I leaned into him, letting the moment wash away the darkness in my soul and replace it with something else. Love maybe. He groaned and the kiss deepened. I slid my hand across his chest to his far shoulder.
“Really?” Oka grumped as she slid off my lap.
I opened my eyes and pulled back a little from Mac, my breathing ragged, but in a good way. A very good way. He shifted on his seat.
“Damn cat.”
I covered my mouth as I laughed. They were holding me together, these two, in more ways than they even realized. They kept the darkness at bay within me with their love and laughter.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Mac said.
I turned to face the direction he looked. Movement flickered in the distance, two animals moving at a good clip. Mac stood with me. “It’s him.” He reached behind our spot and pulled out a handful of clothes. “You should take these to them.”
His fingers brushed mine and he gave me a wink. “I’m good, Pam. I get it now. I understand family.”
I took the clothes, grateful that Mac did indeed understand. I hurried out from the shelter of the trees. The two wolves slowed as they caught sight of me.
“Alex?” I asked even though I could see the color of his fur, the color of his eyes. Part of me was just surprised that he was alive. That he’d made it out unscathed.
“Yeah, it’s me.” His voice was tired. I put the clothes on the ground near them, catching a whiff of gunpowder and blood.
“Here, Mac got them for you.”
“Nice of him,” Alex said. Gods, this was weird, so stiff and awkward.
I turned my back and a moment later came the sound of rustling clothes, and then a hand on my shoulder. I turned and sucked in a sharp breath.
“Oh my gods, are you okay?” Blood spread down Alex’s face in a steady stream.
He waved me off. “I’m fine. Nicked me is all.”
“Nearly killed him,” Jasmine said. “I saved him.” She wove her arms around one of his, tangling herself firmly to his side.
Oka and Mac stayed back, giving us space. But Jasmine clung to her man like a piece of over-glued flypaper.
“Jas, would you give us a sec?” Alex asked.
“No, I don’t think I will.” She glared at me, her eyes shining in the darkness, and I sighed. I didn’t have time for this drama. I didn’t have to like her, and likely wouldn’t since she was so obviously not the right match for Alex, but I wanted him to be happy. Which meant swallowing some of my pride.
“Look,” I held up both hands in a gesture of peace, “Jasmine, Alex is like a brother to me. And I’m with Mac who I care deeply for. So, this jealous act is totally unnecessary. I’m not going to be trying to take him from you. Okay? I just want to talk to him and catch up a little without everyone weighing what we say, or judging the things we’ve done. There’s literally nothing else going on here.” There. I said it all out loud. Without even stumbling over it. Never mind the fact that my heart was racing about a thousand miles an hour because these words were hard to say to this woman I didn’t like when I’d never even said them to Mac or Oka.
Truths. Those were what I needed to hang onto. But Jasmine didn’t budge from her spot next to Alex.
“I’m not going anywhere. I can smell the desire in the air and I am not about to be ousted by a dirty little witch.”
I coughed. Desire? Sweet Jesus, Mac and I had been making out pretty heavy there, but I didn’t realize it would still be stuck to me. I could feel my face heat up as I looked over my shoulder to where Oka and Mac waited. And I could have sworn the big man winked at me. Cheeky git. Made me like him even more.
But I sure as shit wasn’t about to tell Jasmine that’s what she was smelling.
Alex jerked his arm away from her, rougher than I’d ever seen him be. She stumbled and barely caught her balance.
“You see?” she snapped. “You see?”
I wasn’t sure just what I was supposed to see, but maybe Alex did.
He clenched his teeth and he let out a low growl, the muscles in his body tensing. “Time for you to go. I need to speak with Pam.” He took a step toward her, eyes narrowed and that low growl rumbling through him.
Who was this man and what had he done with Alex? Alex was a submissive. He would never growl at someone that way. But there he was in front of me, standing his ground. Because of Jasmine, or did it have something to do with me? I wasn’t entirely sure.
She shifted her weight, clearly considering her options. “You are not my—”
“Now!” Alex snapped, adding another low rumble to punctuate the request.
She growled right back at him, but with her head lowered and eyes downcast. Put in her place? She slowly backed off, her chest heaving and a glimmer of tears in her eyes.
Damn it, I didn’t want to feel bad for her. But how would I feel if Alex treated me like that? Simple: it would crush me.
“Don’t be mean to her, Alex. She’s obviously crazy about you,” I said. Jasmine’s back stiffened.
“Don’t you fucking stick up for me, you dirty witch!”
Alex stepped between us, blocking her view of me, but a second later she was stalking toward the main group, headed to the bulk of where the shifters slept.
“Boy, she’s a real gem, Alex. Where’d you pick her up?” I asked, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
“I’d rather not get into it now,” he said. “Will you walk with me?”
I glanced back at Oka and Mac. Mac made a shooing motion as he stood. “I’ll be in bed if you need me.”
Something rippled through Alex and for just a moment I thought he would let out another growl, but he swallowed whatever it was.
We turned and walked slowly away from camp. Alex held an arm out to me, bent at the elbow. I hesitated and as he lowered the arm, slid mine through, hooking it.
“The Veil,” I said. “You know I couldn’t leave you there, not if I had a way to bring you back.” Alex was one of the only people I could really say this to, and we both knew it. How many people would say hey, no problem, we don’t mind that you totally destroyed the world.
Not many. I didn’t know how to ask the next question without sounding like a bit of an ass.
He smiled at me in the darkness, a tired smile, one that still had his humor but tinged with something else. “Coming through the Veil changed me, Pammy. There was so much to fight to make it out. So much darkness against the light. And I came through whole, like I’d never been broken.”
“I don’t want you to end up hard, like me,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I don’t want you to lose that joy you had in life, in living.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t. It’s just different now. More is expected of me. I still have to find my sister.”
That shocked me. “Your sister?”
He nodded. “On the other side, when I was dead, I found my father. He . . . was not a good guy, but that’s another story. He said she was still alive, out here somewhere. I’ve been searching for both of you the last three years. Nothing, not even a whisper from her.”
I tugged him to the right. “Come on, let’s circle round to the front, and check out the road ahead while we talk.”
Alex walked with me as we gave the caravan some space while we made our way to the front. The sound of the archies roosting in the bushes, the cool snap of the wind, it was all very peaceful. Hard to believe that the world was as big, bad, and ugly as it so often showed itself to be. “Maybe . . . you could stay a little longer. We could see if anyone has caught wind of your sister,” I offered. Now that the shock of him just showing up had faded, and the lines of our relationship had been redrawn, I didn’t want him to go.
“Pammy—Pamela. That’s great, thanks.” Awkward, stilted. He sighed. “What happened to you?”
And that was the question I’d been dreading. Much like him, I’d changed after the Rending of the world. But I hadn’t gotten stronger like he had. I’d gotten weaker, and I’d been batt
ered down enough that I wasn’t always sure I could get back up. I held up my wrists and jangled the five bracelets, three on one wrist, two on the other. “A bunch of elemental assholes attacked me near the beginning. They slapped these on for good measure, draining me of my magic for their own use. Now I can’t reach my elemental magic.”
I almost told him the rest. About the death magic that called to me. My mother’s magic that was so deep in my blood that it was like a separate entity. But I couldn’t bring myself to give it life that way. Bad enough that Oka and Mac knew.
He waited for me to say more as if he knew I was holding back. When I didn’t, he asked, “Have you tried to get them off?”
I laughed, but it was dry and without real humor. “No, Alex, I left them on just for shits and giggles.” I rubbed a hand over them. “Of course I have, multiple times.” I found my fingers tracing the crack in the bracelet that bound me away from spirit. So close, and yet so very far from that power I’d held so flippantly before, thinking I was strong enough to face anything. Even the end of the world.
I sighed heavily. “Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be free of them. I cracked one of them in a fight against a half-breed like me, but it isn’t much, or not enough anyway. It didn’t give me much more than a glimpse here and there of that power.”
“I’m sorry, Pam,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?”
Gods, he still was that sweet guy. I walked a little closer to him, so our arms touched. “No, nothing. But thanks for at least asking.”
I turned my face into the breeze that blew around us, the smell of forest and dirt, of a coming season change hinted at here and there, and wiggled the fingers on my left hand as if it were me making the wind move. It seemed like forever since I’d been able to manipulate the wind. I missed it, as I missed being able to use all the elements.
Alex bent and scooped up a stick from the ground, snapping it in half, and then in half again. “They call themselves the Breakers.”
The subject change was unexpected and I put a hand on his arm, stopping him. “What are you talking about?”
He snapped the twig again, and stuck one end of the shortest stick in the corner of his mouth. “That guy’s group back there. Stefan? Is that his name? I heard him yelling Breakers at them.”
I frowned. “So they think they’re a club now? Like a biker gang? And breakers of what?” While the information was interesting, I wasn’t really sure that it was pertinent to anything we needed.
He chewed on the end of his stick a moment before he spoke again. “I saw some pretty weird stuff when I was running around there. Even dodging bullets and idiots, it was hard to miss,” Alex said. But then he didn’t add anything. Like he was baiting me.
So, I bit. “Like what kind of weird things? Supernaturals?”
Goddess, that was the last thing we needed. More freak show supes that had no origin other than the breaking of the world. My mind raced to fill in the blanks of what he could have seen, so when he spoke, I couldn’t have been more shocked. And the bugger knew it if the twinkle in his golden eyes was any indication.
“Spill it,” I said with a snap of my fingers.
He spit out the stick. “Pineapples. Bananas. Oranges. I even think I spotted a pomegranate. That kind of weird.”
My jaw dropped, and I had to work at my next words. “Wait. What? Where are they getting exotic fruits? How is that even possible?” We were well in front of the caravan now, and I didn’t bother to lower my voice.
We hadn’t brought a torch with us, but the moon shed a fair bit of light, now that my eyes were well adjusted to the semi-darkness.
“Who knows? I haven’t seen that kind of food since before the Rending,” he said. “But my nose knows what it smells, and my eyes what they saw.”
I hadn’t seen anything even close to that in the last three years. A few berries here and there, and the occasional fruit tree that had somehow survived, but I could count those on one hand.
“Me neither,” I mumbled, more to myself than to him. “But food like that . . . it would be good for the kids. The vitamin C alone could give them a good boost.”
He nodded, bent and scooped up a few rocks from the path we were on, juggling them easily. “That wasn’t all they had. I nearly lost control when I smelled the beef, that’s when I got nicked. Real beef, Pammy—sorry, Pam. I never did get my eyes on it, but it was there.”
Part of my brain couldn’t believe what I was hearing, the other part was trying to figure out how to get some of that for ourselves. Suddenly the number of people in Stefan’s group made sense. If he had food like that, the survivors would flock to him. “So you mean cattle? A herd?”
Alex kept on juggling as we walked, his hands moving smoothly, his eyes on his tricks. “I think so. And nuts, and all kinds of other foods that I could see but not smell. Maybe rice if the bags were marked right.”
We walked in silence for a few paces. Where would Stefan’s gang be getting such luxuries? There was no way they could be growing it if they were moving around like all the other caravans. Which left ransacking and theft. But who would they be stealing it from? I hadn’t seen anything like that growing around here in three years. Tropical fruits this far north? Literally impossible.
Wasn’t it?
My mind worked the problem, turning it over and over, wondering how we could get our hands on such a bounty when Alex cut my train of thought short.
“I did see Rylee, by the way. Before I left to find you and my sister.”
I stumbled, caught off guard once more by his change in direction. It took a conscious effort to get my feet moving again. He’d seen Rylee. My mentor, and his, too, really. She’d been the glue that held us all together.
And we’d left her.
I bit my lower lip before I spoke. “How is she? Are they all okay? How are the babies?” I had more questions but I held back. The scene on the road earlier was still too fresh: his mocking of me asking a flood of questions, and then him treating me like a child.
He flicked one rock after the other into the bush as we spoke, sending a bevy of archies into the air, squawking. “She was fine when I left. I didn’t stay long with them, to be honest. Left to look for you right before the world broke.”
My heart sank. “So you haven’t seen them since?”
“No, I’m sorry.” He said it so quietly, as if he’d failed me in some way.
I wanted to take his hand and squeeze it. That would’ve been so natural before. But now . . . there was Mac, and Jasmine. We’d both grown up.
“I’m sure they’re fine. Rylee’s stronger than both of us. They’re fine.” I willed the statement to be true because I had no way of knowing one way or the other. I wasn’t sure I could handle losing Rylee, and Liam, and the babies.
But what if they were already gone, and we just didn’t know? That was my voice, not the darkness. And the question made my stomach twist over on itself so hard, I struggled to swallow.
Alex and I slowed our pace a little.
“Pam. I’m sorry it took me so long to find you,” he said. “I’d get a whiff of what I thought was you and then it would be gone, and then,” he rubbed his face with his hands, “I didn’t know if I was chasing a ghost or a living person most days.”
I stopped walking and looked him in the face. “But you did find me, Alex. That’s really all that matters, isn’t it?”
“Is it? If I’d found you sooner, maybe . . .” he shook his head as if he couldn’t finish that line of thought.
I tried to fill it in for him. “I mean, it would’ve been helpful to have you around when that last knobble-headed witch came after me and the caravan, but there was no way you could have known . . .” I trailed off, but he wasn’t catching my sarcasm at all.
He looked down at his feet, his eyes closed. Maybe some of that submissive was still in there after all.
“Hey.” I took both of his hands in mine. “It’s a damned miracle you found me at all. With
all the weird creatures crawling around, and death and destruction at every corner. I’d say you found me pretty fucking quickly. Sure, sooner would have been great, but it’s now, we’re here. Both of us alive. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”
He looked up at me, our heights not that far off now. How long had I looked up at him? I guess part of me thought I always would. His golden eyes met mine for just an instant before he looked away to the side, then back to me.
“I nearly gave up on you, Pam. There were days I thought for sure you were dead. That I’d be lucky to bring a body back to Rylee.” His voice cracked under the strain of those words.
I didn’t look away. “I know the feeling. I always hoped you were out there alive. But there were days I just . . . I gave up.”
Right around the time Mac showed up in my life. He’d been the direction I needed to take, to finally put some of my past behind me.
I let go of his hands, and one of them came up, as if he might touch my face. Then he thought better of it and pulled back, dropping it to his side.
I cringed. “I didn’t mean to snap at you earlier. It was just so overwhelming, and you . . . I’m not a child, Alex. I need you to see me as an adult.”
I could just see his lips turn up in a sad smile in the dark. “My Pammy is all grown up. Pamela, or Pam, from here on out, right?” I didn’t miss the hint of sadness in his voice. I nodded but couldn’t speak. He sighed. “In some ways, I don’t even recognize you.”
“I could say the same about you,” I whispered. “You aren’t the broken wolf, you aren’t the submissive I last saw.” Even in the dark, my face flared hot as I remembered all too vividly those muscles he had rippling across his chest and stomach. And that flash of bare ass . . .
He leaned forward, and raised his hand again, but this time he didn’t put it down. Gently, he touched my cheek, his fingers tracing down my jawline to my chin.
I couldn’t help but lean into him. Like a magnet he pulled on me.
“I’m with Mac,” I whispered into the night. “I’m falling in love with the bear.” That second part was a little louder. Stronger.
Caravan Witch (Questing Witch Book 2) Page 6
