by Petra Landon
Compassion stirred in her. Along with a sense of awe. A boy, drowning in grief for his father, had unknowingly sleepwalked onto a minefield, only to suffer horrifically as a consequence of it. It was nothing short of a miracle that the boy had not lost his sense of self; had not perished in the aftermath or simply refused to leave the sanctuary of his patch of wilderness, where he was the unchallenged king, after his horrendous experience. But instead, had re-engaged with the world on his own terms, to thrive and mature into this unbreakable man.
Tasia drew a shaky breath. “You were held in a ramshackle barn by your aunt. She used silver and magic on you, until a black bear wandered in that winter. Duncan rescued you and nudged you back to health.”
Her words fell into a grim silence, drawing no response from him. However, it would be incorrect to say that Tasia did not get a reaction, merely that he did not respond with words. The man, turned to stone, seemed to come to life again, his jaw hardening until a tick flexed uncontrollably. The gold eyes flared, their depths hardening into chips of ice; in the throes of an emotion so strong that she fancied his body almost vibrated with the effort to temper it.
Though confused and befuddled by what she sensed in him, Tasia also felt a measure of relief. She was no longer the only one aware of their predicament — he comprehended the gravity of the situation.
“I can’t explain it but somehow, you and I are connected, almost linked together, in a way” she said slowly. “Under certain conditions and circumstances, we’re able to read each other’s thoughts, memories and emotions. Sometimes, even see through the other’s eyes. I don’t know how this works or even when the connection is live. In the hall at Wizard Headquarters, it felt like my blood was on fire when the silver knife plunged into you. Yet, on Russian Hill, I felt nothing, even though you had more silver in you than San Diego.”
Her words died away. The gold eyes burned fiercely, like glowing embers in the pale face. How could a man be consumed by fire and yet, radiate a white-hot coldness at the same time, she wondered bemusedly. Over the past few weeks, the gold-colored depths had become familiar to Tasia, an occasional window into the otherwise inscrutable Alpha. But now, it felt as if she faced a cold-eyed stranger.
“Linked?” he croaked, his voice hoarse and unlike him.
Tasia was greatly relieved by the simple query. It wasn’t a stranger that confronted her, merely the Alpha grappling with an enormous overpowering revelation. She reminded herself that her initial response to the staggering realization had been just as strong, but in the privacy of her own chamber. He, unfortunately, had not been granted the luxury of coming to terms in private.
“I can’t be sure” she apprised him, determined to be as candid as possible. “But if this is what my father warned me about, it is akin to an ayo srayta.”
Tasia, unsure whether he was familiar with the Ancient term, was ready to proffer an explanation. But from his reaction, it was clear that the Alpha did not need one. The hand that gripped the desk’s edge convulsed with the strain. She studied him uncertainly. Tasia had expected shock, even confusion or alarm. But not what she read from him.
Life and magic were synonymous terms in the Ancient tongue — for the Chosen, they were one and the same. Thus, Raoul was aware that ayo srayta was what the Ancients referred to as a life or magic bond. Its origins rested in First Ones lore. Legend said that the Forebearers had once possessed the ability to bond with their mates in a manner where unspoken communication and, in rare cases, an exchange of magic was facilitated through the link. But such bonds had been singular and extraordinary even then, viable only between two extremely powerful First Ones possessed of mystical magic lost eons ago — magic that resided today only in the pages of Chosen history.
Under most circumstances, the mere possibility of a legendary magic bond would stop any Chosen in his tracks. But such was the blow Raoul reeled under that this new revelation failed to rouse him in any significant way. Instead, he focused on the minutiae, the small insignificant details, even as black rage threatened to subvert his storied self-possession.
“A magic bond is between mates” he intimated, brusque and pithy. “How is it sealed?”
Under the uncompromising cold gaze, Tasia flushed. “The usual way.”
Though Raoul had expected it, her answer hit him like another bolt of lightning. Despite the burgeoning wildness within, the wheels in his brain churned through their brief acquaintance. He was unlikely to forget a mating. Except for the one occasion where his memory continued to be fuzzy.
“In the cage, did we …?”
“No.” Tasia interrupted him hastily, before he could finish. “No!” she reiterated vehemently, her eyes holding the narrowed gold ones.
As the first hint of the darkness roiling within seeped through, Tasia’s eyes widened. Something wild brewed in him. This was not anger. Tasia had been witness to his fury before. It was always a cold rage, one restrained with the iron will and absolute control that was his signature. But this time, it was different.
“How?” he asked, the single word clipped as if he did not trust himself to speak.
Holding her confusion at bay, Tasia gave vent to her inner agitation and frustration. “I have no clue. I’ve done everything to make sure the curse would never be awakened.”
I even kept you at a distance, though the ayo srayta had never before, in our history, been sealed with a Shifter.
But Tasia didn’t say the last out loud. She’d fought valiantly against her own heart, despite the dim likelihood of a srayta with a Wyr. To her, it was a curse that must be entombed under layers of earth, so it could never raise its head again. For generations of her ancestors, it had been a bane. The power of a srayta had been bestowed upon them centuries ago by a Magick, to prepare his descendants for a coming bloodbath. But the bond had brought nothing but despair and ruin. To the women called upon to live with it, the ayo srayta had proven to be the root of their destruction.
The gold eyes stared into space, blind to everything around him as the smoldering darkness in Raoul exploded into something infinitely more dangerous. The palm by his side flexed into a fist, while the other held the desk in a death grip. Tasia could not know this, but every response to his pointed questions damned her further in his eyes, providing more fodder to the wildness consuming him.
Tasia’s shocking confession, regarding the genesis of her nightmares, had roused something he’d buried deep in his psyche — fanning the recollections of a horrific period in his life. Having struggled mightily and relentlessly for over a decade to sever the chains that bound him, Raoul believed that he had triumphed over the past. But now, he was being forced to confront it anew. Another witch was dredging up the excruciating chapter again. And no ordinary witch at that, rather the one Spell Caster Raoul had put on a pedestal as the very bedrock of his emancipation. To a great extent, it was Tasia who’d convinced the Alpha that he had finally let go of the past. How could he invite a witch into the inner sanctum unless he’d successfully erased the harrowing lacerations previously inflicted on his soul?
As the past, reawakened anew, loomed large again, it triggered a once familiar poison in Raoul, a wildness he believed he’d left behind forever. The poison spread its venom to revive memories of past persecution, bitterness and treachery, until the snaking tendrils unleashed the very darkness he was always vigilant against. In no time, the venom spread its tentacles to become a frothing cauldron he could not keep the lid on.
“What are you?” he assailed her, a biting indictment in the question.
The accusation jabbed at Tasia. She flinched, before she could stop it.
You know me. I am the witchling.
At the same time, Tasia understood where this particular catechism had come from. “I’m Wizard and First One” she submitted, an acknowledgement that she accepted what drove him to ask her this.
“There is another name for your kind” he interrogated her, in a clipped intractable voice, devoid of emotion
. “One lost in history.”
The gold eyes bore into her without mercy, reminding Tasia of the early days when he’d refused to take no for an answer, relentlessly grilling her until he was satisfied.
Yet, to Tasia, the pointed query hinted at the answer he sought. Confounded by it, she wondered where he could have heard the term. It was archaic; had been so for centuries. And, it was an expression used exclusively by one faction of Chosen.
“The Blutsaugers call us Sirens” she admitted quietly.
For a second, the admission held him rooted in place. Then, fists flexing, he turned away from her, to put some distance between them. Regardless of the toxic brew swirling in him, Raoul was not the same Shifter who’d rushed into a darkened Nest to save a Spell Caster the Pack owed by his Wyr code of ethics. A lot of water had flowed under the bridge since that night. He was no longer a man forever frozen, unable to break free from the invisible shackles that entrenched him to a dilapidated shed in Wyoming. But this was an onslaught he had not anticipated. The Magick that had accomplished the singular undertaking of rousing Raoul from his long slumber was the same one who threatened to shove him back into the all-consuming flames of his past. Yet, despite the overwhelming rage and tumult within, he could not bring himself to intimidate or terrify her. Not the witchling. So, he put some physical distance between them, while he wrestled with the growing maelstrom in him to demand answers from her.
Striding around the over-sized desk, he kicked the chair out of his way; the violence in him finding a small outlet, even as he fought an escalating inner battle. Stepping into its place, he faced her over the desk. The heavy chair skidded away, to topple over with a thud. In the compact room, the noise was explosive. Tasia jumped, her eyes flashing to the Shifter behind the desk. To her dismay, she noted that they were back to their old roles of interrogator and supplicant. In a subtle way, his new stance emphasized the divide between them as he confronted her over the width of his massive desk. The Shifter stood like a rock, his attitude one of restraint — a man of coiled power, muscle and rage leashing himself with the last ounces of his hard-won self-discipline. The clenched fists rested on the desk, to either side; his head lowered in reflection, seemingly absorbed by weighty matters.
Baffled by his actions and the contradictions, Tasia waited. He should be questioning the inception of the inexplicable bond that tied them to each other. Instead, he seemed to be digressing, heading down a tangential path. She wondered at it, but while his suppressed emotions had her uneasy, Tasia was not alarmed. Her equation with the Alpha had transformed into something altogether different from the early days. They’d made enormous strides from their initial fractious, troubled and turbulent association. She had been granted glimpses of the man behind the mask, the one he hid from the world. The power he held over her, by virtue of his knowledge about her secrets, had unnerved Tasia until she’d experienced how delicately he wielded it. The leashed violence in him had terrified Tasia until she’d been incarcerated in a cage with the silver-poisoned Alpha. Once, she had looked upon him as her nemesis; an autocratic, dangerous and ominous Chosen to be avoided at all costs. Today, he was the Magick she trusted with her life and her most lethal of secrets. The man she contemplated gifting her most prized possession — her heart. He knew more about her than any living creature, Si’ffa or Chosen.
“This bond” he questioned, his eyes not leaving his desk. “How do we sever it?”
Tasia blinked. Clearly, her explanation had been neither precise nor well-articulated. If it was the ayo srayta, and she very much suspected this to be, it could not be cleaved.
Yet, the Alpha’s unusual behavior had Tasia reassess. It behooved her to be cautious, since she had no clue how the bond had come to be. Thus, the possibility that it was not ayo srayta could not be discounted.
“I’m not sure” she answered candidly.
The tawny head lifted from his contemplation of the desk. Leached of all emotion, his face was like granite; his jaw jutting aggressively and the skin stretched tight over the bones. But Tasia knew that the facade was merely that, just skin deep, for his eyes told a different story. Whatever seethed in him raged as untempered as before.
The gold eyes were clinical in their assessment of her. “You say this is ayo srayta, yet you don’t know how to sever it?”
Tasia did not prevaricate anymore. “Ayo srayta is for life” she offered quietly.
Like the term signifies.
The gold eyes altered subtly, an expression in their depths that had Tasia frowning inwardly.
What’s going on?
He cocked his head, a gesture so familiar and yet, completely foreign. “For the record, did you ever believe anything I said to you, witchling?”
Her eyes shot to him, appalled and stunned in equal measure. But before Tasia could formulate a response, he continued his tirade.
“Since the night Hawk brought you to my Lair, I’ve made promise after promise to you” Raoul charged, no longer able to mask his seething emotions. “Want to stay away from the leeches — you got it. Need to steer clear of Guardians — I’ll take care of it. Anderson is after you — I’ll handle him. You walk away from the Pack and I tell myself that my own prejudices forced your hand. You hold back secrets at every step of the way and I convince myself that I should give you a reason to trust me. Through it all, I have never taken a single step back when it comes to you. And, I’ve upheld every pledge I made to you. I’ve safeguarded your cover, protected your secrets and shielded your powers from the others. I even gave you my word to not dig into your past, even though it has a bad habit of blindsiding me at the most inopportune of moments. But I told myself that I must walk the talk. That it was the only way to win your trust …. to win you. Now, I find that everything I did, every pledge I made to you, was utterly meaningless. All mere sops. You never believed a word, despite my many demonstrations of good faith. No more. It stops now. I’m done.”
Tasia’s jaw slackened. There was a finality to his words that was hard to miss. “I … what have I done?” she stammered.
“You were clever, witchling, I’ll give you that” he asserted with biting coldness. “You sought to use your best asset to buy insurance against the Chosen that hunt you — a permanent defender to hold back the world.”
The words poured out of Raoul in an unstoppable torrent. “Thanks to me, you’re in the unique position to know just how well I can protect your interests, if I choose to. Isn’t that the role I’ve been playing since the day we met?”
Tasia shook her head in confusion. “Best asset” she mumbled in a daze.
“Don’t play me for a fool, witchling! Your magic.”
Utterly floored by the allegation, Tasia stared at him numbly. The denunciations raining down on her in a familiar voice, with the unfamiliar staccato tones, made little sense to her. It was as if she was trapped in the twilight zone.
Icy resentful gold eyes locked in on Tasia. “You had all the insurance in the world you needed — my word. It should have sufficed. But you’ve overplayed your hand. If the deranged witch could not bend me to her will for ten long months, what makes you think you will? Didn’t the nightmares teach you anything — I will destroy myself before I give in. No one compels me to dance to their tune! Come hell or highwater, the bond that ties me to you will be torn down. And it will be as if you never put the Pack under obligation by aiding Hawk.”
A stunned Tasia roused herself. “No” she protested. “I’m not responsible …” She paused, as her conscience smote her. If it was the ayo srayta, then it would be incorrect to claim no responsibility for it. It was the engineered blood in her veins that enabled the bond, however inadvertent her role or choice in sealing it. But there was one claim she could make without any caveat. “I did not forge this bond between us” she said to him.
But the damage was done. Truth be told, it had been done the moment she’d revealed the truth about her nightmares. Raoul was too far gone to heed reason; in the death gri
p of the noxious poison that had always been his nemesis. At the same time, he was not ignorant of the darkness stewing in him. Raoul was conscious that if he allowed himself to be overwhelmed, the beotan would exploit the opportunity to spring forth. He could not leave his beast in command. The beotan had a soft corner for the witchling but might be far less forgiving of treachery such as this. In many ways, he had come a long way from the devastated boy post the aftermath of the shed.
“Then, who is?” he demanded, in the grip of fury. While he would protect her from his beotan, he was not willing to forgive. “I don’t have the magic to lay such a trap, witchling. Only you do.”
Tasia gaped at him, as it dawned on her that he believed she had set out to entrap him. In a way, it brought some clarity to this perplexing encounter and the sudden acrimony directed at her. Until now, the nature of the storm in him had confused her. With the latest accusation, Tasia believed that she understood what was going on. The past had him in its grasping claws.
“I was held captive by a Chosen who wanted to break me. One of her many attempts involved using silver on me to see at what point I would beg for mercy.”
Now that Tasia had a taste of the appalling abuse inflicted on him, the succinct summary of his torment, in his own words, nearly brought her to her knees. But she could not afford to try and make sense of what had been done to the Alpha. Not yet. She must first convince him that she had not double-crossed him, like the blue-eyed witch. Grasping for straws, Tasia was reminded of another occasion when the past had intruded on him, to change the Shifter she knew to a stranger. In the cage, with the silver surging through him, his past and present had blurred until he could not distinguish reality from fantasy. Perhaps, the Alpha found himself in a similar boat again. Tasia, searching for something to hold on to, hoped that this might explain his baffling accusations.
She rushed into speech without thinking it through, desperate to convince him that she could never be so perfidious. “I’m not her” she cried urgently, her eyes imploring him.