Ash...and the Guardian, who knew my weaknesses the same way I knew Ash’s. How many times as a child had I run away after a lesson with my father to spill my woes to the listening forest? How many times had I growled about the unfairness of paternal tactics?
At the time, the Guardian had been warmly supportive, albeit wordless in her encouragement. As her sister claimed, she did appear to like children.
Unfortunately, I was no longer a child. And a few of my most intrinsic weaknesses still remained.
Which I only realized when Ash backed into the darkness rather than pressing his advantage. “What would you do if my sword wasn’t pointed at you,” he murmured, “but at a pack mate?”
Too late, I saw what he—or the Guardian—had already noticed. The clan had been close a moment earlier, but they’d obeyed my demands and moved backwards.
Well, most had. All save one youngster who dawdled behind.
No, not dawdled. Caitlyn had obeyed my command by retreating three paces, but after that she’d placed her body between the others and danger. And yet...she possessed no weapons. No way to protect herself other than retreat and hope Ash wouldn’t attack in the face of her pack mates’ combined strength.
But a Beta didn’t retreat. Instead, the girl stood tall, unarmed, as Ash’s sword flickered away from me...and toward her upturned face.
No, that wasn’t Ash leading the attack. That sword was wielded by the Guardian. My friend would never have pressed the tip of his blade into the palm Caitlyn instinctively raised between them.
And my friend would never have smiled like that while promising to maim a pack mate. “Do you think she’ll serve the clan if I sever a tendon here”—his sword swiped out a tiny trickle of blood across Caitlyn’s wrist—“and here?”
Another swipe and he’d bared her elbow. Cloth fragments fluttered to the ground. The entire pack held our breath.
The Guardian was right. This was my weakness. If the Whelan clan was threatened, I would do anything in my power to protect them.
So I did. I feinted and pivoted then lashed out while Ash was still raising his sword to defend himself. Without hesitation, my dagger pierced my oldest friend.
Steel ground against bone as the blade thudded hilt deep into his body. Fae faded from Ash’s eyes as he fell.
Chapter 36
The pack’s reaction pulsed through me in a wave of sorrow. Their pain and distress forced me to clench my teeth and swallow hard before I could speak.
“He’s not dead.” I sought out the eyes of family members in the shadows, hunting connection. “And he deserves your support. Ash was fighting....”
The rest of the words dried up as glitter bit into my cheekbone. I couldn’t offer an explanation. Instead, all I could do was be Alpha.
“You”—I addressed the closest thing we had to a doctor—“bandage his wounds. You and you”—jerking my chin at two of our strongest members—“carry him off the field gently. Now, who will challenge me for the role of Beta?”
Because I needed a Beta now more than ever. Not for the Guardian’s sake, but for the sake of the pack I’d leave behind.
Yes, I intended to leave them. Ash had been vanquished, but the Guardian was still a danger. Kale and Hazel were in peril. Rune and Erskine were stuck in limbo.
All of that could be fixed, however, if I opened up a single door.
In order to open that door, I needed to leave my pack in the hands of another. To that end, I raised my voice and asked, “Anyone?”
Unfortunately, nobody came forward to make a challenge. Instead, feet shuffled and eyes averted. I’d broken something by stabbing my friend.
Their distrust threatened to double me over. Still, protecting the pack involved choosing a Beta. Immediately.
So I straightened then prodded individuals verbally. “Caitlyn?”
The teenager in question drew a bloody hand away from her cheek. Ash’s sword had struck before he spun to protect himself. But it wasn’t the wound that made her shake her head.
“No, Alpha. I’m to be your son’s Beta, not yours.”
At least she wasn’t afraid of me. Heartened, I turned to the other pack member who could do the job and was unlikely to be horrified by my recent behavior.
“Willa?”
“No.” The older woman dropped her voice as she schooled me, but the entire pack still heard. “A female Alpha is balanced by a male Beta. You need to choose a man.”
Little did she know that gender didn’t matter. Not for what I had in mind.
I flared my nostrils, trying to tamp down the impossibility of the situation...only to scent something that brought a reluctant smile to my lips. Persimmon. Sweet and clean and warm, like strong arms enfolding me against a supportive chest.
“Butch,” I greeted the darkness. “What are you doing here?”
I could barely make him out as he stalked forward, but his rumble was clearly audible. “Lupe and Ryder took over in town. I’ve stepped down as Samhain Shifter.”
My eyebrows shot up. I’d thought duty was Rune’s guiding force just as it was mine. “Turned in your badge?”
Now he was close enough to make out. Dark skin against dark trees. Dark eyes sparkling. “Samhain Shifters don’t have badges. But metaphorically, yes, you could say that.”
He paused three feet away from me and I found myself at a loss for words. The Guardian would soon realize what I was up to, which would put my entire pack in danger. And all I could do was drink in Rune’s presence like moss soaking up the first autumn rain after a long, parched drought.
Like moss leaves, I felt myself unfurling. Softening. Strengthening.
Rune was here. The impossible might be possible after all.
He misread my silence. Clearing his throat, his gaze fell to the soil. “Since I no longer have alternative duties, I came here seeking a position.”
“Consort?”
His head drifted slowly from side to side. Steel rasped as his sword emerged from its scabbard.
“It looks,” he rumbled, “like you’re seeking a Beta instead.”
RUNE HAD GIVEN ME EXACTLY what I needed, if not what I wanted. Because the notion of having him join my pack just in time for me to leave it.... I shivered and squelched the upcoming pain.
Meanwhile, the shifters around us rustled as if a breeze had flowed through them. They smelled uncertain, but for an entirely different reason. Rune wasn’t a pack mate, and what the others had seen of him didn’t shine a positive light.
Still, I was Alpha...for the moment. My clan would come around once they understood my choice.
And I was choosing this, even though the idea carved out my middle until I felt completely hollow. There was no one I’d trust more than Rune to do this for me. No one else I’d want at the head of this pack.
So I knelt to recover the sword that had fallen from Ash’s fingers, unsurprised that Rune waited for me to straighten before hefting his own weapon. Even when our blades clashed together, the back and forth felt less like a battle and more like a dance.
Rune was ten times more skillful than I was. His sword knew the track mine was heading on before I was even certain of my own upcoming trajectory. His body seemed to be tied to mine with invisible strings.
And yet...he didn’t press his advantage. Didn’t attack with fury. Instead, Rune maintained the same languorous pace with which he’d started. Together, we spun.
Swords collided and separated, sparking moonlight. Blades tapped together, ringing like bells.
Gradually, the pack drew in closer, and this time I didn’t order them out of the zone of danger. Because there was no zone of danger.
Which meant that when Rune spoke, we all heard.
“I’m half fae, but I’ve given your Alpha my true name.” He wasn’t addressing me, and yet he was. Tap, tap, slide, our weapons sang counterpoint to his promises. “With that name, Tara can force me to do her bidding. If I become a hindrance, she can send me away from here. Even without that
promise, I would still bend to her will.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my old nurse smile. She was the soft heart of our pack, the maternal instinct. No wonder she was swayed by Rune’s poetry.
Willa wasn’t. “How,” my father’s Beta demanded as our swords carved beauty into starlight, “can we trust you not to go beast the way you did this morning?”
For the first time, Rune’s step faltered. If this had been a true battle, that would have been the moment I brought him down.
Instead, my sword provided leverage so Rune could regain his footing. My words provided the strength of my belief. “Butch would never harm those he cares about. And, as Beta of this pack, he cares about all of you.”
Persimmon unfurled stronger, pulling me in until my shoulder brushed Rune’s shoulder. If it hadn’t been for the Guardian’s menace and Natalie’s children lost in the bowels of the earth beneath us, I would have dropped my sword and taken his lips.
Instead, I raised my eyebrows, a reminder that I needed to win this battle. Then I twisted the base of my weapon up against the pommel of his sword.
Rune nodded. His fingers relaxed.
As easily as if we’d planned it, his sword flew away into the wooded darkness. Rune knelt with the grace of a dancer.
“Alpha.”
I was the only one with a sword now. I used it to tap him on the shoulders—right, left, right—as if I was a queen and he was my knight.
“Beta,” I replied.
THE EARTH EXHALED BENEATH us. The Guardian thought I was doing her bidding.
But the pack hesitated, their bonds slithering snake-like around me. The immaterial tethers should have latched onto Rune without nudging, but apparently Clan Whelan nurtured reservations still.
So I grabbed the mass of tethers and twirled them around Rune’s shoulders. If pack mates wouldn’t connect willingly to their new Beta, I’d force them to connect.
Force them so fast that the bonds’ bite was surely painful. I’d felt that pain when my father died and leadership had transferred to me in an instant. Then, my shoulders had bowed for a split second before I’d straightened as Alpha.
Rune, in contrast, didn’t falter. Instead, his gaze roved across newfound pack mates.
“I’m honored,” he told them. “I will live up to your trust.”
“Best you do,” Willa started, voice terse. But then she trailed off as I completed the transition that needed completing. The one I couldn’t explain aloud because of the charm Lenny’s wife had cast over my head.
First, I placed two fingers in my mouth to whistle up transportation. Erskine pirouetted only once in the moonlight before he came to stand beside me. Then he let me grab his mane and vault aboard.
There, I did what I’d planned from the beginning. Grabbing all of the bonds flowing out of me except those leading to humans, I ripped them from my flesh.
Did I say, rip? I should have said excavated them one by one with a rusty spoon.
If the sudden joining of those bonds had been painful, their severing was excruciating. Pack mates’ gazes flying to mine, their reactions gut-wrenching and disillusioned.
No wonder Willa, for once in her life, ignored my place above and apart. “Tara, your role is here! With your pack. You’re behaving like a child. If you leave now, you might as well stay gone.”
I swallowed. She was right. I was no longer Alpha because I’d chosen a path my pack couldn’t walk down. I’d chosen to save Kale and Hazel, Erskine and Rune.
But I wasn’t leaving Clan Whelan in the lurch. Instead, ignoring pain both physical and emotional, I flung the bonds I’d ripped from myself toward my Beta...now the pack’s Alpha.
Because Rune wasn’t tied into the Guardian. He hadn’t been raised to defend a fae who didn’t deserve defending. The Guardian wouldn’t have a foothold to sneak through him and into our clan.
Instead, Rune was a safe anchor for my pack mates. He’d protect them until I was finished...or would find a way to protect them forever if I failed.
Only, Rune didn’t understand that. Didn’t understand why I’d ripped free the persimmon-scented connection that started at my neck and spiraled to his heart. Why I’d removed the reason our swordplay had been a dance and a seduction rather than a battle.
I opened my mouth to explain, but the charm that prevented me from explaining about the Guardian prevented me from speaking about this also.
So all I could do was listen to Rune’s anguished “Tara!”
I felt his pain...then I didn’t.
Slumping over the unicorn’s neck, I clenched my fists into Erskine’s mane with the last of my energy. Then I passed out.
Chapter 37
“You need to wake up.”
Rune’s voice slapped my eyes open. No, not Rune’s. Not quite.
The mattress beneath me was soft and...vaguely damp? I blinked my eyes open to find wisps of white floating across a blue sky above me.
Right, I wasn’t in bed and this wouldn’t be Rune shaking my shoulder. This had to be his brother, Erskine.
I rolled over onto my hands and knees, finding deep moss where I’d thought there was a mattress. My head pounded complaint at the motion. There was a strange emptiness and lightness in my gut.
Because I’d severed my tethers to the pack and to Rune. The memory slapped me harder than Erskine’s words had.
There was no time to waste.
Already, the aroma of persimmon was floating away from me. I’d danced through it, with it...then I’d broken the connection. If I wanted to use the remnant still clinging to my skin, I needed to act fast.
Only...Erskine’s nose swept into my bleary vision until we were almost touching. “Is that what Butch really thinks? Were you lying? I understand mortals can lie.”
I didn’t have to ask what Erskine was referring to. Back when I’d made my pit stop on the way to pack central, I’d shared Rune’s deepest fears in an effort to gain his brother’s assistance. Of course Erskine would demand the rest of the story now that he possessed human lips.
Rather than answering, I asked the question I’d wanted to throw at Erskine ever since I realized he was Rune’s brother. “I met you before I met Butch. But you stayed close to me because of his connection. How is that possible?”
Erskine’s shoulder found its way under my floundering fingers. His strength drew me upright as he replied. “Time flows strangely in Faery. Yes, I knew you were Butch’s. Yes, that’s why I carried you back and forth when you asked me to. I want to be his brother, even if he doesn’t want to be mine.”
He set me on my feet, took a step back, then his voice turned petulant. “Now will you tell me why Butch holds me at arm’s length?”
Erskine had leaned me up against one of the standing stones and I started working my way along them to my destination. At the same time, I put Erskine out of his misery. Or, I guess, added to his misery.
“Your brother thinks you set him up a decade ago by pretending to be bullied. He thinks you preferred staying in a burning tree rather than accepting his help afterwards. Ever since, he’s assumed his wolf is prone to flying out of control and that all fae are evil. That’s on you.”
Despite the fact Erskine was my sole ally here, my voice had grown hard. Rune’s pain felt like my pain. I couldn’t prevent my words from coming out as a snap.
A wolf would have snapped back, but Erskine instead wilted. His shoulders rounded and his head bowed until he almost resembled the boy he must have been in Rune’s memories.
“Then you and Butch owe me nothing. Instead, I owe him.”
“Or, perhaps,” I suggested, “neither of you owes the other anything. You’re brothers. Being present in each other’s lives is apology enough. Just a thought.”
As I spoke, my fingers scrabbled behind me. Seeking the door only Rune could open. The one Erskine needed dealt with so he’d no longer be stuck Between.
And, there was the doorknob. At last.
Unfortunately, the fin
al hint of persimmon had seeped out of my pores while I was hunting. But I knew where the last dregs would linger. Under my chin, where Rune had bit me.
For the second time, I ripped off the scab. Smearing persimmon-scented blood on my fingers, I reached for the door knob.
Then I opened up the door.
I HALF EXPECTED ERSKINE to stop me. Or to wrench my arm behind my back and pretend he was forcing me forward to get on the Queen’s good side.
But something about our conversation must have shifted his loyalties. Because Erskine stood back and watched as I walked through the portal into another world.
He watched...as I tripped over nothing and fell through a cold, whirling nothing. Which meant that, rather than arriving with knives out, I landed in the Unseelie Court on my hands and knees.
Thankfully, the Court was too busy to notice my fumbled arrival. Pulling myself to my feet, I noted that the land of Faery looked exactly like I’d expected...and nothing like I’d expected. It was loud and bright and colorful, full of beings both beautiful and cruel.
And all of their gazes were glued to a massive silver mirror. As a result, what should have resembled a medieval banquet hall was more akin to a sports bar.
“Three on the blond chick!” someone yelled. He looked like the most beautiful human I’d ever seen...and at the same time, like he wasn’t at all human. His fingers, I noted, ended in claws.
“Her?” the hairy beast beside him snorted. This one bore little semblance of humanity, although he did stand upright on two legs. “She won’t last thirty seconds. I put my odds on the kid.”
I craned my neck, trying to make out the flickers of movement on the mirror. That was clearly what these beings were betting on. But there were too many bodies between me and the mirror to be sure.
Then I lost track of the game—or whatever it was. Because the Queen’s elegant neck turned her perfectly chiseled face toward me.
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