Charmed Wolf Page 22

  “Not true,” Natalie answered, raising her fierce gaze to meet mine. “Both children look alive to me. You did good work, friend.”

  Chapter 41

  Friend was enough to unstick my feet. Especially when Erskine’s head popped up out of the hole in the ground.

  Rune’s brother didn’t look as suave as usual, and not just because of the explosion. His voice was gritty as he pointed one hand back over his shoulder. “I suggest we get a move on.”

  Every muscle in his body tensed, as if he was holding up the earth upon which we stood. And maybe he was. Because the ground rumbled beneath our feet as he spoke. Loose pebbles clattered as they fell into the darkness. The gaping gash didn’t look particularly inviting after that.

  But the hole had brought my friends to me. Well, one friend plus a duty-sworn ex-Consort and a no-longer unicorn.

  My throat was tight when I nodded. “Good idea,” I agreed, heading for the hole.

  We picked our way down the rubble slope, Kale helping his mother while Natalie clung to the baby. Erskine held up a cell phone set to flashlight mode, but the light was barely enough to keep us from tripping over jagged rocks.

  Rune and I were last, and my balance wasn’t assisted by the way my eyes kept flying to him. We were almost at the bottom when I finally asked the question I both did and didn’t want the answer to.

  “Who...?” I started, only to trail off as Rune’s fingers grazed across my neck.

  When he’d first reached out, I thought he was helping steady me. Instead, he barely touched the sore left by the Queen’s chain and the scab I kept picking at. Questions lingered in Rune’s features. But when the silence between us lengthened, he offered me the airspace. “You first.”

  I swallowed, dropping to my butt to slide down a particularly difficult boulder. We were in the cave now, rushing forward into near darkness. Avenues branched off in multiple directions, but Natalie continued forward without hesitation. I only realized how she was able to be so decisive when my fingers trailed across a glitter arrow on the wall beside me. My friend had painted markers to guide us home.

  I only wished I knew how to guide myself around whatever barrier had lodged itself between me and Rune. Finally, in the absence of a better idea, I did what he’d asked me to—I spat out the rest of my question.

  “Who survived the battle?”

  “Battle?”

  His gaze scorched me, then was gone so fast I couldn’t catch his eyes when I turned my head.

  “The battle with the Guardian,” I elaborated, unsure how Rune could forget something so horrendous. Unless....

  “There was no battle.” Now Rune’s gaze latched onto mine, his brows drawn down. “I wouldn’t leave your pack, Alpha, if they were in danger.”

  I winced at his use of my title rather than my name. Winced...then froze as pack bonds slammed into me. They were faint, but I could still tell who each one belonged to. Could tell that Rune calling me “Alpha” had helped them reconnect.

  Blinking away the irrelevance, I reveled in our reunion. One by one, shifters I’d thought were dead tied themselves back to me. Shifters I’d seen being swallowed by the earth turned out to be very much alive.

  So the episode in the mirror had been nothing more than the Queen teasing me? Or perhaps she’d showed me one possible future the same way Erskine had learned Rune and I would later meet each other. No wonder getting my way had been so easy—the Queen had tricked me into thinking I was gaining far more than she was.

  And none of that mattered. Because my pack—Caitlyn, Ash, every single one of them—was alive.

  I only realized I was crying when Rune’s thumb slid beneath my left eye. “Tara,” he started.

  Then the cave collapsed.

  NOT ON TOP OF US. IN front of us. The turn Natalie had been about to guide us into disappeared beneath a mass of rubble. Erskine and Natalie and Kale and Hazel landed on the cave floor in a pile. It was hard to tell who was shielding whom.

  It was easy to tell who picked them up. Rune crossed the intervening space before my muscles unfroze. “Thanks, brother,” he murmured as he helped Erskine off the top of the pile.

  So, I guessed, Erskine had been the one in the most danger. The fae nodded, something flickering across his face. “I still owe you,” he started, but Rune had already turned to lift the next uninjured body up.

  “We’re fine,” Natalie informed him, pulling herself and her children off the ground with Rune’s assistance. “We aren’t, however, taking the short route home.”

  For a moment, I had no clue what she was talking about. During the fracas, Erskine’s phone had landed face-down on the cave floor. So I don’t think any of us had taken in the full extent of the cave-in until Natalie mentioned it.

  The dim light, however, was enough to show what had happened once Natalie’s words pointed us in the right direction. There was the next glowing marker...just barely visible at the edge of the rubble pile.

  The path forward was entirely blocked.

  No wonder Kale’s lip quivered slightly. He was only twelve, after all. He hadn’t signed up for fae awfulness and tunnel cave-ins and endless life-or-death stakes.

  He needed to be home, watering his flowers. He needed to be doing kid things, whatever kid things consisted of.

  My stomach lurched as I realized that was what Rune had been trying to tell me about Caitlyn also. I’d been grooming the girl to be my Heir’s Beta just as coldly as my father groomed me to take his place. It hadn’t just been the Guardian dragging down Clan Whelan. I’d been implicated as well.

  “What are you thinking?” Rune was back beside me, persimmon swirling warm from his skin to mine.

  “Thinking of mistakes I intend to fix,” I replied honestly. “Once Natalie blows up the ceiling and lets us out of this cave.”

  “Blows up...?” Erskine squawked.

  “Cool.” Kale became abruptly cheerful.

  Rune was the one who stated the obvious. “If we haven’t travelled far enough, then blowing up the ceiling will put us right back in Faery. The Queen isn’t likely to let us go a second time.”

  “But we’re not Between,” I answered. The pack bonds in my stomach proved it. I was never able to tell the pack existed while away from earth....

  Well, the pack bonds pointed in the direction of us being out of reach of Faery. Natalie’s scientific mind would have put a number on my almost certainty.

  And, sure enough, after eying me for a moment, my friend did exactly that. “Tara is 87% sure this is the right step,” Natalie said, picking the thought out of my mind as easily as if we’d been pack mates. “So we’re doing it. But I refuse to set dynamite while holding the baby.”

  “I’ll take her.” I stepped forward, only to let my hands fall back to my side when Natalie’s eyebrows shot up.

  “You’re willingly offering to hold the baby?”

  “I’m willingly offering to hold Hazel,” I corrected her. Crossing my eyes and sticking out my tongue—I had learned something from Kale—I accepted my friend’s most precious burden. Then I paced backwards down the tunnel while Natalie lit the fuse.

  THE WORLD WE BROKE into wasn’t Faery. I knew the moment the dust settled, revealing a sky overcast and leaking drizzle.

  “It doesn’t rain in faery,” Erskine observed. “Not in the daytime anyway.”

  It did, however, rain on the outskirts of town.

  The sinkhole we created, thankfully, had opened in the middle of someone’s fallow pasture. Making a note to drop a hefty donation in the farmer’s mailbox, I considered our options. “We’re closer to Lenny’s house than to pack central.”

  Rune nodded. “There’s backup at Lenny’s house. And transportation. Do you want me to hold Hazel now?”

  I shook my head. I needed to prove to the world that I could carry this child without her screaming her head off.

  Or maybe I just needed to prove to myself that someone was still willing to wrap their arms around me. Because
Rune had been politely distant ever since he’d reappeared within the stone circle. I was growing heartily sick of politeness.

  Unwilling to dwell on that, I set out toward town. After a bit of grumbling, everyone else followed suit.

  The walk was short but painful. Kale, after his earlier bravery, started whining about a rock in his shoe the instant our safety grew obvious. Erskine kept running his hands through his hair, finding tangles, and snorting in a way that sounded like he still thought he was a unicorn. The baby whimpered and Natalie quickly took her back.

  Meanwhile, Rune didn’t so much as glance in my direction. Not once. Not for the entire mile.

  I was almost grateful when we trooped up the alley behind Lenny’s house and found all the other Samhain Shifters gathered there waiting for us. Almost grateful, but not quite.

  Because Rune strode into their midst like he belonged there. Hands slapped backs. Hugs were exchanged. Ryder’s puppy-like affection nearly resulted in a stabbing when he forgot to first relinquish the sword pointing at Lenny’s wife.

  “Almost made you prettier,” Ryder said, then laughed at his own joke.

  And I found myself unable to swallow. This was it. I no longer needed a Consort and Rune no longer wanted to look at me.

  “The kids are safe,” Ryder continued, “so who wants to skewer the fae then get drunk?”

  I don’t know what came over me. Okay, that’s not true. I do know what came over me. I wasn’t ready for Rune to leave.

  So I turned to the fae who had set the whole ugly mess in motion. “Maybe we should hear her story first.”

  Chapter 42

  “We already heard her story,” Natalie reminded me. Unlike Ryder, she wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass. She simply found it difficult to ignore the truth.

  To my surprise, Rune was the one who turned to Lenny’s wife and prodded her for further details. “Do you want to tell us what you did with the woman you’re impersonating?”

  “She’s dead,” the jowly fae started. Then, swatting away our leapt-to conclusions with a horrified hand wave: “I didn’t kill her. She died of natural causes the night I arrived in town. Lenny didn’t want to believe she was gone, so it didn’t take any glamour at all to slide into that gap.”

  What came next was a sad sort of story. A husband’s yearning fed this fae her first bit of stolen magic. Then a human softness enfolded her, one she didn’t want to leave behind.

  There were cookies in the story and adult children who wanted to believe they still had a mother. Townspeople who had never looked past a woman’s frumpiness so didn’t even realize when she’d been replaced.

  “I deserve to be sent back,” the fae said at last. “I never should have drawn children into the struggle with my sister. There at the end, it turned into revenge rather than duty. If I’d realized sooner the beauty of this home....”

  Her voice trailed off as she turned toward the house she’d soon be leaving. But after one glance, my gaze turned in the other direction while thinking something very similar.

  Rune stood so tall and strong and distant. Why hadn’t I realized the beauty of what he was offering when he rejected the role of Consort? Why had I let my pack take precedence every time he’d tried to form a connection, pushing Rune back into his duty by closing the door between the two of us?

  “My true name,” Lenny’s wife continued, “is Viola. If it makes any difference, I will swear on that name to never again use glamour. I swear here and now that all magic I have channeled on this earth, save the spell giving me a human face, is gone.”

  Erskine was the one who pointed out the repercussions of such an oath. “Without glamour, you become just like any other mortal. Your body isn’t young. You might only have a decade or two left to live.”

  “A decade here with a family I love is worth an eternity in Faery,” Viola answered without hesitation. She fell onto her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Please. I beg of you....”

  Ryder’s sword wavered. But it was Lupe—hard leader of the Samhain Shifters—who dropped down beside the crumpled fae and lifted her head. “There’s no need to beg. Viola, we accept your binding.”

  The words had power. I felt them flowing out of the fae, curling around all of us just the way Rune’s persimmon curled around me. I could feel....

  Erskine cleared his throat. Running one hand through hair that refused to release its tangles, he squeezed his eyes shut for a split second then opened them wide.

  He’d come to a decision. “I’d also like to offer my true name as a promise of my own good behavior. I am—”

  Rune spoke over him before yet another powerful name could be unleashed into this gathering. “Erskine is my brother. He doesn’t need to provide his true name. I vouch for him.”

  Ryder punched Rune on the shoulder, harder than was really appropriate. “You have a brother?”

  “Yes.” Rune didn’t tack on half the way he had when introducing Erskine to me. “A brother who recently proved that ‘fae’ can be short for ‘faithful.’ That no part of ourselves is dark unless we make it so.”

  “Aw, dude, that’s sweet.” Ryder grinned so big his subsequent words lacked all sting. “Although, as your friend, you should’ve told me.”

  For once, Rune responded in kind to his ribbing. “You’re saying, you wanted to be brought home to meet the family?”

  “Well, I mean, maybe after a few more dates.”

  “The point,” Lupe interrupted, sounding like herself again, “of the Samhain Shifters is that we aren’t friends and we aren’t a pack. And, as Butch told me this morning, he had already decided to step down from that role.”

  “No!” Athena’s cry would have made me jealous if the woman’s arm hadn’t been wrapped around another man’s waist. She clung to the ugly shifter who’d threatened my pack the last time I returned from Faery, her grasp suggesting his presence was her anchor during the riptide of Rune’s leave-taking.

  The ugly shifter, on the other hand, twisted his face until it appeared even uglier. “Good for you, Butch.”

  Oh, that expression was a smile. He’d leapt to a conclusion I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around.

  Only...maybe I was getting there. I lifted my chin and tried to act as brave as Kale had been during the last twenty-four hours. “Butch,” I said, hoping his eyes would find mine but scared they wouldn’t.

  Persimmon was suddenly so strong I could have choked on it. Instead, the sweetness drew me forward as Rune replied. “Yes?”

  “The Guardian is gone, so our bargain is gone along with her,” I said, working my way around to the point I was afraid to make but more afraid not to make. “So I don’t need a Consort. And I don’t need a Beta.”

  “Doesn’t sound good for you, man,” Ryder said in the loudest possible stage whisper.

  Rune ignored him. Instead, he lifted my hand to his lips. The faint brush of skin against skin made me shiver. “What do you need then?” he asked, his breath warming away my goosebumps.

  I swallowed then told him. “I need you.”

  THE BOND THAT EXPLODED into being between us had nothing of duty about it. It was all heat and persimmon and joy.

  The kiss that came afterward was a promise of everything I’d never dared dream about. I only realized I’d started climbing up Rune’s body in search of that everything when Ryder admonished us. “Get a room.”

  I blinked, astonished to find drizzling rain and shifters and fae and children still there around us. Rune, on the other hand, smiled as warm as the sun coming out. “I think I will. Can I borrow your bike?”

  This time, Ryder’s punch was joyous. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Accepting the keys from his friend, Rune pulled on gloves and kicked the engine into roaring life. I hopped up behind and grabbed hold as he asked: “Where to?”

  “Pack central.”

  The destination might have been the wrong one—my duty once again calling. But Rune didn’t protest. Instead, he nodded
once, then wind whipped cold against my face.

  The frigid slap lasted for only a second however. After that, I dipped my chin into the shadow of Rune’s back and was as warm as if I’d cuddled up to a furnace. And, for a time that felt as endless as a Faery summer, I drifted in that haze of connection and joy.

  Then the bike screeched to a halt. We’d passed the unmanned gatehouse and reached our destination faster than I wanted. The vast hole in the earth where the Whelan mansion used to stand greeted us. That, plus a mass of shifters who approached with fear and relief on their faces.

  “Alpha! You’re back.”

  “Where did you...?”

  “What should we do about...?”

  I cut them off with a wave of my hand, removing my helmet and handing it to Rune as I dismounted. Because just as a man had to find that perfect middle ground between hardness and softness, so did an Alpha.

  And I was still Alpha...for the moment, at least.

  “Is everyone present and accounted for?” As I spoke, I let my gaze drift across the assembled faces. A few children played in the periphery, but everyone else was watching. Waiting. Ready for me to lay down the law.

  So I did, just not in the way they expected. “For three generations,” I told the shifters I’d spent my life ruling without explanations, “our pack has been under the spell of the fae. The Guardian wasn’t a guardian. She was a parasite. And she turned the Alpha of this pack into a weapon to carry out her will.”

  I only realized I was pacing when I ended up face to face with Willa. The older woman’s nostrils flared as she considered me. “That mistake has been corrected,” she pointed out. “It’s time for us to move on, Alpha.”

  “Am I?” When her eyes reflected nothing but puzzlement, I elaborated, “Am I Alpha?”