Tiberius led us in a straight line that had me convinced he’d mapped this route from the air. We hiked a craggy mountain littered with so many butterflies I marveled it hadn’t lifted off for the skies. We skirted a bustling village inhabited by trolls that smelled like the business end of a donkey. And that was before we trudged through a boggy pass inhabited by massive blue toads with operatic tendencies and diva personalities to match. All I can say about that is ouch. My poor ears. They deserved a vacation after this. No, make that a staycation. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t give to leap this last hurdle and tumble into my own bed, in my RV, and sleep for a month.
The impossibility of that scenario pierced my heart. I had no idea how much hot water Thierry was in, but I had no doubt she was simmering in the consequences of her actions. I doubted she would be in a position to help me. Prison break was a big deal, even if you possessed super terrifying powers. I would be jumping out of the cast-iron fryer and into the heart of a bonfire, but what choice did I have? Fugitive back home or future wolfskin rug here. Both options sucked. Though I was more likely to survive the former.
The hours dragged as much as our collective feet. I was ready to call bullshit on the theory of time versus travel in Faerie when a peculiar sensation roused the wolf in my middle. One scent cut through the rest, light and clean and pure, without a dollop of magic saturating the breeze. We all exchanged hopeful looks and caught a second wind. Sure enough, within the hour, we reached what appeared to be a massive gorge cut into an otherwise rolling forestland. Staring into the warped ripples dragging across the surface gave me vertigo. Unlike when we looked up at the rift and saw a torrent of clouds, the view from here was unobstructed.
Home.
Butler, Tennessee was a hop, skip and a jump away. Okay, so more like a plummet straight into Watauga Lake, but still. It was right there.
And there was only one way to go.
Down.
I was about to cash in the favor Tiberius owed me when a brain-meltingly shrill serenade of screams rent the air. Ears ringing like discordant telephones, I lost my center of balance and had to depend on Isaac’s arm to steady me. Having noodle legs was getting old fast. I made a mental note to put a bug in Isaac’s ear about developing some type of wolf-friendly earbuds that could filter out higher frequencies. What good would the pack be if the sirens led the attack and disabled our world’s first line of defense with a few notes of music?
“They’re coming in fast.” Tiberius stepped between us and the flock of oncoming sirens. “We lost too much time on the ground.”
“Pardon me for not having wings,” I growled, woozy and irritated.
“There’s only one way this works.” Isaac held my gaze. “Are you ready?”
Enzo swallowed audibly but slid his pack from his shoulders. “Contrary to popular belief, witches don’t fly well.”
“Tiberius, I’m calling in your marker.” I prayed that was enough, that there wasn’t some type of song and dance of fae etiquette required to cash the favor. “I need you to give Enzo a lift down and Isaac a drop of your blood.”
“That’s two things,” he groused, apparently a stickler for formalities after all.
The rising wave of a battle-sharp melody spiked the air, and we all winced.
“This one time,” Tiberius allowed, “I’m feeling generous. I will grant your requests.”
“You’re a good kid.” I followed Enzo’s example and shucked my pack. It was heavy and would make carrying passengers awkward. “Enzo, as the most breakable, you’re with the prince. Isaac, it’s me and you, babe.”
Together we all tossed our packs into the rift with an eye toward retrieving them later.
The prince offered Isaac his hand, and the two exchanged a bloody handshake. A shimmer of magic announced Tiberius’s shift, and he leapt for the sky, swooping low and gripping Enzo’s shoulders so hard his talons drew blood. The witch grimaced and held on tight to Tiberius’s ankles.
The change rippled over Isaac in a slow wave that spoke to his exhaustion. He mimicked Tiberius, gaining air before piercing the muscles of my shoulders with his pointed claws. I wrapped my hands around his stocky ankles and huffed out a slightly terrified breath.
Neither man spoke a word, but thrust their wings in powerful beats until Enzo and I each dangled from our lifts. Behind us more war cries sounded, and Tiberius uttered a defiant shriek before diving straight into the rift. Isaac made more of a comforting chirrup and then blasted after the prince.
I’m not sure what I expected, but reentering our realm was no different than stepping from one room to another. There was no pain, no disorientation, only elation that we had escaped. I was so giddy with triumph, I failed to notice the siren angling for Isaac until it was upon us. I screamed a warning, and he whirled aside to avoid having me plucked from his grasp. Too late I realized it had been a calculated move. He bumped straight into Rilla, and his wings flurried to maintain our altitude. I swayed between them, his nails tearing my upper trapezius muscles in a bid to hold me. Screaming triumph, she cinched her talons around my arm and yanked me free of Isaac before he recovered. While Isaac fended off his attacker, Rilla snarled at me, her beautiful face gone scarlet with fury.
Tiberius was nowhere in sight.
“I hope you can swim.” Her foot flexed open. “No, actually, I don’t.”
And then she let go.
I spread my arms and legs to slow my descent. I must have looked like a falling star from the shoreline that raced toward me at breakneck speed. I forced my head back and spotted Isaac’s attacker veering off as he tucked in his wings to dive for me. I held out for as long as I could before I streamlined my body, crossing my ankles, cupping an elbow with one hand while the other covered my face and nose.
He didn’t make it in time.
I hit the water with the impact of a semitrailer truck smashing into a concrete pylon. Bones crunched and my insides crumpled as white-hot agony raked down my spine like an oyster knife scraped around the shell. Impact shattered me into a million pieces, then the cool rush flowed over my face and I didn’t feel anything at all.
Chapter 12
“Open your eyes,” a firm, masculine voice ordered, and I obeyed without hesitation. A dark-haired man with a piercing hazel gaze had made me the center of his focus, and his raw power stung the hairs on my arms to attention. Cord, I wanted to cry. Alpha, the wolf howled. “Good girl.”
“How are you not dead yet?” Abram’s face appeared in my field of vision, too close and too large, distorted. “I’ll tell you. You’re damn lucky, and I’m damn good, and you’re damn lucky I’m good.” He forced my left eye open wide and swiped a light across that blinded me. “You should have been born a cat shifter, ’cause you sure as hell have eight more lives than the rest of us.”
“Abram,” Zed, my best friend in the whole world, rumbled. “Back up off her.”
“Stop crowding the healer. All of you.” Cam’s blonde head popped into view, and she shoved Zed back. “Give him room to work. You can chew him out later.”
“I’ll be right outside, Delly.” Zed lowered his forehead to mine. “Goddamn you for scaring me like that.”
“Sss,” I hissed, trying for sorry but failing.
“Sorry means you won’t do it again.” He huffed. “We both know better.”
Strong fingers flexed through mine, and I tilted my head to see who held my hand. Joy inflated my heart to overflowing as I whispered, “Isss.”
You’re okay, I wanted to say. You made it down in one piece. Thank God.
“I couldn’t hold on.” He brought my hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles, unable to meet my eyes. “I tried to…but I was too late.”
I squeezed his fingers to let him know I understood. He wasn’t born to the skies, and he had been dead on his feet. Rilla was too great an aerial adversary. Weak as he had been, he had gotten me more than halfway down. I couldn’t have asked him for more.
“Time for the flip, people. We need her on
her stomach for this.” Abram gripped my forearm. “What the hell? Are those silver burns? Guess we’ll be treating those too.” He barked out more orders, his position as healer overriding the alphas present. Gentle hands lifted me, too many for me to count, and I was turned to lie on my stomach on a cool metal tabletop. “Keep her occupied. Don’t let her fidget.”
A terrified awareness crept over me, an icy cold that might be temperature or fear encasing my spine. I registered Cord’s hand on one of my shoulders and Cam’s on the other. A flash of hurt slashed my palm, and then the strength of the pack bond flowed through them, sank into me and eased the worst of the pain. Their combined efforts lifted my consciousness away from my body and into a safe, dark space that pulsed with warmth and love from my pack.
“Sorry about that. We had to reinitiate the bond.” Cord’s voice rang clear in my head. “It must have severed when you crossed realms.”
I jerked at the surprise of experiencing a presence in a mind where I had been the sole occupant for so long, and they gripped me harder to keep me in position.
“Keep talking,” I begged, my rusty mental speech slurring with fatigue. “I forgot how good this feels.”
Butler, Tennessee, was too far from Wink, Texas, for the pack bond to function. I had been alone in my head for the duration of my incarceration. The spell that kept me in human form most likely would have blocked their attempts to contact me even if proximity hadn’t been an issue. Had I been allowed that connection to pack, I would have been a model inmate. Okay, so model was a strong word.
“You got Tiberius back. We knew you could do it.” Cam rubbed my shoulder, a soothing gesture that had been alien to her before she joined the pack and learned to accept the warg need for touch. “I’m proud of you.”
I glowed beneath her praise until her meaning registered. “You knew Thierry was sending me?”
“You’re pack first, Dell.” Her smile, another rarity until she mated Cord, softened her expression. “Thierry couldn’t have made the offer without our approval, and we never would have agreed if we didn’t feel you were up to the challenge. We volunteered two of our best resources as backup to keep you safe.”
Ah. That explained Enzo’s availability. He was currently in Lorimar’s employ, after all.
“Isaac holed up in his trailer designing gods only knows what. I had to issue him a travel pack so he would pare down his arsenal.” She chuckled. “Otherwise, he would have driven you through Faerie in a tank stocked with anti-magic ammunition.”
“Now, now, mate,” Cord chastised. “You can’t mock a man for protecting what’s his.”
Cam rolled her eyes. I would have joined in, but mine ached too much for cranial acrobatics yet.
“I thought you guys were anti-Isaac.” Both had warned me off him. Not that I had listened. “What happened while I was gone?”
“We’ve never been anti-Isaac,” Cord argued. “We were anti-Isaac breaking your heart.”
“And you feel the likelihood of that has changed why?” Had he given them a version of the same speech he had given me in the dungeon?
The alphas exchanged a loaded glance before Cam hedged, “I’m sure he’d rather tell you himself.”
“That is not comforting.” I squinted to see Isaac, who was thankfully absent from our conversation, and wondered what they were hiding from me. “We talked it out in Faerie, or so I thought. He didn’t mention anything that might have swayed you guys in favor of the match.”
“Gemini don’t bond easily,” Cord confided in me. “They’re so used to isolating themselves as part of their lifestyle that emotion is hard for them. They don’t always get subtle nuance.” His eyes glittered as they flicked to Cam. “Lucky for us, wargs don’t have those issues.”
“Me bonding to him was never the problem.” The scabs over my heart bled at the reminder. “He was the holdout.”
“That’s what we’re trying to tell you, Dell. He lost his ever-lovin’ mind when Thierry hauled you off to Macon. The pack restrained him before he did any real damage to the marshals responsible for your extraction. They caught him on the ridge with a rifle preparing to shoot out the transpo van’s tires. Zed wasn’t sure he would have stopped there, so he called us.” Cord loosened his grip after realizing the tension in his story had tightened his fingers. “Thierry had the vote suspended so we could be with the pack during the transition and so Cam could control her cousin. A Gemini on the warpath isn’t something the conclave was prepared to battle.”
Tears pricked my eyes, and I couldn’t tear my gaze from Isaac’s. “A psychotic break convinced you?”
“A psychotic break over a nonfamily member in a Gemini is on par with an alpha warg mauling the pack’s weakest member,” Cam said. “It’s either indicative of mental illness or—”
“—love,” Cord finished for her, not appearing diminished for his mate having compared loving him to developing a mental illness. “And neither of us can stand in the way of that.”
It wasn’t exactly a blessing, but I would take it. “Thanks, guys.”
“We need to talk about what happened in Faerie. What repercussions we should expect.” Cam touched my cheek. “We’ll talk to Isaac and Enzo first, but we want your report on record as the Lorimar beta.”
Accessing the parts of my brain filled with the information I had paid dearly to procure while in Faerie was like swimming through mud. Or maybe molasses. Molasses. I could really go for some pancakes right about now. And bacon. And sausage. And ham. And screw the pancakes. I wanted meat.
And caffeine.
“Dell?” Cord stroked over my head, winding errant hairs over one shoulder and out of Abram’s way. “You still with us?”
“Yeah.” I did a mental shake then filled them in on the king’s betrayal, the threat to Galina and Paavo, and the bargain to elevate the prince to a king. I warned them about the Huntsman’s presence in our woods and what that might mean for us. I saved the worst for last. After all, the pack bond was a secure connection, and with the alphas in control, they could prevent the rest of the pack from eavesdropping. Drawing in a raspy breath, I confessed to the small problem of our freeing the Morrigan and all that entailed.
“The Morrigan,” Cam murmured in a worried tone. “War must really be coming then.”
In addition to being a death omen, the Morrigan’s other gig was as a goddess of war.
“We’ll handle Thierry,” Cord promised me. “Call me cynical, I get the feeling she won’t be all that shocked to hear the news.”
“You think she planned this?” I tilted my chin in his direction then regretted the slight movement.
“She gave Isaac her blood, didn’t she?” Cord’s lips pursed. “You don’t put a loaded gun in someone’s hand unless you expect them to pull the trigger.”
A worrisome thought occurred to me, an inkling that maybe we had facilitated a trade.
The conclave got its half-blood army.
The king got his most vicious ally returned to him, hobbled and bound to his will.
All things considered, I wasn’t sure which side came out the winner.
“Will Tiberius be enough to get Dell off the hook?” Cord must have been wondering how the Morrigan’s freedom would influence Thierry’s goodwill toward the pack, and me.
“Without knowing Thierry’s part in all this, I can’t say. I’ve worked for the conclave a long time. I understand how the magistrates think. Bringing Tiberius back was an act of atonement and a gesture of our support for their laws. Besides, Thierry owes me for what she borrowed. Dell’s freedom was the cost, and I expect to get paid.”
“It’s all right.” I shoved away those depressing thoughts. “All the good deeds in the world won’t change the fact I broke out of prison to do them.”
“Not necessarily,” Cam hedged. “That thing she borrowed?”
“Yeah.” Thierry and the alphas constantly jockeyed for more aid and more support, so I hadn’t given it a second thought.
�
�It was Theo.”
“I saw him at Macon.” The jerk. “He wore a Meemaw aspect and caused a distraction while Thierry got us to the tether.”
“Sort of,” Cam hedged. “He was brought in to impersonate you, Dell. The Meemaw aspect was just his way in.”
My jaw might have dropped had there not been a table beneath my chin. “What?”
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” Cord paraphrased.
“Theo has been covering for you since you left. Right now, no one knows you’re gone.”
Roiling in my gut almost caused me to toss my cookies as I realized Thierry had yet another means of saving—or damning—me. The only way to calm my stomach was to push those thoughts aside, so I did, focusing on the technical aspect.
“Where is he getting the blood?” I wondered. “He can’t hold an aspect that long without a fresh source.”
“He took his first hit off you the day Thierry sent you through the portal. They couldn’t afford to have anything peculiar show up when the guards searched Theo and marched him back to your cell.”
“I thought I scratched my hand on the walking stick.” I rubbed my fingers together. “What’s been tiding him over since then?”
“Thierry lifted the blood samples they took during your physical. Enzo magicked them up, gave the enzymes a boost to fool Theo’s system into believing it’s straight from the tap.” She hesitated. “Don’t be mad at Isaac for not mentioning the plan. It was my idea to keep it from you. We didn’t know if the magicked blood would work or for how long. We didn’t want to get your hopes up if a clean swap couldn’t be made.”
Being reminded of Theo’s peculiarity got me curious all over again. “Why didn’t you ever tell us he was different?”
“We don’t talk about it. None of us. There’s a stigma to being born that way.”
“The mutation of his abilities has happened before?”
“Yes, and it never ends well. Gemini like Theo tend to die young. People can accept us borrowing attributes from them, but not assuming their identity. We’re very careful not to mention it, even to each other. There was a time when Gemini had their own tribunal, and being born that way earned a child the puppy-in-a-burlap-bag treatment.”
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