Fools.
All of them.
She was the most dangerous thing on that field, and they had no clue. Part of him wished to shout it out, to rub it in their faces that his mate was as ferocious as any of them. But rational thought prevailed, and Midas let her tempt Ferro into another misstep.
The alpha had beaten Midas once, and he saw no reason why he wouldn’t again. He was that confident.
No, he had his sights set on a different torment. He planned to take Hadley from Midas. She was a prize worth more to Ferro than a descendant of the man who turned his mother feral and hateful. He would beat her, use her, destroy her bit by bit, and make Midas watch.
Only then would he call the goblin to claim his reward. The goblin wouldn’t mind if he had to nurse his prizefighter back to health before unleashing him in the ring.
A tremor of real fear zinged through him, that grim future easy to imagine, to remember. But he wasn’t alone this time. Hadley was with him. He hadn’t been left behind to fend for himself. His mate had come for him, without her swords, and without Ambrose. She had come with empty hands, and her bravery terrified him.
A boom exploded through the air, and the ground shook beneath their feet.
Hadley’s gaze met his in a frantic plea for understanding, then shot back to Ferro twice as quick.
“I’m sorry your mom is a nutjob,” Hadley sympathized. “Mine is too. Maybe we could start a club?”
Bellowing, Ferro let his magic splash out in a furious wave that propelled him toward her.
Midas ran full out, his strides eating ground, the grass tickling his stomach, and he craned his neck to snap his jaws closed on Ferro’s left rear leg. Bone crunched in his mouth, and Ferro screamed, but he kept hobbling toward Hadley, quicker on three legs than he had any right to be.
“Oh, please.” Hadley clucked her tongue. “You’re the slowest possible death I’ve yet to experience.” She met Midas’s eyes. “What? It’s true. I get almost killed all the time. I have standards. This guy’s not meeting them.”
The insult fueled Ferro’s wrath, and he galloped toward her with renewed vigor.
Muscles burning, Midas chased him until his nose bumped Ferro’s remaining hind leg. Lunging for the right rear leg, Midas bit down twice as hard and was rewarded with a decisive snap he felt on his tongue.
Infuriated, Ferro dragged himself toward Hadley using his front paws, his useless hind legs limp behind him.
He never once glanced back at Midas. He was too clever. He understood what Hadley represented and that to end her was to end Midas too. He was too keen on keeping Midas alive, especially now that the grudge was personal. For him. It always had been for Midas.
All this time, Midas allowed what happened to him in Faerie to shape the man he had become while the man responsible hadn’t given him a second thought. Ferro sold him, collected his earnings, and moved on with his life.
It was past time Midas did the same.
As that understanding solidified in his head, Midas shifted back onto two legs. “You’re not worth it.”
Ferro didn’t have the strength to shift again, yet, but it wouldn’t take long.
“I can kill him for you, if you want.” Hadley’s offer rang with genuine truth. “I don’t mind.”
“You’ve taken over enough packs.” He made his way to her. “I don’t want this one following us home too.”
“The Knoxville thing was not my fault.” She linked her arm through his, her grip tighter than necessary, and she tugged on him. “I didn’t mean to become their alpha. It just happened.”
Together, they walked away from the ghosts of Midas’s past.
The warmth of her body beside him, the smell of her hair on the breeze, grounded him in the present.
Leaning in, Hadley asked, “Are we out of sight?”
“Yes.” He didn’t have to turn back to hear Ferro’s curses ringing behind them. “Why?”
“I wanted to give you a moment to savor triumphing over your past, but that boom? It was the portal going live. We have to book it if we want to get back to Atlanta. There’s no guarantee how long it will hold since I designed it to collapse.”
Her eyes said other things, conveyed her worry for him, for what he had done, what it had cost him.
“All the moment lacked were explosives rigged to blow up a convenient car behind me as I walked away, but this is Faerie, and I will never in my life forget his expression when you threw Natisha’s arm in his face.” Midas bent and kissed her cheek, her nose, her forehead. “Thanks for the production assistance.”
“As you’re so fond of reminding me, I watch a lot of movies. I wanted you to nail that mise-en-scène.”
Each step carried him farther away from his past, broke shackles that had tied him there for centuries.
Hadley had done this, given him this, the strength to silence his guilty conscience once and for all time.
“Race you to the portal,” she yelled, noticing his mood. “Last one there is a melted chocolate bar.”
Happy to let her win, he smiled at her exuberance. “I don’t mind losing.”
The Faerie air was giving her a high, whether she realized it or not, the magic infectious.
“That’s what all losers say.”
“We both know if I were chocolate, and I melted, you would lick me up without batting an eye.”
Pumping her legs harder, she yelled back, “I would lick you up even if you weren’t chocolate.”
The beast under his skin relished in the play and picked up her challenge. Fur brushed the undersides of his skin, prickling with his need to change and be wild in this untamed land, but he wanted to catch her in his arms and steal a kiss—a real kiss—as his prize for winning.
Throaty baying rose behind them, one voice louder than the others.
From the tenor of the song, a challenge to all who heard it, a new alpha was rising, but Midas didn’t care.
A glowing circle swayed in grass burnt low with magic, and he pushed them harder to reach it.
“Wait,” a voice yelled from behind him. “Alpha.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Hadley shot him an incredulous look. “You didn’t even kill that Ferro jerk.”
“He’s fae,” Midas reminded her. “Defeating him in front of witnesses might have been enough.”
Death might not be a requirement for a formal challenge leveled in Faerie. Alphas bested in battle could, but rarely did, choose to concede and accept banishment from pack lands. Since Midas had never meant to come back here, it wasn’t a question he thought to ask. Or an answer he wanted, honestly.
“We have got to stop accidentally collecting packs like those pennies you stamp on vacation.”
“Alpha,” the man called again. “Wait.”
“Ain’t happening,” Hadley yelled back at him then took Midas’s hand. “You ready for this?”
“I was ready to leave Faerie before we got here.”
“Good answer.” Hadley locked gazes with Ambrose. “Go, go, go.”
Hesitating one heartbeat, he clenched his hands, watched his fingers flex, then heaved a great sigh. He leapt into the circle, his expression pained, then disappeared from sight. As he vanished, Hadley staggered and gasped, clutching her chest and losing her rhythm.
“Why did you tell him to go without you?” Midas scooped her up without slowing. “That’s suicide.”
“He’s corporeal,” she panted. “He had to go through alone.”
The trip through the archive and into Faerie had made Ambrose realer than he had been since the early days of his bond with Hadley. He must have been too solid to fit back inside her. That, or he still held too much magic to rejoin her without short-circuiting them both. Either way, Midas experienced a corresponding pang in his chest that began radiating through his limbs.
Locking his arms around Hadley’s middle, he lifted her and made the leap.
Seventeen
I could tell my portal was held together
with bubble gum and bobby pins by the mother of all headaches that slammed into me seconds before I got vertigo and melted out of Midas’s arms. I hit the ground, which wasn’t more than a foot away, and groaned from the jostle.
The bumpy ride sent him to his knees, and once I got out of his way, he lurched aside to empty his stomach on the grass. I would have joined him, a delightful couple’s activity, but I was a puddle of nausea and too queasy to roll over onto my side. Not choking to death on my own vomit proved to be a surprisingly powerful motivator to keep it all down.
“I don’t have long.” Ambrose knelt beside my head. “I wanted to thank you, again, for your trust.”
“We make a good team.” I swallowed convulsively. “I still have concerns, though.”
“I will prove myself a true friend over time.” He bent and brushed his soft lips across my forehead. They were as cold as winter’s kiss. Or the grave. “We have endless amounts of it.”
As he withdrew, I clasped his hand. “Maybe this won’t be the last time we talk.”
I don’t know why I said it, except he had to miss the sensations that came from being his own person. It might have been a kindness, or an admission of fear. Forever was a long time. We could become friendly—if not friends—but he was still a threat to me and to Midas. If the occasional shore leave kept Ambrose satisfied until Linus and I determined what came next, I was willing to give him that much.
“Maybe not,” he said, amused. “Eternity is a long time to live with someone and not speak to them.”
With that, he began to fade, to thin and darken until he was nothing but a wisp of shadow. Melancholy clouded our bond until it too faded as his magic regained its balance.
“We’ll figure it out,” I promised him. “Right after we mop the floor with the coven.”
The safest place to drop us would have been HQ, but there was no cell reception in Faerie. That meant I had no way to initiate the call sequence to divine its location for the night. Usually, the Faraday was a solid second choice, but that was a no-go. The area was under siege, and we couldn’t help the residents if we got ourselves locked in with them. The next best thing, the area I had the strongest attachment to, was the Active Oval.
Most nights I had company on runs, humans and paranormals alike, but we were alone.
The peculiar glowing light might have driven away anyone set on getting in their laps before bed, but I doubted it. In the age of social media, it was more believable that we would have been swarmed, photographed, and videotaped. Likely, we would have been hailed as alien invaders in tomorrow’s headlines.
Which, don’t get me wrong, would be so frakking cool.
Me? An alien? With a newspaper-worthy agenda?
It would be like Christmas came early.
It would also be damning for my career and put my life in danger from Society retribution, so there was that. I doubted I would still get elected to potentate if I unveiled the existence of paranormals, even if it was in an attempt to save five hundred thousand lives.
And there I went, compartmentalizing again to avoid thinking about Remy.
“Let’s not mention this part to Linus.” I sat up then rocked forward onto all fours, which I regretted immediately. “It sounds less impressive that we created a portal from Faerie when the ride makes you barf up your toenails.”
The other portals ran as smooth as an ice cube on a hot griddle. Ours was more like the little engine that could but really didn’t want to, but hey. It worked.
“Rollercoaster fame is based on terror, exhilaration, and vomit.”
“Let’s stop saying that word.” I got my legs under me. “Let’s stop saying all words pertaining to that.”
“Here.” Midas rose in a fluid motion I couldn’t have mimicked even before the portal. “Let me help.”
Wedging his shoulder beneath mine, he got me standing upright then traded his grip for my waist.
“How are you over this so fast?” I wobbled. “How is that fair?”
“I have fae blood,” he reminded me. “I also spent a great deal of time in Faerie. I acclimated.”
“I’m calling Bishop.” I located my phone. “We need to get eyes on this portal until it goes bye-bye.”
Despite switching my cell off under Remy’s glare after the first portal, it proved as dead as a frakking doornail.
“I don’t suppose you have yours?” I put away my phone. “I seem to have lobotomized mine.”
“No.” Midas touched his back pocket on reflex. “I left it with the supplies in Buckhead.”
Tipping my head back, I glared at the overcast sky. “Where’s a payphone when you need one?”
Genuine shock reverberated through him. “You remember payphones?”
“No.” Slanting him a glance, I laughed at the look on his face. “I remember movies with payphones.”
Shaking his head, a smile on his lips, he scanned the area. “We can’t leave the portal unguarded.”
“The best I can do is set a circle around it.” I had that much juice left, but that was about it. “It will keep humans from wandering in, but it won’t stop anything that comes through the portal from getting out.”
“That will have to do.”
“It’s better than nothing,” I agreed. “Ambrose, can we rig an alarm to tell us if the circle is breached?”
The shadow stroked his chin then stuck out one hand while pointing at his palm.
“It’s not like the city is in peril.” I reached in my pocket, located the chocolates, and tossed him three. All the while I reminded myself maintaining balance with him was a good thing. “Let’s take a moment to indulge your sweet tooth.”
After gulping them down, he motioned me to follow him with what remained of my supplies.
“Wait here,” I told Midas, trusting him to alert us to any oncoming danger. “This won’t take us long.”
With careful instruction from Ambrose, and a boost from his stored energy, we erected a circle that kept the most vulnerable from getting too close. We embedded triggers as well, to inform us the second a sentient being pinged against our protective measures.
Natisha wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot. We couldn’t afford to think or to act otherwise.
Anyone willing to sacrifice her children for vengeance wasn’t going to get squeamish on us now.
The brutal reminder forced me to recall what else we had left behind us in the archive.
Goddess, please let Remy find her way home.
“You’re getting better at this.” Midas’s praise came tinged with concern. “That was fast.”
“It’s small magic, and we’re still flush enough to make it work without drawing on ourselves for power.”
The reassurance was meant to comfort him, but I got the impression it unsettled him.
That made two of us.
Dependence on Ambrose held the potential for addiction, and I wasn’t great at resisting temptation.
Obviously.
Midas swept his gaze around the empty park. “Where do we go?”
“Do you know anyone who lives near here who can lend us their cell?” I got gooseflesh thinking about leaving the portal unsupervised, but we didn’t have all night to babysit it, and we had no means of contacting our allies. With no runners, walkers, or late-night strollers, we couldn’t borrow one either. “The Clairmonts are nearby, but I would rather not try my luck there.”
Ayla was an ally, but she would have her hands full coordinating with her people in the field. She would do in a pinch, but I’d prefer a more private environment for the calls I had to make. Odds were good she recorded her calls, and I didn’t want to give anything about HQ away.
In my heart, I believed the OPA would be on top of things, even without my hand to guide them.
But my head reminded me to take nothing for granted until I touched base with my team.
Please let them be okay. Please let them be okay. Please let them be okay.
“There.” Midas point
ed out a gas station. “Can you make it?”
Brain still wobbling, a bit like Jell-O fresh from a mold, I squinted at it. “You know the cashier?”
Patience almost, almost, masked his amusement. “They sell burner phones.”
“Oh.” I forced my legs to get with the program. “I didn’t consider a prepaid cell.”
“I’ll buy you a Coke and a chocolate bar too. Sugar will help.”
In my experience, sugar always helped, or it at least made the problem taste better.
“You’re the expert.” I rubbed my tender stomach. “I wonder how long we were gone?”
I wasn’t hungry, exactly, but I was forever snackish. I couldn’t base the passage of time off that.
“We’ll check our receipt.” He caught my look. “That way we don’t stumble in asking what day or time it is and draw unwanted attention.”
“I saw that movie.” I leaned into him. “Lots of those movies, actually.”
“How else do you think I learned how to avoid the classic blunders?”
Heart doubling in size at The Princess Bride reference, I was about to kiss him senseless when a lone siren called out to the empty streets, its voice choked off in seconds, leaving my libido cold.
Midas pressed a kiss to my temple then hurried inside while I stood vigil in the silence.
The bench outside was dirty, but I didn’t care. I sat while Midas shopped for us. He returned minutes later, dropped a box in my lap, and twisted off the cap of a Coke bottle for me before passing it over. I took a long drink, handed it back, then tore open the package to find a phone encased in thick plastic.
“I hate how they seal these things. It’s a ten-dollar cell, not the latest iPhone.” I twisted and picked at it. “You need a wrecking ball to open them.”
“Or this.” Midas transformed one fingertip to a claw and sliced out a square. “Better?”
“Much.” I yanked it out and waited for it to power on. “Well? What does the receipt say? How long were we gone?”
“Four hours.” He flashed it at me. “We spent eight or ten in the archive, easy.”
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