Air gusted out of me. And, on any other day, I would have crumpled. But right then, I was only wolf. Pain was irrelevant in light of the danger to my mate.
Danger I could only defuse by dealing with Gabi. So I bounced back, aiming my heel at my opponent’s shin. She evaded but stumbled in the process. My second kick came closer than the first.
It was different fighting my mentor after training among others. I knew her moves, but she didn’t know mine. I’d learned to manage my weaknesses while also gaining new strengths.
Meanwhile, behind me, something shushed like falling rain, never mind that the sun was still blindingly bright in the totally clear sky. I didn’t turn, though. Just kept fighting, noting the way Gabi evaded my third offensive by an even narrower margin than she had the first two.
As she did so, she muttered one of the multilingual curses Celeste and I had tried so hard to emulate when we were children. At the time, we’d thought Gabi was the epitome of womanly perfection. She couldn’t lose. Couldn’t fail.
Maybe not then. Now, though, Gabi didn’t even try to block my palm strike. Instead, she fled toward an all-terrain vehicle I only now noticed beyond the edge of the crowd of shifters. Get on that and she could easily outrun all of us. Get on that and her twisty attempts at bringing me back to heel would continue unabated.
I started to follow, but Maya’s voice restrained me. “Orion’s bleeding again. It’s now or never.”
Orion. The Council’s future attempts to control outpack magic suddenly paled in the face of the man they’d manipulated me into mating with.
Letting my prey flee, I turned to find, not swirling sand, but Hailey pinned on the ground beneath Prince with no new tattoos in evidence. Celeste and Finnegan must have broken my sister’s incipient matebrand just like they’d wiped away mine.
I barely glanced at the four of them though. Because Orion’s crumpled body was once again oozing red into the hungry earth. At least that meant he was still alive. But I’d already tried everything. And he couldn’t have much blood left to lose.
Human thoughts turned frantic and deafening. But I ignored them. Crouched and used wolf instinct as I swiped my cheek against Orion’s, marking him mine.
One side. Then the other…
I didn’t ask for help, but sand and lights rose around us anyway. Outpack magic gathered, and I waited just the way I’d waited until a peccary was close enough for me to clench my jaws shut around its throat in a killing grip it never saw coming.
Only when I was sure of my moment did I seize the swirling power with clear intention. Only then did I slam that power into the hole in Orion’s belly.
“Save him,” I demanded, my words a lupine growl.
Then the world went dark.
Later, I learned what happened while I was unconscious. Orion’s wound closed in a flash of blinding light that covered up Gabi’s escape and kept everyone in the vicinity blinking back stars for minutes afterwards. Hailey tried to flee amid the same confusion, but Prince wouldn’t let her. He didn’t turn her over to Orion’s angry pack mates, however. Instead, he went full-on possessive dominant when anyone came close, growling a repeated “Don’t touch her” that I now entirely understood.
Money changed hands, my ex-housemate Nash coming out far ahead as one of the few who’d bet against Bellwether. The audience didn’t disband, but someone did show up with popcorn. The air smelled salty and buttery when I awoke.
That scent was what I noticed first, along with the fact I was cradled in Celeste’s lap. This was the same way I’d come back to myself after more than one nightmare. Because even though Julius had tried to keep his so-called daughters human and sleeping in our own separate bedrooms, as adults we’d gotten around his orders when we so chose.
And that’s what love was, I realized. It wasn’t DNA that said Celeste and I were sisters, nor was it words forced out of lips that found them hard to manage. It was actions like movie nights crammed into busy schedules. It was instinctive understandings like the way Celeste answered the question I hadn’t even managed to ask.
“He’s alive but sleeping,” my sister told me at the same instant I remembered where I was, the same instant fear for Orion slammed into me far more violently than the swirling sand’s slap had stung my face.
I believed Celeste, but I still leveraged myself up on arms that were weak as overcooked noodles, searching, searching…
There. Orion had shifted since I saw him last, so no matted fur covered where his wound would have been. Instead, I could see perfectly healed skin stretching across his flat stomach, could see how easily he breathed as he lay atop someone’s rolled-up-shirt-turned-pillow.
I could also see his arms. Like mine, they were totally devoid of tattoos.
The relief that had suffused me gave way to urgency. It was time to end the lack of connection that lay between us. Not just because I craved our mate bond more deeply than I’d ever wanted anything. Not for the sake of Orion’s health, either, since I hoped he would wake up soon without needing an additional boost from outpack magic.
No, we had to re-form our matebrand for the sake of all werewolf-kind. To prevent Hailey from talking Prince into creating a magical linkage the Council could manipulate. To prevent any other mini-me’s that might be running around from doing the same. My former hesitation had been an invitation that provoked recent disasters. I was done hesitating. I was done avoiding what I deeply wanted for myself as well as for the larger werewolf world.
Trouble was, my newly steadied thought processes also made it painfully clear what would have to happen for my matebrand to reassert itself and stay in place permanently. The half-glyphs on Celeste and Finnegan’s wrists would need to be broken, the magical bond between my sister and the man she called her soul mate would have to be severed.
Even suggesting that eventuality made it likely I’d soon lose the only ally I’d had for most of my life.
Chapter 26
“You’re giving me the look,” Celeste complained as I came to my feet and pulled her up after me. She was trying to sound like herself, but her voice wobbled. We were often able to understand what the other wanted before words were spoken, so I was entirely surprised to see Celeste covering up her half-glyph with her opposite palm as soon as I released her hands.
Instantly, Finnegan strode toward us, murmuring polite commands that let him brush past the pair of Vega’s best warriors who had been keeping him at a distance until now. My aunt opened her mouth to counteract his dominance display, but I shook my head and she let Finnegan continue to advance.
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.
