by Ivy Asher
My pants are unbuttoned and slowly pushed down my hips. Knox rests one arm over my thighs while the other snakes under my shirt and rests against my back. As soon as Knox settles against me, the agony dulls to a manageable throb. The change is so drastic that a surprised gasp immediately escapes me. Slowly, as the minutes pass and the pain plateaus at this level, my rapid, shallow breathing starts to even out as my lungs expand and cooperate.
I don’t know how much time passes, as we all snuggle against each other greedily taking in the respite. I open my eyes to find five sets staring intensely down at me, and I’ve never been so grateful to see them as I am in this moment. The corner of my mouth tries to twitch up in a smile, but I probably look more like a bad Elvis impersonator.
“It’s okay, we feel it. We’re so fucking glad to see you, too. We’re sorry it took us so long to figure it out, to help you.”
I focus on Valen’s hazel eyes as his words soothe me, and I try to pull my hand up to my chest. I’m surprised when it works, and I graze Sabin’s large hand on my chest as I disengage my runes. Each of them relaxes even more as I steal the pain back into myself.
“Everyone out!” Bastien shouts, and I flinch at his booming voice as it punches through the heavy silence blanketing the room.
“Who the fuck do you think you are, telling us what to do in our own house?” Becket demands.
“She needs skin to skin contact from us to manage the pain. You don’t need to be there for that. So get the fuck out!”
Before anymore argument can ensue, Aydin and Evrin start herding Enoch and the others out of the room.
“Show me what you’ve got around here for food. She’s going to need a shit ton of calories if her Awakening is pulling in enough magic to cause pain like that,” Aydin instructs.
He ushers them out against their small noises of protest, and the door clicks shut behind them.
“Squeaks.” Ryker’s voice pulls my attention to him, and I lethargically refocus on his sky-blue eyes. “We’re going to strip down, and then do the same for you. That way we can get as much contact with you as we can. Each of us is going to try to keep a hand on you, so the pain is not as bad, but this is probably going to hurt until we can all get positioned around you.”
I nod slowly in understanding, and Ryker flashes his hand away and strips off his shirt as quickly as he can. A new wave of agony hits me at the loss of his touch, and everything around me is thankfully swallowed by blackness.
25
I wake up with a dull ache in every inch of my body, but it’s a welcome feeling compared to the agony I was experiencing before. I’m warm and almost naked, pressed against bodies that are equally warm and almost naked. I inhale deeply and immediately I know Knox is pressed to my front. He has this incredible smell that is all him, and I’m obsessed with it.
A scruffy chin nuzzles into my neck from behind, and a satisfied hum spills out of me.
“How are you feeling?”
Ryker’s voice trails up from below me as his hand strokes gently up my calf. It’s then that I realize that each of my Chosen are wrapped around me like I’m wearing my very own outfit of hot men. I’m laying on my side on top of Sabin. Knox is snuggled into my front, Bastien is at my back, and Valen and Ryker are each holding my legs like they’re body pillows.
“I’m okay,” I croak out, surprised that my voice can do even that much.
“I healed your throat,” Ryker explains, reading my confusion. “Once we were all channeling the massive amount of magic flowing through you, my magic didn’t hurt you like it had before. I think when I tried earlier it was just adding to the overload of magic you were already dealing with.”
I give him a weak smile, and I have to look away from the concern and sympathy in Ryker’s eyes.
“How long was I out?”
“Almost an hour.”
Sabin’s chest rumbles beneath me, and his hand threads gently through my hair. “Most Awakenings don’t last more than a couple hours, so you should be in the final stretch. Although, it could be different for Sentinels. You’re an early bloomer by caster standards, so honestly, we have no idea what’s normal or not.”
I nuzzle his muscular chest and absently play with the line of hair that trails from his belly button into his boxer briefs.
“I’m pretty sure Enoch knows what I am. I was in the process of finding out when this whole Awakening shit happened.”
“What do you mean?” Bastien queries, his breath warming my back between my shoulder blades.
“Elder Cleary threatened me tonight. Pick Enoch and his coven, or my Sentinel status might not stay under wraps. I’m not sure if the other elders know, I’d be surprised if they didn’t. I also figured if Cleary senior was in the loop, he probably brought Cleary junior in, too.”
Grunts and huffs of frustration sound off all around me and the atmosphere grows taut with rising tension.
“I’m going to fuck up that whole family if something happens to you because they’re power hungry,” Valen declares.
“Fuck waiting for them to make a move; I say we start laying a foundation of don’t fuck with us now!”
I run my hand over the muscular forearm Bastien has wrapped around my waist.
“Let’s wait and see what Cleary’s next move is. I’m pretty sure I just fucked what they thought was a sure thing.”
I look up into Knox’s storm cloud gray eyes and see confusion.
“Elder Cleary thought, as my assigned guardian, that he’d have control over me for the next couple of years. They have no intention of taking your Bond Claim seriously.” I rub my palm against the stubble on his cheek. “If I had to wait until my Awakening at twenty-five-ish, there wouldn’t have been much I could do to keep the elders from moving me around like the pawn they see me as, but now I’m officially considered independent according to their rules. They can’t force me to stay here.”
Knox’s eyes light up as the pieces fall into place for him, and a beautiful smile stretches across his face. He chuckles and leans down, claiming my lips in a sweet kiss.
“Hey! No making out with our half-naked mate while we’re all cuddling and she’s still going through her Awakening!” Bastien complains.
“Bas, don’t hate that I have access to these delicious lips and you don’t.”
“If I move my hand down six inches, I’ve got access to a whole other set of lips that I’m sure are just as delicious,” Bastien challenges.
Valen coughs out a laugh, and the sounds drown out the small moan I’m pretty sure just escaped me. I’m still achy, but I’d have to be dead not to get wet at Bastien’s words. It’s no surprise that my awareness of the close proximity of these delectable males suddenly becomes the only thing I can focus on.
A knock on the door pulls me from my thoughts, and I feel everyone slightly freeze around me. Aydin pokes his head into the dark room. I can tell it’s him because he’s a giant and he’s currently doing this awkward duck under the doorway thing.
“I heard voices, is she awake?”
None of the guys answer, as if they’re giving me time to decide what I want to do. Sabin hands me a shirt, and I quickly pull it over my head.
“I’m up,” I announce, after I get myself resettled amongst the guys.
Aydin steps into the room, followed by Evrin. The door closes behind them as they shut themselves in with us.
“How are you feeling, Little Badass?”
His question hangs in the room for a second longer than is comfortable. I’m not sure how to interact with them after everything that’s happened.
“Is it normal for Awakenings to hurt like that? Everything I’ve read until now made it seem like a surge or a rush, and that sure as hell isn’t what happened to me.” I ask.
It’s not talked about a lot, probably because no one wants to freak young casters out about what they may or may not go through, but it happens. The more magic that awakens in you, the more painful it can be.” Evrin scrubs the bac
k of his heavily tattooed neck with his palm. “No one really knows why it happens to some and not to others.”
Aydin inches closer to the bed as Evrin answers my question, and I suddenly find myself wishing that things between us could go back to the way they were before. I hate that he couldn’t give me the benefit of the doubt and see me as I really am, not the fucked up threatening version that Lachlan believes. And I hate that his presence feels like an awkward intrusion now, instead of the easy friendship we had before.
We stare steadily at each other for a minute as questions I’m tired of swallowing bubble up into my throat.
“Why Aydin?” I ask softly. “You should have known me better than any of them. You asked me to trust you, but why would you ask for something that you weren’t willing to give in return?”
Aydin wears a helpless look, and his hands scrub his face before falling defeated at his side. “Little Badass, I feel like whatever I say at this point is just going to tiptoe in the land of excuses.”
“I need you to try and help me understand. Because if you never do, I will always think that how you were with me was a lie, some kind of trick. I don’t want to think that way about you. But I can’t crawl out of the pit of hurt and mistrust on my own.”
Aydin’s eyes are still on mine, but I can feel a sudden disconnect. Like even though he’s here in front of me, his thoughts are somewhere else entirely. He drops down to the edge of the bed as if whatever he’s carrying has suddenly grown too heavy to continue to bear. The guys all tighten their hold on me almost at the same time, gearing up and literally supporting me for whatever Aydin is about to unload.
Aydin looks up at Evrin, and Evrin gives him a nod.
“A little over ten years ago, we were tracking some lamia. They had been glamoring humans out of money, and we were tasked with eliminating them. When we finally caught up to the nest, things took a weird turn. There were eight lamia, and it wasn’t much of a fight, but when Lachlan went to kill one of them, they recognized him.
The lamia kept asking how he was there. At first, it sounded like nonsense. We had looked everywhere for Vaughn and the others with nothing to show for it. I think most of us, at that point, had come to terms with the fact that they were gone, killed somehow. So when the lamia started rambling questions about how Lachlan was there, none of our thoughts went directly to Vaughn.
“It wasn’t until he said the name Adriel that it clicked. This lamia wasn’t seeing Lachlan. He was seeing Vaughn in Lachlan’s face. It was the first scrap of a lead that we had come across that might give us some clue about what happened to Vaughn, Eden, and Lance, and their bond mates.” Aydin nods towards the twins, and it registers that Eden and Lance were the names of their parents.
“We worked on that lamia for almost a month, but he was like the fucking Joker and Riddler in one. Nothing he said made any sense. He would scream on and on about how they were going to steal our magic, but we easily dismissed that as an empty threat. Toward the end though, he started going on about how a baby destroyed Vaughn. Or that the baby was not what we thought.
“We never got anything but nonsense out of the lamia, and Silva ended him when none of us could take the nonsensical bullshit anymore. We walked away from that situation even more defeated. Lachlan wasn’t the same after Vaughn went missing, but the month we spent with that fucking crazy ass lamia seemed to break something in him.
“Years buried those memories, and then one day out of nowhere you popped up. As soon as your name spilled out into that car, it dug up the crazy ramblings of that lamia. None of us knew what to make of it, what to make of you, and it put all of us on guard.”
Aydin shakes his head, and he looks down at his big hands before looking back to me, his eyes pleading.
“You’re so powerful. You were before your Awakening, and only time will tell what you’ll be capable of now that all of your magic has opened up. Every time I tried to see you as an innocent female in all this, you would do something incredible, and I couldn’t help but wonder what that lamia meant. It was clear you were the baby he was talking about, so what did he mean when he said you weren’t what we thought?
“It felt almost impossible not to be suspicious, and therefore, cautious around you. We were missing so many pieces of the puzzle before, then there you were, more or less dashing everything we thought we knew to the ground. What were we supposed to do, Little Badass?”
I look away from Aydin’s pleading eyes and find Bastien’s hazel orbs waiting for me. His emotions are masked, and I can’t get a read on exactly what he’s feeling right now. I suspect he doesn’t want how he feels to influence my decision about how to move forward with Aydin, or whether or not I even think that’s possible.
“I was a baby, Aydin. If somehow my existence killed Vaughn, and it probably did, what would I have known about it? How could you guys look at me, or the baby, as the villain in that scenario?”
“It wasn’t that, Vinna,” Evrin pleads.
I raise my eyebrows and tilt my head, giving him the look, and he immediately rephrases his words.
“I mean maybe that is part of Lachlan’s problem, but that wasn’t the issue with me or with Aydin. It was the warning that somehow you weren’t what you seemed. After your reading, what you were became clear. Our suspicion morphed from the possibility that you were some kind of spy, to understanding that you were more than any of us thought possible – a Sentinel. For the first time, what you were wasn’t a threat, at least not in the way we had been thinking. We finally had some answers.”
I release a deep breath, not sure how I feel about anything they’ve just told me. It does help me understand, but it doesn’t help me feel better. I was hoping that, whatever it was Aydin had to say, that somehow it would magically erase all of the hurt. I should know by now that there are no quick fixes when it comes to shattered trust; when something breaks, you can’t always glue the pieces back together.
“It doesn’t make how you guys behaved acceptable. This doesn’t excuse any of you from acting without compassion and empathy,” Valen tells Aydin, voicing how I’m feeling perfectly.
Aydin meets Valen’s stare. “I know. Like I said, I don’t want this to sound like I’m making excuses. I’m not perfect. Evrin’s not perfect. None of us have been in this position before; we fucked up. But we learn and do better, that’s how life works, or should anyway.”
I try to put myself in their shoes. Would I have been any different? Could I have seen through the suspicion and doubt to the truth? Fuck. I didn’t even know what the truth was; how can I expect them to have foreseen it. I want to bitch about how he should have told me. But would I have done that, would I have just laid all my cards out there for someone I wasn’t sure would use them against me? I just don’t know.
I look around as I consider what they’ve said, and land on Evrin’s deep, brown gaze.
“Why did you never heal me? Ryker asked me once, and I could never figure out the answer.”
“I tried to, a couple of times, right after Lachlan attacked you, and after that incident in the car when you blasted Kegan. You didn’t want me to come near you.” He takes a hesitant step closer. “There was so much going on, and the last thing I wanted to do was force something on you just because I thought it needed to be done. I didn’t want to push or take away your choice, not like I saw Lachlan do. Maybe I should have tried harder to explain. I didn’t know how to go about forming a connection. I’ve just always been quiet, and I tend to stick to the background. I figured you knew I could heal and would come to me if you decided you needed it.” Evrin offers me a small smile.
I think back to the library when he tried to approach me after the attack, or how I reacted after I walked back to the car after I magically tased Kegan, or any of the other times Evrin healed Aydin when we sparred. He’s right, I told him I didn’t want him or anyone else coming near me. I was hesitant and distrustful around him because of everything that was going on with the others, and around me
in general.
“Is there anything else I need to know before we work to move past all the shit?” I ask them both. “Think hard before you answer because I can’t deal with any more secrets from here on out. Not after what happened with Talon, and you guys. I’ve hit my limit. So if there was ever a time to get it all out, it’s now.”
The room falls silent, and I feel the rise and fall of the guys’ chests all around me. The steady synchronized rhythm soothes me, and I find more comfort in the simple contact than I ever thought I could. We’re connected, and the certainty of that steadies me in a way I’m in desperate need of.
“There are no more secrets, and I promise there won’t be any more again,” Aydin tells me.
“We’ll do better, Vinna.”
I nod my head at their statements. As awkward and stiff as this whole conversation is, it takes some the hurt weighing me down with it, too. There’s now hope where there was once only bitter hurt, and I suppose with everything that’s happened in the past month or so, that’s something.
26
My stomach lets out a yowl a feral cat would be wary of, and everyone looks at me with some form of shock on their face.
“Lay off me; I’m starving.” I laugh at my joke, but it’s lost underneath another vicious growl from my angry, empty stomach. Aydin chuckles and shakes his head.
“They don’t have shit here to eat, so we’ll go get something for you, Little Badass.”
He doesn’t give me time to answer or request anything before he and Evrin are ducking through the doorway and disappearing down the hallway.
“Well, as much as I love this pile of almost nakedness that’s happening right now, I feel better, and I want to get the fuck out of here,” I announce.
I move to get out of the cocoon of my Chosen and bodies around me vibrate with chuckles and grunts of agreement. Valen and Ryker are the first to climb out of bed. I pull Sabin’s shirt over my head and hand it back to him. Valen gives me my bra and shirt, and I slip both on while the others scoot out of bed around me, pulling on their own pants and shirts. I button up my jeans and give myself a quick once over. I don’t look any different as far as I can tell. I don’t spot any new runes, and aside from being a little shaky and a lot starving, I feel like me.