by Jena Wade
I left the house early to check in with Lissy, happy to know that my mate was at least hanging out with his brother while I was out.
The potion was ready, just waiting for the final ingredient, which could only be added by Thorne in the moment. She gave me a sample of it to take to Thorne; apparently when his blood was added there should be a visible reaction so we knew it worked. She was unsure what that would be. In a lot of ways, we were going in blindfolded.
After leaving Lissy’s house, I went to find Byrom and the other Betas, where we solidified our plans for the takedown, as Kade was affectionately calling it. I should have been planning my mating ceremony and I would soon. We just needed to finish this one little thing first.
If only it was little.
I needed to see my mate. I wanted to hold him in my arms, knowing that tomorrow would bring moon goddess knew what to our lives. The best case scenario was that we’d be done with the dark healer and Thorne would be able to shift freely. We would have his family close, and we would be like every other mated couple I knew. Happy.
The worst case scenario was not one that I dared even think about.
All I wanted was for him to be safe, for it to be safe for us to lead the life he wanted—we wanted. But to do that, we had to have this last battle. We had to fight for any amount of normalcy we wanted. And it would be a challenging one. I couldn’t even fathom what would happen if things didn’t go well for us. It was too painful.
What if something happened to me? What would my mate do? What if something happened to Thorne? I would never be able to live with myself. This endeavor of ours would be endangering our lives, as well as that of my pack mates.
It would also be potentially saving them.
Even if we managed to come out unscathed, unless we killed the dark healer, we ran the risk of suffering from her wrath if she were to get away. For all we knew, right now she had given up on us and we needn’t worry about her returning. I doubted it, but it was a possibility. But until we knew for sure, we couldn’t live safely.
I walked up the front steps of my home, surprised Thorne wasn’t outside, no scent of his—our brother-in-law’s bear either, which kind of stuck out. Maybe breakfast hadn’t started. I would like that, spending time with my new extended family, eating pancakes, wiping syrup from everywhere. I heard toddlers had a way of making that happen.
Unfortunately, I was going to have to tell Thorne he needed to give his family a raincheck. They would be more than welcome to stay, of course, but my Alpha had given an order and that came first.
Byrom wanted to have a meeting with everyone involved to go over the details and make sure everyone knew what the plan was. I didn’t wish to rehash it, but it was important that we keep everyone on the same page. Byrom was a planner by nature and I couldn’t fault him for that.
The house was quiet when I entered, and it had a coldness to it that I didn’t expect. His family wasn’t here, but something was. Something not good.
“Thorne?” I called out.
I heard a muffled groan, but nothing else.
My blood ran cold and my stomach lurched. The floor creaked beneath my feet as I walked deeper into my house. I entered the living room, the room I had spent so much time with my mate in with him in his wombat form, me holding him.
Thorne was there, like I expected. But with him, holding him captive, was a figure I’d recognize anywhere, though I had never seen her face clearly, and still couldn’t now. A dark cloak covered her shoulders with the hood pulled over her face, casting a shadow over her pale skin. All I could see was her mouth, pulled in a tight smile. Her yellow teeth shone through.
“Hello, dog. So nice of you to join us,” she sneered.
“Let him go,” I growled. My wolf clawed at me to be let loose and tear her throat out. But if I shifted, she could disappear and take Thorne with her. I couldn’t risk that, not with her hand on the back of his neck. She didn’t have a weapon, but I knew she was more than capable of inflicting harm without one.
“Not happening, pup. Now, I’m sure you and your little friends have a certain potion in your possession. I want it. And the recipe.” How did she know? Did it even matter? Because she did. So much for our plan, our surprise attack. She had been here all along, not necessarily in body, but she knew too much for her not to have been here in some way or another.
“In exchange for Thorne,” I said. I’d give her anything… do anything to keep him safe. Even that.
She laughed. “No. I’ll be taking him as well. But if you want me to keep him and the rest of that wombat family alive, you’ll give me the potion.” The way she said rest sent a shiver up my spine, but it wasn’t directed at me—she looked Thorne right in the eye as she said it, and how I contained my wolf was a matter of brute force on my part. He wanted her more than dead, he wanted her to suffer.
Alive. She promised alive, not safe, not free from harm, not without the long, slow torture my mate had faced in his captivity. Unacceptable.
I growled, my claws extended. “Not happening.” I needed to stall to keep her talking. If I waited long enough, I’d be late to Byrom’s meeting and he’d send someone after me. Maybe all of them would come. I’d have backup. It wouldn’t be the altercation we had planned but it would be something. Anything was better than me facing down the dark healer on my own.
I looked at Thorne, his eyes wide with fear and his skin pale. “Just do what she says,” he told me. “She’ll kill my brother and Charming.” He left his nephew unmentioned; maybe she didn’t know there was a young wombat with us. If she did, she could try to take him instead of Thorne.
“I’m not letting her get away. Not with you. Not again.” I looked her up and down. “You had him for years. No more. He’s mine.”
“Please,” he said. “Just do what she says.” He couldn’t do this. Not again. He’d given up so much of his life—willingly sacrificed it for his brother. He would never regret that, not for one second. And now he was willing to do the same—for his nephew.
I shifted my stance slightly, my pants pulled tighter against my thigh, and the small bottle of the potion that Lissy had given me moved. I kept my face neutral, not wanting to give away the excitement that raged through me. There was a way out—but only if she didn’t figure out it was with me.
If I could get close enough, I could use the potion. But I’d have to find a way to make Thorne bleed. The thought of his blood pouring out to save us, any of us, had my wolf chomping. I couldn’t give in. He’d see the death he desired, just not by his jaw.
Just outside the window, behind where the dark healer had my mate, two figures walked across the lawn. I met Charming’s gaze, trying to keep my look neutral, not wanting her to see I wasn’t alone. His eyes widened and he pushed his mate toward the woods. Thank goodness. If Canin came near here, there would be no stopping my mate from sacrificing himself. He’d never allow someone to go down in his stead. Especially not his own kin.
Once Canin was out of sight, Charming shifted. His bear was huge. He was now brown. He was a grizzly and a force to be reckoned with. As much as I tried, I couldn’t keep my face from giving away what was happening. Not when a sixteen hundred pound brown bear was running full speed toward the window.
When Charming jumped, going headfirst toward the window, I dove for Thorne, sending up a prayer to the moon goddess that he not get stuck as he crashed through.
I grabbed Thorne with one arm and pushed the healer away with the other as glass shattered around us like an explosion, wood splintering everywhere. Somehow, Charming landed on his feet and immediately let out an ear-piercing roar that shook the house. Damn, I nearly pissed myself and he was my friend.
I grappled for a piece of glass as the healer started to mumble something, directing her focus at Charming. We didn’t have time to talk through what I was about to do and Charming had even less.
“I love you. Please trust me,” I told Thorne as I gripped a piece of glass in my hand. “I need�
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“Do it.” He closed his eyes as I jammed it into his leg, his bellow of agony something I’d hear in my nightmares until my last breath. She came rushing to us, just as we both knew and feared she would, my hand in my pocket, wrapped around the vial.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps, four steps.
I took out the vial and broke it in my hand over the blood just as she reached us, Charming knocking her into the puddle of blood that now formed as I rolled away, taking my injured mate with me, watching as her body crumbled to dust.
Charming roared with victory, not seeing the sight I was seeing. Thorne was bleeding—too much. He was fading away. I grabbed the glass with my own bloody hand and pulled it from his body, the blood flowing even faster.
“Prickles. I need you, Prickles. Please come out. We need to save him. I love him.” I begged his animal to take over. I couldn’t lose him. Not after he was finally free. “I love you, Thorne. Don’t leave me. Shift.”
His body began to crack, his shifting painfully slow, but he did it. He shifted, his wombat flinging himself at me. He was going to be okay.
“Prickles, I’ve never been so happy to see you in my life.” I held him so tight. “You either, bear, and remind me never to piss you off,” I told Charming.
He shifted, stepping over a hunk of wood. “I get that a lot. Canin, it’s safe.” He called out the window, the door opening two seconds later, only not by Canin’s hand.
Nope. The Betas had arrived.
“Perfect timing.” I stood up, holding onto my Prickles tightly. “I need to go shift and fix this mess of my hand, and someone needs to pick up the evil in aisle five.” I pointed to the dusty remains of the dark healer.
“You did it.” Byrom stared at the pile.
“I had the help of a prickly wombat and the scariest bear you never want to tick off.” I stepped over a chunk of wood and outside, setting my mate down and shifting, both of us needing to run and needing time to heal.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Thorne
We walked up to our home, long after the midday sun came and went. I was starving and exhausted, and exhilarated not only by the news that I was going to be a father, but by the connection that I regained with my wombat.
I felt like me again.
I felt better than me.
Only one thing was missing and I planned to remedy that as soon as possible.
I shifted on the porch, calling forth my skin, my body immediately morphing—not a pain or an extra crack. No hesitation, no concentrating extra hard or pleading with my wombat to give me control. With the dark healer gone, I had healed. I twirled around as my mate took his skin, a smile on his face.
“You amaze me.” He held onto me tightly, “I’m sorry about your leg.” As if I cared about that. It needed to be done. She knew about my baby—our baby—and had threatened to kill Gio on the spot and then keep me alive long enough to watch him suffer if I spoke out against her.
I’d seen her in action.
She meant every last word.
“It’s not like it will be my first scar and this one was so worth it.” I bit him, right where I wanted to mark him—like now. “Got any plans, alpha mine?”
“To fix our broken window so squirrels don’t come in and eat our toes.” I just shook my head, heading on into the house, the house still filled with the Betas, Byrom, and Trevor, all working away.
“Why are you all in my house?” Gio boomed out, everyone stopping what they were doing and looking our way.
“You told us to fix your house.” Byrom shrugged.
“And I came for squirrel mitigation,” Trevor gave a half wave.
“Looks like shifting is working out better for you.” Lyle flanked his brother. “You’re almost as badass as my mate when you wombat out.”
“Wombat out?” I couldn’t even be mad at the term. I might even embrace it.
“Wombat out.” He leaned on his broom. “We’re not quite done here, that bear friend of yours caused a bit of structural damage. It’s all fixed up—we just need to do the tidying now.”
“You think I’m badass, you should see Charming’s bear. We owe him.” I owed him.
“I tried to tell him that,” Byrom began. “He insisted he didn’t do it for us. He did it for his mate and his child.”
“He wasn’t hurt?” He didn’t appear to be. Not that I was able to focus much with the searing pain in my leg and the blood loss.
“He saw Lissy, who is expecting you as soon as you’re able.” Darren stepped over a piece of two by four and handed me a small paper. “Said to give this to you.”
I opened it up and read it aloud.
He means now.
“Sounds like Lissy.” Gio stepped around some debris. “I’ll get us clothes. Don’t need both of us getting splinters.”
He made his way into the bedroom, my eyes watching him the entire time, and turned to see everyone giving me the thumbs up. When I gave them the huh look, Darren made a big motion over his belly.
They knew. Of course they did. They cleaned up the fallout of the day, which meant they likely found a pregnancy test.
“He doesn’t know,” I mouthed, instantly seeing the silliness of my words.
“I know you’ll be sad, but I grabbed you some of my clothes.” Gio came out and the crew got back to work as if we hadn’t just had the conversation we’d been having. “Let’s head to Lissy’s so I can bring you back here—or maybe a hotel.” He looked around the room. “Yeah, tonight is a hotel night.”
I’d argue, but the idea of being someplace not where I had just nearly bled out sounded pretty okay to me.
We threw our clothes on once we hit the cool air and walked hand in hand to Lissy’s. She greeted us at the door.
“And how much action did I see? None. I trained for this. I was ready!” She hugged us both tightly. “I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you because of me.”
“We only defeated her because of the strength of that potion, Lissy. That came from you and the pack. Something would have definitely happened to me had it not been for you. She found me because of a paper cut. A freaking papercut. Apparently, one of the things she’d done over the years was turn me into a homing device, with my blood releasing the signal on where to find me.” I held up my completely healed hand.
“I should have known. So much time wasted,” she mumbled to herself as she stepped inside. “Are you coming in or not?”
We were. We followed her in and to a small exam room.
“There are so many things to discuss, I don’t even know where to begin, so let’s start with the leg, shall we?” She patted the exam table and as I went to get on she looked at my leg and back up at my face.
“Right.” I took off the sweatpants and climbed up. It was a gnarly mess. My shift had stopped the bleeding but left the scars.
“Why is it so ugly?” I reached down to run my finger over it and she slapped it away.
“Stop. I need to clean it, although that might not matter this late in the game.” She scrunched up her face and then went to a small counter full of jars and bottles and came back with a wet cloth. “This is probably a waste of both our times, but if I don’t clean it first, I’ll have that step hanging over me.” Which I oddly understood.
She took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “It could be like this because you bled so much. I saw the aftermath and that was a lot of blood, and given the amount of dust, none of it was hers. Am I right on that conjecture?”
“I think so?” I’d been pretty out of it between the fear, my wombat trying to push me down, and the blood loss. My answer was the best I could give.
“You’re lucky you managed to shift at all without Byrom bossing your wombat around, and since you still haven’t mated with this guy officially, I’m not sure that would’ve worked anyway, although you are pack whether or not you like it so there is that.” She was babbling. I’d never heard her l
ike this, but then again I spent most of my time with her as a wombat than a person so what did I know.
“So his blood loss caused the scar. Not that I went too deep?” Gio asked.
I grabbed his hand. “It was as deep as it needed to be and I am proud of this scar. It meant that I finally broke free from the terror that was…” I crunched in, a pain shooting through me out of nowhere. “Sorry?”
“What’s wrong with him. Lissy? Fix him.” Gio commanded, all alpha and bossy. It would’ve been kind of hot if my belly didn’t feel like it was on fire.
“That’s the other thing that could have contributed to the scar.” Lissy was smiling, her eyes on my middle. “It could also be the baby.”
“Baby?” Gio stared at my crunched up body. “There’s a baby? My babe? We’re having a baby?”
“I found out about ten seconds before she arrived. I got a paper cut from the instruction pamphlet.” I spoke the last words through my teeth. “Lissy, what’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing.” She took my hand and settled it on the lowest part of my abdomen, which was bumpy and raised. My pouch. I was getting my pouch.
“Will it stop soon… the pain?”
“From what I read it gets worse before it gets better.” She stepped back as Gio growled.
“Down boy. I’m just getting my pouch.” Gods, I needed Canin or my mom here. They’d know what to do. It had been years since my mom gave me the talk, and I barely remembered it.
“Where your hand was?” His eyes opened wide and he leaned in. “There?”
“Yeah.” I pushed myself to sit up, hoping the worst of it was over. “Where else would it be?” Did he think pouches grew on backs?
“Higher up so he has room to grow?” He squinted, leaning in to look at my line. “He’ll grow into your leg that way.”
“They’ll have plenty of room, promise. No leg growing.” I sucked in a breath as another shot of pain ran through me, this one with significantly less burning. That was good. It meant the pouch was almost done and the pain over… or so I thought. I discovered soon enough how much my understanding of wombat birth was full of crap.