by Lan Chan
Despite what he was saying, a heavy stone sat in my gut. Now that my mind wasn’t preoccupied with survival, I realised she was familiar. I’d met her years ago at Charles’s birthday party. Dredging up a name was beyond me right now. But she’d had the same sultry, forthright air back then. For her to question him openly meant that one, she held a high-ranking position, and two, he held her in high regard. The pure longing in her gaze when she looked at him made me green in the gills. Don’t be that girl, Sophie, I told myself. You can’t push him away and then get upset when others want him.
Logic was a bullshit concept.
“Ask Gwen to send the guards in here. And summon the pack circle,” Max ordered, dismissing her without bothering to answer her questioning pout.
The door shut loudly behind her. Thankfully, I was saved from Max’s unwavering attention by a warm hand on my shoulder. Jacqueline’s expression made me want to burst into tears. Behind her spine of steel, there was a brush of deep sorrow that made her smile fall short of her eyes.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” she said. I pinched myself hard in the thigh to stop from blurting out that it was my all fault. Kai was lost because of me. Raphael had fallen because of me. And I had failed to bring them back.
“I’m so sorry about Bloodline,” I said, trying to find a safe topic.
She nodded. “The Academy is resilient. As it teaches us to be.” There was a knock on the door behind Max. “Come and see me later this afternoon. We’ll settle your timetable.”
She made to leave just as the door opened. I caught sight of a sardonic smile on a face that was so striking it made my breath hitch.
“Mr. Thompson,” Jacqueline said. “We’ve missed you at the Academy.”
Charles gave her a polite nod, but his attention had locked on me. I stared back at him, unsure how to react. There was every chance he hated me. Or at the very least was angry at me. But as I looked into his sweet little face that had lost all hint of baby fat, I couldn’t help the way my eyes began to mist.
“Hi,” I croaked. For a second Charles didn’t move. He just watched me like I was an apparition. And then all of a sudden, he leaped over the table and I found myself enveloped in his arms. I gave an undignified squeal as he crushed me to him, squeezing the daylights out of me. Somehow it still wasn’t enough.
“Thank goodness,” Charles breathed, his arms constricting. Wrapping my arms around his waist, the only part I could now reach, I held him in return.
“I’m so sorry,” I found myself saying again, knowing how badly it was probably hurting him that Lex had disappeared. As dull as my senses were, I felt the rage beating off him in choking waves. His hands felt calloused against my back. When I pulled away to inspect them, they were covered in ugly, pink welts. The explanation for why was strapped to his back.
“She would hate this,” I said with certainty.
“There are a lot of things she would have hated,” he said. I brushed my thumb over his right cheek where there was a hint of a bruise. Closer inspection showed me remnants of other scars as well.
“What happened?” I asked.
Max cleared his throat. “Yes, Chuck. Would you like to tell her what happened?”
“Piss off,” Charles snarled.
“Hey!” I tugged at his arm. It wasn’t so much what he’d said as the pure vehemence in his voice. He’d always been wilful. It was expected from a dominant shifter. But the thing he was projecting towards Max wasn’t playful disobedience. It was hateful. “That’s your brother you’re talking to.”
Charles’s eyes narrowed at me. “I heard you threw a blood blade at his head.”
“And I would do it again. But different circumstances.”
“Well, you wouldn’t know what the circumstances around here have been like.”
It was meant to make me back off. Instead, it made me see red. Maybe I hadn’t been around, but what I did know was that if Max were any other shifter, Charles would be dead meat. Max adored both his siblings with a fierce affection that I’d envied like crazy as an only child. He didn’t deserve to have it thrown back in his face.
“Well, then if you’re going to keep being an ungrateful furball, kindly do it away from me.”
He blinked at me incredulously. I turned away from him, meaning every word I said. I glanced up in time to catch Gwen trying to hide a grin. “Hey,” she said.
“Hi.” I smiled back. “You cut your hair.”
She touched the reddish-brown bob self-consciously. While we were at Bloodline, Gwen had kept her hair in a long plait that went all the way down her back. During Lex’s first-semester trials, Gwen had pinned it into a coiled bun. We called her the Cat Burglar. She got around in skin-tight Spandex and could often be seen scaling the walls of the Academy with no harness whatsoever.
“Kinda had to,” she said. “Malachim are grabby.” That confirmed my assumptions about Max’s haircut. “You let yours grow out.”
I nodded. The glamour on my appearance had dissipated almost as soon as the malachim appeared. Now I was back to being brown-eyed and dark-haired, though my natural tight curls were well past my shoulders now.
There came another knock on the door. I frowned in response to the way Gwen bit her lip and stepped aside.
“Come,” Max said. The door opened and my breath hitched.
A shifter stepped through, his lithe frame at odds to the dangerous glint of malevolence in his almost-black eyes.
“Noah?” I asked, seeing not the well-built man in front of me but the wiry, dark-haired boy who had once haunted my existence in the Zambian compound. My friend Jerome always asked me why I was so jumpy around Noah.
“It’s not like you had anything to do with his pack,” Jerome kept insisting. I always pointed out that being forced to live in the compound and then not feeling bad about Noah’s pack was a contradiction. Nine years ago, Noah had left the compound to go roaming. He was a lone wolf through circumstance. I’d heard he’d taken up with one of the outlying packs. And now here he was. A ghost come to haunt me.
“Hello, Sophie,” he said, voice completely neutral.
I swallowed hard and couldn’t help glancing at Max.
“Charles and Noah are going to guard you while you’re here,” Max said. “You’re not to perform any kind of sinister magic except when you’re at Bloodline.” I almost laughed in his face. The hard glint in his eyes said he knew all about who Noah was. If I even said the words sinister magic in front of Noah, I would probably be dead two seconds later.
It was either poetic or really messed up. I was accused of committing the same crimes as my great-grandfather and Max had assigned a man whose whole pack my great-grandfather had murdered to guard me.
8
Max seemed entirely unconcerned about my history with Noah. “Move her belongings from Bloodline to the mansion,” Max ordered his brother. For once, Charles didn’t talk back. When the door shut behind him, I was aware I was rapidly becoming hemmed in on all sides by shifters. “The circle is gathered, boss,” Noah told Max.
“Go,” Max nodded. “We’ll catch up.”
Without a word, Noah left with Gwen.
Before I could lose my nerve, I opened my mouth to speak, only for him to cut me off. “You understand what a pack circle means?” he asked.
Sometimes, when I was around him, what he said was so ridiculous I often second-guessed what I had heard. “Beg your pardon?”
He leaned forward again, balancing on his fist. “Pack circle,” he spoke evenly like I was demented.
“No.”
A raised brow. “No, you don’t know what it means or–”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Just no in general. No to pack circle. No to mating. Just no.”
He locked his eyes on me, the grey warping into red-tinged gold as I watched. The alpha stare. It was the primordial focus of a merciless predator sighting its prey. It would have been far less terrifying if he were marking me for death. Despite my resistance, a
ll of my muscles locked. Inside, the corresponding sphere of the mating link flared. The colour matched his bleeding eyes so perfectly I wanted to weep.
Biting my tongue raw, I forced myself to hold his attention. That too was a mistake. This thing he was projecting wasn’t about dominance. I wasn’t challenging his rule as alpha. Staring at a dominant shifter too long resulted in one of three possibilities: absolute submission, death, or...sex.
I dropped my gaze, feeling heat clawing its way up my neck. Lucky my darker skin meant blushing was harder to place on me. “You can alpha stare all you want,” I said, my conviction unwavering. “I’m not going to back down.”
“So I heard,” he said, moving to the door. He opened it and waved me forward. “They’re waiting.”
“Let them wait. I’m not going.”
To prove my point, I planted my butt on one of the chairs. He leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest. Sunlight drenched his shoulders casting his features in shadow. I had to focus somewhere other than his face or I’d get caught in his allure again.
“The circle will decide how much freedom you’ll have while you’re here,” he informed me. I was well aware of what pack circle meant. The Zambian wolves had taught me everything, knowing that I was stepping out into a world overrun with their kind. Only those closest to the alpha were allowed to attend. By rights, I should have been below the bottom rung of the hierarchy. They could have had this conversation without me and ordered me to follow their directive afterwards. That I was being made to attend had all kinds of implications that I was not willing to accept.
“While you’re temporary alpha,” I hedged, “your word is the law. You decide how much freedom I have in the Reserve.”
Just saying it out loud made my hackles rise. Jorah had the same power in Zambia. As a kid, I didn’t question it too much. It helped that he had been alpha for a long time. While he might not have been as physically imposing as some of the younger wolves, he had wisdom, experience, and intelligence to recommend him. My parents and the other humans followed his directives without question.
Max was young and had been thrust into power through the brutal attack on the Reserve. With Alistair and the other clan alphas trapped in the alpha link, he was making decisions by the seat of his pants. If he didn’t have the support of the remaining dominant shifters, it would be impossible for him to hold the hierarchy in place. And now I had been thrown in the mix.
“My pack needs to know you’re not a threat,” he said.
“Tell them I’m not a threat.”
“Sophie.”
I could see why Lex always bristled when somebody said her name like she was a three-year-old. “You know why you have to be there. This isn’t about you and me anymore.”
Biting my bottom lip, I hazarded raising my chin. He watched me this time with the patient expectation of a teacher. Pack circle meant a lot of things at different times.
Leaving aside all the mating stuff, right now, it was about my place here and making sure that I wasn’t deemed a threat regardless of what the will of the supernatural council had been. If I chose to disobey their rules, Max would have to punish me. If he couldn’t do that, and I knew he wouldn’t, then he’d be removed as alpha. Forcefully if need be.
With heavy limbs, I raised myself up. “I will not discuss anything about mating,” I said, already moving towards him.
“Nobody said a word.”
Hunching my shoulders, I pressed past him as quickly as I could and out the other side onto the raised wooden platform that ringed the tree trunk. The railing was a few paces in front of me, and beyond that was a rope bridge that linked this room to many others amongst the canopy. On the way here, I had been too nervous to appreciate the sights and sound of the Reserve. For months I had existed within the stench of rotten things in the fens. Taking in a clean breath was a guilty pleasure.
Sighing, I placed my hands on the railing and grinned. It lasted all of a second as a wall of heat rolled down my back. He wasn’t even that close. Two feet at least, and my skin had become a livewire.
Smirking, Max led the way to the pack circle. While the conference buildings had been erected to cater for meeting with other species, the shifters kept their internal dealings as secretive as any other race. They were notoriously insular, their sense of loyalty unbreakable and backed up by the pack link. This location would only be temporary. Once it was dispensed with, it would never be used again.
Keeping a safe distance, I followed Max down the warren of rope bridges and onto solid ground. The soft tread of rich earth and damp grass beneath my feet was a blessing. So much so that I lagged behind a little as I took off my sneakers and socks. During the summer, Lex and I would run barefoot around Basil’s mansion. She felt a connection to the earth that was intrinsically linked to her hedge magic, and I loved the feeling of grass on my feet. Two little barbarians, Betty had dubbed us.
As always, the memory ebbed from joy into a bone-deep sadness. I glanced in the direction of the mansion, knowing that it was just a collection of bricks and mortar now that its heart had been ripped out. Clutching my shoes to my chest, I forced myself back into the present and the very long distance Max was making me walk.
We were well past the inner perimeter of the Reserve. The shifter civilisation was sectioned off into areas where different people were allowed to go depending on their rank. They designated play and learning areas for the younglings to protect them from themselves and from external threats.
The living quarters were in another area that was patrolled day and night by sentries who were trained to kill on sight. Past the general living space were the different environments meant to mimic the natural habitat of the shifter species. Some of it was well beyond my ability to navigate with my mundane human appendages. I wouldn’t even dare.
After another ten minutes, the grass began to turn sparse and sharp. I had to put my shoes back on as tiny pebbles dug into the soles of my feet. The earth morphed from the rich loam of the jungle to a sandy red. Gum and wattle trees replaced the ash and oak pillars that ringed the conference rooms. This was the Australian desert.
I swallowed a hard lump in my throat. The Aussie landscape was harsh and unforgiving. Lex always said it was constructed to kill you. And yet, I was suddenly aching to be in the presence of one of its killers.
“Max,” I asked. “Is Trey here?”
“He’s on guard duty elsewhere,” came the curt reply. Oh.
My hope shrivelled. I missed my friends desperately. I hadn’t been able to get word to any of them. Neither had Andrei. Upon my request, he had scoured Cardinal City for word of Sasha. But there was none to be had. It was as though they had ceased to exist as soon as I had made the decision to leave.
“What about Dev?”
Up ahead, I watched Max’s shoulders tense. “Not here.”
“How about–”
“Are you just going to name every shifter you’ve ever met?” His warning tone made me frown.
“I just want to know if my friends are okay.”
He choked out a laugh. “It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?”
“Why are you angry?”
He whirled around, his posture suddenly tense. “You disappeared off the face of the earth. Did you think you would come back to the same world you left behind? That we’d all be waiting around?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Coming to a standstill, I refused to close the distance between us. For a moment, his nostrils flared before he could pull himself in check. Fury. That was the thing lurking behind his placid facade. Underneath all of that possessive need, he was furious with me for rejecting his offer of mating and leaving.
“Max,” I whispered and then caught myself. What was I going to say? Try as I might, I couldn’t think of anything that would appease him. Every word out of my mouth was a lie because of the ball of fire in my chest. “I’m sorry.”
He snorted. “Thanks. That
makes it all better.”
“If I’d had a choice, I wouldn’t have left.”
He turned his back on me but didn’t start walking again. “There were plenty of choices. You were just too chickenshit to stick with them.”
My jaw hit the ground. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard what I said. You want acceptance, but when things get hard, your first instinct is to wipe your hands and run.”
I knew he was trying to dig at me but that didn’t stop the indignation. “They were going to wipe my thoughts!”
“I gave you a solution.”
Why wasn’t there anybody around? I needed a third-party opinion on this lunacy. Feeling trapped, I deflated. “Okay,” I said. “Fine. I’m sorry. You gave me a solution and I didn’t take it. It’s too late to change things now.”
The crunch of hard-packed earth as he turned was all the warning I got before he appeared in front of me. There wasn’t even time to think about erecting a circle. He grabbed me by the waist and pressed me up against the trunk of a silver gum. His palms slapped down on either side of my head. Rage lapped at me from the entire length of his heated body. The mating link went ballistic. It clawed at the blood barrier like a carnivorous animal, demanding freedom, wanting to drown in the waves of dominance.
Dipping his head, Max rasped in my ear. “Sorry doesn’t cut it.”
The effort not to swoon took up all my focus. Grasping onto my kitchen magic, I countered the burst of his overwhelming husky scent with memories of damp grass and sweet peas. Of sapphire-blue eyes and an unbreakable soul bleeding in my arms. I had a job to do, and it didn’t involve getting naked with Max. My purpose slammed back into place, pushing back at the need that ate at me.
“Sorry is all you’re going to get,” I said, shoving at him. He wouldn’t budge.
“Try again.” He moved a fraction closer, the muscles of his chest unyielding beneath my palms. I felt his heartbeat like thunder in my hands. It pulsed up my arms and thudded between my ears as though he’d reached through my skin and caressed me. I...this was not good.