by KT Strange
Too bad there wasn’t another witch out there mated to a wolf pack. I was really out of my depth and could use some serious guidance.
The silence filled the air around us, and Finn cleared his throat after a moment.
“So are we doing this?” he asked.
“What?” Eli snapped.
“Uh, sex,” Finn said, pointing to the bed. “Cause I kinda feel like you guys are gonna fuck or fight, and of the two I have my distinct preference.
“We are not fucking-”
“Finn, for fucks sake-”
Finn glanced between us, a wry smile playing on his mouth.
“Alright, no fucking,” he said, finishing it off with a muttered, “yet.”
I rolled my eyes just as Eli reached out for me, tucking his fingers under my jaw.
“Don’t,” I said, feeling irritated and like my skin was crawling. “I just… I don’t understand you. What’s wrong with me that you won’t-”
“The pack isn’t safe,” he said, with such insistence on the last word that I stopped talking sharp, my mouth shutting. Eli’s eyes searched my face, his hand dropping to his side. “What right have I got, taking you like that, distracting myself, when the pack’s not safe?”
Oh.
I took a breath, and tried to really listen to what he was saying instead of waiting to throw my own feelings in his face, say my peace, or whatever. One thought pinged at me.
“You think bonding me is a distraction?” I couldn’t keep the hurt out of my voice.
“Definitely no fucking, then,” Finn said.
“Finn!” I snapped.
“Fuck!” Eli growled at the same time.
“You guys sort this out. Brother, don’t be an idiot.” Finn swatted at Eli’s head as he left the room, and Eli let out a snarl before turning back to me.
“It’s not that,” he breathed, reaching for me. This time I let him, feeling like he was about to be vulnerable. I didn’t want to close myself off when that happened, no matter how mixed up my feelings were. His fingers were heavy on my shoulders, and he pulled me in close. I leaned into him, looking up. There was the faint hint of freckles on his skin, along his nose, over his cheekbones. Those days with Dragonpack, hunting in the sun, I thought.
Skulking around in nightclubs and playing rock venues didn’t really give the guys a chance to tan, normally.
"When I finally make you mine, doll... I don't want anything to take me away from that moment. Not hunters, not witches, just you and me, finishing what Finn started." He bent down. I closed my eyes on instinct, and his warm lips brushed over mine briefly. Another kiss, this time at the corner of my mouth. I tried not to shudder, my skin tingling, my stomach going tight. He kissed the soft planes of my cheekbone, so lightly I could barely feel it, then the shell of my ear.
His lips dragged across my skin, and I had to grab him, taking him by the shoulders as my knees felt like they would buckle under me.
"Nothing will have you then except me, and nothing will have me except you. How can I give you everything when I'm holding back part of myself to take care of the pack, stand watch? I can't, and that's the shame I've been carrying. I'm not man enough to do both, not wolf enough to take my mate like I crave to, and protect my pack like I have to." His words were heavy, weighing me down, and I clung to him as he kissed my ear, then the curve of my jaw.
I was gonna cry, ugly cry, or something. The ache in my chest had expanded outward, reaching to take all of his pain, absorb it into myself.
I sniffled.
"Self-sacrifice is dumb," I said, the only words that came to mind.
"What?"
"Don't. Stop waiting for the perfect moment, when we're safe, when everything is good and fine and perfect." I opened my eyes and looked up at him. He was confused, half-terrified; I could see it in his face.
"It can't be now," he said, hushed.
"If not now, then never? Because now is when I need, you Eli. Not tomorrow, or next month. I don't want safe. I'm not afraid of danger. How many times have we nearly died?"
He closed his eyes tight.
"Don't remind me," he said, throat bobbing. "Fuck, Darcy... please understand, sweetheart."
"I do," I promised him. "I get it. I know how much you're hurting. You're doing so good, Eli, keeping the pack safe, I swear." The things I was saying tumbled out of me, because it seemed like the right thing to say to him. He let out a huffing breath, his eyes still closed, his shoulders slumping slowly.
"It's not enough," each word was rough and wounded as he spoke. "I have not been enough."
I didn't have anything to say to that, only the answering pain, a mirror to his I was sure, blossoming in my chest.
He was enough. He didn't believe it, but he was. How could I convince him?
I pressed myself up against him as hard as I could.
It's not like I didn't know how he felt. I'd never been enough.
How could I convince him that he was when I didn't believe it about myself?
Six
Darcy
A knock came at the door and I glanced up from where the maid was arranging the layers of my dress, placing a last few stitches to hold up the hem. I was, apparently, too short.
"I'm decent," I called.
"More than decent," Luka said, poking his head in. He was in a suit, purple tie tucked in neat, although his hair was a bit of a birds nest, like he'd run his fingers through it and forgotten to check a mirror. He looked adorable. Like a muppet.
"If the boys catch you flirting with me," I said before shifting over when the maid urged me to turn. "I'm pretty sure you're young enough that we'd come from different mothers. You're the replacement child, my half-brother, and I'm the bitter old half-sister who chain smokes in the car while I try to impart my life wisdom on you."
Luka made a face.
"I'm not that young," he said, "I'm sixteen."
"Infant," I teased, and he gave me a wearied smile. I could see the age in his eyes, even if his body didn't match up with it. Star-speakers seemed to age quickly, but live the longest. If they abided by what the heavens wanted, their stars burnt bright and took a long time to die. I think. Still regretting not paying more attention to my lessons when I was younger. "Come here, you're all messy."
He stepped up to the pouf I was stood on, and the maid set the last stitch.
"There Miss," she said, standing up.
"Amazing. You made me look like a gazelle when I'm built more like a-"
Luka raised an eyebrow at me. The maid used the moment to squeak out the door, closing it behind her.
"Never-mind," I said, and then ran my fingers through his hair. "Your hair is stubborn, hey?"
"I speak for the stars, but there's some things that even someone of my greatness cannot accomplish," he said, so dry his voice was like old papers.
"That's good enough." I stepped down.
"Darcy," Luka hesitated. "Tonight is not going to be... easy."
"No shit," I said, and then sat, gingerly, at the dressing table, turning to the makeup that was laid out. I wanted to use as little of it as possible and still look amazing. Was that even possible? Probably. I picked up the liquid foundation and grimaced. Maybe I could just get away with contouring. Make half my face disappear with some good ol' fashioned mundane lady illusions. "We're going to try to intimidate them, they'll definitely intimidate us... I kind of wish we could just blow them up now and be done with it."
"Too many innocent lives," Luka said. I nodded slowly. "Isolating them will take a binding spell that's beyond the two of us, even with Wolfe's help."
"Daria's coming, that'll help, right?" It'd been three days since we'd hatched this plan, since I'd clung so tight to Eli that the seams on the sides of his shirt had made marks on the palms of my hands. The pack would be arriving later that night, they were coming by van so as not to alert anyone who had connections to the airlines flight manifests. I didn't put anything past my father and the other witches on the c
ouncil. Daria and Max were with them, along with Frank. Apparently he'd insisted.
"It will. Wolfe has done his best to send Sentinel to round up some amenable hedge witches, people who've been done wrong by the council and would see the score settled." His words were like cold ice in the pit of my stomach.
"Are we doing the right thing," I asked, thinking of every witch council member and their blood staining my hands. It was no worse than the blood that stained theirs, but I wanted to be sure.
Luka looked strained.
"The stars demand it," his voice was throaty. "I think that were we to wait, or hesitate, they might find some other natural way to act without us, and that... that will be much less precise, I imagine."
He didn't need to say more. I got what he meant. WE needed to do this, for the universe, and for our own safety. I tried not to think about it.
They were the monsters.
We were only protecting ourselves, righting a wrong that had been done for so long the ones who had started it had been long forgotten.
"Shit," Finn breathed out the word, dragging it across his tongue. My cheeks had to be pink, I was sure.
"Like the dress?" I asked as he helped me into the back of the limo, Eli already inside.
"That's not a fair question, doll," he said, making Eli laugh as I took my seat.
"He hates the dress. He wants it gone, right now," Eli offered as I looked skyward.
"Nah, it can stay, on the floor, maybe," Finn said, tucking himself in next to me. I leaned against him as the limo pulled away from the front of Luka's mansion, whisking us off to the witch compound where we would meet up with Wolfe and Luka both. They had gone ahead, just as a small precaution. As much as I wanted to see them all lay eyes on Wolfe for the first time in... decades? Nearly a century? Caution was the better part of valor, or whatever. Beside, I was going to have them staring anyway, with both wolves at my sides.
"You nervous." Eli slid next to me, sandwiching me between both men. Their warmth radiated outward.
"I wish the rest of the guys were here," I said. I ached for Cash to hold me close, for Charlie to shake his head and swear that we were all crazy, and for Ace to just be... well, Ace.
"Hmmm, well, they'll be here soon enough," Finn said, watching the world slide by as we took to the highway. I vibrated with nerves for the long minutes, and not even the soothing presence of both men could ease me as we pulled into the long horse-shoe drive that led to the witch's council compound, a grand building that looked like it had been built to mirror the palace of Versailles. Ornate, overdone... a smile ticked up the corner of my mouth as I imagined it in ruins. The legacy of the council would be splintered and turned to ash by the time I was done with them.
"No funny business," I said as our limo came to a stop. "Not only am I wearing the thickest control garment that Luka's housekeeper could find, I want to stay focused."
"That ass though," Finn chuckled as he helped me to my feet and out of the limo. I glanced up at the towering monument to witching power that the building was.
My breath trembled in my throat.
"My lady," Eli said, offering me one arm. Finn offered me the other with a laugh and half-bow. When I raised my eyebrows, Eli shrugged. "Let them never say that wolves don't know their manners."
I placed my hand on the inside of each of their arms, and we strolled, slowly, elegantly, up the stairs to the entrance. A young woman stood there, her wispy blonde hair pulled into a tight bun, tighter than her black pencil skirt and prim white blouse.
"Oh," she said, eyeing my guys before glancing at me. Her face went pale. "Miss Llewellyn," she stumbled over my name.
"And escorts," I supplied her helpfully.
"Yes, yes of course, we were, I was, um, go right in, they'll announce you, just-"
We breezed past her, into a hallway that arched above our heads, gilt clinging to every pastry-inspired curlicue. A set of evil looking cherubs glared down at us as we approached the doorway that would take us into the main ballroom. I knew this place well enough. This is where I would have married Creston.
The thought made me smile, for all the wrong reasons. Taking my own destiny into my hands? That was a revenge that no one had ever seen coming.
The soft clearing of a throat beyond the doorway, and the sound of my name being called out filled me with determination. No going back now. They knew that I was here. I hoped it filled every single one of them with fear.
We stepped into the room, and for the first time I knew what it was like for the guys to be on stage. From every direction I felt the hot press of eyeballs as they looked at us, although when Phoenixcry took to the stage those looks were of admiration.
The people staring us down were giving us glowering stares of rage.
I was a traitor to them, flaunting the ones I loved on each of my arms, betraying the witching world with the two wolves that walked with me.
Watch us, see us, know that you could never take them from me, I wanted to say, as I glanced around the room. There, in a dark corner, my father stood, a goblet of something red in his hand. Our eyes met. I held his gaze, breathing slowly. It was painful, to look at him, to see so much of myself in him, the man I should have adored and looked up to…
I felt nothing. Not even anger. I felt nothing, a gaping emptiness that mawed open in my chest, where love, where hate, should have resided.
I am going to kill you and never look back.
His eyes narrowed, like he could hear my intentions across the crowded ballroom, twinkling with lights and shimmering with silk and satin gowns.
In that moment there was only the two of us, the world sinking away as I squared my shoulders and cocked my chin. He would not be my defeat; I would be his.
Finally, he twitched. He lifted his glass, as if to toast me, and then looked away.
“You alright?” Finn was right there, his voice low. Eli made a mirroring sound, a half-grumble of concern. Instead of feeling weak, or wrung out though, I felt….
“I’m awesome,” I replied. “They have the best lemon curd tarts here, trust me. We need to get some of that in our faces, like now.” My enthusiasm startled a laugh out of Eli.
“Whatever the lady wants,” he said, and then scanned the room. “I think I see something resembling lemon tarts over there…”
More than five lemon tarts later, and at least fifty evil-eyed stares from what I could only imagine to be jealous, green-eyed witches, Finn tugged me out of Eli’s grip.
“A dance,” he said, “for me?” His eyes swept low. “Let’s show these stuffed shirts that I’ve got better breeding than any of them.” He smirked. “Well, I’m better at breeding.”
My lips parted.
“Finn,”I hissed, “seriously?”
He snickered and pulled me toward where the dance floor was inlaid, wood that met the slick marble slabs that made up the rest of the expansive ballroom.
“I have to make jokes,” he said, “I feel like I’m in a zoo exhibit, the way they’re all gawping at me like I’m about to rip their faces off.”
“Did the lemon tarts help?”
“Nah,” he smiled down at me, one of his hands cupping my waist, “but looking at you makes it all fade away.”
“Oh shut up,” I said, not meaning it, taking the moment for me and him. The rest of these monsters around us could wait for their turn. We were coming for them, but first, we were going to show them how good we looked together.
Seven
Darcy
“You’re tormenting me,” Eli said, with dark humor in his eyes as I left Finn’s arms to curl up against the more subdued brother.
“Tormenting you?” I could feel the press of stares, covert now that Wolfe had made his rounds, and was taking the lion’s share of the attention with Luka in tow. I’d never seen the community of witch’s so cowed by the presence of one witch. Wolfe commanded the room, sweeping in and distracting everybody for the time being.
I felt safer with him ther
e, him and Luka both. Now that I watched them interacting with each other, I could see the genetic similarities. Both were kinda weird.
“Where’d you go?” Eli breathed the words onto the back of my neck, the heat spreading across my skin. “You spend all evening dancing with my brother, and I can’t even have you for two seconds?”
For a moment I felt a flash of annoyance, and wanted to remind him that he could have me, permanently, forever and ever amen, but he’d chosen not to… but a took a breath.
Eli had his reasons. And they may have not been entirely fair, or logical, but he was passionate about the safety of the pack, and his own failures as a man and wolf. I was still trying to puzzle out how to convince him that he wasn’t, at least in my eyes, a failure. Any man who would take on an entire hostile wolf pack just to protect me? Dragonpack had nearly killed him, and he’d have died willingly to buy me time to get away.
In my mind, that moment had been sort of like a shadow-mark, or bond, tying us together forever.
I let my head rest on his shoulder, and his arms wrapped around me. We swayed slowly; the string quartet in the corner playing some sort of melody that hummed through the air and made me relax.
“I just want you to know that you’re enough,” I said. “Even if you don’t believe it inside… I believe it. I know it.”
He exhaled, his chest shifting against me as I pressed into him.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Inside and out.” His hands skimmed along my curves, weighing heavy on the small of my back. I glanced up at him. “Never thought a flat footed idiot like me would end up with an armful of something like you, sweetheart.”