Chapter 10
SAPHIRA
Morden returned just as I finished cooking the rabbits over the fire, his dark hair tangled and wet, and his checked shirt sticking to his skin in places. I hoped his swim in the river had improved his mood. He didn’t look as grumpy as when he had left, at least.
But I felt a little moody as he stepped back into camp and sank onto the log I had brought into the clearing with Kaeleron’s help.
Because his return meant Kaeleron needed to leave.
I handed Morden one of the rabbits, and the rest of the jerky, gaining a dark look from Kaeleron.
Because I was sharing the precious meat with my friend?
He had to see it for the peace offering it was.
He huffed and pushed to his feet, and then looked back down at me, at that spot beside me he had vacated, firelight lovingly caressing the sculpted planes of his face.
“I’ll be fine.” I brushed my hand across his and smiled for him. “I’ll stay near camp and maybe when you return, you could… teleport us closer to the Ryland Pack?”
Morden perked up at that.
Kaeleron nodded. “We can discuss places I might know when I return.”
He caught my hand and pulled me onto my feet, and dipped his head, pressing a kiss to my forehead as he gripped my nape.
I leaned into that kiss, my eyes slipping shut as I savoured it and the warmth that curled through me despite Morden’s cold, cutting glare.
“Be careful, Kael,” I whispered and his fingers tensed against my nape.
Because I had shortened his name?
It seemed wrong to shorten the name of a powerful fae king, as if it wasn’t my place to do something so forward, something that made him out to be my equal when I was far beneath him, but I liked how it sounded, and I liked how he reacted even more.
He feathered his fingers down to my jaw, gently tilted my head up and held my face as he lowered his mouth to mine and kissed me softly.
Reverently.
With love.
“I swear I will,” he breathed against my lips and my heart stuttered as he murmured, “Saphi.”
Proving he wielded power with my nickname, just as I wielded it with his.
His fingers disappeared from my face, my skin instantly cooling and missing his touch, and the weight of his presence faded, leaving me bereft. A little afraid. I looked at the glittering air where he had been, faint traces of black mist lingering in it.
“He’s a tough bastard,” Morden muttered and tossed a rabbit bone onto the fire, his tone gruff.
I silently thanked him as I took my seat opposite him, my heart a little heavier than it had been just seconds ago. Kael was a tough bastard. He was a warrior. A powerful one. The seelie were no match for him. Tomorrow morning, he would wake me with a kiss, and everything would be fine again.
All my worries would have been for nothing.
“Sorry I snapped at you about the Ryland Pack.” Morden’s grey gaze remained fixed on the rabbit as he pulled another piece of meat off it. He sighed, shoulders shifting with it, and shook his head. “I just… when was the last time they helped the Harper Pack?”
I knew where this anger was coming from.
And I had been a blind fool not to see the real reason he wanted to steer clear of the Ryland Pack before now.
Too wrapped up in hope they would help to remember the time they hadn’t.
“You know they couldn’t help when Chase’s father challenged Lucas’s father.” I kept my tone gentle, my words soft, trying to offer him comfort in the only way I could as we dredged up that terrible part of our shared past. “I’m sorry about what happened to your father and brother though.”
“My father belonged in Hell. He got what he deserved,” Morden snapped and then huffed and scrubbed a hand over his face, as if he could just rub away his anger and pain with that action. “And it’s not about that. It’s about wasting time on a plan that won’t play out the way you think it will.”
I wasn’t convinced. That wealth of pain in his eyes as he glanced at me said it was about what had happened to his brother. He might have hated his father, might feel he had gotten what he deserved that day, but he had loved his brother.
“We could maybe talk about the plan,” I offered. “I could use your help. I don’t know the Ryland Pack well. I only know what my father told me… that we were allies once and we helped each other out a few times.”
“That was over territory disputes with another pack,” he growled and threw another bone onto the fire, harder this time.
“Some pack tried to encroach on both our lands to set up a territory of their own. We had a reason to work together. Common interests. I doubt Ryland will lift a finger to help us out this time. They’re not stupid.
Starting a war with the Hunt Pack isn’t in their best interests. ”
This wasn’t going as well as I had hoped.
In fact, it wasn’t going the way I had thought it would at all.
“It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?” I threw what was left of my rabbit on the fire, my appetite gone as I sensed another argument coming. “It will only delay us a little and if they say no, we’ll pivot and go with a different plan.”
The flames engulfed the remains of the rabbit, hungrily devouring it, and sparks glittered as they danced up into the night sky.
“We should just cut our losses and head straight to the Hunt Pack.” Morden tossed his own meal on the fire, including the jerky.
The bastard.
“Why are you so intent on going straight there?” I snapped as I watched the dried meat burn up in the flames, feeling a bit like Neve and her treasure hoard. Something precious had just been stolen from me and destroyed, and I wanted the world to burn for it.
“I’m just worried about my sister.”
I didn’t buy that as I recalled the things he had said in the Shadow Court, how he had pressed me to leave with him, and I had been so happy to see him, so desperate to know what had happened to my parents, that I had barely paid attention to his tense body language or that wild edge to his eyes.
“You really think Lucas took my parents and your sister captive? That he has our pack at his mercy?” I watched him closely, cataloguing every shift in his emotions, in his body as he glared at the fire and then lifted fierce, fiery eyes to me, pinning me with a hard look.
One laced with regret.
“I do.” He threaded his fingers together as he leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his knees. “I do, and now I’ve heard what he did to you… I can’t stand the thought of Dani in Lucas’s hands. I need to get back to her and make sure she’s safe.”
“Is that the real reason you don’t want to go to the Ryland Pack? Because you want to get to your sister as soon as possible?”
He nodded and sighed. “I need to see she’s safe. I’m the only family she has. The only protection she has.”
That wasn’t true. The pack would protect her, just as they would protect any member of it. But I understood where he was coming from. He had practically raised his sister after his mother had died, and his father and brother had been executed.
“I’ll ask Kaeleron to scout the pack.”
Rather than growing more relaxed by that olive branch I extended to him, Morden grew more tense.
“I should go with him,” he said. “No. We should all go.”
I frowned at him. “I thought you didn’t want me to go there?”
He shrugged. “I changed my mind. I figure it would be best to head straight there. All of us. We can leave as soon as the fae returns.”
Something felt off as I stared across the flickering flames at him, as he kept his determined gaze fixed on mine, his fingers locked together so tightly his forearms were corded and the joints of his fingers were white.
I casually sat up, resting my hands on the log on either side of my hips.
Close to my dagger.
My wolf instincts snarled at me, that part of my soul restless and pacing, demanding I keep my distance from this male because something was wrong.
Very wrong.
“What if we’re spotted?” I pursed my lips, donning a thoughtful mask. “Kaeleron can hide in shadows but I’m not sure whether he can conceal all of us. If we’re spotted… I’m not sure the three of us can take the entire Hunt Pack. Kael is strong, but—”
“No fighting.” Two words that chilled me. “We’ll go to Lucas and figure out a way to escape with the pack.”
“I’m sorry. Did I hear you right? You’re against us fighting the Hunt Pack? If he has our pack, and we don’t fight them, the only other choice is one I can’t believe you’d make.”
The steely look in his eyes told me that as unbelievable as it was, it was the path he was picking.
“You’re suggesting peace with that monster?” I edged my right hand closer to my dagger, unsure who this male was before me now, because it certainly wasn’t the Morden I knew. “I figured you would want to kill him if he had your sister.”
“She’s my only family. I vowed to protect her,” he snarled back at me. “I’m not risking her by attacking a whole wolf pack and its alpha.”
“So what is your plan? Just walk in there and—” I cut myself off, my eyes narrowing on him as something whispered through my mind. “Tell me again how you beat Lucas.”
“I already told you.” He shoved to his feet and stormed away from me, heading to one side of the clearing before he pivoted and strode back across it.
“I went to the Hunt Pack about you and I got Lucas and Braxton alone, and I beat them up, took your bracelet, and found my way to Lucia to save you.”
“Braxton jumped you.”
He whirled on me, frowning. “What?”
I calmly said, “At Falkyr… you said that you got Lucas alone and you were going to his house, and Braxton jumped you.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” He shook his head. “He jumped me.”
“So you didn’t get both of them alone.”
He growled at me.
Fucking growled.
Not the irritated noise wolves were prone to make when they were frustrated, but the vicious and threatening one they made when they were close to the edge, when someone had pushed them too far and they were putting them in their place.
“What does it matter?” He took a hard step towards me. “All that matters is saving our pack!”
I flinched even as my hand edged towards my dagger and my wolf side lunged to the fore, snapping fangs at him for daring to threaten me, for turning on me like he was. “We’ll save our pack. When we get to the Ryland—”
“No. Change of plans,” he interjected and took another step towards me and my hackles rose. “We’re going straight to the Hunt Pack.”
As calmly as I could manage, I rose to my feet, my legs trembling a little as I watched him closely, as I tried to calm my instincts and lie to myself, telling myself he wasn’t a threat to me, that I just wasn’t used to him being so pushy and forward with me.
I wasn’t used to his anger being directed right at me.
And that it was understandable that he was upset because he was worried about his sister.
“We’ll be walking to our doom if we do that, Morden. We need to be prepared to fight if we’re to save our pack.” I kept my tone gentle, sure he was just worked up because he feared Lucas might snatch his sister and sell her as he had sold me.
He bristled with aggression as he squared up to me, only a few feet separating us now. “Drop it. When the fae returns, we’re going to the Hunt Pack.”
I paced away from him, needing more space as everything he did and said roused and angered my wolf side.
I wanted to attack him to protect myself, which was something I had never expected to feel when it came to Morden.
I didn’t want those urges to get the better of me, so I moved to the other side of the fire and stopped there, using it as a barrier between us.
“Why is it so important to you that we go right there?” I could keep my fangs from his flesh but not the bite from my words as my hand itched to reach for the hilt of my dagger.
“My sister!” he barked.
“My parents might be there… Chase too. Maybe even Everlee. I have stakes in this too, and people I want to save… want to protect. But rushing there is a bad idea, Morden. You have to see that. We’re not ready.
The three of us cannot fight the entirety of the Hunt Pack alone.
” My brow furrowed as I silently pleaded him to listen to me—to listen to reason.
He wasn’t thinking straight.
His need to save Danica and his fear were getting the better of him.
That was all this was.
He moved like lightning, too fast for me to track, and his hand clamped down on my right wrist, gripping it so tightly my bones screamed.
I tugged at my arm, twisting it and trying to break free of his bruising hold. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not waiting for that fae bastard to return.” He yanked me towards the forest, too strong for me to stop him, practically dragging my feet through the leaf litter as I leaned away from him, trying to use my slender body weight against him. “We’re going now.”
The guilty look in his eyes as he kept his profile to me, refusing to look at me, made something hit home.
And it hit home with enough force that it knocked the air from my lungs and the fight from my body.
I had been a fool.
So blinded by friendship.
By my love for Morden.
That I hadn’t seen this betrayal coming.