Lorcan choked back a gasp, letting his fingers tighten in the blankets despite the ache of pain it sparked. It was hard, but he forced himself to wait for Knox to continue, to give the alpha space to share what had to be a most painful memory.
“He… he’d been… Orion said it was some kind of ritual to strip the power from him. All I know is that he was stolen from us, killed, mutilated, and I… I failed him. I should have been able to stop it. That’s when I made the decision. I couldn’t sit around and watch it happen again. I had to do something. So I talked Orion and a few others into helping me, and…”
“You came and stole me from Maken Pack.”
Lorcan wriggled, wanting to turn, to look at Knox, but the alpha’s hand held him fast.
“I thought it would solve our problems, but I can see now that I was naive. Worse than that, I was cruel. We took you from them with no regard to what you wanted, gave you no say. We were desperate, Lorcan, but that’s no excuse for taking you from your home.”
“Maken Pack isn’t my home.”
Knox’s hand finally lifted, and Lorcan eased around to stare at the alpha’s face. A single tear trailed down to his chin—the only sign of the well of emotion hidden within.
“I’m sorry about Joel. But that wasn’t your fault.”
“It’s my job to know every time our boundary is crossed. If we’d known the moment he was taken, and not hours later…”
“It might have made no difference.”
“Or made all the difference. There’s no use dwelling on it. It’s done and can’t be undone.”
Lorcan didn’t know what else to do, so he wrapped his arms around the alpha, hugging him tightly. They lay there in silence for a while, nothing but the sound of their quiet breaths until Knox spoke again.
“But there is a mistake I’ve made that can be fixed.”
Lorcan canted his head to the side, curious. “What mistake is that?”
“I can return you to Maken Pack, back where you belong.”
He sat up, frowning at Knox.
“I don’t belong there. I just told you, it’s not my home.”
“It’s where you chose to be, where you went to be trained. I understand why you’d want to go back there.”
“I didn’t choose to be there,” he said bitterly, sitting up and swinging his legs off the bed, putting his back to Knox. The wolf was so dense sometimes.
“What do you mean?” Knox pressed his fingers lightly against Lorcan’s wolf mark.
Lorcan leaned forward, easing out of reach.
“Do you really believe someone raised as a druid would give all that up to train as a pack’s sorcerer?”
“Uh… yeah?”
He scoffed, moving to stand. “Just goes to show what you know about the magic world. Which is practically nothing.”
“I know what I need to know,” Knox growled, catching his shoulder and pulling him back onto the bed.
He shoved Knox’s hand away, pushed to his feet, and spun around to face the alpha.
“You didn’t need to know that I’m actually a druid? Or that the Warrens never knew of my existence before seven months ago? That they threatened my family in order to make me come with them, leaving behind everything I’ve ever known, and forced me into training to be something I don’t want to be?” He crossed his arms and leveled Knox with a cold stare. “Right, why would you need to know any of that? I’m just a tool to you, a means to an end. The thing that’s supposed to put your boundary back together. And now that you know I’m broken, that I can’t do what you brought me here to do, you’ll just put me back where you found me and hope no one notices what you did.”
He was embarrassed to feel tears in his eyes, brushing them away before they fell.
“At least Maken Pack was honest. Colt never tried to pretend I was anything more than an inconvenience he had the misfortune to be landed with. He never pretended there were feelings involved, never tricked me into bed in the hopes of getting better magic out of it.”
Knox stretched a hand out toward him, but he took a step back, moving out of reach. The alpha let his hand fall, and then turned away, his shoulders hunched. Lorcan’s chest heaved, and he struggled to draw breath. He made for the door and the fresh air beyond.
12
Knox heard Lorcan leave the hut and clenched his hands into fists. He didn’t want to admit it, but the mage’s words had gotten to him. There’d been a lot of truth to Lorcan’s outburst. Stealing him had been a last-ditch effort to save the pack, and Knox was blaming the mage for its failure when he was the one responsible. He’d chosen Lorcan, dragged him away from… well, dragged him out of the frying pan, and thrown him right into the fire.
He waited another minute, struggling to settle his body when the urge to change kept rolling over him. Without a mage, his control was always on a knife-edge. Add in the strong emotions of recent days, and he was like a kid again, shifting with the slightest provocation.
Once he had himself in hand, he went out in search of Lorcan. The mage had said his piece, and now Knox needed to say his. Lorcan hadn’t gone far. He was crouched on the ground outside, leaning against the wall of the hut. He didn’t move when Knox’s shadow fell over him, acting like he wasn’t even there.
Knox sank to the ground beside him, sitting cross-legged with the hut to his back.
“I’m sorry.”
There was no response beyond the sound of Lorcan’s ragged breathing. Ragged and fast and…
He took a closer look at the druid, spying hunched shoulders and the rapid rise and fall of Lorcan’s chest.
“Hey.”
When his hand met Lorcan’s shoulder, the mage turned away, curled against the wall of the hut. Not so easily deterred, he reached out again. Lorcan tried to shrug off his touch, but Knox tugged him around until they were face to face. Tears were trailing down Lorcan’s cheeks, his eyes red. Each breath was a struggle. Knox caught the mage’s hand and pressed it to his chest, over his heart.
“Breathe with me.”
“I— I can’t,” Lorcan rasped.
“You can. You will.”
The mage rolled his eyes. If he’d had the breath to speak, Knox suspected he’d be saying something less than complimentary about him.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Stop fighting me and breathe.”
Lorcan gave in reluctantly, matching him breath for breath. The silence gave Knox time to think. He’d offered Lorcan the chance to return to Maken Pack because he’d thought that was where the mage wanted to be. The truth was, his pack needed Lorcan. They couldn’t afford to let him go. Knox needed to convince Lorcan that he wanted to stay. He’d been treating him like a prisoner, which probably wasn’t too dissimilar from how Maken Pack had treated him. If Lorcan had arrived at their pack willingly, as a prospective mage, things would have been different. That was the world—the life—he needed to show the mage.
When Lorcan seemed calmer, growing restless at their closeness, Knox eased back to lean against the hut.
“I am sorry. This is not how our pack wanted to bring a mage into the fold. It isn’t how I pictured meeting you, either. Nothing about this has gone the way it should have.”
Lorcan snorted. “Are you saying you would have wined and dined me? Instead of the bag-over-the-head midnight abduction?”
Knox made a face. “The pack can’t exactly afford to wine and dine. But I’d have put on a clean shirt, maybe a tie.”
“Do you even own a tie?”
“…Gage does.”
“He’d let you borrow it?”
“He never wears it. It’s not like he’d notice if it went missing for a few hours.”
“Well, you can’t wear a tie now anyway. I’d feel under-dressed.” The mage glanced down pointedly at his shirtless chest and worn pants.
“Okay, so we’ll ax the dressing up.”
He’d piqued Lorcan’s interest, the mage watching him closely before asking, “What else…?”
“Else?�
�
“Yeah. What does rolling out the red carpet look like for Samhain Pack?”
He mused on the question. “I don’t think we own much carpet, red or otherwise. But we could start with a proper tour of the place. If you’re considering staying, you should get to know your new home.”
Lorcan didn’t look impressed by the offer. “I’ve walked most of the boundary, visited the pack house, the kitchens. What else is there to see?”
Knox got to his feet and held out a hand.
“Come with me and I’ll show you.”
Lorcan canted his head to the side. “Aren’t you going to be walking the boundary all day?”
“Gage is handling it. You and I are taking a break today. Alpha’s orders.”
“How’d that happen?”
Lorcan finally took his hand, and Knox helped him up.
“I lost control earlier, shifted twice trying to get the stuff for your hands from Orion.”
The hot flush of embarrassment at the recollection made him want to shift right then and there and slink off through the trees to lick his wounds.
“You can’t control your shifting when you’re tired?” Lorcan’s forehead creased as he stared at Knox in confusion.
“It’s harder, but that’s not the real problem.”
He led Lorcan back into the hut, tossing a clean shirt his way. The mage tugged it on, covering up the wolf mark that Knox never got tired of watching. The moon that adorned Lorcan’s skin was constantly changing, mirroring the one above.
“What is the real problem, then?” Lorcan followed him back outside as Knox tried to decide where to take him first.
“Well, shifting is magic, right?”
“Right,” Lorcan said, a little uncertainly.
“And our pack is low on the magic front. Has been for years. We’re down to a single mage now. Orion is getting older, he gets sick a lot, and it weakens his magic. His magic is our magic.”
“But I’m here now. Shouldn’t that… help?” Lorcan looked a little put out.
“You’re not our mage yet. The bond we have is temporary. Your magic helps me, but… I guess the effect of what we did didn’t last that long.”
“So you’re saying if we did more… sex stuff… you’d have better control?”
“Maybe? I’m no expert in magic. I just know pack.”
Lorcan’s expression shifted from contemplation to determination, as if he’d made up his mind about something. “Then teach me about pack, and I’ll teach you about magic. Sound fair?”
“I don’t know…” Knox pretended to think it over. “I mean, you’re stuck living in a pack, so there’s a lot of important stuff for me to share with you. But how useful is knowing about druid magic going to be for me? Seems unfair, unless you’re throwing in a little something extra to sweeten the deal.”
Lorcan’s eyes widened in shock—and maybe lust—but then narrowed in suspicion. He came to a halt and folded his arms. “You’re not the only one who isn’t above a little blackmail. If you want my magic, make it worth my while.”
Knox grinned as the mage neatly turned the tables. “I do like a challenge. Come on, let’s see if I can’t fill that empty head of yours with knowledge.”
It took a little more prodding before he got Lorcan to move, the mage linking his fingers through the belt loop of Knox’s jeans.
“Where are we going?”
“South.”
“I can see that. I was asking about the destination, not the direction.”
“The hill.”
He knew his reticence was annoying Lorcan, but he’d always been a wolf of few words. He wasn’t planning to change that now.
“What hill?” Lorcan asked as they moved out of the trees and into a meadow. “Oh, that hill.”
The hill in question was the highest point in the pack. Knox figured it was the best place to start to show someone around. The base was grass-covered, but the peak was all rock and loose shale. It was a steep enough climb for human legs, so Knox took it at a run, urging Lorcan along with him. The mage slipped once, the loose pebbles under his feet sending him sliding backward, his arms windmilling. Knox caught him easily and tugged him onto more solid ground.
“There. You good?”
Lorcan stopped flailing, his cheeks flushed a deep red, his chest heaving. “Yeah. Nothing like a brush with death to wake you up in the morning.”
“You wouldn’t have died. Maybe broken a limb, and probably skinned your arms and legs—”
The mage winced. “That’s exactly the image I needed in my head right now.”
“Well, I didn’t let you fall, did I? Stop whining and enjoy the view.” Knox turned him around so he was facing back the way they’d come.
Lorcan’s glare would have melted ice, but Knox met it with a glower of his own, waiting Lorcan out until the mage looked away.
“So this is your pack.”
“This is it. The southern boundary is behind us, due north is that way. From here, you can see the stretch of our land.”
“It’s bigger than I thought.”
“Packs need space. It isn’t easy to carve it out in the first place, let alone hold it once you’ve got it.”
“But it’s yours.”
“It’s ours.”
Lorcan was looking at him expectantly.
“What?”
“Tell me about it.”
“About what?”
The mage rolled his eyes and gestured outward. “About the pack. I know about the boundary, but what’s inside it?”
The pack was just… the pack. Knox tried to see it from an outsider’s perspective.
“It’s sort of divided into four areas. I guess the boundary itself counts as the fifth. There are the meadows and the hill where we are, the center of the pack over there, and the woods, which are mostly north and west. The stream forms the boundary between the woods and the pack center.” He gestured as he spoke, Lorcan following where he pointed. “And then there’s the lake to the east. We keep the animals nearby—chickens, mostly.”
Knox didn’t bother explaining how bad wolves were at animal husbandry. Especially their pack, with their severe lack of magic-powered self-control.
Lorcan perked up at that, though his enthusiasm wasn’t for the chickens. “There’s a lake?”
“Yeah. You can just see the edge of it, over there.” It was a dull day, but there were patches of sun shining through here and there, just enough to glisten on the lake’s surface.
“Can we go there first?”
“Last might be better. We can cool off when it gets hot later.”
“Oh, okay. Hey, wait. What’s that? Is it part of the pack?”
Knox followed where Lorcan pointed and winced. “That’s um… that’s…”
“It looks like it’s off the main road to town. Isn’t that a little central for a wolf pack?”
“It’s the scrapyard.”
“Scrapyard?”
“All packs have to have a business these days. This is ours.”
“Scrap? Scrap metal is your business?”
“Yeah.” He wanted to change the subject, but Lorcan seemed oddly fixated.
“Can I see it?”
“Why?”
It wasn’t somewhere he’d planned to bring Lorcan. In fact, he’d actively kept him away from it. There was nothing impressive about their scrapyard. It was the business a pack had when they couldn’t get anything better. If Lorcan knew anything about packs, he’d have known right away what that signified. Instead, he looked interested, maybe even impressed.
“I’ve never seen a scrapyard before. Is it outside the boundary?”
“Yes and no.”
A cold breeze stirred around them, and Lorcan shivered. On instinct, Knox moved closer, pressing against Lorcan’s back to share his warmth. Lorcan went to pull away but then stopped, leaning into the touch.
“You’re warm.”
“The benefit of being a wolf. I always run hot. Come
on, let’s get moving. There’s a lot to see.”
Since Lorcan wasn’t likely to be satisfied until he’d seen it, Knox led him to the scrapyard first.
“There are two boundaries here, an inner and outer one. The inner is like the main boundary, but the outer one is different. It lets people come and go.”
The magic washed over them as they crossed the inner boundary. They were at the back of the scrapyard, junk and scrapped cars piled up around them. A winding path led through it. Knox strode along it, Lorcan by his side. The mage’s gaze kept flickering to the towers of scrap, eying them with unease.
“They won’t fall.”
“Are you sure?”
As Lorcan asked, a wolf appeared on the path ahead of them, and then disappeared between the stacks.
“Who was that?”
“Marcus.”
“How can you tell?”
“Wolves are as recognizable to me as people. Scent, sight, sound. Back when my powers were stronger, I could even sense which wolves were close to the boundary. Now I can just about feel when someone crosses it.”
“Bonding to me would change that for you?”
“Bonding with a mage would complete me.”
13
Lorcan felt unaccountably subdued as they wandered the scrapyard. He scrounged up a smile as Knox introduced him to the wolves working in the yard out front. They looked dusty, dirty, and a little bemused by his presence.
“Knox, come take a look at this, will you?”
Someone out of sight called to Knox, who disappeared into the cabin that served as an office, leaving Lorcan to his own devices outside. Lorcan counted eight wolves around, though only three of them were in human form.
A guy with oil stains on his khakis stared at him. “You’re the mage?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Knox’s mage,” a second wolf said, folding his arms.
That was the problem, wasn’t it? Because Knox hadn’t said ‘bonding with you would complete me.’ He’d said bonding with ‘a mage’ would complete him. Lorcan got it. He wasn’t what Knox needed; he couldn’t fix the boundary. But it still stung. He wanted Knox to want him. To need him. To—
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