“It doesn’t surprise me that you don’t remember anything,” Tidus continued.
There was a knock on the door and Silas rose quickly to his feet, making his way over, and then letting Whitney, Aeron, and Harlem into the Pairing House. Aeron was glamoured up, and Whitney had foregone her usual sigils although she was still wearing bones in her hair. Harlem was dressed in purple silk, clearly not a member of the partnership between the other two girls.
“We came to check on your friend,” Whitney said, finishing off a cigarette and then tossing it out the open screen door with a grin. She knew all of the guys except for Silas hated the smell, and yet, she did it anyway.
Aeron moved over to the table and paused next to the map while Faith pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. Maybe once I was able to explain away some of the girls’ idiosyncrasies, she wouldn't hate them so much?
“I’m … gonna stand here and have a smoke,” Silas murmured, heading outside and then dragging one of the rocking chairs underneath the dining room window. With the glass open, he could still feel like he was a part of the conversation. Now that I knew the history of his smoking and why he did it, it didn’t bother me so much. Maybe it never really had?
“Where did you get this map?” Aeron asked, her voice tight as she traced her fingers across the drawing Anubis had made of Tidus’ blood, and the roses created out of our magic. At first, I’d assumed it was the Forest Spirit’s magic that was bringing us all of these clues. At this point, I was starting to realize it might very well be mine.
“Why?” Anubis asked, standing up and moving over to stand beside her. “Do you recognize it?”
Aeron gave Faith a long, careful look and then raised her face to meet my gaze.
“I do,” she said and then shrugged her shoulders, like she was apologizing in advance for spilling the beans. “This mark right here.” Aeron pointed down at the spot where the red rose had bloomed. “This is the Seelie Court. Right here, this is the Unseelie Court. Friends, what you’re looking at is an overview of Faerie.”
Knowing that the two spots on that map belonged in Faerie really made me curious as to the existence of fate. It felt like everything was falling into place. We needed to visit the fae realm to return the cauldron, and now we had two more reasons to go, two more reasons that might be Montgomery’s missing parents, Tidus’ missing pack members.
“The wards start right here,” Anubis said as we stood on the western edge of pack property, right next to a fairly quiet rural road. There were houses that faced this road, like Lana and Leslie’s, with driveways that came right down to the street itself. It was the closest any member of Pack Ebon Red got to living among humans.
“I swear, it feels like my feet are buzzing when I stand here,” Che said, naked and brilliant, and not at all concerned that a human might drive by and see him in all his muscular glory. “It’s fucking charged.”
“There’s definitely magic here,” Anubis confirmed as my other mates took up positions on either side of me. Nic was on my left with Silas and Montgomery while Anubis, Che, Tidus, and Jax took up the other side. “And it’s still fairly powerful. No human would accidentally cross over it, not without prior permission from a pack member. Any Numinous would sense it from a mile away.”
“But it’s not strong enough to keep the Crone out,” I said, exhaling sharply. I had a symbol drawn on the back of my hand in blood, courtesy of Anubis. Well, the art was. The blood itself was a mix of mine and all seven of the boys, a couple random herbs, and a bit of fur from each of our wolf forms. I could see a few black, a few white, a few red strands in there, stuck to the now dried crimson-brown stain on my knuckles.
Thank Mother Earth that Faith had still been asleep while we’d stood around the dining room painting ancient werewolf runes on our skin in blood. I’d had enough issue trying to explain Aeron’s declaration of faerie maps last night. I’d decided to just stay true to my usual excuses and blamed Montgomery’s cosplaying and love of real life roleplaying games on the whole thing. Faith had actually bought that one hook, line, and sinker, and I felt a little like crap about it.
No, I felt a lot like crap about it.
What would she think of me when she found out how many lies I’d fed her over the years? Would we ever be able to build up true trust again?
“We’re ready when you are, Zara,” Anubis said quietly, giving my hand a squeeze.
Here we were, ready to practice our first real test of big magic, and I was such a tangled bundle of stress that I couldn’t even appreciate how momentous this all was. Wards that hadn’t been refreshed in years, and we were going to be the ones to do it.
‘She’s coming,’ a voice said inside my head. I knew right away that it was the Forest Spirit. Looking over my shoulder, I tried to spot him in the brown and green of the forest, but he was nowhere in sight. ‘The Crone; she’s coming.’
He didn’t chastise me for not prioritizing the cauldron. What was done was done, and there was nothing I could do about it now.
‘The Crone is coming,’ I repeated for the boys, feeling my heartbeat inside my throat. ‘We need to get these runes up now.’
Bending down, I drew my own rune into the dirt. It was shaped like a heart with an eight-pointed star inside of it. According to Anubis, it stood for prosperity, fertility, and physical peace. He’d chosen it because of the eight points in the star, and it seemed like the perfect place to start.
Each of my seven mates had a sigil of their own to draw before we locked hands and chanted in low, easy tones under our breath. We were chanting in that ancient wolf language, the one left long-dead, but that I vowed to learn from Anubis, that I vowed to teach my future pups.
It sounded like a mix of English and French, smooth but with a few hard sounds. It was almost like I knew the words as I spoke them, and yet I was certain I’d never heard them before.
Magic rose up in a wild wave around us, rustling the fronds of dewy ferns, shaking the thick canopy of trees above our heads. I hoped no human came down this road right now; I had no idea what the surge of power would do to their car … or what they might do when they came upon eight naked humans casting spells.
We’d probably get the police called on us.
The mark on my wrist throbbed, power shooting along the line of my men, like an electrical current. It skittered between us, jumping from person to person, making our hair stand on end, swirl around our heads. I just hoped my beautiful little braided bun would hold.
My rune was the first to glow, flaring bright and bathing my face in silver light. Nic’s was next, and then Anubis’. Power made its way down both sides of the line and lit up the perimeter of Pack Ebon Red like it was outlined in silver. It shimmered and then broke across the earth like a wave, rippling and shifting like luminescent fog. Ideally, we’d finish up here and then go repeat these symbols at all the cardinal and ordinal points of the property.
We didn’t get time for that.
The Crone crashed into the space in front of me, knocking me back with a wave of power as the new runes reacted to her presence. She was riding a broom and screaming at the top of her lungs, spiders hanging from the wide holes of her massive nostrils. Even with a barrier between us, I could smell the scent of decay and rot as she launched herself at our spell, yellowed claws tearing at the magic.
Nic helped haul me to my feet as Che took up the space in front of me, guarding me from an enemy that I wasn’t sure we could even beat.
‘Is she going to get in?’ Jax asked, now in wolf form, as we stood there and watched the disturbing image of the wrinkled, malformed monster throwing herself at our magic. I could feel my own power draining from the mark, leaking out of me like sand in an hourglass.
I imagined we were on a bit of a countdown.
“We need to get the cauldron and go,” I said, just in case the Crone got in. The thought of not being here if she did made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t know if
the pack—if my mother—could chase her off or defeat her without us here. The Crone was brimming with stolen werewolf magic, and Nikolina was bereft of it.
“We have to go,” I repeated, shifting and taking off through the trees. The boys followed after me, crashing through foliage and leaping over fallen logs as we made our way to the rusalka’s secret copse. That, too, had a layer of protection around it, but I imagined it wouldn’t take the witch long to find it. ‘Anubis, Che, Jax, head to the house and grab the mushrooms. Go for the big house as soon as you have them and we’ll meet halfway.’
It took me longer than it should’ve to find that spot; it was well-hidden. But as soon as I did, I shifted and shoved my way through the trees, calling out for Karma as I went. Her head peeped above the water and a split-second later, she was shoving the heavy metal cauldron out of the pond and letting it roll across the ground.
Montgomery lifted it up just as we all felt it … a crashing sensation, like a tidal wave of power pushing inward and drowning us.
The Crone had broken through the barrier. The question now, was, had she brought anyone with her?
We went as fast as we could with the heavy cauldron, carrying it between us and running through the trees up the hill toward the back of Nikolina’s house. Once we got close, we turned and made our way in the direction of the Pairing House next.
We only made it within sight of the house before shit really hit the fan.
I paused on the crest of the hill as the Mother appeared, dragging two wolves on chains along behind her. They smelled so badly of rot and blood and flesh that I couldn’t tell if they were alive or not.
“Those are my parents,” Monty said, gazing down at the alphas of Pack Ivory Emerald, all the color drained from his skin as he struggled to keep hold of the cauldron with Nic on his right side.
The Crone was standing between us and the Pairing House, blocking us from my other mates, and the mushrooms we’d need to cross into faerie. Slowly, she turned toward me, her massive nostrils flaring, her black-on-black eyes focusing directly on me.
‘My mate was unfortunate enough to be introduced to her stock pot, and it will be a few years yet before you're mature enough to replace me.’
That’s what the Forest Spirit had said to me. Standing here now, with that monster’s eyes locked firmly on my face, I knew that that was where I was headed next. Now that she was standing here, I had a feeling … that she wanted me more than she wanted the cauldron.
Somehow, someway she knew who I was, what my heritage was. A faerie treasure was nice, but the flesh of a demigod? Even better.
She came for me so quickly that I hardly had time to dive out the way, relying on my physical prowess over my new magic. I couldn’t beat the Crone at her own game—even if was a stolen game—but what I could do was make sure I was red in tooth and claw. I would fight here until my last breath.
The Crone turned on a dime, still riding her broom. She was at an advantage like that, zipping above me and raking her claws across my face. She turned in an instant and made another go at me. This time, I was pretty sure she was going to take off my fucking head.
‘Get the cauldron down the hill and get it out of here. If you can, one of you bring the mushrooms up this way. Maybe we can escape her in Faerie.’ There was the very real possibility there that those could be the last wolfspeak words I’d ever utter.
A howl shattered the air, one that I well recognized, and then Che was there, coming at the Crone with powerful bunches of muscle, launching himself in the air. He managed to knock the Crone from her broom at the same instant my mother and the Forest Spirit appeared, both in wolf form. He was so much bigger than her and she wasn’t a small wolf. Just a quick glance at them and it seemed like he was at least twice her size.
The Crone threw Che so hard that he hit me like a freight train, sending us both smashing into the deck of Nikolina’s house, splintering the wood into pieces. I struggled to get up, pushing the big dark body off of me and checking for a pulse. Che was still alive, but he was bleeding profusely from several places where the Crone’s claws had gotten him, bits of splintered wood sticking out of various parts of his body.
Nic put himself between me and the Crone, but she just smiled at him with big yellow teeth. If he died again … I wouldn’t survive it. I ran forward and put both palms on the warm side of his red-brown form, giving him a shove and sending him rolling down the hill. The Crone took advantage of the moment to wrap her fingers around my neck. She didn’t waste a second before she started to squeeze.
If the Forest Spirit hadn’t snapped her arm in half with his powerful jaws, I’d have died within seconds, my head popped clean off my shoulders. I collapsed to the ground as the two giants went at each other, tearing into one another’s bodies with abandon, spattering hot crimson across me as I raised a hand to my bruised throat and found Nic suddenly by my side, shifting into human form and holding several mushrooms out on his hand.
“Take it!” he screamed, but I couldn’t leave, not yet. I had to make sure all my mates were safe; I had to get Montgomery’s parents back and restore the seat of Pack Ivory Emerald’s power; I had to be certain that my pack wasn’t going to be slaughtered while I was gone.
I took four of the six mushrooms in Nic’s palm and sprinted over to Che, opening his massive jaws and shoving one inside his mouth. I clamped his jaws shut and squeezed them tight while he thrashed and fought against me, unconscious and injured with no idea that I was trying to help him.
Within the span of a few heartbeats, Che was gone and I was turning just in time to see the Forest Spirit lock his jaws around the Crone’s throat.
Down the hill from us, Montgomery was facing off against the Mother. As I ran for him, I saw the Crone thrust her hand through the Forest Spirit’s chest, tearing out his heart … just as he bit off her head. The two massive bodies crashed to the ground beside me, slow and groaning, both bleeding and dying. Magic surged up and out of my father, and a lot of it—too much of it—managed to hit me directly, knocking me to my knees.
My mother howled her rage and fear, diving into the mess and yanking my father’s massive body away from the witch who, even though she was beheaded, had just enough time to smile at me before her eyes went glassy and the last of the life drained out of her.
“Zara!” Nic called again, grabbing me by the shoulders. This time, it was he who shoved a bit of mushroom in my mouth and clamped his hand over my lips. I struggled, shoving him off of me and pushing to my feet, taking off toward Montgomery with every ounce of speed I possessed.
I didn’t make it halfway to him before the faerie magic swept up and over me, dragging me under, and tearing me away from my Pack Ivory Emerald mate.
Just before I blacked out completely, I saw his green eyes meet mine, a strength in them that I’d have to hold close to my chest until we were united again, until I could tuck him against my breast, kiss his lips, feel him thrusting inside my core.
When I woke up—minutes or maybe hours later—I found myself lying in the middle of a field with six of my seven mates. Six of them. I was naked and shaking, my throat bruised, and my future uncertain. The cauldron sat in the center of us all, a threat, a promise.
A groan sounded from behind me and I turned, tamping down a melancholy howl of pain in not knowing what was happening with Montgomery Graves of Pack Ivory Emerald, my king, my knight.
And that’s when I saw Faith, lying there in her pajamas on faerie soil.
My boys woke up around me, making their way to my side. Che groaned and collapsed his black furred body into my lap. Without even having to think about it, I dug my fingers into his fur and called on my magic to heal his wounds. Putting up the runes had drained me and the boys dry … the death of the Crone and the Forest Spirit had filled us all to the brim and then some.
As I healed Che, as Jax pushed his furry body against my back, and the other boys crowded close around me, Faith finally opened her
eyes and sat up.
There was me, naked, with two huge wolves pressed up against me, and four nude boys cuddling close.
She blinked several times before flicking her eyes up to the double moons in the sky.
Didn’t take a genius to realize that something … was very, very wrong.
“Zara,” she asked me, her voice quivering with fear. I wanted to comfort her, but for the moment, all I could do was sit there and stare. “Where the fuck are we?”
That was a very good question.
Where the fuck, in fact, were we?
“Zara,” Faith repeated, pulling her hand away from a big, fragrant rose blossom … with teeth. I hoped Faith mistook them for small white petals, and pushed the boys aside, so I could grab her hand and pull her to her feet. She came to me, trembling, just before the rose-thing lunged and sunk its teeth into the grass where she'd just been sitting.
Fortunately, she was too busy gaping up at the double moons to notice.
“Faith,” I said, but I was shaking and as close to a panic attack as I'd ever been. I'd told Tidus before, in the shower, that I was about to have one. Hah. How wrong was I. “Please stay close to me.”
“What the hell is … Is this some sort of eclipse or like … gas from a weather balloon or something?” Faith was scrambling for an explanation for the inexplicable. The question was: how did I break it to her without actually breaking her?
“We need to get moving,” Nic said, breath coming in harsh pants. I was almost mad at him for shoving that mushroom down my throat. Because of him, I was stuck here and Monty was left behind. If he dies, I'll truly find my breaking point. I knew that as surely as I knew that Nic had done the right thing—and that he was right yet again. We really did need to get moving. “And we need to go in wolf form. We can't run around Faerie naked and exposed.”
“Wolf what?” Faith asked, tearing her eyes from the sky and then blinking in surprise at Nic's naked form standing right there in front of her. She clamped a hand over her mouth and spun away. “What the hell is going on?!” Glancing over her shoulder yet again, Faith's brows went up and she looked away sharply. “Zara, what the fuck?!”
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