by Odessa Lynne
With those strange words, Ash clutched Matthew around his waist and squeezed, hugging him so tightly that Matthew had trouble keeping his balance.
He tangled his fingers in Ash’s hair. “Can’t be that bad, can it?”
“My fate—I never wanted you to be my true mate,” Ash said, voice cracked and raw. “I still don’t want you to be my true mate—”
Matthew’s lungs felt like they were made of glass.
But Ash wasn’t done speaking, and what he still had to say did more than steal Matthew’s breath.
The words sent a shiver of cold hard dread into Matthew’s very bones.
“They tell us our fate,” Ash said, speaking in the wolves’ language, “and I don’t want your fate tied to mine. But I can’t deny it any longer. You are my true mate. ‘Your fate will find you on the eve of your true mate’s death,’ they told me. ‘Your pain will know no bounds and your heart no comfort until what’s lost has been found.’”
Chapter 19
“He isn’t going,” Ash said, his voice tight and hard in the cold light of the overcast afternoon. His latest heat cycle had ended shortly before a wolf had come knocking at the door of Ash’s room, asking for Matthew and Ash to meet privately with Alpha Craig and Alpha Rick for a meal.
“This isn’t for you to decide,” Alpha Rick said from the far end of the table. “He’ll submit to First Alpha’s request and you’ll submit to him.”
Alpha Rick seemed to have recovered from the events of the night before last, and like Ash, Rick had only the faintest marks left on what Matthew could see of his face and neck.
Even though Rick appeared to be on the repression drugs or in the lull between heat cycles, he hadn’t moved from his place at the far end of the long table since Matthew had walked in behind Ash, leaving the other end for Craig and Ian, Matthew and Ash.
Rick also hadn’t eaten, even as Matthew had followed Craig’s lead and fed Ash every bite of his meal—a way to show his appreciation for Ash’s submission, Ian had explained.
Having Ash lick food off his fingers had been strange, and Ash had actually nipped his fingertips once.
“Son of a bitch,” Matthew had said while shaking the sting out of his fingers. He hadn’t been able to hold his glare with Ash looking at him so wide-eyed and solemn.
“I’m hungry and you’re too slow.” Ash gestured across the table where Craig was feeding Ian the very last bite from his platter and then at Matthew’s own platter, still half-filled.
Matthew snorted and touched the bottom of Ash’s lip with a piece of bread. “I’ve never done this before.”
Ash snatched the bread right out of Matthew’s fingers with his teeth. Matthew jerked his hand back.
He’d glared suspiciously at Ash. The son of a bitch had been laughing at him—Matthew had seen it in the crinkle around his eyes.
He’d known then he could really get used to seeing a less serious side of Ash—if only he could get Ash’s words from earlier in the day out of his mind.
Would he die tomorrow? Matthew had never really believed in any kind of predetermined fate, and so he couldn’t believe that someone—anyone, even these Diviners the wolves had—could tell him what tomorrow would bring.
If everyone’s lives had already been planned out for them by the universe then what was the point of life?
His thoughts had been interrupted by three young wolves who had arrived to remove the platters. Just before the last of the three youngsters had picked up Matthew’s platter, Ash had reached out and snagged the boy by the back of his neck. The boy had flashed his teeth and growled at Ash, but Ash hadn’t reacted to that other than to twist in his seat and pull the boy forward toward Matthew.
“My oldest,” Ash had said. “From my first. Atishetishiki er tio Kemeareaieskiat or Ethan as he’s chosen to be called now that First Alpha has asked us to choose human names.” Then Ash had introduced them, told Ethan to wait, and Matthew had spent the next few minutes uncomfortably aware of the boy’s nervous stare as Matthew had hurried to finish feeding Ash.
Considering that Brendan had once told him that First Alpha had over sixty kids, Matthew hadn’t been that surprised when Ash had told him he had children. That didn’t mean he knew what he was supposed to do with them now that he and Ash had mated.
Assuming he lived long enough to do more than meet the one.
He’d forced his thoughts onto something else.
Now, though, there was no way to deny the possibility that tomorrow might be the last day of his life, because he was about to agree to meet up with Cam Lujan so that he could draw Jay out of whatever hole he was in and find out where those fucking bullets had come from.
Matthew shuffled his feet and tried not to hold his arms quite so tensely across his chest as he stood behind the chair he’d been sitting in earlier. “We should do it,” he told Ash. “It’s important. And then, after this, I’m done. One of the other volunteers can step in, just like you wanted.”
“No,” Ash said. “I don’t want you to leave the safety of the den.”
Matthew looked across the table to Alpha Craig and Ian. “He’s being overprotective. You probably know why.” Matthew looked sideways at Ash and wondered just how far Ash’s submission would get him. He sighed and leaned onto the table, slapping the top lightly. “We’ll go.”
“We won’t,” Ash said, eyes fixed on Alpha Craig across from him.
Alpha Craig didn’t respond to Ash, merely turned his intent gaze on Matthew.
Ash was still sitting, and Matthew turned to him again. “You will, because it’s the right thing to do for your people.”
Ash flattened his hands on the table, his jaw clenched stubbornly.
“Don’t you get it?” Matthew asked. “What if I trip on the porch steps and break my neck on the way back to your room?” He waved his hand in the air. “Or—or—what if I drop dead because my heart explodes, or there’s an aneurysm in my brain, or the biotech starts fighting with my immune system again—there are so many ways I could die I can’t even mention them all. We’d be here all night.”
Ash’s fingers curled against the top of the table with an audible scratch of claw on wood.
Matthew plopped down into his chair again, sideways, and put his hand on Ash’s thigh. “It’s alright, you know. Whatever happens.”
Ash closed his eyes momentarily and when he reopened them, he looked at Matthew and Matthew could read the worry in them. “I’m not ready.”
“Yeah, and neither am I, but if fate’s real then there’s nothing I can do about it, and if it’s not, then there’s no reason for us not to go.”
Ash covered Matthew’s hand, the warmth of his palm soaking into Matthew’s skin. “I won’t hide from my fate, but I’m not eager to meet it if it means you’re going to die.”
Matthew forced a grin. “We all gotta go sometime.”
“Not you, not now.”
“Ash…”
“No.”
“I don’t want to do this with anyone but you. I can’t leave you without a heat mate.”
“Then stay.”
“We need to do this.”
“Someone else can do this.”
Matthew saw Ian share a quick glance with Craig but Craig merely continued to watch silently, as did Rick.
“I’m the one Lujan knows. Unless Jay’s got to him, he’s not going to know I’m the one responsible for his people being caught.”
“No,” Ash said again.
Matthew smacked the table. “Goddammit, Ash.”
“We’re mated. Your fate matters more to me than my own. You’re my life. And I can’t agree with this.”
“Son of a—” Matthew bit off the curse and grabbed Ash’s hand. “Submit, goddammit, so we can do the right thing here.”
Ash dropped his head forward and he sat silent for a moment. “I submit,” he said and the words shocked Matthew to his core.
“Just like that? I ask you to submit and you do it? After all th
at arguing?”
Ash raised his head and met Matthew’s gaze. “Yes.”
“You’re giving in that easy? This isn’t a trick of some kind to make me think—”
“Give in?” Ash’s expression might have passed for a frown, but Matthew wasn’t sure. “I’m not giving in. This is no trick. I’m offering submission. It’s our way.”
Craig finally spoke from across the table. “His submission is a gift. If he argued, the gift would have less value. Accept the gift.”
Matthew glanced at Ian. Ian’s shoulder lifted in a barely perceptible shrug.
Craig turned a pointed look on Ian.
Ian stared back wide-eyed and innocent. “What?” Then, because apparently Ian couldn’t take the way Craig’s eyebrows rose, Ian added, “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I just thought he might appreciate a little empathy. This stuff is confusing.”
“Confusing?”
“Hard to understand, not that intuitive, completely and overwhelmingly alien in nature—”
“You’ve made your point.”
Ian grinned.
Craig huffed out a short breath, but Matthew didn’t miss the fond look Craig gave Ian before he turned his attention back to Matthew and Ash.
Matthew tapped the table, glanced at Rick, and then exhaled roughly. “I guess it’s settled then. We’ll head out as soon as you guys get Ash drugged up again.”
“The newest repression drug isn’t working well,” Ian said, “or maybe a better way of explaining it is that it works really, really well, right up until the moment it stops working, and then…” Ian cleared his throat and rubbed his chin. “Yeah, you know.”
Matthew rubbed his hand on his thigh and had a hard time looking at Ian or Craig with the reminder of that morning and what he’d seen. “Yeah.”
Ash’s curious look made Matthew think Ash might not understand why he was fighting embarrassment.
“Well,” Matthew said. “I guess we’re done?”
“Not yet,” Rick said from the end of the table.
Matthew turned.
Rick pushed away from the table and stood, and Craig did the same.
Matthew’s gaze shifted between them, then to Ian and Ash, who both stayed put, looking on without any real expression that Matthew could make out.
“What’s this?” Matthew asked.
“You’ll come with us while Ashikid prepares for your mission,” Rick said. “The Diviners wish to tell you your fate.”
Matthew’s heart leapt into a hard thudding beat. He glanced quickly at Ash. Ash’s hands had curled into fists.
“I’ve never met the Diviners. I don’t want anyone trying to tell me my fate.”
Ash reached over and gripped Matthew’s arm. “No one ignores a summons from the Diviners.”
“Then I’ll be a first, because I’m not letting someone fill my head full of bullshit just before I go out and do something as dangerous as this. Fuck that. I’m not doing it.”
Across the table, Ian winced.
The sharp tips of Ash’s claws poked at Matthew’s forearm, while Rick stared at Matthew with an unreadable expression that sent a chill through Matthew.
Alpha Craig wasn’t quite so hard to read. His eyes glittered like the coldest sky Matthew had ever seen and he stared hard at Matthew. “Someday you might attain true alpha status, but at this moment you’re one of my betas, Matthew. You’ll visit the Diviners as they’ve requested or I will personally drag you in front of them and throw you at their feet. The choice of how you arrive is yours. But you will submit.”
Goddamn. Matthew cleared his throat and nodded slowly. “Yeah. Okay. I submit.”
Craig acknowledged his agreement with a faint nod.
Ash squeezed Matthew’s arm and then released him, while Ian whistled silently, eyebrows raised high.
Chapter 20
Three hours later, Matthew stood looking down through a forested ridge at the broken remains of a water recycling plant that hadn’t survived the earthquake over fifty years ago. Abandoned buildings jutted into the air below the ridge and pools that must have been sunk into the ground to hold and treat water had turned into natural ponds, the two closest to the ridge merged together because part of the ground had sunk lower than the rest—possibly during the quake, possibly just because of the passage of time.
“I’m supposed to find him there?” Matthew had trouble keeping the skepticism out of his voice. He looked down at the small tracking device he held, which marked out the location of heat signatures in the buildings. There were only three.
Ash pushed aside a low limb and gestured for Matthew to lead. “Devon said the information’s reliable.”
Matthew tucked the device into his front pocket and they started down the ridge, headed for the building on the other side of the ponds and whatever waited for them there.
Twigs and damp leaves crackled underfoot with their every step.
“I don’t trust Fletcher,” Matthew said. “He hates me.”
“Why do you think he hates you?”
“Because of what happened three years ago, that goddamn bet. He insults me every chance he—Ow! Shit.” Matthew tugged a clingy briar away from his neck and tried to pay more attention. The overcast sky had darkened and although it wasn’t yet evening, the woods had turned dim and heavily shadowed and the air was turning chill.
Fucking great.
“Devon insults everyone at one time or another. He’s learned a lot since Wentarki mated him. He’s very good at breaking the codes on their trackers and phones. He assures us Lujan is here. He made contact as Trevor and set up this meeting. Lujan thinks you’ve been looking for him for the last six months.”
“I have been, just not for the reasons he’s probably thinking right about now, not unless Jay’s got to him first somehow and told him Trevor’s the traitor.”
“You’re not a traitor.”
“Not to you. To them, that’s exactly what I am, a traitor to the human species.”
“We’re at peace with your government. Your government agreed to our terms. They’ve left the renegades to us to deal with.”
“Only because the States are barely holding it together and you know it.”
“Things will improve once we stop the renegades.”
“This could go on for years. Until things go back to the way they were before you showed up, someone’s always gonna be looking to blame you for something. The world’s full of a lot of unhappy people right now.”
“Things will never go back to the way they were.”
“Exactly.”
The incline had steepened and Matthew had to carefully slide his way down a steeply slanted rock that jutted out of the earth. Moss crushed under his fingers and his boot heels scraped two long grooves in the earth that had settled over the end of the rock.
He heard Ash coming up behind him and he hopped down onto the flatter ground below. They didn’t have far to go, and he could see the raised lip of one of the pools from where he stood.
Matthew’s stomach hadn’t settled for a moment since the Diviners had spoken to him and the sight of that pool scared the shit out of him. The water’s surface gleamed dark and smooth under the gray skies and he had forced himself to take a deep breath. Ash had asked him what the Diviners had told him, but Matthew had refused to say anything more than, “It doesn’t matter. They’re wrong.”
Ash’s eyes had spoken of hurt and pain, but he had nodded and accepted Matthew’s answer.
Matthew had felt like a total asshole, his regret immediate and intense, but he’d already decided he wouldn’t tell Ash and he wasn’t about to change his mind.
Still, the water rippled, drawing his eye, and he wondered if fish had somehow made it into the ponds. He didn’t see how that was possible all the way out here without human intervention, but the ripples continued to appear at intermittent intervals, rolling slowly outward.
He didn’t like the churning in his stomach as he watched and he didn’t like the way h
e wanted to turn around and go, flee far and fast and just leave this for someone else, so he clenched his jaw and kept moving forward.
But he’d been right not to want to hear what the Diviners had to say. Their strange behavior and those eyes—he’d never seen eyes go black like that before, not in the wolves, not in a human—they’d freaked him out, and then—then the one had spoken, and Matthew had known—
Sometimes it was better not to know what might be coming.
“My mother was one of the first humans to get to work with the wolves,” he said abruptly. “Did you know that? She was a doctor and a scientist and she was invited to study with the wolves that first year. I never saw her again after that first heat season. I’ve always wondered what happened to her. I mean—” He knocked a spider web out of the way and then yelped when a fat spider dropped down on his arm.
He slung his arm, throwing the spider off him. “Fuck!” His heart raced and he quickly scraped at his arm, trying to get the web off. “I hate these fucking things. If I never see another goddamn spider web in my life, it’ll be too goddamn soon.”
Ash’s hand landed on Matthew’s shoulder and he jumped.
“Goddammit.”
“You’re worried about what the Diviners told you about your fate, aren’t you?”
Matthew paused his movements and then dropped his arms to his sides and turned into Ash’s touch. He couldn’t speak so he just stared at Ash.
Ash raised his hand and cupped Matthew’s cheek. “I was afraid of my fate. I’m still afraid. There’s no shame in that.”
Matthew’s chest was so tight he couldn’t breathe and a sharp tingle burned warm and heavy behind his nose. “It’s fine. What was that Kem told me this morning? You can accept or reject your fate but you can’t ignore it. If I can’t ignore it, then I fucking reject it. They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Look at Brendan. He’s supposed to be some kind of peacemaker. Do you see peace on the horizon? I don’t.”
“He's young. He sits at First Alpha's side during talks with your governments. We’re a patient people. The prophecy is complex but his place is set. He’ll play an integral role in the future of all of our… of…”