by Lan Chan
Closing my eyes, I recalled Basil’s lessons. “Blood is associated with violence, with pain, and with passion,” he’d said, his face grim. “It is also the ultimate connection to family and to life. Something that contains that much power is naturally powerful in magic as well.”
On its own, blood wasn’t evil. But the very nature of blood alchemy landed it firmly in the realm of sinister magic.
I must have dozed off while reading because the sound of boots crunching up the driveway had me startling. The night was too dark. The Fae lantern had doused. There were no streetlights even if the supernaturals had managed to rig human appliances for their own convenience.
The circle was complete before I spotted golden night-glow eyes watching me. Max strode forward, his pace easy enough that it made me think he realised I’d been startled awake, and he didn’t want me to run.
He stopped at the foot of the small steps leading to the porch. Adjusting slowly to the darkness, I found myself asking, “Are you okay?”
He crouched down in front of me, so big and gorgeous and – controlled. The leash he had thrown over the lion stalking behind his human face was unbreakable. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
I found myself pausing, using all of my experience with shifters to parse whether there was anything in it that should ring alarm bells. The coast seemed clear.
“Charles told me about the raid. Are they okay?”
A nod. “A few bruises but nothing they can’t walk off. Why are you asleep out here? Worried?”
It was a statement with no slight attached. Not a comment on my weakness but a simple appraisal of the situation. An acceptance that this was just me.
The mating link twinged. Just as he locked away the lion, I held the link in check with blood. Wanting him was a cosmic punishment I was willing to accept. Losing him completely was unfathomable.
“A little.” Bundling the throw around my shoulders, I allowed myself to speak the words without holding anything back. Maybe the darkness made things easier. Perhaps it created a bubble in which all of the tension brimming between us could be calm. “I thought you might be out there.”
“I was.”
“Oh.”
“It’ll take more than a few demons to bring me down.” He ran a hand through his short hair. The movement was mundane, but I was utterly transfixed. “About earlier. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”
“I understand.”
A quiet, ruthless chuckle. “Yes, you do.” Something red and hot beat back the gold in his eyes for a second before they dimmed altogether. “Walk with me.”
This was too dangerous a game. Though every alpha instinct in him seemed to be on lockdown, I wasn’t fooled into thinking he was safe. Or I was.
But the apology, the painstaking attempt to be non-threatening, it cost him. Hating that I was the one doing this to him, I looked out into the now-still night with the stars watching peacefully from the heavens, and couldn’t bring myself to refuse. “Am I allowed to step out of the perimeter of the house then?”
“Just this once.”
“Ha. Ha.”
Lips curving, he held out his hand. I shouldn’t take it. The rough pads of his fingers closed gently over mine as he helped me to my feet. It was the barest touch before he let go and moved aside, but it branded me to my very core.
He led me from the well-groomed grass of the Thompsons’ front lawn towards the closest perimeter, where the vegetation became less civilised. Knowing that my vision would be impaired, Max kept us away from the actual tree line.
He didn’t try to touch me again. Not physically. But his presence beside me was a visceral, warm stroke that kept the chill at bay.
“You needed to speak to me?” he asked as we wound around the path that would eventually lead to the homes of the civilians. My dull human nose caught the heady scent of gardenias and night-blooming jasmine in the air.
“I’m going crazy with nothing to do,” I told him.
“It’s been two days.”
Out loud, it sounded ridiculous. But after six months of near exhaustive activity, a moment to breathe felt like a moment I was drowning. If I allowed myself to stop, I was afraid I would never move again. “I’d prefer to keep busy if I can.”
The weighted brush of his gaze swept over me. I clenched the fist not in his field of vision and bore his scrutiny. “What did you have in mind? Don’t say you want to patrol.”
Ah. I see there was a limit to the leash. A part of me wanted to push to see just how far I could bait him towards the edge. Bad ideas were being left unprodded tonight, though.
“I was thinking of asking Doctor Thorne if he needs help in the infirmary. They were making potions this afternoon.”
Head turned towards the quiet stillness of the family homes, Max paused a step. He was moving again before I lost my pacing, but that fraction of hesitation was too telling. “You want to spend more time away from the Reserve?”
“I want to be useful.”
“You’re useful here.”
To a human’s perception, the darkness would have eaten up the sneer on my face. His shifter senses caught it clearly. “I’m tolerated here. Potion making is in my blood as much as alchemy is.”
“I can have Noah supervise if you want to make potions here.”
Smothering the urge to scream, I negotiated the point. “If I can make potions here, I wouldn’t say no. But I’d like to help the Academy too.”
The amusement in his voice was unmistakable this time. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Do you hear an echo?”
Seizing the opportunity, I went on. “I know I’m not supposed to go near the Cabin–”
“You’re not.” The finality in it was absolute.
“But–”
“No, Sophie.” And then, even though I wasn’t owed an explanation, “There’s too much going on. Your presence is agitating enough for the pack. For your own safety and my sanity, stay away from the Cabin.”
“Some of my potions might help Durin.”
He looked off into the distance without saying anything more.
I huffed, not liking it one bit. “Fine. I’d also like to do some gardening.”
This piqued his interest. “Got a hankering for Herbology? I hear it’s off the syllabus at the Academy. Kai and I used to catch up on sleep during the classes in our first year. And then Lex–”
His teeth snapped audibly like he’d tried to bite back the words. It was as though he’d forgotten. I’d done the same thing for weeks after she left. The body blow never got easier when I opened my eyes to sunlight and wondered why she hadn’t already snuck out of the room for her chores.
“She’s okay,” I said. It was the same thing I told myself every time. “Wherever she is, she’s okay.”
“I know.” Cold, cold words of absolute conviction. The mating link became still. For the first time, it really hit me that while Charles was angry, Max’s pain was far more corrosive. It lashed at the protective heart of him, making him confront something he’d thought he should have outgrown by now: fear. He was terrified for her.
I couldn’t stand seeing him hurting. “Remember that time the fair came to Rivia and we took her to the House of Supernatural Horrors?” I asked.
The barked-out laugh was fractured but genuine. “Whose idea was it not to tell her it wasn’t real?”
“I think that honour falls on Sasha.”
“She didn’t even hesitate. A griffon went right for her and her first instinct was to wave that stick of hers in its face.”
“Sasha’s still paying off the fines. He had to get a part-time job over the school breaks.”
“Serves him right.” A heavily weighted pause. “Kai will never stop fighting. Wherever he is. We just need to find him.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, my face pinching so tight I thought I might have burst a blood vessel. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
Why don’t you tell him, Sophie? That ugly v
oice said in my mind. That’s a sure-fire way to make him stop stalking you. Isn’t that what you want? And when I kept my mouth firmly closed, it whispered: coward.
We rounded the perimeter of the living quarters and through the path leading to the conference rooms. Cut out of the very canopy of the trees, the forest here was thicker. Too dense to allow the faint moonlight to penetrate enough that I could see.
Max turned as though to take the long way around lighter paths. The ache in my chest made me reckless. I took hold of his hand. He held on even though he shouldn’t. For a second everything became silent like all the night creatures stopped moving.
“Max?” Anastasia’s voice cut through the fairy tale. “Something’s going down with the wards in the northern sector. Harris is worried it could be a warning.”
She melted from between the trunks of a huddle of fir trees. Her eyes were a reflective, translucent green. Night-glow. Even I knew warding problems weren’t an issue that warranted the attention of the alpha. She knew we were here and had done it on purpose.
Trying to disengage made him cling even tighter. His jaw was granite when he drew me close so that if I took in too deep a breath, my chest would be flush against his. Knowing he held me out of faithfulness didn’t make me like her any better.
Leaning down, his breath was a hot caress against my ear. “You should thank her,” Max said, his voice full of a lion’s rumble. “I wouldn’t have been able to stop.”
My pulse was still uneven when Noah arrived to escort me back to the Thompsons’. Max refused to leave until Noah turned up. Those two minutes with Anastasia inspecting her nails like she was thinking of slitting my throat with them were agony.
“Sorry,” I said to Noah when I stepped onto the porch.
“I was already awake.”
“Still, it can’t be fun to babysit.”
“It can’t be fun to be babysat.”
I closed the door on his retreating back. As I made my way up the stairs, Eugenia was a phantom in my memory. “Feel the need to peel your skin off yet?” she asked.
No amount of cold water helped the situation. I stood under the high intensity blast of the shower until my teeth chattered and my lips turned purple. But when I looked inside me, the mating link was still an inferno raging out of control.
17
Internally, I was ecstatic to walk into Weaponry and Combat the next morning to find Sasha joking with Dev about ways to stay hidden while doing surveillance. When he set me down after a rib-crushing hug, his expression said I was still raging externally.
“So, life in the Thompson house not what it’s cracked up to be?” he asked, flashing me his fangs.
Dev opened his mouth, but my expression made him bite his lips together. “Don’t even think about it,” I said. “I so don’t want to hear your opinion on the matter.” Not least because his parents were leaders in the civilian community. They ran communication for the pack. I didn’t care if technically they were ambassadors. In my book, that was just a fancy term for professional gossips.
Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. Turning around, I let out a whoosh of contained air tainted with affection and threw my arms around Astrid’s neck. Like the other supernaturals, Astrid seemed to have an innate sense of how much pressure to apply so as not to break my bones with her strength. Today she added a little extra. I leaned into the pressure and still felt it wasn’t enough.
When I pulled away, her expression was strained. In my mind, I curled into a ball and began to howl like a dying creature.
“Hello, Sophie,” she said, her posture ramrod straight. The hug had been an aberration. Behind her crystalline blue eyes and the militaristic way she held herself, all I could see was bewilderment. Like she didn’t understand how to function in this world where Kai no longer existed and Lex was in mortal danger.
Unable to give her any sort of comfort, I tried to stick to a somewhat normal topic. “So, are you ready to kill Andrei yet?”
Her brows creased. “We’ve been assigned to work together securing the protection of Cardinal City. My personal feelings about him don’t matter.”
Huh. That she had any personal feelings about him at all was interesting. She raised her hand, stared at it, and then lowered it again. For a second, I thought she might stroke my arm, and then midway through the motion, she forgot what it was she had meant to do.
“Are you okay in the Reserve? If I could, I would make Father allow you haven in Seraphina. But they’re so agitated at the moment. Raphael remains unreachable.” She wound a lock of her pale blonde hair around a finger and tugged. By her very nature, every one of her movements was graceful. But I heard the distinct sound of ripping and pried her fingers loose.
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” The lie didn’t sit with either of us. “Or I will be. Please don’t worry about me.”
Her mouth opened, but before she could say anything, Professor Eldridge marched into the room with Tyler. My heart gave a little lurch at the sight of them. It almost erased some of the terror I was conditioned to feel in Professor Eldridge’s presence.
“Dammit,” Sasha said. “Picked the wrong day to come back to school.”
“How did she get the prison to let her go?” Orla asked.
“She’s spreading her time evenly. There are only a few classes here now.”
You wouldn’t know it based on the sheer number of students in the class. Twice as many as there had been in Arcane Magic. Granted, only the magic users would truly benefit from those classes.
Professor Eldridge didn’t bother with any introductions even though half the class hadn’t had the displeasure of being subjected to her teaching methods. “You’re probably all here because there are terrifying things out in the real world,” she said.“Let’s see if we can get you ready for them. We’ve got instructors from every race. With the malachim, there’s no telling who might turn on you at any moment.”
“What a beautiful sentiment,” Kieran commented. “It almost brings a tear to your eye.”
And then Professor Eldridge kept going, and I actually felt like weeping. “Most of you will know Astrid Bellamy, Evan McKinnon, and Brigid Harcourt, and of course, Tyler Jackson.” She pointed to the back of the room where Evan and Brigid had snuck. They stood against the wall beside the closed door. Their companion was the one who held my attention. “Our other volunteer is Anastasia Black. They’ll be with us for the remainder of the semester.”
The arm that Sasha had slung around my shoulders constricted. It was only then I realised I was grinding my teeth.
“Professor,” Kieran asked. “How exactly does the Council expect us to fight off the malachim when they’re not corporeal half the time?”
“Poorly,” came the blunt reply. “I won’t sugar coat it.”
“When does she ever?” Sasha observed.
I pinched his side.
“The malachim are unlike any other demon we have fought before. Their origin makes them an amalgamation of all the demons’ strongest abilities. They are less affected by the wards we keep in place in order to protect ourselves from the other demons. That is why, today we will not be picking up any weapons.”
Beside me, Sasha went rigid. “I knew I should have swapped out with Roland.” He glanced down at me and then pulled me against him. “Though it’s good to see you, Soph.”
My feelings were evident in the fact that I hadn’t stopped watching him out of the corner of my eye, fearful that he might just disappear before I could say goodbye. Ironic, considering that’s what I had done to them in the first place.
Tyler stepped up beside Professor Eldridge. The sunlight coming from the window grazed the side of his face, causing the scales on his temple to shimmer like oil-slicked water. It made me wonder whether being half para-human made his resistance to the malachim stronger.
“Take a look at the floor, folks,” he said. “The room has been sectioned off into grids. Come up and grab a set of supplies from the front and then find your
self a spot.”
Breaking away from us, Astrid went to supervise while we jostled with the other students, many of whom we didn’t know, to follow the instructions. I wasn’t short by any means, but height wasn’t a determining factor when dealing with supernaturals. Fear increased their competitiveness. I wasn’t anywhere close to the supply table when something clipped me on the right side of the head. “Ow!”
The girl who’d struck me didn’t even give me a second glance. I would have said something if I thought she’d done it on purpose, but she continued to bump into the bodies around her. If I stayed around much longer, I would be a walking bruise. Somebody grabbed me and pushed me in front of them.
Dev’s big, brown hands landed on my shoulders. He bit the air in front of him, a growl rippling in his throat. “Move!” he ordered the students in front of us. They parted like the Red Sea.
“It’s okay,” I started to say.
He pushed me forward gently. “It’s okay for you,” he said. “But if Max hears that you got hurt on our watch, we’re not going to be okay.”
“I’m not a china doll. I can handle a bit of jostling.”
Grabbing two sets of supplies, I allowed him to part the crowd once more so we could break from the huddle. “No offense, Soph,” he said, “but you probably wouldn’t realise someone was trying to hurt you until their knife was already in your back. And then you’d stop to ask them what they were doing.”
“Excuse me? Over-exaggeration much?”
“I’m just saying, there’s no harm in being careful.”
“As opposed to what I’ve been doing my whole life?”
“You haven’t been almost mated your whole life.”
My nostrils flared. “I am not mating with him.”
He held up his hands in a surrendering gesture. “Okay, okay. All I’m saying is, it doesn’t hurt to be careful. Some of the other females aren’t going to be above using any excuse to rip the skin off your face.”
