushed against his.
And then I pushed into him, pausing when I reached his own mental barriers.
Let me in, I whispered.
He hesitated.
I squeezed his hands, rubbing my thumbs over his heated skin. Please, Michael.
I brushed against his mental shield again, light but insistent. I wouldn’t break through his defenses. That would be wrong. He needed to concede for this to work. To let me in of his own volition. Anything else would be a violation.
With a sigh, the barrier crumbled, and for the first time since we were bonded, Michael stopped suppressing.