“Zara,” Nic warned, looking out across the field as Tidus, Anubis, and Silas moved over to stand beside us. Che and Jax were wearing their wolf shapes already, prowling a loose circle around our group and checking for threats beyond the angry rose. When it snapped at Jax, he snapped right back and severed the vine connecting it to its thorny bush. “Do it or I'll have to.”
“Don't speak to our alpha so disrespectfully,” Anubis chastised, but his voice shook, too. What had just happened? What the hell had we just been through? I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around it.
I think my father is dead. The thought hit me like a bolt of lightning, but this was not the time nor the place to process that sort of heavy revelation. Each second we stood here, holding a valuable faerie treasure, we were prone to attack.
“Faith,” I said, moving around to stand in front of her as she pulled her hand away from her mouth, looking at me like she'd never seen me before, like I was the worst sort of stranger: one she used to know but didn’t anymore.
“This is a dream,” she declared, coming to the most logical conclusion. I mean, one minute she was sleeping in the Pairing House, and the next, she was lying in a field with her naked best friend and some giant wolves. “I'm dreaming.”
“You're not dreaming,” I told her, my body shaking. Just behind Faith, several of the other boys shifted forms, leaving me and Nic alone, wearing our naked human flesh, and standing beside our clueless—and about to be shocked shitless—best friend. “Faith, I need you to look me in the eye, and I need you to listen.”
“I'm so dreaming,” she said, nodding her chin and crossing her arms over her pale yellow pj's. I noticed her sliding her own sleeve up, and pinching her skin with two slightly sharp manicured nails. Faith was trying to wake herself up. Unfortunately for her, for any of us, there was no waking from this nightmare.
My hands locked onto her shoulders, and I looked into her eyes hard, pleading with her to listen, to pay attention. Her life quite literally depended on it.
'Forgive me, Alpha,' Jax said, trotting over to stand beside me, pink tongue lolling, blue eyes flicking from my face to Faith's. 'I gave her the mushroom. There were witches at the Pairing House; I had no choice.'
'I appreciate your quick thinking,' I told him, putting my right hand on the top of his head and leaving the left on Faith's shoulder.
“This is Jaxson Kidd,” I told her, and she raised both brows at me like I'd completely lost my mind. “And those other wolves behind you, those are the rest of the guys.” I nodded my chin in their direction, and Faith glanced back, letting out a small shriek and then hopping away to stand beside me, her dark eyes wide, hands trembling. “We're werewolves, Faith.”
“This is the weirdest dream ever,” she grumbled, turning away and stalking through the grass. I snatched her arm before she could get too far from us, my fingernails digging into her, tears pricking my eyes. This was not how I wanted to tell her. Fuck, I never wanted to tell her at all. This was one of my worst nightmares come true. Not only was my best friend no longer human, but I'd turned her into a werewolf against her will. I'd dragged her into the world of the Numinous with dire consequences, and even worse prospects.
“This is not a dream!” I shouted, my voice echoing across the empty field. Here and there, flowers bobbed in the breeze. Some were probably just that, just flowers. The rest were probably death traps just waiting to pull us in. The moons above us cast plenty of silver light to see by up close, but the distant horizon was nothing but a watercolor blur. “It's not a dream, Faith, and we're in serious trouble here. There are people after us, and if they catch us, we're all dead.”
“Dead?” she asked, blinking and shaking her head, putting her fingers up to her temples on either side. “Why are you and Nic naked? Whose dogs are these?”
“This isn't going to happen the way you want it to,” Nic told me, storming through the grass, and then grabbing Faith's arm. As soon as she turned to look at him, he started to shift, his skin rippling with red-brown fur, his mouth extending into a muzzle with sharp, sharp teeth. Faith's lips parted, her eyes widened, but no scream came out.
Instead, she collapsed to her knees in front of him, coming face to face with her first Ebon Red wolf.
'Get on my back,' Nic commanded in wolfspeak, projecting so that every one of us could hear. Everyone … including Faith. Her hands clamped over her ears as she stared Nic down, quivering, mouth opening and closing in silent disbelief.
“We need some way to transport the cauldron,” I said, leaning down and tugging on Faith's sleeve. “Can we have your pj's? I promise I'll buy you new ones.”
“My … my pj's?” Faith whispered, still staring at Nic. As much as I wanted to be slow and gentle with her right now, we didn't have the time or leisure. I reached over and started unbuttoning her top, yanking the long-sleeved flannel pajama shirt off her arms as she yelped and clamped her hands over her chest. At least she was still wearing a camisole underneath.
Rising to my feet, I moved over to the cauldron and tied the shirt around the top, just under the rim. Giving it a little tug, I managed to drag it across the ground. This would have to do.
“I need the pants, too,” I decided, heading back over to my friend. This time, when I tried to steal her pajamas, she fought back, shoving at me violently, eyes brimming with tears.
“No! Don't touch me!” she screamed, but I didn't have time to argue. No, not only had I dragged my friend into a huge mess, but I wasn't even going to be able to sit down with her the way I'd wanted, lead her into this slowly, step by step.
Poor Faith Cassidy was being dropped right into the deep-end.
“I'm sorry,” I murmured as I wrestled her pants from her and left her sitting there in the grass in just a pair of pale pink panties and a cami. I tied the pants around the cauldron as well and put one end into Tidus' mouth. Silas grabbed the end of the shirt sleeve, and together, they started forward, dragging the cauldron through the field.
It was not easy work, but at least there were seven of us; we could take turns. Seven when there should be eight, I thought with a horrible pang inside. My wolf wanted to throw her muzzle to the sky and howl her pain, but who knew what sort of fae I'd attract if I did?
“Zara!” Faith snapped as I paused in front of her. She was getting angry now, furious really. “I'm not into this cosplay shit, and you know it.”
“I'm sorry, Faith,” I told her, staring into her eyes as I felt the change ripple over me. “I'm really fucking sorry.”
My wolf tore through me in a rage, ready to fight, desperate to find her mate. If I wasn't careful, my wolf-y tendencies would take over and drown out my logicality. Faith was screaming now, but we'd long since passed our expiration date for this location.
Middle of the night. Dark field in some random Faerie locale. Roses with teeth.
It was most definitely time to go.
I knelt down beside Faith, bowing my front half by tucking my paws in, like a horse or something.
'If you want to live, please get on my back.' My voice was tired, drained, even in wolfspeak. Faith looked at me like I was a monster, but then a sound broke through the quiet night, like something screaming from a rotten mouth. It was ragged and broken, and most definitely the sound of a creature none of us wanted to meet.
Faith made a strangled sort of whimper and clambered onto my back, sobbing and cursing at the same time as she snatched thick handfuls of fur and clung on for dear life.
As I stood up, I lifted my nose to scent the air, hoping for some clue on where to go—or where not to go. We hadn't exactly had a lot of time to plan. From the south—or what my wolf senses perceived to be south—there was the sweet, cloying scent of rot.
We'd go north.
'Let's at least put some space between us, and whatever that thing is,' I told the boys, making sure my voice projected into Faith's head as well. She whimpered and curled forward, pressing her face to my neck. This wasn't going to be eas
y. Hell, it would probably scar her for life, but there were no good choices here, only ones that were less tragic.
'Your guess on direction is as good as mine,' Anubis admitted, 'at least for now. If we come across any actual landmarks, I might be of more help.'
'Your friend is close to losing it,' Tidus murmured, his sandy-gold form trotting along with the bit of pant leg clutched in his jaws. I wasn't sure how long Faith's poor pj's would last, but it was the only idea I had to carry the cauldron while still being able to keep our wolf shapes. 'Her panic is making me feel panicked.'
'It's okay,' I told Tidus, trying to soothe him by bumping my body along the side of his. 'Once we get out of here, we'll figure this all out.' I could tell my words were soothing to him. Good thing, since they were hardly soothing to me.
In all my life, I'd never felt so out of control. Well, except for maybe the night Nic died. But this was a close second. I'd said once we get out of here, but I wasn't entirely certain we would.
We continued across the field for hours, hours, changing places so that no one person was stuck hauling the cauldron for long. It made my mouth bleed, and the metallic scent seemed to carry on the wind. Who knew what sort of wicked fae we were attracting?
I let out a snort of relief when we hit the edge of a forest, its depths dark and inviting, limbs swaying in a breeze. The suns were peeking their orange and yellow heads over the horizon, bathing the field in early morning light.
Being caught out in the open during the day was just as dangerous as being out in the open at night. Faerie was one, big death trap, waiting to suck us all in and consume us.
“I think I might throw up,” Faith groaned, squeezing my pelt so hard, I knew I'd have bruises later. We trotted just inside the shadowed canopy of the trees, and I paused, kneeling down to give Faith a break. She stumbled away from me, throwing up in the bushes.
'She's still detoxing,' Anubis said, collapsing into the leaves and lying on his side, panting heavily. Bits of pale yellow pajama fabric were stuck between his sharp, white teeth. 'That, and she's creeping closer to the change. I don't know what'll happen if we're here during the full moon, instead of at home, but either way, I don't think she has long.' I shifted as Anubis spoke, directing his voice so that Faith couldn't hear him.
I padded over to her, and she turned, jumping back slightly at the sight of me in human form.
“We can only take a short break,” I said, my voice an apology. Jax pushed up against my side, my fingers curling in his black-speckled-white fur for comfort. “I'm sorry, Faith. As soon as we get a moment—”
“Everything makes so much sense now,” she whispered, collapsing back against a tree that was heavy with shiny, purple fruit. I dared eat none of it, despite how hungry and thirsty I was. Nearby, a cool pool of water sparkled, big green lily pads drifting across the surface. We didn't dare go near that either.
“Makes sense?” I asked as Faith avoided my nakedness with her eyes. Now that she was one of us, she'd have to find a way to get used to it though I was by no means pushing her now.
“All of your … your weirdness.” She looked back at me with wide, wide eyes. “I knew something was going on with you. I just … I just didn't know it was this.” She tucked her legs up close to her body and wrapped her arms around them, her expression half fear … and half disappointment. “I'm still holding out hope that this is a dream though.” I smiled, almost hating her natural sweetness in that moment. She was too forgiving, too nice to survive in my world.
I stood up and stretched my arms over my head as Tidus padded up to sit beside Faith, and then shifted. She jumped as he offered a smile, her eyes wide.
“Mind if I sit here for a moment?” he asked, and she nodded, albeit reluctantly.
'We need a plan. We can't just keep walking with no idea of where to go,' Che supplied, his voice a grumble as his huge black form trotted back and forth in the clearing, violet eyes searching for trouble.
'No shit,' Silas murmured, head low as he sniffed his way along what looked like a game trail. He must not have liked what he smelled because he reared back, sneezed, and then shook his dark pelt out so that it rippled in the dappled sunlight. 'But what do you suppose we do? We're tied down with a human, and a giant ass metal cauldron. We have no clothes and no clue.'
Faith shivered as the sound of wolfspeak buzzed through the group.
“We have magic, too,” I supplied, studying the mark on my wrist. It seemed to throb as I looked at it, and I squeezed my fingers into a closed fist. That surge of power I'd felt when the Crone had ripped the Forest Spirit's heart from his chest, it seemed to throb through me, like I was the proud new owner of magic I never wanted.
“Do we need to have sex to make it work?” Tidus asked, his voice soft and threaded through with panic that I knew wasn't his own. He was channeling Faith hard. We might have to figure out a way to tamp down on their connection just a bit. “Because I'm not sure I could get it up right now.” He chuckled, and Faith scooted several inches away. I almost smiled. Usually it was me getting creeped out over intimate conversations between her and her current boyfriend. How the tables had turned.
“I don't know,” I said, staring at the black-green rose tattoo and exhaling as I lifted my eyes up. “But this is our best bet. We don't exactly have any mushrooms to go home with, now do we?”
I moved over to the cauldron and gazed into it, at that sparkling red liquid that never seemed to spill, no matter how much we sloshed it around. The smell of it was almost too pungent for me to handle, the sharp reek of magic heavy in the air above it like a cloud.
“I'm sorry,” Nic said, shifting back and looking at me with dark, pleading eyes. “It was all I could think to do. We had to get the cauldron out of there. I had more mushrooms, but …”
“It's okay,” I said, and then I moved over to give him a hug. He put his arms around me and squeezed back. So much had happened in those last, final moments, I couldn't blame him. Frankly, I was just glad we were all still alive, and that Coven Triad hadn’t managed to reclaim their stolen treasure. “Let's just play the cards we've been dealt.”
I squatted low and swiped aside some dried leaves, creating a bare patch of dirt to work with.
'What are you planning on doing?' Anubis asked, whuffling my hair and licking the side of my ear.
“Trying to make a new map,” I told him, glancing his way and grinning. “Think you could shift for me?”
Anubis' dark fur rippled and drew back, leaving the tan-skinned, blue-haired boy crouching beside me. Without preamble, I reached forward and grabbed either side of his face, leaning in for a kiss. Our mouths met with fire and lust, and the primal urge to mate surged through me. I was not, however, going to traumatize Faith any further. I'd been around a time or two when she'd gotten hot and heavy with a guy, and I swore I'd never subject her to that sort of anguish myself.
As Anubis and I kissed, power surged between us, as balanced but as unforgiving as the Forest Spirit himself. It had that same sense to it that he had, like there was no good or evil, just a score that should always remain zero. The earth must stay balanced.
Pulling away from my mate, I shifted a claw and then put a small cut on my wrist to draw blood.
I let it dribble onto the earth, and then waited, hoping for roses, hoping for a map … but expecting nothing. As soon as my blood hit the ground, however, I felt it, this sharpness in the air that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight.
“Boys!” I shouted, but it was too little, too late.
A body slammed into mine and sent me flying. I shifted as I went, so that when I landed, I was in wolf form and ready to find my feet. My lips were pulled back in a snarl as I spun and found a fae woman standing in the dirt patch where my blood had just been spilled, sweeping her foot across it and lifting sloe-eyes to my face.
“Down, girl,” she whispered, her voice like the glittering of stars in a night sky, foreign, ethereal, distant. This, this was the
Queen of the Unseelie Court in the flesh. She moved over to the cauldron as the boys snarled, surrounding her with raised hackles and white teeth, all of them wearing their beast forms yet again. The thing was, if the queen wanted to take the cauldron, we couldn't do much to stop her. “I received your message, and I accept your gift.” She smiled and leaned down, cupping her hands in the shimmering red liquid. The queen sipped it and shivered, curling her lip up like there was something off about it that she didn't like.
“It's been tainted,” she sneered, glancing back toward me with the perfect dark arches of her brows raised, as if I had had something to do with the cauldron's corruption. “That's to be expected, I suppose …”
The Unseelie Queen turned to meet my gaze head-on, alpha female to alpha female, essentially. My boys didn't like it, but I held up a hand to quiet them down. Poor Faith just sat and trembled against the base of the tree. I couldn't exactly blame her; the might of a faerie queen was something to behold.
Aeron, apparently, was the striking image of the Unseelie Queen, save two important features. The first, were her wings, these diaphanous spans of glittering gray and lavender that I knew her majesty had not been born with. They smelled nothing like her and, in fact, reeked of the strong, metallic bite of raw magic. That, and I knew sidhe were not blessed with wings of their own … but that on occasion, they liked to steal them.
I wondered briefly what poor creature was out there, missing its most important appendages. Unfortunately for it, I didn’t have the time to worry about anyone else’s anguish.
The second way in which Aeron differed was so easy to spot, I bet even Faith noticed: power, pure and simple. Like Nikolina was to me, the Unseelie Queen was on a whole different level than her daughter.
“I suppose I can't blame you for tainting it,” she murmured, swirling her fingers around in the glimmering magic of the cauldron's waters. She bared her teeth at me in an expression that I could only hope was meant to be a smile.
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