Wolf Bound

by Leisl Leighton

  ‘But those prophecies haven’t all come true.’

  ‘Oh, but they have. Eloise is the Nexus, capable of being a weapon for good or for evil. Thankfully, she found your pack, bonded with one of you and fought the Darkness from taking over her soul. She has chosen to be a weapon against the Darkness. Bronwyn rid her mate of the Darkness’ influence, overcoming the Beast and in an incredible feat of healing that saved not only him and Eloise, but all of your pack, also enabled Skye and Morrigan to become pregnant.’

  ‘Skye’s pregnant?’

  ‘Yes. Which is another bonus for us, as the power of the babies inside her womb will be added to the whole.’

  ‘Babies? I’m going to be an uncle to twins?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fucking brilliant!’

  She waved her hand at him, impatient. ‘You focus on the wrong thing.’

  ‘I hardly think Skye and Jason having a baby is the wrong thing. It’s a fucking miracle.’

  ‘No, it’s not a miracle. It’s prophecy. Morrigan too can become pregnant. The prophecy also told us that Skye would be master of all the elements and would save her pack from the destruction I accidentally wrought.’

  ‘Okay. But the last one isn’t true. I’m not bound to the banshee.’ She smiled at him, a knowing smile that made him shiver to his core and shake his head. ‘I hope all this doesn’t hinge on that, because if it does, we’re all fucked.’

  She waved her hand. ‘We will focus on that when the time is right and when you are ready to do what must be done.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘With your help, the power of the Nexus and the witch and Were and spirit can harness the magic of the world and use it to cast the Darkness into the void before he can fulfil the words of the prophecy.’

  ‘The child. Morrigan’s child. She’s pregnant too?’

  Morghanna nodded.

  If that were true, then the last must be true as well. Adam swallowed hard, feeling every ounce of the weight of the responsibility she had just placed on his shoulder. ‘You want us to kill the child?’ Revulsion bubbled inside him. Even if it was a child with Darkness in its heart, he wasn’t sure he could be a part of killing a baby.

  ‘No. We simply need to stop the Darkness from being born into the babe.’

  ‘He’s not in the child already?’

  ‘No. He can’t be. Not while it is growing in the womb. The only time he can move into the child is when the babe is about to be born and the soul meant for it will settle into its flesh as it is brought into your world. That is the moment the Darkness must strike, killing the soul and taking its place in the flesh of the child. Once it has done this, because of the magical nature of the child and his own powers, he will be able to syphon all power from the ley lines of your world, destroying it and my Goddess and using the destructive force to cross the bridge between the worlds of the gods and hold dominion over all.’

  ‘Fucking hell. Why don’t the gods stop it then?’

  ‘The gods do not believe this can happen. They do not believe any being would be so stupid as to destroy another god or goddess. The power unleashed in the universe by a destruction such as this could tear the fabric of everything apart and cause chaos that would take millennia to pass. But the Goddess believes the Darkness has come to be something that feeds only on destruction. It will only become stronger if it manages to do this and is no longer bound by the same rules as the rest of them. The others of her kind will not believe her, and she is forbidden to lift a finger herself to openly stop the Darkness from seeking its revenge. That is why she needs us all. We must play our parts to stop the Darkness from entering the world through the child in my sister’s womb. Our only chance is to expel the Darkness into the void before the child is born, then the prophecy of its birth can play out without the Darkness having any influence over it. The child can live and grow a normal life—well, as normal a life as any child could have without its parents. Both Cain and Morrigan will be destroyed when the Darkness is expelled into the void.’ She narrowed her gaze on him. ‘So, are you ready to get back to work and stop worrying about how long you have been away from your home?’

  He wanted to look away, suddenly feeling like a recalcitrant child being brought to task over a temper tantrum, but forced himself to return her gaze. ‘I still can’t believe I can help, but if you’re right, then yes. Bring it on and let’s destroy this fucker.’

  She smiled at him and held out her hand for him to help her to her feet. ‘I thought you might say that. Now, we have tested your physical agility and stamina, let us see about your control over your power.’

  ***

  Adam closed his eyes and concentrated on the emotions rushing through him.

  ‘Yes,’ Morghanna said somewhere to his left. ‘Those emotions you have always felt and reacted to are not all your own.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said, opening one eye.

  ‘Concentrate!’ She clipped him across his shoulder.

  He closed his eye. ‘I can feel anger and frustration now.’

  ‘You will feel more than anger and frustration if you do not concentrate and take this seriously.’

  ‘I am taking it seriously.’ He opened his eyes again.

  ‘Good, because to understand and manipulate the emotions of others, you must first master your own.’

  ‘I don’t manipulate people.’ She raised a single brow. ‘Well, not like you make it sound. I do it to help people.’

  ‘Yes. You have had great success in helping your pack.’

  ‘So why do I need to do this if I’m already good at it?’

  ‘Because you did it without thought. Without truly understanding what you did and how you did it. You are a creature of pure instinct, and while that will lead you so far, it will not lead you to the greater power that lies within. The power that will help the triumvirate and the Nexus rid this world of the canker of the Darkness.’

  ‘And I can’t do this from my body?’

  She sighed and he felt her frustration with him. He didn’t mean to harp on getting back to his pack, but that was where he was meant to be.

  ‘No. It is important you are in this form so that you can help Shelley control and channel her powers with your powers. The connection is stronger for her this way.’

  He sighed. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her now when she spoke of his powers. He did. He knew with certainty that his Trickster nature made him an empath in the true sense of the word—one whose powers derived from the ancient heart of the universe where the different threads of magic first came into existence. With that power he’d been helping his packmates for years, especially through the years after his parents and brothers were murdered and when the Curse was taking its toll. However, the bit he was struggling with was that to do his part, Shelley had to engage with her powers. That and the bond she kept referencing but then refusing to discuss. ‘I won’t force her to use her powers.’

  ‘You will not have to. She will choose to use them. To save her friends. To save the pack. To save you.’

  ‘If I’m so strong, why do I need saving?’

  ‘Everyone needs saving. Even you. Shelley is key in delivering you back to your body.’

  He couldn’t help smiling. ‘So I do get back to my body?’

  ‘That is one of the things we are aiming for.’ She tutted and shook her finger at him. ‘Enough procrastinating. Back to the task at hand.’ She gestured for him to take up the meditation pose she’d taught him. ‘Now, while you have been very successful in the past at reading the emotions of your pack and stabilising them, you have also often been overwhelmed by those emotions, causing you to behave in ways that were detrimental to you and others around you. This is what we seek to control. Like Shelley, who must learn to control the spirits around her so they don’t overwhelm her, you must learn to control the influx of emotions that influence your own emotions.’

  He groaned. ‘Please don’t bring that up again.’ He was tired
of being taken to task for refusing to come with her and leave Shelley. ‘I was worried about Shelley.’

  ‘Yes, but that was only part of it. You could feel her fear as if it were your own and you let it take you over. You cannot allow that to happen again. It would be too easy for the Darkness and its followers to influence you negatively and take you out of the equation by doing so.’

  ‘Fuck.’ His eyes snapped open. ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Yes. The Darkness is trying even now to infiltrate this part of you through your body. It wants you on its side—you would be an asset with your ability to read and manipulate the emotions of others.’

  ‘I’d rather die.’

  ‘And you will if you do not learn to control what you do. If you learn control, you will be of no use to the Darkness.’

  ‘It will leave my body then?’

  ‘Possibly. Or it will kill you.’

  ‘Terrific. Great options I’ve got there.’

  ‘Better that than no options at all.’

  He swallowed hard. She was right. He had to do this. He knew the stakes now. ‘Okay. I’m concentrating. Tell me what to do.’

  Over the next few days, they practiced the drills for controlling his emotions until he was dripping with sweat and exhausted, and then she drilled him more, throwing an array of emotions at him—quite literally at him. She’d conjured what looked like balls of smoky glass out of thin air and lobbed them at him, each one breaking on contact and overwhelming him with emotions others had experienced in the past—terror, grief, happiness, anger, depressive sadness, passion and so on—and he had to create a syphoning barrier that allowed him to utilise his power to feel the emotion but not let it take him over, so he could then pull on the right positive force to channel back out into others. His head was aching by the end of it, but he felt far more serene inside than he’d ever felt before. A serenity that brought an endless sense of strength and surety.

  After a few days of this, when he’d managed to successfully create the syphoning barrier with her every attempt to overwhelm him, he straightened, smiled at her with what he knew was his cocky smile and said, ‘Is that all you’ve got?’

  She conjured another ball. This one had a tinge of amethyst to it. ‘I have saved the strongest for last.’ She threw it at him.

  The ball hit him right in the middle of his chest, the glass-like substance turning to insubstantial tendrils of smoke as the others had. He erected his syphoning barrier, but this time, as the tendrils sank into his skin, he was driven to his knees by such an intensity of emotion that the barrier simply flickered and went out.

  The emotion covered him, shot through him, surrounded him. Love. His love. For Shelley.

  But not simply that. There was something more, something behind it, ugly and weak, and yet it threatened to overtake everything. It was fear: fear that she was his mate but would never accept him.

  The knowledge felled him, driving him to the ground. He struggled to breathe through the overwhelming onslaught he’d been fighting against for so long, but that had secretly driven everything he’d done since he’d met her. He looked up at Morghanna. ‘You’ve made this into a weapon? My love for Shelley?’

  ‘Not your love for her—your fear of it. Mastery over this is more important than mastery of all the other emotions combined.’

  ‘I know I love Shelley. I always have. I don’t deny it.’

  ‘No. However, you will not let yourself admit that she is your mate because you fear the choice she will make will not match yours.’

  ‘She doesn’t love me.’

  Morghanna smiled knowingly. ‘Of course she does. However, she suffers from the same martyr complex as you. She will give up everything because of her love for you. She is as frightened as you, perhaps more.’

  ‘She has good reason after what her ex and her family did to her.’

  She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. However, it is essential you both face that fear and allow the bond already in place to strengthen, for if you do not, none of what we are doing here will make any difference and we will fail.’

  ‘You’re telling me this all hinges on Shelley and I mating?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But … I can’t force a mating. Shelley has to accept it of her own volition. Coercion of any kind won’t let the bond come into being.’

  ‘That is true, which is why you both must stop fighting against what is meant to be and let the strength of it flow through you.’

  ‘And how the fuck am I supposed to do that here?’ He dragged himself to his feet, anger burning in his chest. ‘You refuse to let me even try to speak to her, let alone start the mating with her.’

  ‘The mating has already begun—as you would know if you opened yourself to it. And I am not stopping you from seeing her now.’

  She waved her hand and the air shimmered and then suddenly, the shimmering became a mirror-like surface full of swirling black and ghostly clouds. The clouds began to clear and the blackness dissipated until an image wavered in the mirror.

  ‘Shelley,’ he whispered, taking a step forward. She was sitting at the table in the living room of her house. The table was covered with diaries and grimoires. She was holding her head in her hands, her fingers threaded through her hair, almost as if she was about to tear out great chunks of it. She was too thin. She lifted her head, glaring at the ceiling, her violet eyes made even more intense by the pallor of her skin and the dark circles under them.

  Beautiful. So beautiful. Although he’d have to kill someone for not making her look after herself. She made an aggravated noise in her throat and then, looking down, swore at the diary she was reading.

  He wanted to reach out and touch her. To take her pain and frustration away. To soothe her anger and set aside her despair. To hold her in his arms and watch her as she slept. To bring her food that she turned her nose up at, but then later ate with a gusto that made warmth spark in his chest. He wanted to make her laugh. To cry out in passion. He wanted to give her joy in every way he could. He wanted to be her mate in every sense of the word. She was so real, so much a part of him already, he knew what Morghanna had said was true. However, there was the little issue of him being without a solid form. ‘I can’t mate with her while I’m not in my body. And according to you, I can’t be in my body until this is over. So how is this supposed to work?’

  She simply smiled at him and said, ‘Touch the mirror, step through and I promise the way will become clear. All you need to do is trust in yourself and your love.’

  It seemed like such a simple thing and yet … ‘One small step and all that,’ he murmured and, reaching out, touched the rippling mirror-like surface.

  Everything he was turned inside out.

  Chapter 20

  ‘I want to know about the Trickster and Warlock Lightning,’ Shelley told the diary in her hands. The pages fluttered and opened on another entry about banshees. ‘Okay. Then tell me about the Nexus.’ The pages fluttered again and landed on an entry about a medium learning how to communicate with multiple spirits at once. ‘I don’t want to know about that, you bloody book. Tell me about births of magical beings.’ Again, the pages fluttered and she looked down to see a picture of a winged woman, mouth open on a scream, death with his scythe in the distance. ‘You’re as fucking useless as the last one!’ Shelley slammed the diary shut and shoved it across the table. It hit the tray that held the lunch she’d not touched and the whole lot went spilling onto the floor with a loud clang of metal and smash of broken glass and crockery. ‘Oh, fuck. Just fuck.’

  ‘Hey? What’s the problem?’

  She looked up to see Gareth in the doorway, another tray in his hands with a steaming bowl and fresh jug of water. He looked down at the mess on the floor. ‘If you didn’t like your lunch, you didn’t have to push it on the floor. I hope you’re not planning on murdering your dinner in the same way.’

  She looked down at the bowl of minestrone and the thick piece of freshly baked sourd
ough he placed before her and burst out laughing.

  Gareth laughed with her.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ she wiped the laugh-tears from her eyes. ‘I needed that.’

  ‘So did I,’ Gareth said, pulling out the seat beside her. His face fell into serious lines as he regarded her. ‘We all miss Adam. He could always bring light to the darkness. He brought me out of my depression after I was kidnapped and tortured by Morrigan.’

  ‘Yeah. He always made me laugh despite myself. Just like you’ve done a few times.’ She looked over at Gareth, considering. ‘Maybe you have a little bit of Trickster in you.’

  ‘I wish.’

  She looked at him queryingly.

  ‘It’s nice to be able to make people laugh. Especially when they need it most. He brought something so essential to our pack. I think most of us didn’t realise it until he was gone.’

  Her mouth trembled, but she sucked in a breath, determined not to cry. ‘I know. I’ve learned so much about what a Trickster truly is to the pack.’ And what that meant to her in particular. ‘He is one of the strongest there’s ever been. I think he saved all of you when the Curse enacted. He kept you sane and strong.’

  Gareth sucked in a breath. ‘What are we going to do without him?’

  ‘You’re not. I’m going to find some way of bringing him back.’ She stared at the soup so hard, it blurred in front of her eyes.

  ‘Shelley?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t you eat your dinner and then go take a break. Maybe get some sleep. I know you’ve barely been sleeping lately.’