by RJ Blain
If Snowflake was Dante, why had we abandoned Nicole? Had it been impossible to escape with her? What had happened to us?
Alex groaned and hung his head. “We really are. It explains so much, especially about Richard’s shoes. How else to try to get Richard’s attention than to destroy his shoes?”
Snowflake lolled his tongue at us in a canine grin.
“What are you two talking about?” my mate demanded.
Alex pointed at Snowflake said, “I think we found your brother. After what happened to Vicky, this really should have occurred to one of us earlier.”
Elliot’s eyes widened, and he paled so much I tensed, ready to catch him if he slumped to the floor. “You can’t be serious.”
I understood why his voice wavered. Hope could be such a painful thing, and he had so many reasons to fear it. I reached for Snowflake, and at my mate’s warning growl, I froze, hand outstretched.
“And that’s the best confirmation I can think of right there.” Alex pulled out his phone, dialed a number, and waited for several moments before saying, “I need a sorcerer to come to His Eminence’s room. I think we might have a lead on his brother. I’m also going to need the best witches you can find me—at least five. If I’m right, we’re going to have a long day ahead of us.”
Alex hung up.
“It can’t be that easy.” Elliot’s gaze locked on Snowflake, who wagged his tail so hard I worried he’d give himself whiplash. “It can’t be.”
“Vicky? Think you can justify your reasoning? You’re the one who noticed. I think you’re right, but let’s hear how you came to that conclusion.”
“We have proof of concept. I’m the proof of concept. We know he can do that sort of thing,” I began, hesitating as I tried to piece together all the little things that added up to making our adopted fox none other than my mate’s beloved twin. “First, he helped our puppies. There’s no reason for a natural fox to do that. A fox would’ve been more likely to kill and eat them, not hunt rabbits for them and keep them fed. He chewed out the silver bullets. If he hadn’t, they would’ve died.”
“That alone should have tipped us off,” Alex admitted ruefully. “He’s been managing Richard like a champion, too—not something a natural fox would do. Normal dogs love Richard. It drives Nicole crazy, as she gets so damned jealous so damned easily. So while I’m not surprised a fox would adore him, it’s more than that. Whenever Richard would start on a bad downward slide, Snowflake would destroy something. It would distract Richard enough Frank or I could do something about it. Lisa and Amber haven’t been able to help much. They’re barely holding themselves together as it is.”
It bothered me hearing Alex’s candor about Richard’s state of mind. “And what about you?”
“I know better. He’s a survivor, and as long as he has the pack relying on him, he’ll endure. Until Nicole wakes up, things will go back to normal for a while; when he isn’t taking care of pack business or helping with puppies, he’ll be with Nicole. He’ll be easy to manage now.”
“And Amber and Lisa?”
“I expect they’ll have meltdowns. I’ll have to take their guns away again as soon as we return to Yellowknife. If you’re right, the instant we take Dante home, it’ll be total chaos. Whatever we do, we can’t tell Richard, not yet. It’ll drive him right over the edge trying to come here and protect Nicole at the same time. If we can get a confirmation Snowflake is Dante, I’ll handle forcing the transformation. That leads to only one problem.”
Elliot sighed. “He might be a Fenerec now.”
“Yes, and if he is, who performed the ritual on him?”
I shook my head and held my hands up in surrender. “It wasn’t me. It can’t have been me.”
My mate and Alex gaped at me.
“It can’t have been you?” Elliot asked. “Why not?”
“I don’t know how to perform the ritual.”
His mouth dropped open. “You’re how old?”
Narrowing my eyes, I grabbed Snowflake by his scruff and dragged him onto my lap. “Snowflake is cuter than you are right now, and I think I might like him better.”
Alex hooted his laughter. “Good luck, Elliot. You’re going to need it. May she choose to have mercy on you sooner or later. For some reason, I don’t think you’re getting a proposal in the morning anymore.”
“Thanks, Alex. Appreciated.”
“Anytime, Your Eminence.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Elliot hid his hope well, but I saw it in his eyes whenever he looked at Snowflake, and I wondered if I had made a mistake allowing him to learn of my suspicion. If I was wrong, if Snowflake was just another fox, I feared my mate wouldn’t emerge unscathed.
Why did hope have to be such a terrible, treacherous thing?
“There are white foxes, there are red foxes, but there aren’t any white foxes with red paws,” Alex muttered, shaking his head. “We’re stupid. I’d heard what had happened to Vicky, and it didn’t even cross my mind Dante might’ve used the same exact trick on himself.”
I swallowed, and after a moment of thought, decided it was best to voice my deepest fear. “Why wouldn’t he have done the same for Nicole, then?”
“If he could’ve, he would’ve,” Elliot snarled, his voice so full of conviction and anger I recoiled from him. He grimaced. “Sorry, Vicky. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”
I scooted away from my mate and held Snowflake closer. “You have lost your fox privileges.”
Snowflake didn’t seem to mind, and as though trying his best to confirm he was who we were beginning to believe, he stuck his tongue out at Elliot.
“You’ve lost that one, Your Eminence.” Alex reached over and stroked the fox’s fur. “On second thought, he’s similar to Evelyn’s coloration if you were to reverse them. He may’ve modeled his form off his mate—or pulled on their mating bond for a bit of help. Evelyn’s had no issues with resisting shifting at the full moon since his disappearance. Could it be possible he’s stolen her wolf with his magic?”
Elliot’s eyes widened. “And if her wolf’s hitching a ride with him, she wouldn’t be able to find him through their mating bond because her wolf’s already with him; there’s nothing for her to find. But wouldn’t that make her Normal?”
“She smells like a Fenerec still, albeit with a weaker scent. I assumed she was suppressing her wolf to protect her puppies. I was worried she’d be like Wendy and Nicole; neither can avoid shifting during the full moon without a great deal of help. Out of all our bitches, though, yours has the best control when it comes to avoiding a shift.”
I lifted my chin and huffed. “It’s the only thing I’m—”
Elliot reached over and clapped his hand over my mouth. “Stop putting yourself down.”
“If you two are going to fight followed up with kissing and making up, wait until the sorcerer arrives to confirm our suspicion. If Snowflake is Dante, wait until after we figure out how to help him shift back to human. Then I’d suggest you wait until we get him to Yellowknife, because if he’s anything like Vicky, we’re going to need to get him near Richard because the pack bonds are going to go haywire for a while. Richard will freak, and then he’ll panic because he won’t leave Nicole.”
“This is becoming very complicated,” I grumbled. “What do we do if Snowflake is Dante?”
“We do to him what Richard did to you. I’ll initiate the forced shift, and you witches will back me. I expect the witches I called in will do most of the heavy lifting, but you two should help anyway. The twin’s obvious, and I think you should be here because he did the same thing to you, you being human and here might help us get him to shift and become human again.”
I clacked my teeth together, against the idea of taking any risks with Elliot’s twin but also at a loss of any other way to handle the problem. There was another issue I had with the whole idea, and I wasn’t certain what I thought about it. “And the sorcerer?”
Elliot sighed. “He’s the
sorcerer equivalent of Nicole. As far as sorcerers go, he’s a good guy. I’ve assigned him to our Basin hits, and we’ve let him go to town on them to get answers from the guilty operatives. It’s been useful. Cruel, but useful. He’s got enough power to last him for a while, and we got the intel we needed.”
I often forgot Nicole was unusual; most wizards snapped after their powers manifested, and they often went on some form of magical rampage. It amazed me she was so stable, but I suspected Richard had a lot to do with that—and Nicole’s wolf.
She was never alone.
However loathe I was to admit it at times, I wasn’t alone, either.
I doubted I’d be able to shake my fear of losing Elliot, my puppies, and the others who’d managed to worm their way into my life. Like the relentless shifting of the seasons, I fell to the very thing I’d craved for so long but hadn’t been able to claim. The lines between affection and love blurred until I couldn’t tell them apart, and love came in so many different varieties I could spend an eternity trying to make sense of it.
Lowering my head, I buried my nose in Snowflake’s fur, breathing in his scent. My nose told me fox, but my heart told me a different story, one I hoped to be true, not just for Elliot’s sake, but for mine, too. He was my friend.
Someone knocked at the door, and I growled, holding onto Snowflake tighter.
“And the Alpha bitch has gone into protective mode.” Alex sighed, got to his feet, and answered the door, opening it to allow six people in, which was a tight squeeze in the hotel room. “Miss Hanover thinks our fox might be His Eminence’s twin. She noticed his witchcraft had been suppressed when he had a flare of temper without manifesting, so she came to my room to ask me to confirm the scent—or the lack of scent. I agreed with her assessment. Thanks for coming out, Alfred. The Yellowknife pack appreciates your help.”
My vague memories remembered a sorcerer named Alfred, but he’d been a much older man; the one who stood behind me was young, in the prime of his life, without any hints of gray in his dark hair. He smelled faintly of flowers, as though he stood with one foot in his grave, but he seemed alive enough.
I didn’t like the way he looked at me, and I bared my teeth and growled.
“It is as you say, young wolf. The fox is not what it seems, and I’ve seen his like before in the squirrel your Alpha had me admire. But, something is different.” Alfred frowned, crouched just out of reach, and looked me over, his eyes narrowing. “You, woman. You’re the squirrel.”
Twitching, I considered the best way to hunt a sorcerer; I’d never killed one before, and I was considering taking a few bites out of the one who dared to remind me of my days as a rodent. “My name is Victoria.”
“And she’s going to be my wife,” Elliot grumbled.
The sorcerer chuckled. “It’s about time. You need plenty of little heirs so the Inquisition might be guided wisely in the future. Do try to produce at least one child with as much integrity as you, sir.”
“Alfred enjoys taunting the Shadow Pope. It is one of his few joys in life,” Alex whispered to me.
The five women who had accompanied the sorcerer waited in patient silence.
“Is Snowflake my brother?” my mate demanded.
“He’s certainly not a fox, that much I am certain. He’s also not natural. It’s a strong possibility. If you need my assistance, Your Eminence, I can offer you aid. I can ensure his soul does not flee his body during the shift. It’s not much, but it should make things a little easier on the witches and your wolf.”
“Any help would be appreciated, Alfred. Thank you.”
“A debt repaid. My life for the life of your brother. Consider it the beginning of my repayment for your mercy. Anyone else would’ve killed me for what I am rather than considering my deeds.”
Years had gone by since I’d first met Elliot Anderson, but one thing hadn’t changed. Above all, my mate hated injustice.
Elliot nodded. “If I could free you, I would, Alfred. You know that.”
“And we both know you are right to leash me as you do. Enough talk. Let us work, so we might be finished with the menace that is Basin once and for all. It pleases me to do a little good after so much carnage.”
In the future, I would make certain to avoid sorcerers. He sounded far too pleased about how much carnage he’d wrought, even more so than helping restore Dante to human life.
At the sorcerer’s instruction, I held my mate’s brother, my mate took an unexpected nap courtesy of a sneaky witch with a syringe, and Alex crouched beside me, cupping Dante’s muzzle in his hands. The sorcerer and witches surrounded us.
“He’s going to be mad at us when he wakes up,” I muttered, stealing glances at my mate.
“Better than him manifesting and flooding the hotel when we start working with Dante,” Alex replied. “Twins tend to get sensitive when their sibling is essentially being tortured—which is what we’re going to be doing to Dante in about thirty seconds. Vicky, if this is anything like with you, it’s going to take a while, he’s going to be in a lot of pain, and he might manifest. You’re on biting duty; if you think he’s about to lose control of his witchcraft, give him a hard nip on the neck. That should stun him and keep him from manifesting. With luck, he burned out his reserves controlling his brother’s magic earlier, but who the hell knows what’ll happen at this point?”
“It could go smoothly,” the sorcerer said, crouching and grabbing hold of the scruff of Dante’s neck. “Please begin. Should an opportunity arise, I will help you as I can, wolf. Perhaps with five witches, two wolves, and my magic, we can mitigate the stress such a transformation has on him. I can make no promises either way.”
“Here goes.” Alex frowned, narrowed his eyes, and leaned closer to Dante.
The tiny seed of Dante’s magic I’d harbored in my chest burst, and my body burned from the inside until nothing remained.
Maybe some women wanted to wake up crammed between a pair of twins, but I was not one of them. The instant I realized I was in bed with two men who looked and smelled like my mate, I launched halfway into orbit, stepping on both in my effort to escape the situation and figure out what was going on and why. They yelped, I took flight, and instead of hitting the floor, Alex caught me around the waist, hauled me to him, and gave my neck a rebuking nip. Unlike my mate’s bite, his wasn’t intense enough to drop me to the floor, but he stunned me long enough to secure his grip on me.
“Of all the dumbass stunts,” my pack’s Second muttered. “I told you two she’d flip if you both crawled into bed with her.”
I panted, my eyes wide, and it occurred to me both men were dressed in sleep-rumpled suits, and while my nose once again deceived me on who was who, my mate’s grin betrayed him. Dante stifled a yawn, covered his head with the blanket, and went back to sleep.
“Dante was cold again. Vicky’s prettier and warmer than me. He was mostly asleep. What were you expecting me to do?”
“Turn the heat up in the room.”
“But Vicky was sleeping, and she wasn’t letting me go.”
Alex released me, rubbed my throat where he’d bitten me, and gave me a gentle push towards my mate. “Sorry, Vicky. I don’t know what the hell happened when I started forcing Dante’s shift, but you yelped, passed out, and wouldn’t wake up. Alfred said you’d be fine, and that he expected something like that to happen, but he didn’t explain why.”
Elliot sat up and held his hand out towards me, and tired of trying to live so many lies, I gave into the inevitable, growled a warning at Alex that if he even thought about laughing at me I’d kill him, and stepped into my mate’s arms.
“I happened,” Dante said, stretching out and yawning again. “Sorry, Vicky. When I made you shift, you were already in bad shape, so I used my magic. When Alex forced me to shift, that magic came back to me. I wasn’t able to warn you, sorry.”
Shaking my head, I waved away his apologies. “You were a fox. If you were anything like me, you likely couldn’t count
to two even if you wanted to.”
“I was a little better than that, but not by much. They were going to kill you if I didn’t do something. I… wasn’t expecting my magic to work as it did. Sorry.”
“You had no idea what you were doing, did you?” Elliot asked, his tone wry.
“Not a clue in hell. She was dying, I didn’t have much space to work with, so I was thinking on my feet. A fox could carry a squirrel, and a fox was small enough to get out.”
“You’re all right?” I whispered.
Dante smiled at me. “Tired, but not as tired as you, apparently. You’ve been out for a solid twelve hours, and Alex refused to let you out of his sight.”
“Twelve hours?” I shrieked.
Elliot held me closer and nipped my neck, and his bite left me limp in his arms, barely able to remain standing. “You’ve been stressed, tired, and anxious. You needed the sleep.” Kissing me where he’d scraped me with his teeth, he adjusted his hold on me until my cheek rested on his shoulder. “After Dante finished shifting, Alfred looked you both over. He thinks you’re both going to be prone to taking long naps for up to a week. We’re only to worry about it if we have trouble waking you up. He seems to think you were using your witchcraft full-throttle preserving Dante’s witchcraft; he’s never seen anything quite like it, but then again, there aren’t any other witches quite like you two.”
“If my brother bothers you, Vicky, I’ll kick him out so we can get some sleep.”
Elliot snarled, “Like hell you’ll kick me out!”
Alex hung his head and sighed. “It’s been like this for twelve hours, Vicky. Please do something about it.”
What did Alex expect me to do? Since I couldn’t think of anything I was willing to do to make them stop growling, I frowned and asked, “Have you told Richard yet?”