Finding My Breaking Point

by C. C. Masters

  “Did they tell you about James?” Cody asked as he ran a hand through his hair in agitation.

  “Yeah,” I scooted to the edge of the bed so that I could put my feet on the ground. “I’m on my way.”

  “She’s not okay,” Mason warned Cody. “She’s still weak.”

  “I’m fine,” I insisted as I got up on shaky legs. “James might calm down as soon as he sees that I’m alright and walking around.”

  The twins exchanged another glance, but I ignored them. Cody reached out for me and I leaned my head on his chest as he wrapped his arms around me. “I was worried about you,” he murmured.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly as I took comfort in my giant wolf. “I thought I’d be ready if I had to face down another fae, but whatever is inside Justin isn’t anything like I’ve seen before. It made Drake look like a harmless kid.”

  Cody stiffened. “Anna, it took you down in less than a second.”

  “I know,” I whispered as fear ran through me. I knew that the rest of the guys didn’t have a chance against anything that powerful and that Austin had made the right choice in pulling them back. Yet, even after all the time I’d spent preparing to protect them from a fae threat, I still felt helpless. What if I wasn’t enough to keep them all safe? What if I got them hurt? Talen’s last moments flashed across my memory and I hugged Cody even tighter.

  The twins pulled on the clothing that they must have hastily discarded in their rush to get me warm again and I went to my closet to dress. “I don’t know what it was,” I admitted to them over my shoulder as I pulled on a comfy pair of Jason’s sweats and a cami. “I just know it reminded me of when Drake-”

  Cody interrupted me with a low growl as he stalked towards me.

  “It wasn’t him,” I assured Cody as I wrapped my arms around him again in a tight hug. “This was something different.”

  He rubbed my back, but I could feel that he was holding something back from me. “What is it?” I murmured against his chest.

  “I could feel something through our bond,” Cody told me as he squeezed me tighter. “I could feel your light disappearing, almost as if it were being sucked into the darkness.”

  I shivered at the memory. “Could you hear the whispers?” I asked cautiously.

  “No,” Cody said in a low growl that caused his chest to vibrate. “I couldn’t reach you at all, it was like something was trying to block our bond.”

  “You know the despair that you feel in the worst moments of your life? When you feel utterly hopeless and despondent?” I paused to let the weight of my words settle over them. “That’s what this felt like.”

  Cody grunted. “Whatever this is, we’ll find a way to fight it.”

  I hesitated while I considered my next words. “I think I’ve felt this before,” I said quietly. “There have been a few nights where I think I’ve heard whispers like that.” I shook my head. “But its always been faint and easily banished, I had no idea it was anything but my own imagination.”

  The twins glanced at each other before Mason spoke. “We might have felt something like that before,” he admitted reluctantly. “But I just thought it was depression or something.”

  Jason didn’t look up from the ground as he spoke. “We’ve dealt with dark shit before, but we’ve always been able to pull each other out before.”

  Cody frowned. “I think I know what you mean. About a week and a half ago, one of my buddies lost the battle within and became one of the twenty-two.”

  I hugged Cody a little tighter. “Shit, Cody,” I murmured to him. “You know you can trust me with stuff like that.”

  Cody held onto me as if his life depended on it and took a shuddering breath. “I know,” he said softly as he rubbed his face against my hair. “But I don’t like that kind of shit to touch you, I want you to stay bright and happy.”

  I pulled away from him so I could take his face in both my hands. “There’s a difference between protecting me and shutting me out. I need you to trust that I can handle when you’re going through a tough time and I want you to believe that I’m strong enough to help pull you out. I’m not weak and delicate.”

  “You’re not,” Cody agreed with a small smile. “You’re tough and resilient and you’ve been through your own hell and come out the other side stronger than ever.”

  “Come to me when you need to talk,” I whispered to him. “You don’t have to stand alone in any battle, even if it’s within your own head.”

  The look of love and affection in Cody’s eyes was the only answer I needed from him and I brushed my lips against his in the barest kiss while I sent him a wave of love through our bond.

  Mason cleared his throat. “And we’re here if you want to have a beer or something.”

  “Yeah,” Jason agreed. “We might not have done the same tour, but we know what it’s like.”

  “And we’ve helped some of our old buddies through shit,” Mason said solemnly. “Marines always have each other’s backs.”

  There was silence for a moment, but I was glad to see all of us coming together. I knew I wasn’t the only person that the twins had pulled away from. Cody hadn’t said much, but I’d seen his frustration a couple times when the twins were mentioned and even James had noticed they were unusually quiet – and not in a good way. I wondered if some of their behavior in the past couple weeks had been affected by the strange darkness and whispers that had taken over Justin.

  I sighed. Why couldn’t we get a break from crazy shit popping out of nowhere? I knew my wolves would defend me until death, but if the fae were involved then this battle would be mine to fight. My guys were fierce warriors, but I was the pack’s magical defense and I couldn’t let them down. I would do whatever it took to keep them all safe, no questions asked.

  “Let’s go find James,” I told them firmly as I pulled away from Cody. James was already a scary guy on his good days, if he was feral then this was a serious situation. I just hoped I could fix whatever our unknown enemy had done to him.

  “We can take her,” Mason offered Cody hesitantly.

  “Nah,” Cody said casually. “I got her.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m pretty sure I can take myself,” I assured them. But after letting go of Cody and taking a couple steps forward, I was already regretting my words. I didn’t want to lean on Cody, because it looked like I had already done enough damage to him. I must have drained his magic and energy while I was unconscious as my body had been trying to heal itself.

  The twins didn’t say a word as Mason put an arm around me and Jason did the same for Cody. We all pretended that this was a perfectly normal occurrence of events. Who doesn’t occasionally get knocked unconscious by a fae entity possessing the body of a rival pack master? And then have one of your mates go nuts and try to kill everyone in sight? Just another Tuesday night, right?

  Austin looked just as exhausted as Cody when we approached him and James, who had been locked in a large cage while still in his wolf form. The metal bars were thicker than those of a jail cell to make them impenetrable to the strongest wolf among us. That was a good thing, since a snarling James immediately flung himself against the side of the cage to try and attack us.

  I knelt down just out of his reach and gestured for the other guys to move away from me. “James,” I called out using our bond. “I need you to come back to me.” I frowned when I touched his mind and it was a snarl of dark thoughts, none of which made sense.

  “Did he touch Justin?” I asked cautiously, not taking my eyes off James and his furious eyes.

  “Yeah,” Austin said tiredly. “Got his jaws around his neck but didn’t bite down hard enough. I think his intention was to have Justin shit his pants, not to kill him. At least, it was initially.”

  “And then James went nuts,” I guessed. “Whatever’s in Justin must have poisoned him.”

  “But he didn’t react the same as you did,” Cody murmured quietly. “He’s not hurt or cold like you were.”

/>   “Maybe it wasn’t trying to kill him,” I suggested. I thought about it for a moment and shivered when I relived the memory of the whispers in my mind. “I think whatever this is uses the darkness inside of you,” I theorized. “It twists you somehow. Maybe I had enough fae blood to be able to fight it off but James…”

  I didn’t have to say it, but I knew we were all thinking it. James had more darkness in him than anyone else I’d ever met. He lived by a strict code and his own set of morals, but he would cross lines that the rest of us wouldn’t. Nothing was off-limits for him when it came to protecting the people that he loved. We all knew that he had done some shit and lived through hell, but we also knew that he needed to be pulled back sometimes and reminded that he was loved.

  “The moment he saw you fall would have triggered the darkest parts of him,” Cody said quietly. “If he was already on the edge, it wouldn’t have taken much to push him off the cliff.”

  I sat back on my heels and gazed into James’s dark eyes, but I couldn’t see any trace of humanity within the wolf that stared back at me. I didn’t see any sign of the man I loved in there, I just saw anger and hate. He lowered his head to growl at me and I noticed something around his neck, buried in his thick fur.

  “He’s still wearing my necklace,” I said softly.

  Austin cleared his throat. “He doesn’t take it off, not even to shift.”

  Tears came to my eyes and I looked for the crystal that carried a part of me within it. When James leaned forward, I saw it flash in the dim light as it dangled from his body. “I managed to banish the darkness from my body,” I said thoughtfully. “It took everything I had, and it left me almost broken, but I did it.”

  “You think you can use the crystal to reach him?” Mason asked.

  I took a deep breath. “I won’t need to. Our mate bond has started to form, and I think I can use that to bring him back to me.”

  I didn’t need to turn around to feel the surprise and jealousy radiating from Mason and the hurt coming from Jason. Cody and Austin already knew about my bond with James because they hadn’t been avoiding me, they had been developing their own mate bonds with me. Things with the twins had gone far enough in the wrong direction – after I got James back I would force them to patch things up with me. Life was too short to miss out on any more time we should be spending together.

  I closed my eyes and sank deep inside of myself. I knew I could trust the guys to keep me safe while I went on my journey to save James from the darkness eating him up inside. I could feel the pack bond that I shared with all of the guys, but the bond with James was tenuous and frayed. That must have been why Austin hadn’t been able to reach him.

  I went even deeper to where I knew my mate bonds were. Over the past few weeks, I had been nurturing them from delicate, barely-there threads, to stronger gold ropes that tied me to each one of my guys. My bonds with the twins were just wisps that I could barely sense, but that was going to change. I found the rope that would lead me to James and found the bright gold polluted with darkness that was inching closer to me with every minute.

  I prepared myself the best that I could. The last time I had tried to fight the darkness, my magical barrier had been useless. The darkness had floated through and whispers had invaded my thoughts. This time, I wasn’t going to rely on magic to protect me. I needed to wrap myself in positive thoughts and happy memories to combat the ugliness that was going to be thrown towards me.

  I thought about planning pranks with the twins, about exchanging my secrets with Caleb, teasing Cody until I got that special grin from him, and the light in Austin’s eyes whenever we planned for the future. But most of all, I thought about James. I pictured how furious he would pretend to be when I pranked him, but how he secretly loved how I challenged him. I remembered the day he had first allowed me to see past his cold exterior to the man he truly was beneath it all. I thought about the rare times I’d seen him genuinely smile and how it made my heart soar with happiness.

  Once I was as ready as I could be, I plunged forward and followed our bond to the seething mass of darkness that was keeping James from us.

  Kill them all.

  Splatter their blood over the walls.

  Make them scream in horror.

  Bask in their pain.

  I was bombarded with darkness, but I didn’t stop or hesitate. I was here for James and I wasn’t going to let anything get in my way.

  The deeper I went, the more intense the whispers became, and I felt them battering my defenses. My energy was waning quickly, but I kept going. I started to get mental pictures and voices in addition to the whispers.

  I saw a man lying on the ground, blood spreading from underneath him.

  A child with a broken neck and blank eyes staring up at me.

  A pile of bodies in the desert.

  A crowd of enemies coming towards me with knives.

  These must be flashes of James’ memories of the darkest times in his life. I braced myself and went further, seeking out the true core that made James who he really was.

  I stepped into a dark cave, but this wasn’t like the other visions that I had seen. This was different, more real than a brief flash of memory. “James?” I called out, trying to sound brave.

  Something moved in the darkness beyond, but I held my ground. “You shouldn’t be here.” I was relieved to hear James’s voice, but I didn’t like how broken it sounded.

  “You’re here,” I said firmly. “I’m not leaving until you do.”

  A shadow rushed towards me, but I stayed strong and didn’t flinch. James had been trying to scare me away from him for far too long, but I knew he would never hurt me. His shadow morphed into the shape of a man in desert fatigues stained in blood. This was the first time I’d ever seen James with a beard, but his dark eyes were unmistakable even though I wasn’t used to the hollow and haggard look he was wearing now. “You need to leave,” he said with hot eyes. “Get out!”

  I stood firm in front of him, unwavering in my determination. “Are you done?” I asked calmly.

  “Not even close,” he snarled. “It’s time you saw what you’ve been crawling into bed with.”

  The dark cave faded, and I found myself in a Humvee traveling down a dusty road between two other vehicles just like mine. “Chocolate man! Chocolate man!” A young boy shouted as he led a crowd of youngsters after us. But none of us had chocolate to give them today.

  “Not today, assholes!” a young guy in fatigues shouted back at them.

  The kids threw rocks at us, but soon we were past them and onto the open road. “Shit,” the guy beside me said. “You think we can make it past Khalidiya without drawing fire today?”

  I found myself shrugging without comment.

  “Oh fuck,” he cursed. “Road up ahead is empty of locals; you know what that means. Pucker your asshole, shit’s about to go down.”

  My vision got fuzzy until I heard an explosion, then everything was brought back into sharp clarity. The Humvee in front of us exploded in a burst of heat and jagged metal, sending shards in all directions. I turned to my buddy, but blood bubbled out of his mouth and a large piece of smoking metal was sticking out of his chest. Before I could even move, a battered old pickup truck drove by us at high speed, peppering our vehicles with rounds from automatic rifles.

  The scenery around me changed again. This time I was on watch outside my base while hundreds of people protested outside of the gate. They were protesting our searches of their homes for materials used to make bombs and our habit of bringing men in for questioning in a desperate attempt to cut down on the attacks against us. Nothing we did was helping, it was just creating more enemies who wanted to act against us.

  I felt hopeless and desperate. I wanted to protect the brothers I was serving with, I wanted to defend my country against those that wanted to tear it apart, but nothing we were doing here was helping. I was frustrated that good men were losing their lives on missions that did nothing to further ou
r cause. We weren’t even helping anyone in this country, more of the locals hated us every day. The worst part was that I had no idea how to fix any of it. If we left, this territory would be quickly overrun with our enemies, but if we stayed? Would we keep living this Groundhog Day over and over?

  Then I was on a night time raid. The armed man beside me kicked in the door of a ramshackle house and I rushed in with my comrade close behind. As we shouted our commands, a woman huddled around her children and two men looked up at us with hate-filled eyes. We led the men out of their home in zip ties and black hoods as the woman and children sobbed. Other members of the battalion led their own prisoners out as their families watched.

  Similar scenes went by again and again. Driving down the highway, passing small towns, just waiting for the explosion of an IED. Sometimes only the vehicles would be damaged, but even when a soldier was killed, our daily routine didn’t stop. After putting one of your burnt and broken buddies on a medevac plane, you got back in the Humvee and you went over the same stretch of road the next day, knowing that the limbless body could be yours the next time. There were no days off and every day that passed was just a repeat of the day before. No one paid attention to days or months, time was marked by events. Did you last get mail in August or October? Who knew? It was around the time LT’s vehicle was hit by a suicide car or right after PVT Michael’s leg was blown off by an IED.

  Then the scene shifted, and I was checking on my buddy who had guard duty at the base’s gate. It was a shitty duty that involved just staring at the hot desert, but at least they had cover - unlike when we set up roadblocks and searched random cars without any protection at all. One of the guys on duty was only eighteen years old and didn’t even need to shave. He had these hopeful, bright eyes and was pumped up about saving the world from terrorists. I remembered having that feeling in what seemed like a lifetime ago, and I hated knowing that he would be worn down by this hellhole day after day until there was nothing left but resignation.