by Lan Chan
“Would it make a difference at this point?” I asked. Even though the Arcana fruit was making me feel a detached glow, I was very aware of the tender wound at my side.
“We’re not sure,” Doctor Thorne said. “We’ve never really shipped our patients off into the human world.”
I chewed on another bite of fruit and thought back to the compound and then dispelled my thoughts. We’d had a doctor amongst the human population, so it was a moot point. And anyway, the supernatural healing had always done the trick.
Jacqueline moved again, this time leaning over to prop herself up with her elbows on her knees. It occurred to me that she was fidgety. It didn’t fit with her persona at all, and it made me think that there was something that made her uncomfortable.
“The thing is,” she said, “even if we wanted to send you to the humans, we’re not sure if it’ll turn Max into a raging killer again.”
Mentioning him had a dark cloud of apprehension curling around me. “He’s only just woken from his induced sleep, but he’s asking for you,” Jacqueline said. “The shifters are waiting outside to take you back to the Reserve.”
“Which shifters?”
“Ari and Harris.”
Not Noah or Charles. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew it had been a deliberate choice. Through pack, Noah and Charles were a hundred percent loyal to Max. Through friendship, they might hesitate for me. Ari and Harris wouldn’t.
“Are you comfortable going back to the Reserve?” Jacqueline asked. The way she said it, gentle and wispy, had the hairs on my neck standing straight up. It was only then that it struck me what this reminded me of. I’d watched a movie once with Jerome when we’d taken a trip to the human sector surrounding the compound. It was an over-the-top action movie where some ex-marine had turned bodyguard and had just saved a damsel from her violent partner. The way the doctors had spoken to her was exactly the way Jacqueline was speaking to me. Like I was the victim of a crime. Like I was a battered plaything.
The thought made gold bars appear momentarily in my eyes. It set my teeth on edge, making my muscles tighten. I winced as the pain in my side flared.
“Perhaps a few more days’ rest is called for,” Doctor Thorne said.
“No. I’m fine. I’ll go back to the Reserve.”
Jacqueline reached out for my hand. “Are you sure? At least think about staying for a while.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”
That word rattled around in my head, making everybody glance sidelong at each other, because things were clearly not fine. Cassie elected to go with me under the guise of visiting friends.
Ari and Harris didn’t say a word when Doctor Thorne discharged me and I limped out of the infirmary. “I’d like my access to the MirrorNet back,” I told Jacqueline.
“It’s already done. I don’t think any of the Council can argue that you’re a threat, considering you chose to die rather than use Noah’s essence to save yourself.” Her lips curved into a smile. She touched my cheek, her face growing soft. “I’m so proud of you.”
“For dying?”
She petted my cheek. “For never forgetting who you are despite everything.”
I clenched my fist to stop from tearing up. Who was I? Someone who chose the easy way out over her best friend. I was a failure.
Ari and Harris tried to lead me towards the Thompsons’ place. I veered off towards the living quarters. “It’s this way,” Ari snapped.
Ignoring him, I kept walking, with Cassie mute beside me. “Sophie!”
With my voice full of blades, I echoed something he’d said to me when this all started. “I don’t take orders from you.” His eyes widened. “Cassie’s here. You don’t need to watch me.”
They still trailed behind us, but I reached Trey’s parents’ place and knocked on the door. It was the middle of the day, but Laila opened it after a minute or two. The welcoming smile on her face slowly drained as she caught sight of the two inner-circle shifters standing in the distance.
“Sophie,” she said. “What’s the matter, honey?”
“Would it be okay for me to stay here for a couple of days?”
She scratched the side of her nose in confusion. “You’re always welcome here but…” And then she put two and two together. “Are you sure?”
Ari was suddenly right beside me. “Wait a second–”
“I’ve made my decision,” I said with as much calm as I could muster. “Are you going to start listening to me or will you force me against my will?”
I locked my gaze with his and refused to back down even when the pain in my head became a screaming siren that wanted me to look at the ground.
It felt like an eternity but must have been seconds before Ari could no longer stand it and broke away. “Shit,” he bit out.
“Where’s Noah?” I asked, moving away from Laila and back out onto the open walkway.
“He’s on recovery, but–”
I started power-walking towards Noah’s place.
“Wait,” Harris pleaded. There was genuine unease in his eyes.
“If he has a problem,” I said as smoothly as I could, “he knows where to find me.”
The two shifters gave each other nervous glances. “You can run away and tell him if you’d like. In fact, it would probably be best that you leave in case he finds out you knew and didn’t say anything right away.”
“Holy crap, Soph,” Cassie said, when they literally jogged away. “Max is going to lose his shit.”
“He’s already lost his shit.” And it was my fault. I might have understood it had he been able to feel the mating link, but he couldn’t. There was no way he did and hadn’t brought it up. Which meant that this thing between us had turned toxic. I’d been so selfish holding onto him when I knew I couldn’t have him. I should have done this from the beginning. Should have pushed harder to be separated instead of being weak and giving into my need to be close to him. If that was how Max reacted when I was in danger, he wouldn’t be able to survive it if something happened to me when I tried to transmute Lex’s blood again.
Cassie picked at her nails. “Are you going away too?”
I paused mid-step. “Cassie.”
She straightened her spine. At this angle I could see only the tips of her eyes that were beginning to moisten. “It’s okay. I get it.”
What I heard was the disappointment and fear. “It might be better for everyone if I’m not around.”
“No, it won’t,” she said. “It’ll only be better for you.”
I would have been less painful if she just backhanded me. Swallowing down all of my emotions, I pushed them aside to be dealt with later.
“Can you please pack up my things? I just need to talk to Noah and then I’ll come back to Laila’s.”
She agreed, but something in her eyes said that she doubted she would see me ever again.
Noah was not at home. I waited outside his place for a few minutes, thinking that he might return. I should have known that I wouldn’t be alone for long. Gwen appeared as per the shifter custom. Even if she wasn’t beta, I suspected they would have sent her anyway. She was all fluid grace hiding the efficient soldier within.
“Is Noah with you?” I asked before she could say anything.
“Yep.”
“Okay. Then lead the way.”
She didn’t try and make small talk, and I didn’t nudge like I would have before. A clean break was just that, a break. I couldn’t allow myself to get swept up in their emotions because I would have enough trouble controlling my own.
When I stepped into the conference room, I found myself locked in the stalking gaze of the inner circle. This time, I didn’t have Max to protect me.
31
It was customary in the presence of the circle to take your place in the very centre. But I wasn’t going to bend today. So I planted myself just inside the door. Avoiding Noah’s pointed look, I said, “The answer is no. As it has always been.”
Anastasia snorted. Unlike Noah whose complexion was still peaky and whose bandages I could see in the bulge at his side, she was physically unscathed. Was I imagining, though, that there was less bite in her aggression? “You’ve said a lot of things,” she argued. “But we don’t see any evidence of it.”
Truth. I had said I didn’t want to mate with Max and then I’d acted like I had rights over him. That wasn’t fair on anybody.
“You’re right.” I wasn’t sure which of us was more surprised. “It won’t happen again.”
Gwen had taken a seat on my left. Now she crossed one leg over the other and leaned forward. “Are you sure? You’ve just come out of the infirmary. Maybe you should take some time to think about it.”
“Agreed,” Amy added. “I know that happened might seem fright–”
I stared at her pointedly. “That wasn’t frightening. It was insane.”
Her gaze flicked sideways to Jeremiah. “We’re shifters. We lose our heads a little when we’ve emotional.”
“Are you really going to sit here and tell me that what happened was normal? I’ve lived with wolves. I’ve seen it when one goes rogue. That was not it. He’s not some run-of-the-mill shifter. He broke through a sorceress’s ward for goodness’ sake!”
She gave me a genuinely bewildered look. “Yes, but maybe if you were mated–”
“Why? So I can be chained to the Reserve for the rest of my life because he can’t control himself? However he is now, he’ll be worse if we’re mated.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Noah said.
I arched a brow at him. “I can’t continue to have this conversation with you if you’re going to pretend nothing is wrong.”
“She’s right,” Anastasia said. Though the way her jaw clamped made it seem as though agreeing with me was the worst possible thing she could have done. “I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s agitated beyond what’s normal.”
“Yes, but he’s not normal,” Gwen pressed. “He’s half-mage born. That’s got to count for something.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I sighed.
“It matters to us!” Jeremiah argued.
I bit my tongue and inhaled slowly before answering. “I know how you feel. But I’m sorry. I can’t do it. So I’m asking you to please have my back when the time comes.”
They exchanged glances. Something charged filled the air with a preternatural quietness that made my hairs stand on end. Silent predator communication. The pack mind at work.
Anastasia’s hand fisted. I swore I heard bones cracking. “Do you love him?”
The question was not unexpected. Regardless, the lie I had cultivated on the way here was harder to push out past my grinding teeth than I thought. Years of practice being meek, being compliant, being Sophie Mwansa, was the only thing that allowed me to make it convincing. “Yes.”
Harris threw his arms in the air. “Well, then what are we having this conversation for?” Beaten amber light reflected in his eyes. The first wave of his aggression filtered through the room, stoking the fires of their animal hearts until half of them were growling softly. “Just give in and be done with it!”
And with those words, he handed me what I needed.
I willed my jaw to stop clenching. “That’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t want to just give in. I’ve given in my entire life. I’ve been the quiet child, the sidekick best friend, the suspected criminal. I’d rather not spend the rest of my life as the placid mate.” By speaking them aloud, I realised for the first time that it was true. “I love him. Which means when it comes to things that matter, I’ll let him have his way because I don’t want to hurt him. Over and over again, until I’ll lose who I am and what I want. Until I’m no longer me. Is that the future that you want for me? Is that the kind of mate that will be good for the pack?”
Silence permeated the room. So quiet that I could hear the birds flitting on the branches that cocooned the conference room.
“He wouldn’t–” Gwen began to say, but then she snapped her mouth shut.
After that display in the arena, we all knew my leash would be very short. “Dammit.” Gwen slammed her fist on the table. She tugged at her hair. “You realise that eventually he’ll have to mate with someone.” It was all I could do not to glance at Anastasia.
I nodded. “I understand.”
Jeremiah swallowed. “Maybe it’ll be better for everyone if you left the–”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he was saying because inside me, the mating link suddenly flashed like a white-hot beacon. The blood drained from my face as Gwen’s head snapped up, her nose twitching in the air.
“Shit!” she spat a second before the door busted open right off its hinges.
Noah was the one who grabbed me. Ignoring his injury, he shot out of his chair and snagged the front of my shirt, dragged me into his arms, as the shifters around me kicked furniture out of the way to form a protective circle around me. Harris and Jeremiah planted themselves in the line of fire, their shoulders pulled back, their lips quivering.
“Get out,” Max said, his voice like a deadly blade. The chilling bite of aggression scraped over me. It seeped through my skin and sank like a dead weight in my gut.
He was just wearing jeans and a green T-shirt but the aura around his flickered with unwavering conviction. There was no way the elite guards had willingly let him go in this condition. Which meant he’d broken out of containment and probably injured a bunch of guards on the way.
Pulling the lie around myself like a protective cloak, I forced myself to meet his gaze and froze. His eyes hadn’t changed back. They were still that depthless black.
Noah tightened his hold on me, even though we both knew it was a mistake. Max’s insidious rage slid abrasively over Noah, making the wolf’s features waver between man and beast.
It was instinct for shifters to change into their animal forms when threatened. Right now, Noah was doing everything he could not to shift and roll over to show his belly.
“You have to let go,” I whispered.
He swallowed hard. “If he comes at you, I’ll run.”
Max’s nostrils flared. “You step out of this room with her and it’ll be the last thing you do.”
“Max!” Ari grated, coming up on Max’s left. “This isn’t right.”
The snapped-out punch wasn’t unexpected, but Ari hadn’t counted on the deadly force behind it. When Ari went sailing across the room, broke glass, and dropped to the ground, everybody became still. There was no movement below.
I realised then that I’d miscalculated so badly during that first pack circle. Max had held back so much it was laughable. Perhaps he always had been hiding behind his charming, playful mask. I saw now that I was looking at the future leader of all the shifters. Not just the lion clan. And that just made everything so much worse.
It was not in the shifters’ nature to know when to quit for their own good, though. They had decided to protect me, and they would do so until their last breath. Which probably wasn’t going to be all that far off.
All around me, clothing began to tear and claws unsheathed. My skin pricked with goose bumps and I suddenly really needed to pee. The uncomfortable vibration of growling made my teeth chatter. A strange metallic taste coiled down the sides of my neck.
Anastasia fell back into step beside Noah. He traded me off to her. They were making an assumption that Max would be less inclined to hurt a female. I wasn’t so sure. If Agatha hadn’t teleported herself away from the arena, Max would have ripped her head off her body and crunched her bones for breakfast.
“I’m not asking,” Max said, voice dropping so low it was barely speech.
Inside the mating link, a tendril of darkness appeared. It cascaded into a spider’s web of poison, and I gasped. He was on the verge. If they attacked him now, they would die.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s enough.”
Struggling away from Anastasia was impossible. She w
as miles stronger than me. Her fingers clenched around my arm as though we were joined at the hip. I stamped my foot on hers. She didn’t budge. Her white-blonde hair seemed to have grown a couple of inches and hung like an ivory curtain around her head.
“I mean it,” I said, trying to get her fingers off. “I’m done. Let me go, please.”
“I would do as she asks,” Max said, being oh so helpful. When Anastasia still wouldn’t comply, he said, “Get on your knees.”
It wasn’t a roar. He didn’t even raise his voice. But the brutal dominance in it hit me like the aftershock of an explosion. It lashed at the protection circle I’d thrown around myself and became a pressure in my mind that wouldn’t let up.
Outside, the trees began to shake as though an invisible wind was ripping through the canopy. I heard creaking like the earth was moving under us. The mating link flared again, this time with a soft glow that saturated my insides with comforting heat. It helped to cut through the heady waves of Max’s will. I was human, and it took all of my mental scrambling not to get down on my knees.
They resisted for as long as they could. But eventually, one by one, they crouched and lowered their heads. Anastasia tried to drag me down with her. Everything inside me screamed in protest. Who the hell did he think he was? I didn’t care if he was alpha of all the supernaturals. I didn’t care if he was fricken Lucifer himself. I would not now, nor would I ever, bow down to anyone this way.
And then he arched his brow and all of that disappeared. If I was going to pretend to be submissive, I couldn’t give in to my true instincts to tell him to stick his command up his behind. I sat down heavily, knowing that if I had any chance of getting him to back down, I had to play this part even if it killed me. And it seemed like it very likely would. Because if he had any inkling that I wasn’t submissive on this point, he would never let me go.
Don’t let them make you forget who you are, Sophie.
I would never forget. Even if we had mated, I would never forget. Max wanted me safe in a bubble in the Reserve. How could I ever be safe in this world with Lex as a best friend? I didn’t want to be safe. I wanted her back more than anything.
