by Lan Chan
At their head was a sleek, golden creature with intricate markings along her pelt. She moved with the assured gait of a huntress. Even in her beast form, Anastasia’s reflective eyes were ravenous when she watched him. The leopards trotted around Max in an unbreakable circle, nipping at his heels and lunging at him in turn. I wasn’t sure what they were waiting for until Harris and Jeremiah joined them along with the wolves. They formed a second ring around Max, splitting his attention.
Right beside my ear, Military Woman gave a short, sharp whistle. Max’s head snapped up. He wouldn’t have given her another moment’s notice if her hand hadn’t suddenly winched around my throat. “What the hell?” I got out a second before Max booted one of the wolves running in his way out of sight.
That was when the pack descended on him. Not caring who took collateral damage, they stampeded over him using both speed and force to pin him to the ground. My heart jack-knifed as Anastasia clamped her jaw around Max’s forearm and bore down. He grunted, slamming her into the nearest shifter, but she wouldn’t ease her lockjaw. Harris caught hold of Max’s left ankle. The gorilla shifter pulled Max off balance. The other shifters didn’t move as Max fell. They converged on him, biting and scratching.
They became a mass of indiscriminate claws and teeth. Blood, skin, and fur splattered on the ground and against the bark of the trees. I whined as some of it splashed onto us. Struggling in Military Woman’s arms, I tried to break out of her hold. “Stop,” I screamed.
Nothing changed.
Having shifted back into his human form, Jeremiah wrapped his arm around Max’s throat. With Anastasia and Harris still latched on to him, Max managed to take a few steps back and slam Jeremiah into a tree. Wood creaked as the tree gave in to the weight bearing down on it. The leopards swarmed Max’s back, dragging him to the ground. Harris yanked Max’s feet out from under him, forcing him to his knees.
I saw the hit coming but couldn’t stop it. Throwing a circle around Max did absolutely nothing. Pumped full of adrenaline, the shifters tore through it like kindling. Ari’s fist connected with the side of Max’s head. One of the leopard minions raked her claws across his chest, drawing a splatter of blood that soaked his blue T-shirt in seconds. I caught a hint of the tattoo Lex had gifted him for his ascension. The loop of her writing peeked out, and I felt a flash of something tug at my subconscious.
Death.
Max gave a low groan. Beaten-gold eyes filled with fury held me captive. Anastasia finally let go of his arm. She drew her own back, her claws flashing like steak knives. She was going to gut him. The absolute ridiculousness of it struck me even though I knew she meant it. Resentment vibrated from every inch of her body. She wanted him and hated him at the same time. And if she couldn’t have him, then she was going to take her displeasure out on him. I screamed my anguish.
If you accept the mating link, a phantom voice said in my mind, he will die.
I snapped. Reaching into the pool of alchemy, I grabbed every inch of it that I could and directed it towards the droplets of blood covering every one of them. Rage rattled inside my ribcage as I drew a blood circle around the clearing, not sparing Military Woman from my wrath, and set it to explode. The storm of my magic rolled through the circle, transmuting the blood into molten fire. The first scream came from a female voice. She shuffled backwards, slapping at her chest with an open palm. My magic ignited the blood on her skin. One by one, the blood on them turned to burning heat. Flames licked at their chest, their arms, their faces.
Military Woman gave a shout of pain, letting go of me to stamp at her clothing. As soon as I was free, my legs carried me over to him. I may or may not have stepped on Anastasia’s leg on the way there.
“Max!” Kneeling beside him, I kept reaching into my front pocket out of habit. Even though I knew I wasn’t carrying around a health elixir. There was so much blood. Wishing that it wasn’t his, I splayed my hand against his chest and was about to whisper a word of light when his fingers laced around my hand.
Confused, I frowned as he curled his other arm around me, pulling me to his side. “What the—?”
All around us, shifters dropped to a crouch still trying to put out the magical fires. “Let them go, Sophie darling,” Max purred.
“What?” That was the extent of my vocabulary. Gwen drew up beside me. She shook my shoulder and pointed to her throat.
“Hot. Hot. Hot,” she said.
Ignoring her nakedness, I flattened my palm against the ground and released the magic. There was a collective groan of relief. One set of boobs in my face was avoidable. Two dozen unabashed shifters at various eye-levels were impossible to ignore. So I became very interested in the ugly, strappy plants growing out of the dry dirt.
“Is that enough for you?” Max said. It was directed at his pack.
“Enough?” I asked.
Anastasia was panting. “How do we know she wouldn’t have done the same for anybody else? She’s too soft.” She moved in Max’s direction, and I found myself blocking her way.
Harris groaned. His entire right side was one big, raw blister. “It’s good enough for me. You can’t fake that kind of loss of control. Either way, she doesn’t want him to get hurt. We’ve done more with less.” I finally lifted my head and glared at him. “This hurts like a bitch, by the way.” He pointed to the burned spot. It was so red against the rest of his alabaster skin.
“I…what?” I said.
“She still isn’t allowed to use blood magic,” Ari snapped, holding his right shoulder.
“I think she just did,” Jeremiah added.
Gwen shook her head. “That wasn’t blood magic. It was basic alchemy. You’d know that if you bothered to study.”
The bear shifter rolled his eyes. “Here we go. Sorry, miss Ivy League. Not all of us had the advantages of going to an Academy.”
She picked up a rock and threw it at him. It bounced off a section of burned skin and he yelped like a pup.
“What the hell is going on here?” I shouted. Max’s hand clenched on my waist. I pushed away from him. My heart was still beating a mile a minute. Until now I had still been holding on to the words of light just in case they turned again. But when he grinned at me, the mirth shining through despite the various cuts on his face, it dawned on me.
“You think this is funny?” I hissed.
“I think it was necessary.” Truth. There was no laughter in his eyes. I knew about pack circles, but I’d never been a part of one. Shifter law was very intricate. Their primal natures made some things that were unacceptable in human custom almost mundane. I’d said I didn’t want to mate with Max, but when push came to shove, I would kill them to protect him. So yeah, I still didn’t want to be around him, but my feelings about him were open slather to shifters who could scent the slightest change in my moods.
In their minds, it was now just a matter of him winning me over. The reality of it made me push myself to standing.
“Where are you going?” Max asked. Blood dripped from his brow when he tipped his head up to peer at me.
“Away.”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
“You don’t know the way back.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Sophie.”
I turned on my heel and stomped out of there. If I hung around any longer, I was in very real danger of punching him in the face. Something like that right about now would only convince them Max made my blood boil in a way that screamed mate. The foulness of my mood was all over my face as I trudged back the way we’d come. It was only as I was retreating that I saw Noah standing sentry beside Yolanda a little way off. In the excitement, I’d forgotten that they were there.
Her eyes were closed, her head leaning against the grey bark of a gum tree. But it was the metaphorical storm clouds rolling over him that made me pause. I didn’t need shifter senses to know what he was thinking. I’d used alchemy to protect Max. The same alchemic gift that my great-grandfather had used to
murder his pack. Increasing my stride, I hightailed it out of there as quickly as I could.
10
After stumbling around in the bush for a while, I gave up and used a basic tracking spell that Professor Mortimer had taught us in first year. It was the same spell that fuelled the magical directions at Bloodline. When I returned to the edge of the clearing where the human population lived, Charles was waiting for me.
“Do I want to know how you knew I would be here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I think you already know.”
“So this is how it’s going to be from now on?” He fell into step beside me even though neither of us really set a direction.
“Seems like it. He makes all kind of stupid decisions in the name of the greater good now.” The bite in it was chilling. I paused. Reaching out a hand, I stopped him too.
“What’s going on, Chuck?”
He pretended to be interested in the bear cubs wrestling with each other outside one of the houses. It wasn’t long before the front door opened and two women grabbed them, one each, and bundled them back inside. I bit my bottom lip. There were very few people outside their homes. The ones who were walked in pairs. Shifters were quiet and hardly speaking to each other or the people they passed. When Basil lived here, there was so much general noise that I found it impossible to study.
Forgetting my earlier line of thought, I frowned. “Why is it so quiet?”
This was met with yet another round of brooding from my new bodyguard. “Chuck?”
He grumbled. “We’ve been attacked in our own homes twice now.”
That was all that needed to be said. I spoke anyway. “But neither of those times could be avoided. They were demon attacks!”
“Do you think that matters?”
I supposed not. In their dimension, they would have fought an unending war with the vampires and mages. Their enemies would have been flesh. Now they fought a foe that could disappear, and they possessed no magic to protect themselves. As a dominant shifter, there was nothing more painful than being unable to protect those you loved.
Trying to look on the bright side, I reminded him of his heritage. “I hear that Shayla’s blood makes you able to fight the malachim.”
Somehow that seemed to make things worse. “Good for me, I guess,” he said with complete and utter apathy.
“A lot of the shifters here would give anything to be able to do that right now.”
He laughed without mirth. “They don’t know what they want. We’ve never had an enemy like this. One that can take down our strongest without even lifting a finger–”
I squeezed his arm to refocus his thoughts. “All magic comes at a price. Even for the demons.” That price was servitude to the most twisted being in the dimensions. A price that I personally wasn’t willing to pay.
Really, Sophie? a raspy voice in my head said. Not even if it will bring them back?
The voice was ancient and foreboding. It had started soon after the malachim first attacked. Basil had tried to exorcise me on the off chance I was possessed, but he’d found nothing. He said it might be a result of the blood barrier. I was picking up necromantic energy. Brilliant.
Amber flashed in Charles’s eyes, drawing me from my own uneasy thoughts. His muscles went rigid under my palm. “I know,” he said. “But we seems to be paying a higher price.”
Searching his face gave me nothing. But as we continued walking, I saw how he clenched and unclenched his fists in agitation. Every once in a while, he would sneak a glance at me before turning away. Almost as though he was battling with himself over something.
“I need to see Jacqueline. Can you take me to Bloodline?”
He nodded, his thoughts a million miles away. It was disconcerting. Charles had always been a ball of energy before. This sombre side of him was wrong on a level I couldn’t even describe.
We veered away from the accommodation sector, past the dwellings of the solitary animals, and hit the perimeter of the Cabin.
“Don’t even think about it,” Charles said as I craned my neck past the wall of pines that stood sentry surrounding the home of the alpha couple.
I blew out a breath. “Do they really think I’m going to do something that stupid?”
“They’re not thinking. We’re backed into a corner. Everyone is on eggshells until Durin either pulls through or goes under. You being here is volatile enough. Nobody is allowed inside except the alphas.”
I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Which is why I shouldn’t be here at all!”
He flashed his canines. “Agreed.”
It hurt more than I cared to admit. Somehow, I managed to keep walking as though he hadn’t just sucker punched me emotionally. After a second, he reached up and tugged at my hair. “He was unbearable, you know. After you disappeared, he was worse than I’ve ever been. Two weeks into it, I finally cracked it and asked him why he didn’t just go after you. The whole pack had the same thought. You know what he said?”
I shook my head, breath barely a stutter.
“‘She needs to not be here right now.’” He gave a small smile. “That’s not how we do things. The rule is, you ask someone to mate with you and they leave, you go and bring them back.”
My mouth was too dry. I swallowed twice before I could make my voice work. “What if they don’t want to be brought back? What you’re talking about is called stalking.”
“What do you think we are?”
The reality of it was stark. They were pushy and possessive beyond measure. But I also knew there were checks in place. The pack would never allow one of their own to take someone unwillingly. If Max had hauled me back, and the inner circle saw that I was truly unhappy, they would deal with him. That was how their protectiveness worked. It was why their species was so tightly knit.
“So then,” Charles continued, “it begs the question of why you won’t mate with him. Because I know you love him. And Sophie, I’m done grappling around in the dark waiting for demons to destroy everything I care about.”
That there was why Charles Thompson was more dangerous than any of the shifters twice his age. Beneath all that childish hostility was a sharp intelligence that caught everything. He wasn’t unfocused. He was bored. And when dangerous met boredom, bad things tended to happen.
“What do you think would happen to your brother if we mated and I died?”
The gathering of his brows said it all. “Why would you die?”
I peppered my laughter with as much bitterness as I could. “Do you think Lucifer is just sitting around knitting sweaters? The only way he’ll be able to get Lex to do what he wants is to threaten the people she cares about. Who do you think is first in line?”
It wasn’t even about arrogance. Basil wasn’t keeping Betty locked away because he wanted to be obstructive to the supernaturals. With her and Kai out of the picture, I had a target on my back.
Charles sucked in a breath. “We could pro–” Amber began to ring around his eyes at the ridiculousness of his statement. How were they going to protect me from Lucifer when they couldn’t protect themselves against the malachim?
“Sophie...”
I squeezed his arm. “I’ll deal with it. But Max and I...it can’t happen.”
“He’d do it anyway,” Charles said.
“I can’t do that to him. I won’t.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair no longer applies.” Turning away, I walked to where the mages were manning the portal. Charles hesitated two metres away.
“Bloodline Academy, please,” I asked one of the mages. “Chuck?”
He sighed and stepped through with me. The portal field on the other side was deserted. By my calculations, it was a few days into the semester, but I hardly spotted anyone as we made our way to Jacqueline’s office.
“What’s going on here?” I said, not really expecting an explanation and not getting one. Charles had become mute.
My stomach tied itself in knots when we got to
Jacqueline’s door and Alex wasn’t at his post. In fact, his desk was devoid of its usual mess of books and papers. I knocked apprehensively.
“Come in,” Jacqueline’s voice called out.
“I’ll stay out here,” Charles said.
“No, you won’t.”
“This has nothing to do with me.”
Normally I wouldn’t have pushed, but his withdrawal since we’d arrived was ringing alarm bells. “What if something happens while I’m in there?”
He scoffed. “Jacqueline can handle anything.” He said the words but there was no conviction in his tone. What the hell was going on?
“Inside. Or I ask for another guard.”
For a second, a flash of the old Charles rose to the surface. “Aww, c’mon. I don’t want to listen to boring Academy shit.”
I left the door open behind me and smiled when I heard him shuffling in afterwards. Jacqueline was standing by the window, staring out into the late afternoon sun. She turned when I approached. Her smile widened when she saw my so-called protector.
“Told you we’d get you back here somehow,” she said to Charles. He growled softly at her and sat down beside me. Jacqueline took her seat and pulled out a sheet of paper from the giant tome sitting on the desk.
“This might be a bit different to what you’re used to,” she said. I glanced at the timetable in front of me.
“No kidding,” I said. “There’s so much blocked out!”
She threaded her hands together and rested her chin on them. “As you can imagine, it takes a while longer for students to teleport in from their respective communities. We’ve removed some of the electives that aren’t directly related to self-defence, and we’ve had to cut down those classes where we no longer have the professors to teach them.”