“I think I might be close to a panic attack,” I told him, looking into eyes the color of a foggy morning, this beautiful gray-blue color that was almost ethereal in nature and yet, clearly a product of Mother Earth’s love. “Maybe the closest I’ve ever been in my life.”
Tidus’ face softened as he took my shoulders and turned me around so that I was the one with my back against the wall.
“Relax,” he whispered as I closed my eyes. Tidus pressed his lips to my shuttered lids and then worked his way down the side of my face until he found my mouth. It was dark in the bathroom, the lights off, the trees slanting shadows across the windows and blocking the light. I could still see him, of course, when I opened my eyes. I was werewolf; the darkness was nothing but a different shade of beautiful to me. “We’ll get through this together.”
His smile, when he gave it, was devastatingly handsome.
“I think I can finally see what my purpose is here,” Tidus said, leaning in close to me and putting his forehead to mine. He was a bit taller, leaning down to meet my face with a nuzzle. His hands were warm as he ran them down my arms to my elbows. “Maybe it’s to take care of you? I’ve always wanted a mate; I waited my whole life for one.”
“You’ve found one,” I told him, putting my hands on his arms and giving his muscles a squeeze. Surfer muscles. I found them ridiculously sexy. “At the end of the Pairing, you’ll stay, right?”
“If you want me, I’ll stay,” he said with a small exhale, leaning down to capture my mouth. I think we both knew we didn’t have a lot of time here, so I wasn’t surprised when Tidus reached down and unbuttoned my jeans, pushed them low on my hips and then helped me kick them off of one leg. Once I was free, I helped Tidus out of his own jeans, happy to see that he followed the traditional werewolf rule of thou shalt not wear underwear. The only people I knew who generally broke that rule were Nic and on occasion, me. Maybe we spent too much time with humans?
I slid my hand down the length of Tidus’ cock and gave it a small squeeze as he picked me up like it was nothing and pushed my back to the wall of the bathroom, his bright sunshine-y smell lightening my mood just enough that I could appreciate this moment with him. I had to keep doing that, loving every normal moment I got because there might not be a lot of them left. I’d never know when a kiss with one of my mates would be the last, if a smile from a friend would turn into a distant memory that I could never recreate.
“What’s your tattoo mean?” I whispered as I wrapped my legs around Tidus’ midsection and held him tight. He reached between us and guided himself to my opening.
“It means that sometimes, the very best things are locked up tight—and that the only way to get in is if someone trusts you enough to give you the key.” Tidus thrust into me, pushing me against the wall with his hips, making us both cry out.
Our mouths clashed together as we ground our bodies in a simple, primitive dance, one that had been acted out billions of times before and would continue to be performed a billion more. But each time was unique. The actual act might be the same, but the feelings of the people involved were so different, it was impossible for it to ever truly be recreated.
Our mating was fast and quick and hot, bodies rubbing together, sounds escaping our lips quickly stifled by each other’s mouths. We moved and ground our hips until I stole an orgasm from Tidus, taking his seed deep within me before I dropped my hand to my clit and finished myself off shortly after.
As soon as we finished, I checked my wrist. Sure enough, I had vines crawling up my arm, two perfect blossoms—one red and one black—clinging to the green. Tidus and I were connected by the vines, magic swarming our bodies, making both of us break out in goose bumps.
“We need to get to Faith,” I said as he carefully sat me back on my feet. I just kicked my pants off; there was no time to fix them or clean up and I wouldn’t risk breaking the vines that wound around my arm and Tidus’.
We headed back into the bedroom and approached the mattress, kneeling low and putting our hands on Faith’s body. As soon as I felt the magic surge from me into her, it tried to come back again. She wasn’t a mate, wasn’t marked by me or bonded to me. But I shoved my magic into Tidus and then tore the vines on our arms apart, pulling away and leaving him with both fragrant blossoms.
Montgomery passed the silver knife over Faith’s sweaty, thrashing body, the keening noises tearing from her throat raising the hair on the back of my neck.
“Be careful,” Monty warned as Tidus took the knife, staring at his reflection in the silver blade before he lifted it to his throat … and cut. Red rivers ran down his neck, staining his white t-shirt with crimson as he coughed and choked, clamping a hand over the wound. I remembered that pain from just a few days ago, that sudden fear that this was it, this was the end.
Before we could take the ritual any further, I leaned over and peeled Tidus’ fingers away from his wound, checking the edges to make sure they were healing. It was faint—he had used a silver blade, after all—but I could see the skin knitting with a slow, easy precision.
“Okay, go for it,” I choked out, hating the sight in front of me as Tidus leaned over Faith’s body and Montgomery held her lips open. Anubis slipped two pieces of wood into her mouth on either side, keeping her teeth from biting down. They were both spatulas from the kitchen, long ones that protruded from Faith’s mouth in an almost comical sort of way.
But there was nothing funny about what was happening.
My mate was bleeding profusely and my friend was dying, even as his hot blood poured down her throat. He clutched her right hand with his left, the vines tracing across his skin and onto Faith’s, the petals from both flowers scattering in a supernatural wind, the silky red and black blossoms falling off and landing on my friend’s body. They came to rest in a very purposeful looking decoration.
As soon as that happened, some of the blood from Tidus’ neck spattered when he coughed, creating … another map.
“Get your phone!” I told Nic, but he was way ahead of me, snapping several photos before Faith thrashed and did her best to scream past the wooden blockades between her teeth. The blossoms fell away, but we had the images saved.
On the previous map, we’d had one single black and red rose. This time, we had two distinct locations. Two more spots where our wolves were being held captive? Or something else.
“Get the vampire maps from upstairs,” I called out, not daring to move from this spot. I wasn’t leaving Faith or Tidus until this was all over. Silas did as he was asked, heading upstairs, the heavy fall of his boots on the steps echoing around the den. There was a pause as he dug through the upstairs drawer—which just happened to be my underwear drawer—and then the sound came again as he made his way back.
I didn’t watch as the boys opened up the maps on the floor and tried for the same logic we’d used to pinpoint the location of the missing wolves last time. Instead, I waited while Tidus bled himself out for several long minutes, twice as long as I bled when the asshole angel had slit my throat. Tidus was a trooper though, fighting through the pain until the wound was fully healed and then slumping back against the wall, his face pale and his breathing shallow.
I made sure to cuddle up close to him, trusting Monty to take care of Faith while Anubis brought Tidus some lunch meat, water, juice, and a box of semi-stale doughnuts.
“It’s nothing fancy, but this should help you feel better,” he said as Tidus downed the orange juice first, chugged the water, and then did his best to eat all of the food.
“This isn’t going to be as easy as last time,” Nic said, sitting back on his heels and glancing over at me. I nodded, but the map was something I’d have to worry about later. For now, Tidus and Faith were my only concerns.
For several hours, Nic, Che, Silas, and Jax pored over the maps while Monty took care of Faith, I took care of Tidus, and Anubis did his best to help everyone, grabbing food from the kitchen, blankets upstairs for Faith,
even cleaning up the spilled blood on the sheets. Between him and Montgomery, they managed to change the sheets as well as Faith’s clothes, putting her into a pair of my pajamas.
Tidus fell asleep, curled against me on the floor, and we stayed that way until well after nightfall.
Faith had stopped sweating, thrashing, and keening, but going on eight hours after the ritual, when she hadn’t woken up, I was starting to get worried again.
Carefully, I pushed Tidus off and propped up the blanket Anubis had given us to keep his head off the floor. I stood up and made my way over to the bed, looking down at my friend and then pausing to scent the air. My nostrils flared as I tried to breathe past the reek of blood and human sweat. Bending low over Faith, I sniffed along her skin … and found just the faintest hint of werewolf.
“Montgomery,” I whispered, just before Faith blinked those long lashes of hers, opening her brown eyes to stare up at me. My heart sputtered, thundered, tore in half and reformed all over again as she looked around the room and then sat up slightly, giving an exaggerated yawn and then rubbing her hand over her eyes.
“Zara,” she asked me, voice husky from all of her unconscious screaming, “why aren’t you wearing any pants?”
Faith spent the rest of the day, and all of Sunday, resting in the den.
I had yet to explain the whole situation to her. Instead, I’d made the excuse that she’d gotten severe food poisoning and that we’d had doctors in to check her over while she was passed out. Now, I was being treated to a nonstop rant about how True Fantasies was going to get a serious lawsuit or at the very least, a totally outrageous Yelp review.
The pants thing … had been a little harder to explain. I’d simply said I was on my period, started bleeding on my pants, and came rushing out of the bathroom when I’d heard she was awake. Since she’d seen me in questionable nude situations before, she’d simply narrowed her eyes and accepted my explanation. For now.
But by the end of Sunday night, she was starting to smell like werewolf, and for the first time in days, was actually able to stand up and take a shower on her own without my helping her.
“We don’t have a lot of time to wait around,” I said, sitting in a chair in the kitchen while Montgomery brushed my hair out and braided it again. I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but I liked having his fingers in my hair so much that I was surreptitiously pulling apart his careful braiding so that he’d have to redo it for me. The amusement in his green eyes when I asked for another touch-up told me he might suspect just that, but I’d be damned if I’d admit it. “We have to move the cauldron now. The new moon is tomorrow night. If the Crone is going to come for us, if our wards really are as weak as Majka said, then we have to go in the morning. Aeron’s already assured me that she’s sent a messenger to warn the Unseelie Queen that we’re coming—and that we have a gift for her.”
“We could also try to reset the wards ourselves,” Anubis said, flipping through yet another book that I couldn’t read. “There’s plenty of literature on that, and there are wolves around who were alive to see them put up. Unlike …” He trailed off and glanced over at Tidus. According to the Alpha-Son of Pack Amber Ash, the connection to Faith was a little … unnerving. He knew when she was awake, when she was hungry, when the toxins were making her feel sick. Slowly, her new wolf blood was taking over and undoing all the damage the Seelie Prince had done, but it would be a few more days yet before she was back to normal.
And, according to my grandmother’s book, several more before she could shift.
I was going to have to have that conversation … soon. This wasn’t something I could put off, just like the cauldron wasn’t something I could ignore.
“Maybe we try to restore the wards and then we go to Faerie,” Nic said, pulling my right foot into his lap and massaging my arch. God, he knew how damn good that felt, didn’t he? I gave him a look and he quirked a small smile at me.
‘It never gets old, touching you like this,’ he said, the buzz of our wolfspeak drawing all the boys’ attention our way.
“But what about the map?” Montgomery asked, exhaling, his breath stirring my hair as Che, Silas, and Jax continued searching through the maps, looking for a spot that might match to the new design we’d been given. “If that really does show us where the missing wolves are, we need to act on it now. If we bolster the wards to keep the Crone out then that buys us time to check out those two spots before we leave for Faerie.” Montgomery gave me a tight little braid that he twisted up on the back of my head in a complicated little coiffed ‘do that I could see in the reflection of the dining room window.
Wow. Pretty sure my hair had never been so fancy in all my life.
“If we go to Faerie now,” he continued as Tidus shifted uncomfortably, probably in response to something about Faith. Maybe she’d woken up from her latest nap? If I said I wasn’t a tad jealous of his new connection to her, I’d be lying. But even if this was permanent, it was a small price to pay for Faith’s life. “Who knows when we’ll be back. And what if we don’t come back?”
Monty stepped back to admire his handiwork.
“The longer we leave our wolves in their hands, the more lives that could be lost,” I said, thinking about the bodies we’d dragged from that warehouse. And now that we’d stolen Coven Triad’s cauldron, that we’d taken those other wolves from Kingdom Ironbound, there was a chance that what was happening to our pack members was even worse.
“She’s coming down the stairs,” Tidus whispered, and we all went silent. I stood up and made my way over to the staircase. It took a minute for Faith to hobble over to the door and open it. She seemed surprised to see me standing there.
“I’m starving,” she said, giving me a smile and putting her foot on the first step. “I just called my dad and we both decided that it’d be best if I stayed here for a while. He said the detectives are working on a new lead in my mother’s disappearance.” I grimaced, but it wasn’t quite time for that conversation. I needed Faith to be completely healed first. We hadn’t talked about Malak, not yet. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that she didn’t remember him at all. Faerie magic was a tricky, elusive sort of thing. It was possible the prince had glamoured Faith so that she didn’t remember him unless she was in his presence.
“Do you want me to bring you something instead?” I asked as she continued down the stairs. She was as stubborn as I was though and unless I wanted to physically control her—I never wanted to do that again—then there was really nothing I could do to stop her from moving around so much.
“No, I need to get out of that room. Just knowing you guys have crazy orgies in there grosses me out.”
“We don’t have orgies,” I said, but then I paused in a way that immediately drew my best friend’s attention.
“Oh?” she asked, blinking long lashes at me. She’d somehow found her way into my very small and rarely used make up collection, slathering her lashes with dark mascara. “You don’t?”
“What’s your definition of an orgy?” I asked, and her eyes got so wide, I swear they were about to fall right out of her skull.
“Uh, according to the Internet, an orgy involves eight or more people engaged in sexual acts together, whether or not they all interact with one another.” Faith paused and tilted her head to one side, the thick heavy length of her braid hanging over one shoulder. Monty had done it up all fancy for her again. “So … have you had one up there or not?”
“If you’re going to waste all that effort coming down the stairs, just hurry up and I’ll make you something to eat,” I said, moving into the dining room, knowing that it was going to take Faith a while to finish her descent down the stairs.
“Don’t you walk away from me, Zara Vodja Castille!” she called out as I rolled my eyes to the ceiling.
‘Can I tease her, please?’ Che asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing his ankles on the tabletop. Based on the smug, look of asshole scr
ibbled all over his face, I was pretty sure I’d have to put him on his back to get him to take a no from me seriously.
Yet another issue I had to figure out. Did I make Che submit to me—I could, if I wanted—or did I put some serious thought into his talk about equals. In every pairing, there was always a dominant female or male. But didn’t I want to take the packs in a new direction, one focused more on tolerance and less on the fragile yet brutal game of dominance?”
“Hey, you,” Che said as Faith slumped into the chair at the end of the table. “Sorry our orgy bed is bugging you out.”
“So you did have an orgy then?” she asked as I opened the fridge and buried my head inside. “Zara! When did this happen?”
“Thursday,” Che supplied happily, his voice this low purr that made muscles low in my belly tighten. How could I be so frustrated by him and so attracted to him at the same time? “Zara screwed all seven of us, but I feel like for an orgy, we could’ve amped it up a little. I think Jax wants to go down on Tidus.”
“Even if I did, would you have a problem with that?” Jax purred right back at him, giving Che this intense stare that was clearly a challenge. “Or are you as homophobic as that asshole?”
“What asshole?” Faith asked, her cheeks coloring slightly. “You mean Owen? I can remember him saying some pretty inappropriate stuff, but I can’t remember why. And then he broke up with me and I can’t remember why that happened either. He won’t tell me; he won’t even text me back.”
The boys exchanged looks, but it was Tidus who answered.
“You were really sick at that point,” he explained as I grabbed some lunchmeat and veggies from the fridge and then snatched a loaf of fresh bread from the cabinet. I wasn’t much of a chef, but surely Faith could appreciate a carefully crafted sandwich? All the ingredients I was using came directly from Pack Ebon Red property. The lunchmeat was nitrite and nitrate free; the vegetables were organic and non-GMO; the bread was baked onsite.
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