Breaking Free

by Layla Nash

  Edgar Chase’s eyes flashed gold as the lion surfaced, and Nick’s wolf bristled in immediate reaction. Despite that, the security chief maintained rigid control over himself and his voice, which came out so soft and careful that Nick almost doubted what he’d heard. “Give me your word that you will kill Keller, and we’re in.”

  “I’ll kill him however you want me to,” Nick said. He gripped the edge of the table. “It’ll be as slow as I can manage. I have a few debts to pay him back myself, and a few added up from his time in this city. He’ll suffer.”

  “Good.” Logan chase nodded. “The pride will take the south wall and main entrance to the compound. Minus the gorgon.” He slid a sideways look to Lacey. “Would you like Benedict at the house as well, in case Eloise gets... overexcited?”

  Nick didn’t want to know what happened when a gorgon got overexcited, but he also didn’t want a whole crowd of people around at Smith’s house. That just meant more people to be injured or killed, and more blood debts for him to repay.

  The corner of Lacey’s mouth turned up as she looked at the lions. “Would Benedict stay away from his mate in this situation?”

  “No,” Benedict said, looking irritated and rather academic as he sat behind his brothers. “But they’ve used some dirty tricks in the past. So I will bring Eloise and her special sunglasses to Smith’s house.”

  Before Lacey or Nick could respond, Rafe O’Shea leaned forward. “Meadow and I will be at the house. I request the gorgon’s assistance in protecting my mate from harm.”

  “Done,” Benedict said. “She’ll turn anyone you want into stone, friend. Just say the word.”

  Ruby glanced at Nick, a strange expression on her face that he didn’t recognize. “Our beta will lead BloodMoon pack against the compound so I can assisted Meadow at Smith’s house. BloodMoon will get the prisoners out. Thank you for your work, Nick.”

  His mouth went dry and for a long moment, his throat wouldn’t work either. Finally, Nick inclined his head. “I helped bring trouble to your door; this is my atonement. But I am glad to have met you.” He resisted the urge to look at Evershaw as he corrected himself. “Most of you.”

  It felt like a goodbye, and Nick wasn’t used to those. More to the point, he wasn’t used to people looking sad when they said goodbye to him. And Ruby looked... regretful. Like she’d miss him in some way. It made it hard to breathe as he imagined saying goodbye to Lacey. To walking away from her and knowing he wouldn’t see her again, wouldn’t hold her or smell her hair or kiss her lips. He wouldn’t be able to.

  It hit him like a bolt and he had to brace himself against the table under the guise of studying the blank map. He couldn’t say goodbye to Lacey. He couldn’t. It would be like tearing off his own arm. He might as well try to rip out his own heart. His only hope—the only option—would be walking away without saying a word. Pretending he headed out for a trip and might eventually return to see her. Turn it into a “see you later” instead of a “goodbye.”

  He cleared his throat a few times and looked at the other alphas, waiting. Kaiser sighed, another remarkably bear-like sound, and scratched at his beard. “We’ll be where we’re needed. My mate will stay with the young, so anyone who needs to protect their young are welcome to bring them to our home.”

  Nick figured Josie was scary enough to defeat BadCreek all on her own, but it probably made sense to leave her with the little ones. From the warning look Kaiser shot his way, and the smirk on Axel’s face, they both knew exactly what Nick was thinking.

  Harrison, the jackal, nodded and rested his palms flat in front of him. “While we support this effort, we do not have the manpower of the other packs. We can provide security on the perimeter during the fight, and pick off any who try to escape or flee.”

  Nick nodded, satisfied with that. No sense in making the smaller jackals shoulder the same burdens that the lions and bears carried. And that was everyone. The whole set of them. Nick retreated to sit behind the bears once more, not wanting to steal any more of Lacey’s thunder.

  She looked relieved, perhaps more than she could have admitted, and some of the worry wrinkles in her forehead eased. “Good. We’ll try to drag Smith out at midnight. Initiating the attack right before then will be best. That way, if Ray tries to reach back to his pack for assistance, they will be too busy dealing with all of you. Thank you, everyone. Hopefully this is the last time we have to talk about this.”

  “And we’ll all meet back at the Pug for drinks when it’s over,” Ruby said. A note of threat wove in her voice as she spoke, and Nick wondered if that was for him or Lacey. Ruby apparently didn’t take too kindly to people preparing not to come back from a mission.

  He snorted and headed for the door. “The first round’s on Smith, and the second is on me. Just make sure it isn’t vodka.”

  Nick was already in the hall when the alphas started talking again, his focus shifted to what was to come. He needed to call the witch and make sure she was prepared for whatever it was she needed to do. Nothing could fuck this up. This was the last chance. He’d make sure Smith was alive and well, that the djinn wasn’t planning to fuck around with the city or Lacey, and then he’d get on the next plane to London. Hunting down Keller would take most of his time after that, and after Keller... Well.

  He shook himself and the crushing feeling of a lack of purpose. He’d figure that out when he got there.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Lacey

  Nick disappeared before I had a chance to even look in his direction. As soon as everyone agreed with the plan to go forward, he vanished. He left the map on the table in the center of the room, and for a while the rest of us stared at it, waiting for it to do something magical, maybe. Then Ruby stalked forward to take the map, holding it gingerly by the edge of the heavy parchment, and looked at me. “Are you ready?”

  No, I wasn’t. Not at all. Not even a little bit. I forced a smile and shoved my chair back. “Of course.”

  “I’m serious about meeting back at the Pug when this is over,” she said. She didn’t linger over it, like we were school friends parting for the summer. Instead she turned on her heel and walked out, already in conversation with Rafe. Meadow hesitated, looking at me, before she followed them out. We’d all meet up at Smith’s house. It would all work out.

  I repeated it to myself with each step as Savannah and I walked out of the building and onto the street. We hadn’t driven, which was kind of a jackass move by me, making Sav walk. She claimed she wanted to, that she needed to stretch her legs and get fresh air in order to heal, but I probably should have insisted on a driver.

  But selfishly I’d wanted the extra time to think, both on the walk to the Council building and on the way back to the house. I shoved my hands in my pockets and stared at the near-empty streets, wondering where everyone else was on such a fine summer afternoon. What did normal people do on a day like this one? Did they get dinner on a patio outside somewhere, maybe meet for drinks at one of the trendy rooftop bars in the city? Did they go to a movie until the air-conditioning turned them into ice cubes? Did they stay home and lie around naked under the fan? I had no idea. If we hadn’t been gearing up to run headlong into unknown danger, I wouldn’t have had any idea what to do with myself.

  If I wasn’t hyena queen, I didn’t know who I was. Who I would be. Who I could be. I thought I knew, when Cal was alive. But looking back, I was just borrowing who he was. When I had a goal, I drove where we went and what we did, but if there was downtime and nothing to do, I was completely lost. Even the goals were always about my family or his family or escaping the city.

  I slowed to a stop on the sidewalk, staring at nothing, and felt that odd sense of disconnection once more, as if the world moved around me and I stayed exactly where I was. How unbelievably fucking sad.

  Sav waited longer than I expected to catch my arm. “You okay?”

  I turned to face her, glad we weren’t at the house but were far enough from the Council buil
ding that none of the other alphas were around to hear this. “Who the hell am I, Sav?”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Uh... You’re Lacey fucking Szdoka, queen of the hyenas and a bad-ass chick. Why?”

  I shook my head, wanting to laugh and cry at the same time. “All that I am, everything I’ve done... It’s all because someone else told me to.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” She dragged me into the alcove of an abandoned store, shielding us from view of the occasional foot traffic on the street.

  I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to blot out the sense that my whole life stretched behind me in a long boring road of obedient choices. “I went to school where my mother wanted me to. I studied business because my mother wanted me to. I was going to Europe because Cal wanted to. I’m—“ I started laughing, even though it mixed with tears, and wanted to run for the hills so I could be alone. Maybe I could make it back to that little cabin in the woods where Nick and I had cuddled and he’d refused to sleep with me. “I’m even the hyena queen because my mother wanted me to be. What the fuck do I do, Sav, that someone else hasn’t decided for me?”

  She stared at me like she’d never seen me before. “Are you fucking kidding me right now, Lacey? Is this Nick? Has he been telling you all this shit?”

  “No,” I said. It was a knee-jerk reaction, an immediate rejection that any man could tell me that shit and that I’d listen. Then I shook myself, trying to breathe normally even as my heart skipped and thudded against my ribs. “Yes. I don’t know. He pointed it out. He said I could do anything. That I could make a choice. That I wasn’t my mother. And I know all that. Of course I know that. Or maybe I didn’t. I don’t fucking know.”

  She growled in her chest, muttering something about chasing him down and having a nice conversation about mind-fucking people, but I took a deep breath and finally faced the facts. “But none of it really mattered, Sav. None of that stuff really mattered until I met him.”

  “Who?” she demanded. “Cal?”

  “Nick,” I said as my heart broke. Cal, I love you. I’ll always love you. You’re the heart of my heart. “He’s…I think he’s my mate.”

  Sav gaped at me. It might have been funny, how long it took for her to snap her mouth closed and find some words, except my heart kept breaking and my eyes stung with tears and I thought I might have had another breakdown, right there in the street.

  Sav ran her hands through her hair and gripped big handfuls, the curls sticking out between her fingers in wild clumps. “I beg your fucking pardon?”

  “I met with Harrison this morning, and he told me I wasn’t Cal’s mate.” I forced the words out, wondering if I would believe them more every time I spoke them. It didn’t feel like it. “That they knew who Cal’s mate was and she’s in the pack. That Cal knew about her and told her he was going with me anyway. And since Cal wasn’t mine... Nick thinks I’m his mate. He’s certain of it. I thought it was just a line of bullshit, but he’s... I think he might be right.”

  She continued to stare at me, holding her hair, until I started to fear for her sanity. I might have just broken her brain. Which was exactly how I’d felt as I sat with Harrison in that nice little coffee shop I’d never be able to visit again.

  I took a shaky breath and stared out at the street and all the normal people walking by. None of them knew what was going to happen tonight, the magic we might unleash on the city. None of them suspected that a djinn was about to be freed into their midst, and we had no real way of controlling him. Most of them probably knew, to the core of their soul—just as deeply as I’d believed that Cal was my one and only true mate—that magic did not exist.

  Except it did. Even though they didn’t see it, magic surrounded them.

  Sav exhaled in a whoosh and finally dropped her hands, though her hair stayed comically sticking up in giant cowlicks. “Back the train up. Cal wasn’t your mate but he loved you enough to walk away from his?”

  I nodded.

  Her eyes immediately filled with tears and she bit her knuckle as a keening sound escaped. I couldn’t look at her another second, a lump already in my throat. “Please. I’ll start bawling and never stop. I can’t.”

  She choked it back and wiped furiously at her eyes, clearing her throat and coughing until her voice almost stayed in one octave. “That stupid, unbelievable, wonderful man. Fuck a duck, Lacey.”

  “Yeah.”

  Savannah raked her hair back. “And Nick is your mate, and he knows it, and now you know it.”

  “Yes.” I took a deep breath.

  She gestured behind us, in the direction of the Council building. “Then what the fuck was that? It’s like you two don’t even like each other.”

  “We have a lot going on, and—“

  “Bullshit,” she said, shaking her hand. She grabbed my shoulder and pointed her index finger right in my face. “I’m calling bullshit. Don’t you fucking dare do that. Don’t you push him away, too.”

  “Sav—“

  “You have another chance,” she said, fiercely enough that my hyena started to take notice. It was dangerously close to a rank challenge, and I didn’t think either of us wanted to brawl in the open. But her eyes flashed gold and she used all of her strength to shove me against the brick wall and keep my attention. “You unbelievable idiot. Your mate is alive. You lost Cal, yes, but you have another chance to be happy. Do not—do not—let anything derail that. Don’t you fucking dare.”

  “Savannah,” I said, gripping her wrist where she’d grabbed some of my shirt. “It’s not that simple. It’s not—“

  “Fuck simple,” she said. She didn’t budge. “In all our lives, Lacey, I haven’t seen you do anything I’d be ashamed of. I haven’t. And that’s saying a lot. Even this last year, when you had the chance to do anything in the fucking world you wanted, you put your nose to the grindstone and did the right thing every. single. time. I’ve never second-guessed you or questioned your decisions or regretted anything you’ve done.”

  My lips rolled in so I wouldn’t flash my teeth and get her hyena going. I wasn’t going to fight her. I wasn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t hurt Savannah. “Would you just—“

  She hauled me toward her and slammed be back into the brick hard enough to knock the wind out of me, and I blinked. The hyena roared to the surface and my nails turned dark where I held her arms. A growl bubbled up in my chest as both the hyena and I stared at her, and saw the hyena answering in Savannah’s eyes.

  Her voice was barely more than a hiss as she did it again, slamming me into the brick as she said, “But.”

  I snarled, my toes curling with the urge to shift. Two hyenas fighting in broad daylight on a city street was bad news.

  Her words drained the fight out of me completely.

  “But if you walk away from your mate and martyr yourself for a job you didn’t even want, I will never respect you again. Ever.”

  She didn’t blink, didn’t hesitate. She definitely didn’t laugh it off or look away. I could have killed her for that kind of a challenge, and she didn’t care.

  The knot in my throat returned. My grip on her hands loosened as I stared at her, and the only words I could find were the ones I couldn’t even say to myself when I was alone. “But what if I lose Nick, too?”

  She deflated and almost dropped me. “Lacey—“

  “What if I lose him too? Seeing Cal die almost killed me. I wanted to die. I can’t…I can’t imagine what it would be like to feel more than that for Nick and then feel worse if he dies. I wouldn’t survive it. I wouldn’t.”

  I didn’t wipe the tears off my cheeks, because I wasn’t ashamed of them. I couldn’t be. How could I ever trust the world enough to love Nick? He was so damn reckless, and he’d already survived more than any shifter should have expected to. He was covered in scars from close calls. A man like that was never going to wrap himself up in bubble wrap or even wear a helmet when he rode a damn motorcycle. He was a fucking moron in a l
ot of ways. But I loved him. I did.

  “Now, I know you’re an idiot,” she said. Sav pulled me in for a hug and sighed. “You have to take a chance, Lacey, and believe that it’ll be worth it. And I guess make sure that you go first.”

  I could almost laugh about that, because I knew down to my bones that Nick would die before letting me go. We hugged for a long time, longer than I could remember having done before, and eventually I pulled away so I could blow my nose and wipe my eyes and try to get my shit together. She did the same, muttering and calling me names, and she even handed me extra tissues.

  “You ridiculous cow,” she said. “Take a chance. Straighten this shit out with him before you go running into the Be-whatever tonight and face down a genie. Figure it out, Lacey. I think he’s kind of a jackass, but he gets stars in his eyes when he looks at you.”

  “I should kick your ass for talking to me like that,” I said. It was probably ruined by all the mascara and eyeliner running down my face, or at least by my runny nose and blotchy face. I’d always been an ugly crier. “And it’s the Betwixt.”

  “Fuck the Betwixt. And I love you, too, bitch-face.” She shook her head and tried to smooth her hair down again. “Now let’s get moving so we can get back to the house and figure out how you’re going to survive this shit tonight without getting you or Nick killed.”

  For the first time in a long time, I actually wanted to smile. I might not know who I was yet, or who I wanted to be, but it felt like I could have a lot of fun figuring that out.

  Chapter Thirty-six