by Lola Taylor
Verika wanted to argue that point but opted not to. She liked her head where it was.
Using the noses werewolves normally found so useful, Gage and Nik deployed every wolf at their disposal. They searched the manor, the woods, and even drove ten miles in either direction down the highway.
Nothing. Literally nothing turned up. No footprints, no traces of cast spells. Even the guards’ memories had begun to fade. None of them could say now, exactly, what had happened to Danica and Alara.
“Another byproduct of the curse he cast on them, I’m sure,” Verika said as they traipsed through the woods. Nik had insisted they search the woods one more time, considering they were so dense and the most likely place the kidnapper would have hidden away his hostages. If he was still nearby. Though no one said that, even though she knew, from the doubtful looks on her fellow searchers’ faces, that everybody was thinking it.
Verika and Elijah walked side by side, at the end of the group, while Gage, Nik, and several others took to their wolf forms to prowl the woods. Elijah had wanted to Shift in order to better help out, but after what happened last time, nobody else was keen on the idea. He looked about glumly as wolves of every size and color ran through the thickets.
“You’re helping out just by being here,” Verika said lightly, nudging him as they walked. “You’re fine. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Maybe that should be my New Year’s resolution,” he said with a weary smile.
Well, she supposed the New Year was coming up soon. It was already cooling down, and winter would be here any day now. Good Lord, where had the time gone? Something about having your life be in mortal danger seemed to make the days fly by at warp-speed.
“Maybe my New Year’s resolution should be ‘stay out of trouble,’” she said.
“Nah, wouldn’t work. You have to make one you can actually keep.”
“Hardy-har-har.”
She stifled a yawn. They had all been going since dawn, since discovering the High Queen of Wolves and their Alpha female were missing. They were all tired and in need of some rest. Although what Verika wanted wasn’t rest.
She gazed up at the nearly full moon rising in the east, admired how it dusted the tips of the trees in pale silver light. It looked so bright up there. The manor was removed from the city. Perhaps the countryside, away from the artificial glow of the city lights, made the moon seem that much brighter.
The itch to Change worked itself into her skin, making it tingle.
Elijah grasped her hand, squeezed. “Soon.”
Her heart fluttered at that. Out of fear, out of excitement. Changing into another creature was terrifying. Which was ironic. There were plenty of transmutation spells out there to aid a witch in switching forms completely, even enabling her to disguise herself as an inanimate object. Although she wouldn’t recommend that. Changing into something that didn’t have a brain did something to a person. Twisted their insides and made their souls rot. If they stayed in that form too long, they might cease being a person altogether. The archives back at DPI headquarters were full of artifacts that had once been people. Everyone gave them a sad look, shook their heads, and sighed, “The spell just went wrong.”
Wrong. Like how her rather pathetic attempt, now that she thought about it, at tracking the kidnapper had gone.
Her hands balled into fists, and she suppressed a growl.
Failed spells were weird for her, both for their ability to stir her curiosity—her “where did I go wrong?”—and for their penchant at pissing her off. Growing up, mistakes with working magic meant ridicule, fodder for the bullies. And they already had plenty, from her wild red hair to her big glasses (hellllllooooo, contacts!) to the dips and swells of her curvy body. Mistakes meant she’d have to work twice as hard to prove herself worthy of studying, and staying in, magic classes. And she had worked hard. Far too hard to let some freaking nameless warlock poke fun at her by kicking her out of her own spell.
She’d show him.
Nobody bested Verika Tate-Johnson in magic.
Shouts erupted from the woods ahead. Elijah’s and Verika’s gazes both snapped up, their ears pricked, listening. Without a word, they took off at dead runs, following the trail of guards scurrying into the woods.
They didn’t pause to breathe, didn’t distract themselves with communicating telepathically. They leaped over bramble and stone as the shouts grew louder.
The brush parted, giving way to a single white oak bathed in moonlight. It stood tall in the clearing by the stream, its pale branches stretching so tall Verika had to tip her head back all the way to see the top.
But that spectacular tree wasn’t the most eye-catching feature of the glen.
It was the message scrawled in blood on the tree’s trunk that took everyone’s breath away.
Contact me within three hours, or they die.
Straight and to the point. Nothing cryptic about it, which, in some morbid way, Nik appreciated.
He already knew their lives were in danger before reading the message. In fact, it didn’t really surprise him. It had been expected. After all, if he were an evil son of a bitch with no soul—and sometimes, he questioned whether or not he still had one after some of the things he’d done to survive—he would ransom his enemy’s loved ones’ lives, too. It was a smart move.
Only, when that message came delivered in your loved ones’ blood…well, let’s just say that made an entirely different impression.
Soon as he smelled Alara’s blood, he nearly vomited. His body went still, all but his hands, which hung limply at his sides, trembling.
He couldn’t look away. In another one of those surreal moments of his life, his sense of where he was, why he was here, whom he was with, abruptly vanished, as if his mind had gone numb. Like the growing horror in his chest as he slowly comprehended what he read somehow hollowed him out, made him feel as though someone had shoved a block of ice down his throat.
His mouth filled with spit. His tongue twitched, urging him to swallow, but he couldn’t even do that. It was only when his eyes began to water from being open for so long, when that first hot tear fell on his cheek and forced him to blink, that he felt “in the moment” again.
And the horrible sense of loss was so great, it nearly sent him to his knees. A sob started to escape, but he snapped his mouth shut, sealed his lips. He was an Alpha, dammit. No way in hell would he cower—not now, not fucking ever.
But he wanted to. He wanted to beg God for mercy, to scream at him for letting this happen, to claw at himself for being so reckless as to leave his mate’s side when war was on the horizon.
He should have known she wouldn’t be safe. None of them were while that snake lived.
And who had brought her to his doorstep?
The rational part of his brain said, Now, Nik, you knew Mistress Black was most likely coming to kill you all, anyway. World domination kind of works that way.
But the irrational, pissed-off part that needed something to punch said, Hell, naw, motherfucker. That SOB, sorry sack-of-shit brother brought this plague upon us, and he deserves to PAY!
Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes. Saw Alara’s kind, steady gaze in his mind’s eye, felt the memory of her hand upon his cheek. “You’re stronger than your anger.”
He growled a curse in frustration, his eyes stinging all over again. God, he missed her so damned much. His mind skipped forward to the future. Instead of picturing him and Alara sitting on a porch in a little farmhouse somewhere in the boonies, sipping sweet tea with cute little lemon slices because she loved that shit, their hair so gray it looked like smoke, he instead saw nothing but darkness, and that terrified him, and God, he needed to release all this hurt, this gnawing anger, this relentless demon inside him that just wanted to rip the world apart.
“I hate you,” he said quietly, fists shaking at his sides. The urge to rip his elder brother’s head off and punt it into that damnable message was intoxicating, to the point he was chokin
g on his rage.
Elijah—and the whole damn clearing—had gone still.
The wind rustled through the trees, shaking loose a few more russet-colored leaves. They brushed Nik’s face, raking their brittle claws down his cheek before settling on the ground. He stared at the red leaf. Flashes of the crimson message, of Alara screaming his name while Mistress Black smiled and poked holes in her with a knife, assaulted his mind.
“I hate you so damn much,” Nik growled, louder than before.
Elijah didn’t say a word. He stared at his brother with a hardened gaze, mouth pressed into a firm frown.
Nik fought to control his breathing, to rein in his anger. “You have no idea how hard it is to look at you, to breathe the same air as you. To not let this…this rage control me. And you want to know what the worst part of it is?” He laughed bitterly and shook his head. “I don’t want to hate you. I was actually glad to have my brother back. Still want to be. But I can’t. I can’t celebrate your return if it means the loss of my mate. So I guess I’ll just have to make do with hating you.”
Verika looked as though she wanted to say something, but a quick shake of the head from Gage kept her mouth shut. She stared solemnly at the ground, looking as miserable as Nik felt.
Elijah never said anything. Which only made Nik feel more like a dick than he already did. Somebody should have jotted that down and framed it: “The day Nik Johnson regretted what he said.”
“I’m sorry,” formed on his tongue, but his voice dried up. The words tasted true, but he couldn’t say them, not yet. Maybe not ever.
Gage’s calculating gaze stared at the tree. “We should prepare for battle,” he said quietly. “Taking an Alpha’s mate is an act of war.”
“Agreed,” Nik said in a steely voice. He was itching to tear that bitch’s head off even more than he was Elijah’s.
“We need to leave here, before the DPI figures out where we are. If they haven’t already,” Verika said.
“Yeah, you’ll be useless from a jail cell,” Nik said darkly, eyeing Elijah as if he were a piece of garbage he couldn’t wait to be rid of. The want and need for his brother, for the three of them to finally be a family again, warred with his desire to scream and kick at him for getting himself tangled up with Mistress Black.
“But what if this happened for a reason?” Alara had said when Elijah had first showed up and Nik had confessed his frustrations to his mate in private. “What if he was destined to fall in league with Mistress Black? What if his purpose was to bring her to us because we’re the only ones who can stop her?”
Nik never believed in destiny. No one could convince him it had been God’s plan to have his father die, his brother walk out, for him and Gage to endure hell on earth under Malachite’s rule. For Verika to leave him, taking his heart with her.
Then he’d met Alara, and suddenly, “fate” took on a whole new meaning. The sense of rightness he felt with her was indescribable. Suddenly, he’d started to believe some things might be preordained. That maybe the bad was kind of good sometimes.
But what little faith had been growing inside him was blown to hell the moment he realized she had been taken.
His mate, the other half of his soul. The better part of him in every possible way.
And he’d do anything to get her back.
“We should trade him over to Mistress Black for Alara and Danica,” Nik said, pointing.
“Nik,” Verika snapped, stepping in front of her mate, “you can’t be serious. You’re just upset—”
“No, upset is when you get a flat tire on the way home from a hard day’s work. Or when your cable goes out during the Super Bowl. We passed upset a long time ago. Try pissed off and desperate, sweetheart.”
Verika drew herself up to her full height. “Nikolas Austin Johnson! This is your brother you’re talking about.”
“And Alara is my mate, my Marked! Just as Danica is Gage’s! We can’t take any risks, especially not with Danica being with child.”
He might as well have dropped a bomb in the clearing, everyone looked so stunned.
Elijah took a step back; his eyes flashed to Gage. “Danica is pregnant?” Verika stopped too, gaping at Gage while waiting for him to answer.
Gage flashed Nik an irritated glance. “Yes. She told me this morning.”
“And you told Nik but not me,” Elijah said flatly.
“I was going to eventually tell you.”
“Why doesn’t that sound more convincing?”
“Now is not the time to sort out hurt feelings,” Verika interrupted. “We need a plan, now. What are we going to do about this?” She gestured to the tree. “Mistress Black said we have three hours to contact her. Plus, we can’t stay here much longer. We need to find Mistress Black, and we need to get going.”
Nik blinked. Verika had always been kind of a nerdy, soft-spoken girl. Clearly, she’d come into more than her dazzling powers. She’d found herself, her true power as a person, since meeting Elijah.
That’s when it hit him—he and Verika were never meant to be. He could never have given her what she needed to grow and prosper as a human being. Elijah could.
Huh. Maybe there was something to this fate thing after all, but he didn’t want to give it too much credit. Not yet, not until they’d found Alara and Danica, and had brought them home safe and sound.
Gage nodded curtly and placed his hands on his hips. He stared at the ground, thinking. “I’ll call in every favor owed me and to the crown, contact every pack, and rally every wolf willing to help.”
“That’s a good start, and you should do that.” Elijah stepped forward. “But I have another idea.”
He was an idiot. Or he had a death wish.
As Elijah situated himself on the bed, lying flat on his back, hands pressed to his sides, legs stretched out straight, he couldn’t help but wonder whether he were about to make a huge mistake. If maybe his “grand idea” wasn’t so grand after all.
“You sure this will work?” Nik said tersely, standing with his arms crossed in front of the bed. Gage stood beside him, as did a handful of guards, and Heath, in case anything happened.
Elijah’s eyes flicked to Heath. He really hoped he wouldn’t be needing medical attention afterward, and not just because he didn’t care for doctors. Mostly, he didn’t want to think about the many different ways Mistress Black could fuck him up with her magic, even in a dream state. His stomach churned, and a wave of vertigo hit him.
Thank God he was lying down.
“It’ll work,” Elijah said curtly. In part because his ass was still chapped Gage had told Nik about his nephew or niece and not him, and in part because his throat was so tight he was having trouble speaking. “I’ve done this before to contact her, when she’d send me away on some bullshit mission and I had to report back.”
Nik muttered something under his breath, a stormy look on his face. Gage hissed at him, too quiet for Elijah to make out what he’d said. Apparently it had been a reprimand, because Nik pressed his lips together and silently glared at Elijah.
Verika cast a look at Nik and rolled her eyes as she lay down beside him.
“What are you doing?” His heart skipped a beat as she settled into the soft mattress in their suite.
“Going with you, of course.”
“You can’t do that! It’s too—”
“Dangerous? I know. I’m mated to you, remember? We Johnsons eat danger for breakfast.”
“This isn’t funny, Verika. Mistress Black could seriously injure you.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? While you’re meditating, you also run the risk of her injuring you, and there’s no way in hell I’m about to let that happen. I won’t leave you unprotected. We’ll fight fire with fire, or rather, Black Magic with Black Magic. I’m going with you, and that’s final.”
He stared at her a moment. She was dead serious. And once his mate made up her mind to do something, you either damn well got out of her way or aided her.
He nodded, his heart beating faster than before and his stomach fluttering with nerves as they both laid back and she took his hand. It didn’t help the brand was making his stomach upset, a feeling which hadn’t completely left since it’d started.
“Together.” She turned her head on the pillow to look him in the eyes.
He smiled softly and squeezed her hand. “Together.”
Elijah looked at his brothers, the guards, Heath. “Do not disturb us, no matter what happens. Our souls have to make it back to our bodies on our own. If we wake up without them…well, let’s just say that could be very, very dangerous.”
“Understood,” Gage said quietly. He smiled grimly and eyed them both. “Good luck. Safe travels and Godspeed.”
Elijah turned his attention again on his mate. She was so lovely, so brave. And just as reckless as he was, sometimes. That, or he was rubbing off on her. “You sure you want to do this?”
She nodded, her gaze unwavering. “I’m sure.”
Nodding again, distracted by both the comfort her presence brought as well as the worry over her safety, Elijah turned his gaze toward the ceiling and closed his eyes. He heard the satin pillow rustle as Verika readjusted, doing the same. Their breathing evened out, their thoughts emptying as Elijah began the chant that would take them into a deep state of meditation—and lead them straight to Mistress Black.
Elijah’s hand felt clammy as he and Verika strolled through the murky fog.
No, not fog—magic. He could tell by the ozone stench in the air and the electric hum riding his skin, making it prickle. Plus, the light-blue glow coming off the fog kind of gave it away as magic.
Verika looked around, clutching his hand tight, alert green eyes searching the surrounding darkness. “I have to admit, I’m not very fond of these tunnels between planes of consciousness,” she said.