Shadowmated, p.16
Shadowmated, page 16
It wasn’t that I suddenly trusted the man. But I suspected my sister would need his support very soon.
“You know what I have to ask,” I told Celeste, ready for the flare of her anger that was bound to erupt shortly. Our relationship had hovered on the edge of rejection for so long that I should have gotten used to that potential. But my throat felt rimmed with ice despite the endless heat of the desert. My fingers were so chilled I had to rub them against each other to get any feeling back.
Celeste was the one who made the next move. “Then ask,” she said, her voice a whisper.
I was glad Finnegan reached Celeste’s side at that point and slung an arm around her shoulders. Because her body leaned into his and her tension eased a little, which made my own muscles loosen too.
The loosening applied equally to my tongue. “When Orion and I first formed our matebrand, it was overwhelming,” I told my sister. “I wasn’t thinking rationally.” Which was likely what had happened to Celeste with the half-glyphs. She’d fallen for Finnegan the moment she set eyes on him. No wonder she’d snuck out to meet him even after it became clear he was a Council spy.
Not that Celeste’s rose-tinted glasses had been swapped out for prescription lenses recently, not when her hand unerringly linked with Finnegan’s. I could almost see her blocking out my words in favor of focusing on his presence, could almost see her loyalties changing from me to him.
She still met my gaze though, even as she shook her head in negation. “Uh uh. That’s not what you need to say. You want something. Ask for it.”
I tried another tack. “If we’re going to save the imprisoned children…”
“Low blow,” Celeste countered, her cheeks turning red and her eyes narrowing down to slits. She was clinging to her temper by a thread and I deserved every bit of fury that was coming. After all, Julius and Gabi had used the kidnapped children as bait to trap Celeste. No wonder she thought I was doing the same.
I wasn’t, or at least not on purpose. I was just trying to get Celeste to understand some of the stakes if we didn’t act fast on this one.
Because what would it matter to her if a werewolf pack she’d barely spent any time around was wiped out? Why would someone raised to scorn shifters care if we were all forced to bow down beneath a Council who didn’t have our best interests at heart? Stolen children were the topic she was most likely to care about.
“Elspeth,” my sister said. “I don’t want to guess about this. Tell me what you need.”
The way she’d eschewed my nickname made me feel like a wolf trapped in a burning maze, no obvious way out and survival unlikely. And although I’d expected Celeste to stop meeting my eyes at some point, I was the one who now dropped my gaze to the desert sand.
But I still gave her the facts she requested, even though the words felt like sandpaper scraping the insides of my throat. After all, she deserved honesty, this woman I’d never fully known even though I’d thought we were close as sisters.
“Your half-glyphs are blocking our matebrand,” I admitted. “I’m sorry, Celeste. But I need you to break your connection with Finnegan so I can rebuild mine with Orion.”
Celeste didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she tugged Finnegan along as she walked away from all of us, glaring at Vega’s guards until they dropped back to watch from a distance. And within sight yet beyond shifter hearing, the two of them held a discussion so animated it might as well have been a pantomime.
To my surprise, it appeared Finnegan was the one arguing in favor of breaking their half-glyphs. If I didn’t miss my guess, he was promising that magic made no difference to his affections. That he’d be there for her no matter what.
Celeste, in contrast, clung to Finnegan the way I wanted to cling to her. Both of us had recently realized that the sole parental figure in our lives considered us lab rats instead of daughters. But Julius had been warmer toward Celeste during our shared childhood, so surely that loss had struck her harder than it struck me.
No wonder she shook her head adamantly when the man she’d become attached to suggested breaking their connection. No wonder she stopped speaking, likely lost in the same fear of abandonment that roiled my own gut.
In the end, I couldn’t tell what she and Finnegan decided. I only knew they were back in accord by the way their bodies once again curved toward each other. If they tried to flee now, I’d have to send wolves to capture Finnegan, which would break my sisterhood with Celeste even more thoroughly than the request I’d just made. That thought made my fists clench so tight I couldn’t unclench them even when the pair turned and began pacing back toward us.
When Celeste made it through the circle of shifters to return to the spot where I’d woken in her arms, her question wasn’t what I expected. “You’ll treat me like an adult after this?”
Celeste deserved the truth, so I gave it to her. “It’s never been a matter of thinking you’re less of an adult than me. It’s that I can’t bear the thought of losing you. When you walk into danger, all I want is to protect you whether or not you’re able to protect yourself.”
Her rebuttal was quiet, but not so quiet our audience couldn’t catch every syllable. “Do you think it was easy when you went out on jobs where your life was constantly on the line? It wasn’t. But I got used to it. The same way you’ll get used to me engaging in carefully thought out risks.”
Would I get used to that? No, I didn’t think so. But I could do the right thing when my sister was asking for so little in preparation for giving up so much.
“I promise,” I told her, wanting to ask if she’d still be my sister when all this was over.
But the words stuck in my throat and Celeste had already turned to face Finnegan. “Ready?” she asked in the tone she once saved for me. Warm. Trusting.
“I’ve been ready for you my entire life,” Finnegan answered.
Then their hands met, not the untattooed hands they’d linked earlier but the ones that boasted half-glyphs on the insides of their wrists. And, the instant ink made contact, the swirl of outpack magic rose to surround them in an undulating haze.
I’d seen similar clouds of rotating sand particles so many times now that the scene should have looked ordinary. It didn’t. The visual manifestation of outpack magic was like the voice in my head intoning a desert prophecy—awe-inspiringly beautiful and terrifying at the exact same time.
This was pure power and Celeste was about to harness it. In the midst of the swirl, her lips moved. But despite our proximity, I couldn’t hear what she was saying. All I knew was what I caught glimpses of between the light and sand and the pair’s mirrored bodies.
Half-glyphs rotating in the opposite direction than they’d rotated previously. Half-glyphs unspooling, curling out of Celeste and Finnegan’s arms and feeding into the magic of the desert.
My sister was doing as I’d asked. She was unmaking the half-glyphs to save werewolves she had no real connection to. To save children.
Or, perhaps, to save our sisterhood?
Whatever the reason, Celeste carried on even as pain hollowed out her cheeks and hardened Finnegan’s jaw. I knew what it felt like to lose the matebrand and I suspected losing the half-glyphs was no different.
I took a step forward. I had to stop this. I couldn’t let Celeste harm herself even for the sake of every werewolf on the planet.
But my aunt blocked my path. “Wait,” Vega murmured. “You promised.”
I had promised. Still, Celeste was now doubling over from agony.
Or, no, not from agony. Instead, my sister, who bore werewolf blood but who had been genetically engineered to be unable to shift, did the unthinkable. Her hunched torso shortened. A tail erupted. And she dropped onto the sand lupine.
Beside her, Finnegan did the same.
And as the swirling magic turned back into ordinary sand then filtered out of the air around us, Celeste yipped delight. Finnegan howled pleasure. Then they were testing out their new bodies, frolicking together…
…Which is when I lost track of what my sister was up to because Orion had finally woken. He came to his feet as smoothly as if he’d never been injured. His eyes were open and so full of starlight I wanted to fall into them as he paced toward me step by calculated step.
“I smell like you,” he rumbled as he drew closer.
“Do you mind?” I answered. After all, I’d made multiple decisions that affected him without his permission. I’d made promises to the outpack that played leapfrog with his mandated timeline. I’d begged Celeste to withstand agony in preparation for a matebrand Orion had explicitly told me he wasn’t ready for.
But he just smiled with starlight in his eyes. “Did you mean what you said earlier?”
“You heard that?” Despite everything, my cheeks heated. I’d assumed he was too far gone to catch my grand declaration.
“I heard it. Did you mean it?”
I swallowed. Nodded. “Yes.”
And in reaction, the swirling outpack magic woke again. It encircled us instead of Celeste and Finnegan as matebrand ink sprang back to life upon our skin.
Chapter 27
The last time I’d matebranded with Orion, I’d been using the connection as a hidden weapon. And still the process of bonding had been so profound it left me barely able to stand on my own two feet.
This time, I was all in as the desert winds whipped sand into a kaleidoscope of reds, golds and purples. The roaring vortex drowned out all other sounds, catching us up in the whirlwind. And yet, I could feel each tendril as matebrand ink once again pulsed intricate patterns into our skin.
I gasped, the sensation overwhelming. And I was glad when Orion’s arm settled around my waist to hold me upright. I was even more glad of the way, as the outpack whirlwind eased, he bent down until his breath feathered across my cheek.
“Elspeth,” he murmured, the word emerging from his mouth along with a breeze of cactus-scented perfection. “Would you do me the honor of becoming my mate?”
I didn’t answer him aloud. I didn’t have to. Not when his lips were so close to mine and were no longer forbidden.
Instead, I tilted up my chin, the tips of our noses brushing. His fingers grazed my neck, tentative at first before cupping my face with supreme confidence. The pads of his thumbs traced my cheekbones and I leaned into his touch, my eyelids fluttering shut.
In the ensuing darkness, I found a familiar door waiting for me. This door had been closed then opened then entirely absent. When it was present, it had been a conundrum. When it was gone, I missed it like a lost limb.
I was so grateful to have it back.
Now, reaching out with one invisible hand, I could feel Orion helping from the other side as I turned the knob to unlatch it. Together, we thrust the barrier out of the way and met in the middle.
“Mate,” he rumbled inside our minds.
“Mate,” I replied equally silently, equally fervently.
Then we were touching, both in our minds and with our bodies. My arms wrapped around his neck to hold him in place as our lips made contact. His mouth was at once firm and pliant, and I tasted starlight in the magic crackling through the air and across our skin.
The matebrand was sinking its roots deeper inside us and I didn’t care. No, that was wrong. I did care. But I wasn’t worried. Instead, I was thrilled. Ecstatic. So bubbly with joy that if Orion hadn’t been holding onto me I might have floated away into the clear blue sky.
But what passed between us was also so much more than matebrand magic. Our renewed connection was built upon moments we’d shared. Jokes cracked. Alliances forged. The pure pleasure we’d taken in each others’ company. The trust that our affections were reciprocated, would continue to grow and to bloom.
The heady brush of skin against skin matched the incredible oneness of our intangible connection. I closed my eyes and saw Orion. I opened my eyes and saw stars.
I wanted to linger in that kiss forever. But death lay at our feet and we had a lifetime of moments like this to look forward to.
Plus, we were both wolves, even if we currently stood in human skin. Wolves who looked out for our pack mates. Wolves who knew when to celebrate and when to hunt.
Now was a time for the latter. So I took one last look at the intricate tattoos curling around both of my forearms and around Orion’s neck where I’d clung to him. Then I released my mate and picked up the duty I knew Celeste was itching to address.
“We need to track down the stolen shifter children,” I told Orion.
A growl from our audience reminded me that we hadn’t been alone for our moment of intimacy, that we wouldn’t be alone in what lay ahead either. That knowledge didn’t embarrass me. Instead, it felt good.
In the end, it was portions of Vega’s pack and of Orion’s that traveled with us to Texas. Prince wanted to join in, but the Bellwethers had lost two alphas in less than a week—they needed their new leader to stay close even if they didn’t particularly want him there. And the popcorn-and-gambling alpha saw no reason to throw in his lot with us, even though I was pretty sure my grandfather was a member of his clan.
Orion and I didn’t argue either point even though we could have used extra paws on the ground. When Gabi escaped, we’d lost the element of surprise. But speed still felt more important than wasting what might have been days of negotiation building up our numbers.
Plus, it didn’t seem like a good idea to let the popcorn-and-gambling pack leader know that our greatest asset—our matebrand—perhaps wasn’t an asset after all.
Because although the complex swirls of tattoos were very much present on my skin and on Orion’s, they didn’t writhe the way they used to. Didn’t seem to offer a reservoir of magic to be tapped into at will.
“You probably just burnt them out temporarily,” Maya suggested from the seat behind me as we rode from the Houston airport to the Enclave in a rented minivan. “Orion was almost dead,” she pointed out. “It took a lot of energy to bring him back.”
“Is that your professional medical opinion?” I asked, swiveling around to face her. Doing so pressed my shoulder into Orion’s and he lifted his arm to make space for me then proceeded to rub the tension out of my neck. The contact of his fingers with my skin worked wonders to soothe my muscles but it didn’t do anything to slow my racing heart.
Unfortunately, Maya’s gentle headshake thrust tension right back into the recently loosened muscles. Meanwhile, the sight of Finnegan lounging on the seat beside Maya made me want to re-start the disagreement with Celeste that had ended when she played her new trump card.
I’d promised to treat my sister like an adult, which apparently meant respecting her declaration that Finnegan had never betrayed us. According to her, the well-dressed man had fled Orion’s pack to avoid becoming privy to information he’d feel the need to relay to the Council, information that might harm Celeste.
We were meant to accept Hailey as the most likely culprit for warning Gabi about the invasion of her apartment. And, sure, Celeste agreed it was messed up that Finnegan had tricked her into erasing Orion’s and my original matebrand. But he’d had a change of heart. He’d never do anything like that again.
Based on all this, we were to believe that Finnegan had every right to come along on this infiltration. We were supposed to understand he wanted to save children who’d been raised in captivity like he had.
I didn’t like any of it, but I’d promised not to argue the point. And now we’d run out of time to do so. Because our minivan was the final one in a line of five, brake lights from the fourth glaring in the darkness as Vega’s van slowed then stopped. That meant we had to stop also since the narrow lane winding toward the Enclave was only wide enough for one vehicle unless the others pulled over to let us pass.
They didn’t pull over, which suggested the outer gate I’d breezed through more times than I could count while working for the Council wasn’t open. Unusual, but not a deal-breaker since we’d come prepared with three possible ways to get through a locked gate.
Worse than the barrier presented by the gate itself was what it meant—that the Council had anticipated our presence. I glared at Finnegan, sent a request to Orion via the mate bond to keep an eye on the other man, then opened the door and stepped out into the night.
The scent of ozone hung heavy. As if a storm was gathering. Or—as I realized when hairs on my arms stood on end—as if the gate wasn’t merely locked.
Sure enough, a spark in the darkness suggested the perimeter fence was buzzing with electricity. It had never been turned on when I’d passed by here before.
We were definitely expected. And someone very much didn’t want us to get in.
So when a dark silhouette of a figure strode past the van in front of me, I instantly dropped into a fighter’s crouch. “Edgy?” Vega asked as she stepped out of the glare of headlights.
I straightened but didn’t stash my knife back into its hiding place as I answered her question with another question. “The gate’s locked?”
“Locked and unmanned.” She held out her hand to show me what she’d found there as she added, “But there was a note.”
The handwriting on the post-it was nearly as familiar as my own and so was the method of communication. Back when Celeste and I were kids, Gabi had relayed our homework assignments just like this. Numbers of sit-ups, impenetrable chapters to work through—she hadn’t gone easy on us even when our ages were numbered in single digits.
But the notes themselves had been games. Some days Gabi had hidden them where only my shifter nose could sniff them out. Other days she’d stuck the post-it on Celeste’s back surreptitiously, the way a big sister might tease a beloved younger sibling.
We’d both been blind, I now realized. Or I’d been blind. Celeste not so much.
