Jax had dropped her hand and was now rummaging around in the shed he’d led her to. He chuckled to himself when he heard Zane’s proclamation. He ought to have warned the commander, knowing his fiercely independent mate wouldn’t take kindly to it. The thought of her venom fuelled reaction excited him though, he had missed that fire.
“I’m faking my own death, now? I don’t need your protection. I’ve been taking care of myself for years, that’s not about to change because of some fucking prophecy. Get this fucking collar off me, Jax. I’m out of here!”
“I’ll help you get it off, Rory, but you’re not going anywhere.” He held up a blow torch in one hand and a pair of bolt cutters in the other and grinned, playing on her temper. “Trust me, baby?”
“With my life? Yes. With my heart? Not so much.” She narrowed her eyes at him.
“That’s something else we’re going to talk about, but first things first.” He lit the blow torch.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa no fucking way, Jax! You are not going to hold a blow torch to my sister’s throat, you fucking maniac!” Marco launched himself at Jax and the blow torch fell to the ground. Hunter grabbed for it and put the flame out, while Jax and Marco rolled around on the floor briefly.
Aurora rolled her eyes and walked out of the shed. The urge to spread her wings and fly was growing by the second. She felt closed in, trapped in a situation that she knew nothing about and didn’t hold out any hope of getting information any time soon. She needed to clear her head. She needed to fly.
Jax followed closely, as she’d expected him to. “Take the collar off, Rory.”
“What?”
“You heard me, take it off. You’re getting on my nerves with all this poor me, stuck in a silver collar crap. You’re not a victim, you’ve never been a victim. So, take it off.”
“Oh, I’m getting on your nerves? Well, you could always fuck off again. I don’t recall inviting you back into my life.” She turned away from him.
“Don’t turn your back on me,” he was relentless. He grabbed her arm and she whirled to face him. Anger lit her features and seeing the hint of the fire driven girl he once knew, he continued to push. “You can get that thing off if you want to. You’re not allergic to silver, there aren’t any exceptions to that rule, it’s simple. You’re either allergic or not. You are not. Take the collar off.”
“Don’t you think I would have done it by now, if I could?” Her eyes blackened and the raven tried to surface.
Jax gave a satisfied grin, his hunch confirmed. “Well, I dunno, maybe you wanted to be his prisoner. Maybe, you were turned on by the idea of being his pet. Did he put a collar and lead on you? Did you let him parade you around the castle, like some submissive kitten? Were you weak for him, Rory?”
“Get the fuck out of my sight, Jax!”
“Take the fucking collar off, Rory! Now!” Jax pushed a hint of his alpha power into the order, showing her that he was serious.
The collar began to feel hot against her skin. Jax continued to hurl abuse at her, his words fuelling her anger as she concentrated on the collar. The angrier she became, the hotter the collar grew. The metal at her throat began to loosen. She reached up to wrap her fingers around it, finding a gap between it and her neck that hadn’t been there before. She gave a quick pull, heard a click and the collar dropped to the ground with a clatter. The air closed in around her, suffocating her and her head began to spin. Reaching her hands out for balance, she stumbled backwards into Jax.
“Rory?” Jax’s concerned voice was by her ear.
“I’m fine,” she told him, breathlessly, leaning back against his solid frame and taking advantage of his support until the dizziness passed.
After a few moments, he turned her to face him and wrapped his arms around her, allowing her to lean on him once again and she looked up into her mate’s eyes. A simple look between them was all she needed to know that Jax had deliberately escalated the situation. He’d pushed her, in the way only he could, into using her own power to get the collar off.
-How did you know?
-A hunch. You’re more powerful than you know, wild thing, you just had to believe it yourself.
“How did you do that?” Marco gasped.
“Ask him.” She glanced at Jax then looked up at the sky. “I need to get up there.”
Aurora stepped out of Jax’s arms, yanked the sweatshirt she was wearing over her head and ignoring Jax’s protests and attempts to cover her, she let her wings expand from her back. Her raven wanted out and she was happy to oblige. They had been caged for too long. The shift came on quickly, her body shrinking and reforming into the bird. The raven shot into the sky, moving too quickly to be stopped. Circling the area once, she gained a bird’s eye view of the safe house and its grounds. The cacophony of shouting, calling, ordering, and begging her to come back down faded into the distance and she allowed her bird take over for a while.
The house was set in its own grounds; a swimming pool with a pool house, an orchard and other out-buildings dotting the land. Concealed among the sloping roofs that covered the large house was a roof terrace. To one side of the terrace, sat a helicopter. Aurora marvelled at the way it was hidden, you’d never see it from the ground.
The place was huge. It was situated in a valley, surrounded on all sides by mountains, with not another dwelling in sight for miles. The valley housed open fields, olive groves and a lake, which she aimed for now. Jax’s sleek, black wolf tracked her from the ground. He turned towards the lake without looking up, his senses so in tune with hers that he knew where she was headed. He was standing at the water’s edge when she landed nearby.
The raven perched on the branches of a fallen tree trunk that lay across the expanse of water, creating a bridge that didn’t quite reach the other side. He was naked, having left his clothes behind when he shifted, as shifters do. Not that it was the first time she’d seen him naked. Shifters weren’t shy about their bodies; it was simply part of life for them. Something they came to terms with and dealt with long before their first shift. Still, he had her full attention and she was thankful that in bird form he couldn’t tell she was looking at his body. Well, maybe that wasn’t true.
“I know you’re checking me out, Rory. I still feel your emotions when you’re in animal form. I can see it in your eyes too. I don’t need our bond to know that you like what you see,” he called out. With a smirk on his lips, he moved in her direction, swaggering arrogantly. When her raven screeched at him, he stalled, deciding against taking another step towards her.
“Shift, Rory. We need to talk and I am not going to talk to your bird.” His demand was powerful and if she hadn’t been an alpha herself, she was certain she would cower and submit to him in that moment. Her raven cocked its head on one side and eyed him suspiciously. His eyes pleaded with her to her him out. “Please?”
Taking pity, she shifted. Allowing her wings to remain, she wrapped them around her body and stayed seated on the fallen tree, her toes dipping into the chilled water of the lake.
“You’re incredible,” he breathed, his eyes all over her.
“And you’re boring. Get to the point.” Her eyes swept over his torso and she noticed the details of the black ink across his shoulder.
It looked different now, there seemed to be more of it, creeping towards his chest. Tattoos weren’t a straight-forward process for shifters. With their body’s natural ability to heal, they had to have them permanently burned to their skin with a potion developed centuries ago, by witches. It hurt, more so than the tattoo itself. She knew because she had two of her own.
“Wait, what the fuck is that?”
“What the fuck does it look like?”
“A raven? You permanently marked yourself with a raven? Why, Jax? Why did you do that? When did you do that?”
“The same reason you have a black wolf on your thigh!”
“That’s not an answer!”
“I got it a few weeks after I left and why the hell
do you think I did it?”
“A few weeks?”
“Rory...”
“You knew,” her whispered response was no longer edged with anger. It was hurt, unbearable pain that filtered through her words and stabbed him in the heart.
“Rory, listen...”
“You knew what I was. You knew before I did. I didn’t shift for almost three years after you left. You knew and you didn’t tell me.”
“I wasn’t certain. I promise to explain all of this to you, if you just come back to the house. Please.”
“Did you feel the bond?”
“Shit, Rory, please...”
“You did. You felt the bond. You knew Caspian was lying. You knew it was you and me and you handed me over to your brother, like I was nothing.”
“You have never been nothing to me!” His angry shout echoed around the open space of the lake as the wolf clawed its way to the surface.
“Well, you have a funny way of showing it!”
“Is this really how it’s going to be? We’re mated!”
“You did this, Jax! Almost four years of nothing. Four fucking years, and then you think you can just turn up and bite me?”
“I saved your fucking life!”
“So now I owe it to you?” She stood and stalked towards him through the shallow water. His sharp intake of breath granted her a satisfied smirk when she allowed her wings to fan out behind her. Exposing her body to him in this way didn’t make her feel weak or self-conscious, she had taken control with that single move.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” He straightened, pushing his shoulders back and regaining his composure, he found his own control. Despite his obvious urge to allow his eyes to roam her exposed body, he kept them level with hers.
“I know you lied to me about our bond and you left me. You did something nobody else will ever be capable of. You broke me. I never thought you would do that to me. Not you.” The last two words were a fragmented whisper, despite her show of dominance and his mood softened.
“There were reasons, good reasons. I had to train, to become the man you need me to be. So that I can protect you when all this prophecy shit hits the fan.”
“Bullshit! I don’t believe you, Jax. You were a kid who got scared of his feelings and ran away from them!”
As she drew level with him, he grabbed her arms, fingers wrapping around them and pulled her against him. She let out a gasp as their bodies touched, skin to skin. The feeling was normal, yet not. Familiar, yet brand new. Goosebumps covered them both and sparks cracked in the air as their bond reacted to their physical connection.
“No!” His anger dissipated and he spoke softly, locking their eyes. “I would never run from you, Rory. I would never run from us. Never!”
“Until you did.” She yanked her arms from his grip and stepped back. Her wings drooped sadly to trail the ground as she moved further away from him. “You ripped out my heart and left me alone to pick up the pieces. I fixed myself, but I put myself back together differently. Four years is a long time, I’m not the same person you left behind.”
“What are you afraid of, Rory?” He picked up on the emotional fear through their bond, matching every step she took away from him with one of his own towards her. Closing the distance before she could open it.
“I’m afraid I can never trust you again. I’m afraid what we feel is only because of the bond, that it’s not real. I’m afraid that if it isn’t real, it will break me all over again. Even if it is real, it might still break me. I’m afraid that four years is a long time and you won’t recognise me anymore.”
“We could be separated for a thousand years and my soul will still pick yours from a crowd of millions. I’ll never not recognise you.”
“And if all that wasn’t enough, just when I thought I could have a life without you, maybe even a good one, you turned up out of nowhere and thought it was okay to complete our bond without my consent!”
She turned her back to him, refusing to let him see the tears that threatened. He was the only one she had ever allowed to see her weak moments. He had been the only person who ever saw all of her. She wouldn’t give him that privilege now.
“Was I supposed to let you die?” He spoke quietly from behind her, his body heat drawing closer. She felt his breath on the back of her neck, then his fingertips gently brushing the feathers of her wings, taking away years of tension in a single touch. “You think I can live without you?”
“You managed well enough for four years, Jax!” She ran, shifting as she moved. Aurora took off into the sky, leaving him standing on the small patch of sand beside the lake.
“You’re mine, wild thing. I won’t let you go again!” He yelled the words in her wake, before shifting and following the raven’s flight path.
Aurora hated brooding. Brooding was useless, a complete waste of time and energy. She preferred to meet her problems head on, that way she had the option to move on quickly if things didn’t go her way. If Aurora had been one for brooding, the peak of the mountain, overlooking the valley below, would have been the perfect spot. High above the world, a mist that reminded her of home descended on the rocky formation where she perched in raven form, dissecting every piece of information she had been given since her Grandmother had revealed the prophecy. Without the book she had little chance of figuring out what her next move should be.
She was dead. For all intents and purposes, she was gone from the world. She couldn’t afford to stay dead for long though. She needed answers to questions her mind hadn’t thought of yet. Her parents would be mourning her and the pack would feel the loss of a future alpha. That was all before she even began to think about Lykos and his pack. Had he returned to the castle? How were the pack doing without him? Should she even care? He had kidnapped her. How did she know he hadn’t been part of Caspian and Axel’s plan to kill her? There was every chance the nice guy attitude that fooled her had been an act. It almost made more sense if it had been an act, the whole situation had been seriously weird. The fact that he had killed Axel was in his favour, only now his wolf had a taste for human blood, making him a threat.
The sun set behind her while, with shifter eyes, she watched the two male figures far below. Both Jax and Zane knew she was there. The bond would allow Jax to sense her presence, watching them from above. It didn’t matter that she believed the words he said to her, she couldn’t force the trust she once had in him to return, no matter how much she wanted to. Her soul ached for him. Her head demanded she keep her distance.
Resolving that while she had her issues with Jax, she did trust her brother and the other men, her best option was to stay put. Find out what they knew, maybe even discover something useful that she didn’t know herself. She shook out her feathers and launched her body off the peak, spreading her wings wide and gliding towards the house.
Jax and Zane were in the courtyard, chopping wood for the fire. Jax had told his commander about his chat with Aurora, if you could call it that. Being so close to her that way, both of them naked, had driven him out of his mind. Once he knew she wasn’t planning on moving from the mountain top any time soon, he’d let his wolf run to his heart’s content, in an attempt to work out his frustrations. How was he supposed to be this close to her and not want to complete their bond? Every part of him wanted every part of her with a need so hot it burned him from the inside out. If she truly meant to refuse him, she never would have allowed him to get close enough to touch her wings. A shifter only allowed you to touch their animal if they truly trusted you. Aurora may have been in denial about it, blinded by her anger, but she still trusted him.
“So, are you just going to annoy her into loving you?” Zane asked, squinting in the waning sunlight.
“She already loves me, she’s just angry.” Jax’s reply came with the memory of the feel of her silky feathers on his fingertips.
“How are you going to convince her to complete the bond? You’ll both be on edge until you do. You need t
o re-gain her trust, Jax.” Zane swung his axe and split a log in two.
“I’m trying.” Jax swung his own axe, matching Zane’s movements and split a log of his own, before picking it up and throwing it onto the growing pile of wood.
“By making her want to kill you?” Zane wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.
“At least she’s talking to me now. It’s better than silence.”
It was better than silence. Four years of no contact with her had been harder than he could have imagined, so now he would take whatever she was willing to give. If that meant her hurling abuse at him, well, he could live with that. He only had himself to blame. If he hadn’t gone dark on her after he left, their relationship would be in a healthier state now. It didn’t matter how many times he explained and begged her to realise he’d done it to protect her, nothing could take away the pain he’d caused them both.
“We need to bring her up to speed on the robbery at Shadow Fen. I don’t think Connell told her what was taken, if it was actually taken. We should also go over what little we have of the prophecies, see what we can decipher together.” Zane turned the conversation to business and Jax nodded, content to change the subject.
“There’s a lot her parents kept from her. Marco tried to make them see she should know, but they refused to tell her. She’s as much in the dark as we are, if not more. I don’t even know if she’s looked at the book, Caspian never said.”
“I’ve seen it.” Her presence filled the cavity in his chest that appeared whenever she wasn’t around. He turned to look at his mate. “I took the book from the vault, Caspian just helped.”
Jax tracked her walk towards them. Her hair was wet from the shower, her long fringe held back with a clip and she was dressed only in one of his t-shirts. He was glad that, in the absence of her own, at least it was his clothes she was wearing. His wolf wouldn’t have reacted well to her wearing one of his teammate’s shirts. Still, they were going to have to take her shopping. He recalled, at the sight of her bare feet, that Aurora rarely wore shoes if she could help it.
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