A murmur of agreement rippled around the circle, clashing with other, grimmer mutterings, but I didn’t dare meet any of their gazes. I was too afraid of what I might find staring back at me. Resentment, anger, fear, hope. The last was most terrifying.
“Everyone close your eyes,” Graeson ordered. “This is your last chance to leave without facing repercussions. If you can’t abide by the rules I have set, go. Return to Bessemer with my blessing.”
The quiet stretched, and my nerves strung taut with the waiting. Rustling noises popped up here and there, but the scuffs were too faint for me to tell if someone—or someones—rose and left or if the shuffling was the natural impatience of predators unhappy sitting for so long while at a tactical disadvantage.
“Eyes open.” Graeson’s molten gaze awaited mine. “It’s time.”
He lifted the thirsty-looking blade from his lap and set its scabbard aside. I figured unsheathing the dagger might explain some of the murmurous sounds until a quick head count told me I had cost Graeson two members of his already small and vulnerable pack. Still a part of his six, the two deserters had been strangers to me. Honestly I had half expected Haden to make a break for it when given an out. Or maybe Jensen and Bianca now that they grasped the magnitude of what was at stake for their fledgling family. But the wargs known to me remained in their spots.
“Tonight this gathering becomes more than a sum of individuals,” Graeson continued. “We become pack. We become family.”
The mood in the circle as we scooted closer to banish the empty spaces was both somber with the loss of the men and excited for what was to come.
“Take the knife with your left hand. Score your right palm until blood flows. This symbolizes your willingness to bleed for your pack.” He illustrated making the cut, and my gut quivered. “Mark your neighbor’s left palm, a promise that their hurts are yours to share.” A red line appeared across Jensen’s palm. “Then pass them the knife, clasp hands and let our blood bind us.”
Around the circle the dagger traveled, biting the hands of those who fed it. When my turn came, it was Dell who cut me, and deep. Jaw clenched, I made my own slice across my palm then marked Nathalie. Dell’s hand slipped in mine, our essences mingling. Nathalie finished with the male beside her, and we clasped hands too. The warg blood tingled in my open wounds, feeding magic and excitement into my veins until I was drunk on the sensory overload.
Done wetting its sharp tongue, the blade returned to Graeson. Reverently he placed it inside a carved box then completed the circuit. Power, raw and wild zinged through my arms as he fed a part of himself through us all. This was a kind of earth magic I hadn’t known existed, and I marveled at the rich texture of its caress.
Light flashed behind my lids, blinding me, burning his radiant visage in my mind’s eye. The fierce white glow I associated with Graeson was ten times more brilliant than ever before, and it engulfed me, branded me on a cellular level.
“These are your people too now.” His voice brushed my mind. “Feed your power into the circle. Bind them to you.” A husky plea. “Bind me to you.”
“I don’t know how.” I writhed in the supernova that was an alpha claiming his pack, my old self charring and my ashes scattering. “Gemini magic is self-contained. I can’t affect others with it.”
“Relax your mind. Magic is in the blood, in the mind and in the heart.” A phantom kiss pressed to my forehead. “Picture your magic as a butterfly rising up from your core. Now, will it to fly all the way around the circle and return to you.”
“Here goes nothing.” Running with his analogy, I fixed the image of a butterfly in my head and imagined it rising up from my center, wings caressing my rib cage on its way to freedom. Focusing until sweat popped out on my forehead, I pictured it fluttering over the wargs’ heads, christening each with its pixie-dust residue, until it landed on Graeson. “Is it working?”
“Yes,” he rumbled, voice low and as sensual as a caress. “I can sense you melding with the others. Now finish it.”
Biting my lip, I urged my imaginary ambassador to take wing once more, floating over the other half of the circle until that kiss of energy lit on my shoulder. As its ethereal legs touched down, a jolt shocked my eyes open, the static punch like sticking fork tines in a live outlet.
Incandescence radiated from me and Graeson in a blast that seared my flesh as light pierced my soul. White-gold and intoxicating, it baptized each warg, each link in the chain, and when it swept past me like a tsunami, silvery threads of magic glinted in my mind’s eye, tethers spun from my heart.
“We did it.” We had sewn the small pack together, to us. “I can feel them.”
“You did good, Alpha.” Dell butted in, chuckling in my head. “Now you’ll never be rid of me. I don’t even have to mentally knock. I can just blast down your brain door.”
“A comatose alpha won’t do anyone any good,” Nathalie chastised.
Eyes wide, I snapped my head toward her. “I can hear you. And Dell. At the same time.”
“You’re pack now.” She grinned wolfishly. “We can conference call like nobody’s business.”
“You may release hands.” Graeson’s booming voice in my ears startled me amid the cerebral chatter. “It’s done.” Rolling gracefully to his feet, he prowled toward me and hauled me upright. Tucking me against his side, he addressed the others. “Welcome, kindred, to the Lorimar Pack.”
Lorimar. Lori and Marie. The two little girls whose deaths had brought us to this place, as these people, and who we would miss for always.
Hot tears rolled down my cheeks as I flung my arms around Graeson. I buried my face against his ribs before the sobs clawing up the back of my throat tore past my lips. I couldn’t hold him tight enough. The harder I squeezed, the more certain I felt that I would be the one who shattered.
“Shh.” He wrapped me closer and nuzzled my hair. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Voice ruined, I sought his mind. “You named the pack after our sisters.”
“Our pack.” He drew back to stare down at me. “Is this one of those things I should have asked you about first before making a decision?”
“No.” I laughed, a choked sound. “This was perfect.”
The tension locking his muscles melted under my praise, and I sprinkled impulsive kisses over his face, because Graeson was trying to treat me as an equal and not a weakness he must blindly protect. Compromise didn’t come easily to dominants, a truth I had learned well during my time with the Chandler pack, but he was putting in the work. This newest evidence of his devotion cracked open my soul, and I basked in the rightness of being with him. I pressed a lingering kiss over his heart, my new favorite spot, and breathed in the scent of his skin until fur rubbed against the underside of mine.
Inhaling the column of my throat, Graeson released a low growl. “Want to go for a run?”
I laughed at the mischief in his voice. “We just did.”
“You heard the alphas,” Dell crowed. “The race is on.”
White fabric billowed in the air as the pack shucked their pants and dresses and tossed them skyward. A few darted into the trees for privacy while the rest sank to the ground and gave in to the pain beside a friend. Bone snapped and cartilage popped until wolves filled the clearing. Tails swishing, they pranced and jumped and bit playfully at one another. Only Bianca remained unchanged. She sat where I’d left her and scratched the underbelly of a massive auburn-furred beast busy kicking his hind leg in ecstasy.
A melancholy ache radiated from my chest. “I can’t— Not the way you do.” They peeled aside their humanity and reveled in the untamed nature of their souls. “I don’t have a wolf.”
“Yes, you do.” Backing away, he arched his spine in the throes of change. “Let her come out to play.”
Agonizing moments later, a gorgeous sterling wolf with snow white splashes of color up his forelegs climbed to his paws and shook out the residual tingles from his change. He paused at the fringe
of towering pines and glanced back at me, waiting, hoping, then bolted out of sight. The others followed, except for three of us.
Picking at the neckline of my dress, I twisted around to face Jensen and Bianca. “Are you coming?”
“I can’t, and he won’t.” Laughter rang out when he licked her chin. “I haven’t felt the urge to shift since my scent changed, and he can’t leave me unprotected. It goes against all of his instincts.” She ruffled his fur. “Even though he can’t help but answer the alpha’s call by going furry.”
“Will you two be all right?” The explosion earlier had me on edge. Charybdis thrived on preying on the vulnerable, and it didn’t get more defenseless than a heavily pregnant woman unable to call on her wolf. Jensen was fierce, but Charybdis was no ordinary enemy. “I can stay if you want company.”
“One babysitter is plenty.” She huffed at the wolf licking her ear. “Go. Enjoy yourself. Nip Nathalie’s tail for me.”
Requiring no further encouragement, I summoned my inner she-wolf. Recalled magic blasted through my veins with the punch of an adrenaline dump. Fur pierced my skin and rippled up my arms, across my shoulders and over my neck. My jaw cracked as it elongated, and my senses heightened in a rush that left me drunk on the moon.
Nostrils flared, I inhaled the musky woods scent of wolves, my wolves, and chased the heady lure of my mate deep into the heart of the forest.
Chapter 6
Thighs screaming with each flex of burning muscle, I jogged back to the ceremonial site to check on the lovebirds. With nips and short barks, the wolves begged me to stay and play, but their animals were fresh, just hitting their stride. Thanks to my earlier jog-a-thon, my knees were the consistency of overcooked elbow macaroni, and I couldn’t feel my feet. Two legs were no match for four, and now that I was done for the night, the others could chase the horizon instead of holding back for my sake.
I pinned a sappy curl to my lips as Graeson’s mind brushed mine, his approval that I had circled back to check on our most vulnerable member warming me. Spreading my awareness, I luxuriated in the ability to touch each mind in the pack. The wargs vibrated with energy and poured their emotion into the scrabble of claws on dirt. They might not know it yet, but their new alpha planned on running them until they dropped in their tracks.
Panning my thoughts toward Bianca, the better to locate her, I slammed against a mental wall that blasted me with a headache so powerful I staggered and tripped over an exposed root. “Bianca?” My temples throbbed with my pulse, but I fought the blinding pain to search for her mate. “Jensen?”
After the worst effects subsided, I pushed to my feet and leapt to the creek bed, following it around a bend and past the candlelit area where the ceremony had taken place. For a span of seconds, I thought the migraine pounding between my ears had affected my color perception, but piece by piece the whole picture came into view, and bile stung the back of my throat.
Legs crossed and expression serene, Bianca sat in a pose identical to the way I last saw her. Upon hearing my approach, she tightened her grip on the handle of the ceremonial dagger. Its tip rested on the lip of her navel, and she pressed down until bright crimson spread across the splattered fabric of her dress. Calling on the dregs of my magic, I brought my wolf aspect forward and drew on her heightened senses. A copper tang prickled my nostrils, and I understood the crusted brown stains weren’t mud from wandering the creek bed. They were blood.
Her irises, usually a denim blue, shone as black as her pupils in the patchy moonlight and grew somehow darker at my approach, as though her eyes were filled with a starless night sky.
“Hey.” I came to a full stop several feet away from her crossed ankles and endeavored to sound casual while my heart jackknifed against my ribs. “Maybe I should hold that for you.”
“Hello again, Camille Ellis. I will keep the knife if you don’t mind.” Her unblinking stare pierced me. I had held a gaze hardened with the same vacant malevolence in another innocent face a few days ago. “The babe is insurance, you see.”
Reaching for Bianca through the pack bond on reflex, I dunked my mind into an icy blackness that sent tendrils of cold eternity seeking through our connection. “Charybdis.”
A delicate roll of her shoulders shifted the blade deeper. “As you like.”
So much blood on her. Where had it all come from? “Why do you need insurance?”
“I am vulnerable when my entire awareness is present in one being, but I cannot risk bringing an avatar so near your wolves or I would lose her and endanger my current level of autonomy. This was the only way for us to meet. Therefore…” Bianca twisted the blade until the richness of her blood hit the back of my throat with every inhalation, “…I required leverage.”
As much as my palm itched to drive the knife through the real Charybdis’s cold heart, all the act would accomplish at this moment was ending a woman and her unborn child. I had as much faith in him revealing true vulnerabilities to me as I trusted a coiled rattlesnake not to bite.
Holding steady, I reached through the pack bond to alert Graeson then mentally swept the area once more for signs of Jensen. I found none. “How did you possess Bianca without an avatar to act as your vehicle?”
“Bianca spent a great deal of time with Emily, learning what to expect from a warg pup I imagine. A pregnant female is a vulnerable female and a valuable asset.” She let her delicate shoulder rise and fall. “I laid claim to this body to, as you say, keep my options open.” Her grin chilled me. “It seems I was right to mark her. Never had I dreamed she would lead me straight to you.”
Harlow had initiated contact with Emily, the Chandler alpha’s daughter, to trick her into performing small tasks for her. Did this mean Emily was infected too? I saw no other link between Harlow, his current avatar, Emily and Bianca. How his contagion spread gnawed at me, but I knew better than to ask a second time.
Bianca tilted her head, absorbing every detail of my disheveled appearance. “Ask me what you truly wish to know.”
It was a trap. I knew it. I walked right into it anyway. “Are my aunt and cousin still alive?”
Eyes rolling back, she inhaled until her stomach rounded, then exhaled on a sensual moan. “Where would the pleasure be in telling you?”
I bit my lip, hating I had exposed the pulsing heart of my weakness.
“How you ache with their loss.” Bliss wafted off her skin, and she flared her nostrils wider. “How it eats you up inside to know you failed to save them, the same as you failed to save Lori.” Cruelty glinted in her eyes. “You are weak, Camille Ellis. You always have been, and you always will be. It will cost you all you love, and then, when you are broken and beg for my touch, then I might—might—bestow my blessing upon you.”
The mention of her touch called to mind the shell that remained of Marshal Ayer after bearing the burden of such a blessing. “You’re offering me a position as an avatar-in-waiting?” Did she expect me to stand in line until her magic burned out Harlow? “I’m afraid I must decline.”
“How much further must I push before I break you,” she mused. “It is such an individual process, one can never truly estimate the threshold until one crosses it.”
Tamping down the fear and guilt, the worry and regret, I shut down my emotions the way I had trained myself to when the burden of carrying Lori’s ghost in my bones weighed too heavily on me. The change in Bianca’s expression was instantaneous. I had cut off her supply and slapped her back to attention. Now all I had to do was keep her focused on me and not the wolves I sensed circling us.
“What is your purpose here? Not just in this forest, but on Earth?” I deserved that much at least. “Why did you leave Faerie?”
“There is much game to be hunted here.” The thing inside Bianca exhaled on a lusty sigh. “Varieties of fae exist here that Faerie has long since forgotten in her eagerness to purge her excess into this realm.” She pointed a stained finger at me. “Gemini have been reduced to lore in Faerie.” A laugh flutt
ered past her lips. “What other forgotten gems might this Earth have to offer?”
A sick feeling pooled in the pit of my gut. I doubted she meant game as in animals. She meant people. Humans. Fae. All of us.
“Earth is not your playground,” I growled.
“Yet.” Bianca drew herself up taller and sent her gaze searching past my shoulder. “It won’t be much longer now.”
“Wait.” Sensing the pack’s nearness, I lurched forward. “Why risk this visit? You gained nothing from it.”
“Wrong.” A chill permeated the word. “This visit is a gift. Treat it as such.” Her knuckles whitened on the dagger’s handle. “I can reach you anywhere, Camille Ellis, through anyone. I will hunt you as you have hunted me, until my vengeance costs you everything, as your ambition has cost me.”
“Ellis.”
A flash of bare skin drew my eye as Graeson ran naked into the clearing with the wolves panting at his heels. Faster than my lips could form a warning, Bianca reared her arm back and hurled the dagger. The cruel blade sheathed itself between his ribs. Clutching the handle with a snarl peeling back his lips, he sank to his knees, and blood flowed in rivulets down his chest.
Mind gone numb with shock—this wasn’t happening, I wasn’t losing him, not now, not like this—I fell back on my training. Lunging for Bianca, I captured her wrists and twisted them high and tight behind her back until her swollen belly protruded. I pinned them at her spine with a Word, laid her on her side, a position she couldn’t rectify without help, and bound her ankles together too.
Charybdis couldn’t have planned his moment any better if he had cracked a whip over the wolves and driven them to exhaustion himself. Fatigue overwhelmed the pack bond. Shifting back to their human skins, with human hands to help, took a lifetime. One Graeson didn’t have to spare.
Threat neutralized, at least for now, I ran to him. Skidding through the loose dirt on my knees, I caught him in my arms as he toppled forward. Sticky warmth plastered the gauzy dress against my chest. The dull bump of the dagger’s handle against my ribs sickened me. Gently, so gently, I guided him down to the ground on his side. The blade was serrated toward the handle, and he was pierced clean through.
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