Chapter 20

D arkness. Pain. Fear. Cold.

Caleb?

There is no confusion, no disorientation, this time.

I hear a whine. I whirl, seeking. It's a weak, pitiful sound.

WOLF!

A louder whine. Down—deeper into Death.

There is no hesitation. I follow the sound, drifting bodiless into the icy depths. Another soft sad whine reaches me, louder yet.

Don't let go, Wolf. I'm here.

I smell his fur, blood on his breath. Sparrow. His voice is weak and thin, faint.

I'm here, my mate. Take my mana.

I feel a cold wet nose nudge my hand, and now I have a hand, a body. The void of The Dreaming becomes the dense, swirling fog I associate with Caleb, and I feel his fur under my hands and his bones and his muscles.

You're weak, he whispers.

Take my mana, dammit. Can you feel your pack? They're with you. I got them out.

Maeve, I can't. If I take mana from you in the state you're in, you could be too weakened to get back to TThe Waking.__

Then we'll stay here together.

Don't be stubborn .

You're my mate. I'm not leaving you. And you're not leaving me. So get up and fucking FIGHT , Caleb.

He snarls viciously. I've BEEN fighting!

And since when do you give up? I curl myself around him, burying my nose in the thick soft fur beside his ear. Your pack needs you. I need you.

He heaves a breath. I'm tired, Sparrow. It hurts .

I know, my love. I know. Take mana from me.

His great shaggy head turns and his tongue licks my cheek, and I feel a pull at my spirit—not my prana, but something else. The fog dims, and shadows swirl.

Somewhere beyond the dark, there is pain.

Pain is good. Pain anchors me to my body.

More, Caleb. Take more.

I feel his muscles bunch, tensing, and then he fights to his feet, wobbling for a moment, and then finding his strength. His tongue laps at my eyes, my chin. The fog swirls, thinning. Darkness rises, and threatens to swallow me, but I focus on the distant throb of pain in my Waking body.

More.

Maeve, no.

Caleb, yes. I reach out an invisible hand and touch fur. You'll bring me out. I trust you.

His tongue touches my breasts, my belly. My sex. And then lips fuse to my sex and a human tongue flicks my clit and I arch, moaning. Shadows boil angrily around me, but the pleasure and the pain are twin anchors to reality. I feel my mana flowing out of me and into Caleb, and I open myself to him.

Something icy brushes beneath me, something titanic and venomous and alive, and I remember one of the first times I entered The Dreaming, not knowing what it was, and I was nearly claimed by something alive in the depths of The Dreaming; this is that thing, or something like it.

Where it touches my Dreaming self, I feel magic flare and surge, and the shadows become waves of water curling and rushing but never crashing, and the darkness is a real, palpable thing, not just the absence of light but a dense, viscous ocean of solidified nothingness, and for a moment I can almost make out serpentine shapes undulating in the waves of darkness, god-sized Kraken prowling these formless depths so near to Death.

Caleb's tongue lashes my clit, and I scream as ecstasy shears through me, and I feel hands on my breasts, lifting them, cupping them to suckling mouths, and skin presses to my skin and now I have hands to reach, to touch. I clasp something thick and hard and hot and stroke it greedily, and taste Stirling in my mouth, and then Fin, and then Stirling, and Alistair's mind brushes mine, coiling around me and seeking my pleasure, finding it, and my ecstasy surges as he shatters me with his mind across the bloodlink, and I taste him, and I'm greedy for him, even as my hands caress Stirling and Fin.

Cas…my Caspian, he's beneath me, entering me, taking me, and Caleb is devouring me and my mana pours into him in an amber river.

I come apart with a wild scream and feel my coven join me in release, tasting them each in turn, swallowing Fin's release and then Stirling's, and Alistair's paints my hands and Caspian empties himself into me and I feel them all inside my soul, our bond linking us, this physical connection renewing us, and Caleb is so greedy, so needy.

I give myself to him, and he is ravenous for my pleasure, taking it for himself in greedy gulps, thumbs prying my sex apart so he can get at my clit and orgasm after orgasm shatters me into a million pieces, and each shard of my coming self is for him, for my mate, for Caleb, and he fills himself with them.

And then I'm blinking, stirring, and I feel cold damp air on my skin and warm flesh everywhere. But I still can't see anything but a red haze.

"Caleb?"

I hear a lupine growl. Feel his fur tickle my toes, and then his weight collapses on me, pressing me into the hard stone floor, and his tongue, still smelling of my pleasure, laps at my eyes. I feel his heartbeat against my chest, and I tangle my fingers in his fur.

"Your pack?" I ask, clinging to him as he licks and licks and licks at my eyes, left and then right, left and then right. With each swipe of his huge wet warm tongue, the red haze clears.

I hear a female groan. A male. And then a chorus of pained, hoarse moans and murmurs.

"Alpha?" A soft, delicate female voice. "Caleb?"

He growls but doesn't stop licking.

The same soft voice calls out. "Sound off."

"Channing," comes a deep, smooth male voice.

"Colin," a younger, higher male voice.

"Sierra," a female voice, low, shivering with seductive power.

"Callahan." A male voice, rough, cracking, hard.

"Connor," says a male voice with a distinct Irish lilt.

"Saige? You good?" This is the Channing-voice.

The first female voice answers. "Good is relative." She coughs wetly, spits. "I'm alive, though."

"Someone explain what the fuck Caleb is doing?" This is Callahan's voice.

"And more the point, why do I feel an eighth on our pack-bond?" I think this is Colin, the youngest-sounding one.

"Looks to me as if our Alpha is licking the face of a woman. Can't tell who or what she is, but she's the answer to your question, Colin—she's the eighth on our bond."

Caleb pauses licking my eyes just long enough to let out a savage snarl that clearly, even to my non-wolf ears, means enough .

The pack falls silent.

The red haze isn't gone, but I can make out shapes, now.

"She needs blood, Caleb," Caspian says. "Unless licking her will heal her completely, you need to let her up so she can drink. This fae won't last much longer."

Caleb's weight lifts, and I knot my fingers in his fur. "You're okay?" I whisper. Even the whisper hurts my throat.

I feel as much as see Caleb's shift—the flare of amber light, washes over me, and then Caleb has me in his arms, cradling me against his chest.

"I'm okay," I whisper, my voice more of a hiss than a croak. "You're okay?"

His lips touch my forehead with such exquisite tenderness it almost hurts. "Yes. You brought me back from the edge of Death itself."

"You're my mate."

"Mate?" one of the females says—Saige? The One who called for the sound off. "Since when?"

I blink my eyes, but the film of blood obscures everything except shapes and outlines.

I realize Caspian is right—I need blood. Badly. I smell fae—honey and sunlight. The pulsing thread of life is weak. My prana is all but depleted, as well.

"The fae," I whisper. "I need her blood."

Caleb carries me down the hall to the source of the blood and sets me down. She's dying, on the cusp of death.

Everything hurts, a depth of pain that steals my breath, turning my stomach. This is the worst yet—and every time I think I've felt the pain to end all pain, something else tops it.

I'm nauseous with agony, an all-over throbbing in my muscles, my bones, my very soul.

Ward-breaking sucks.

"Qu…Queen." The fae's voice is barely a whisper. "I'm sorry. Sorry."

I pull her head into my lap. "For what?"

"What they did to you."

"Which side were you on?"

"The…the wrong…one."

"But you call me queen?"

"Fight…or die."

I feel a new kind of ache in my soul. "Who?"

"Zuh—" her voice gives out, and she coughs wetly, tries again. "Zirae."

I touch her cheek. "What's your name?"

She finds my fingers with hers—hers are cold, clammy—and presses them to her throat, over her weakening pulse. "Iliria." A swallow.

"With this prayer, I send Iliria into the singing void."

"And…and the void…" a long pause. "And the void shall…sing…the final…song." She squeezes my hand with the last of her strength. "Take it. Before I die. Take my blood and my vitality. I give it to you, my queen. Take it all."

My eyes mist and my throat burns. I roll and lay her head on the floor, cradling it in my palm. My lips find her throat, her pulse— thrum…thrum…thrum…

Her fingers touch my cheek as I lick her skin; she gasps, and for once I do not suppress the pheromones. A surge of need shivers through me, and I pull her sweet blood into my mouth, and her small breast fills my hand, and her muscles go slack beneath me.

Thrum…

Thrum…

Thrum…

one beat every few seconds.

Her prana, even in death, is potent, a shimmering golden thread, plentiful and dense. She was powerful.

I drink, and she whimpers in pleasure.

Her spine arches, and a long slow ecstatic exhale ghosts past her lips, and now her blood cools in my mouth. Her prana flows like honey and tastes just as sweet, and there are only a few infinitesimal glimpses of the woman's life—a huge wolfhound loping beside her through a primeval European forest; practicing glamours by a waterfall; a fae female coming up behind her as she brushes her hair, the other woman's hands taking the brush and setting it aside and pulling away the edges of Mara's robe—

I pull away from the memory, giving her memories the privacy she deserves, and her blood is sluggish and sour and her prana's brilliant light dims.

I slide my fangs free and lick my lips. The bloody haze over my vision dissolves into splotches as the new blood courses through my body and my healing takes over.

Her eyes, pale brown, stare sightlessly at me. Her hair is caked in blood, crimson becoming ochre-red on the brown of her hair.

I can't explain why her death means so much to me, but I'm hurt by it, aching inside for her sacrifice, so willingly given at the end.

The silence is profound.

I close Mara's eyes and cross her hands over her chest, and then stand and turn to face Caleb, his pack, and my coven.

I look to Caspian. "Was it real? Did it happen, here, in The Waking?"

He knows what I mean—healing through mating…sex. "Yes."

Alistair stands apart, a black T-shirt stained with blood, his black cargo pants partially undone. I cross to him, noticing with no small amount of satisfaction that my blood armor seems to have survived this latest round of ward-breaking. Alistair's jaw is tense—tension radiates from him.

I touch his jaw with my fingertips. Gaze up at him. Step into his space, pushing my body against his so my breasts crush against his chest. "I'm happy I got to share that with you, Alistair," I whisper; the words are for his ears alone, although I know everyone else can hear them just fine. "You felt good. I want more."

He swallows hard. "Maeve, I…" he looks away. "I knew you needed me. Your mate, his pack—they all depended on you. We all do. The others in this prison depend on you."

"So you didn't want to share that with me?" I ask, letting hurt stain my words. "You did it out of duty?"

He shakes his head, and his hands wrap around my waist, hesitating inches above my backside; I press myself into him, and he lets out a slow sigh as his hands steal down to cradle my ass. "I want you, Maeve. I need you. I just…I've mourned my mortal wife for two centuries. I don't know how to stop. It's hard to see you as anything but a fragile little mortal child. Your life span, so far, is a moment's pause to one of my age."

"Well, old man, I'm not a fragile mortal child anymore. I'm a powerful immortal woman. A young woman, but a woman nonetheless, and you're part of my coven. Our bond isn't complete without you, so stop holding yourself apart. Let yourself want me, Alistair. More than that: let yourself have me."

Behind me, Caspian, Fin, and Stirling crowd closer, surrounding me. I reach a hand out to the circle of my coven of vampires, and Caleb's huge rough paw envelops mine, and I pull him close, into the circle.

"I need you all. I can't do this without any of you."

Caleb's lips touch the back of my neck. "You saved my pack, Sparrow."

I turn in Alistair's arms, lean against his chest. I tangle my fingers in his hair and tug him closer, touching my lips to his, whispering: "You're my mate. They're your pack. Of course I did. I'd do anything for you."

I keep hold of Caleb's hair and run my tongue over his lips, and then turn my head to find Fin's mouth waiting, and I taste his mouth, faint traces of blood; Stirling's kiss is slow and soft and intense; Caspian, last, nips my lower lip so it bleeds and he licks the tiny cut so a shivery frisson of pleasure sizzles through me as his venom bubbles in my bloodstream.

"I'm sorry," he breathes, his mouth moving on mine.

I shake my head. "Don't be. I'm sorry, Cas. I never wanted to hurt you. I know it's not fair to you that I took another mate. I just—"

He shuts me up with a rough kiss. "Stop. I get it—I see it. He's part of this, Mae."

"Ah- hem ." Sierra, the one with the seductive voice, breaks the moment. "Will someone please explain WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON ?" The last several words are shouted in a deafening, furious tone.

"I don't know whether I'm turned on or icked out," Colin, the young one says.

"Same," grumbles Callahan, the growly one with the rough voice that sounds like he swallowed rocks and they're stuck in his esophagus. "I'm gonna go with turned on, even though orgies aren't typically my thing."

I push out of the ring of my men—I work hard to suppress a giggle at that: my men , plural—and face the pack.

I feel the packbond, separate from my bond with the coven. It's… actually incredibly complicated to sort out in my head. I feel my coven, and I feel Caleb, both separate from the coven and part of it, sort of…and then, off to one side (as best I can mentally picture it), is the pack. This bond is not at all like a coven's bond. With my coven, they're all in my mind at once, but as separate entities, each with their own unique signature. I can tell them apart without even thinking.

The pack? They're a hive-mind, almost. I feel each mental signature separately, but they all feel the same.

I look at Caleb, frowning. "I don't understand the packbond."

"Because it's not complete." He steps up next to me and takes my hand.

I look up at him. "I…I'm not sure how I feel about…"

He smirks, a slight ghost of a smile. "It's not like that, I told you. While most packs do share complex sexual politics, my pack does not. We are a chosen family. They are my brothers and sisters. They are brothers and sisters to each other."

I breathe a sigh of relief. "Oh. Okay." I grimace in their direction. "Nothing personal, I just…I have enough on my plate with a whole coven and now Caleb."

None of them answer—I feel confusion, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear coming from them across the bond, but I can't pick out who feels what.

I decide to try to assign mental signatures to names and faces. They're standing in a semi-circle around me. On my far left is a short, petite woman with brown skin, black hair, and facial features that mean she could be from any number of places, in terms of ethnic origin. I focus on her and pick up a hint of confusion.

"Saige," I say, meeting her soft brown eyes.

Her hair is tightly curled, shaved on the sides and long on top and back (when I say the sides are shaved, though, I mean they were, at one point, but have grown out over the months of her imprisonment), with three gold hoops laddered down her ears. Despite her small stature and kind eyes, there's a feral edge to her.

She nods. "That's me. And you are?"

"Maeve Sparrow," I say, electing to omit the other titles, since I don't know what they mean, and know even less if they'll mean anything to these six shifters.

"Caleb's new mate," says the male next to Saige.

He's fucking enormous. Bigger than Caleb, even, and that's saying something. Six-six? Six-eight? NBA tall, but built like Caleb…that is to say, like a god. I feel no attraction to him, other than appreciation for a fine male figure. His skin is naturally pale but tanned to a dark golden hue by a life lived outside under the sun, with jet black hair grown shaggy and unkempt and a beard to match.

Anger wafts from him. "Callahan," I say.

He nods. "And who are you, Maeve Sparrow? What are you?"

I shrug.

"The only reason Caleb went after you—" starts Colin.

I cut in over him. "Was because they had you guys. I know. That's why I'm here. We escaped…I don't even know how long ago. Hours, maybe? We came right back in to rescue you."

"The female fae," says the next shifter in line, a short male built like a bulldog— broad shoulders, broad barrel chest, short legs, massive arms, reddish-blond hair and beard grown out from a close shave. "She called you queen before you drained her."

"She did."

He glares at me, chin lifting defiantly. "I bow to no one." He has the Irish lilt, making his identity easy.

I look around. "You see anyone bowing, Connor? It's from a prophecy, apparently."

"The Once-Mortal queen business? That old shite?"

I shrug. "I know very little about it, only what Aeldfar, my grandfather, has told me. I do not claim the title. But it does seem to fit the facts so far, so…"

The female beside Connor snorts. She's tall and voluptuous, a real siren. Her hair is jet black and hangs to her waist—when clean and brushed, it would be as glossy as a raven's wing. Statuesque doesn't cover it where Sierra is concerned—six feet tall, built like a female WWF star, with tits out to here. She looks like she could snap me in half with one hand.

"Sierra," I say. "What's funny?"

"You. ‘Oh, I don't claim the title,'" she quotes me in a whiny, simpering voice. "But I didn't hear you telling that fae you killed you weren't any damned queen."

Jealousy—I feel it and taste it as clear as day. Shit. Caleb may think of her like a sister, but she doesn't feel that way about him.

"She was dying already. She offered me her blood, Sierra. I spoke the Sacred Rites over her and eased her passing." I step into her personal space; I feel her tense, feel violence simmering just beneath the surface. "I'm sorry, Sierra."

She flinches as if struck, and I focus in on the bond, the feelings from her. "For what?" She snaps.

"You know. I wouldn't say it out loud in this setting."

She lifts her chin. "I have no secrets from my pack." She glances at my coven. "Them I don't know, and couldn't care less about."

"Very well. You love Caleb, and not as a brother. He doesn't return the feeling, and never will. That's not about you , though, Sierra. He was just…meant for me, I guess. Why is anyone's guess. But I'm sorry for how much I know you must be hurting."

Her eyes flash with pain, with shock, and then her jaw sets and a shutter falls over her emotions, shielding them from the bond. "Fuck you, Your Majesty ." The last words are snarled, venomous with sarcasm and bitterness.

Amber light flashes and a jet-black wolf lopes away.

I look to Caleb. "Will she be okay?"

He shrugs. "Sierra is a difficult woman. Brave, fearless, powerful, and full of anger." He juts his chin in the direction she fled. "I've known of her feelings but chose to ignore them, hoping she would move past them. I see now I was mistaken."

The last shifter laughs. "She's been in love with you from day one, Alpha. If you thought she'd just move on, you clearly weren't paying attention to the kind of woman she is."

Channing honestly somewhat resembles the famous actor who shares his name, with sandy blond hair and freakishly perfect jaw structure, with a hard, muscular build.

He lifts his chin in my direction. "So what do I call you? Maeve? Sparrow? Your Majesty? My lady?"

"Maeve. Not Your Majesty. Never that." I stare after Sierra. "How do I fix things with her?"

Channing laughs again. "Good luck. She holds a hell of a grudge."

Connor snorts. "You can say that again. I broke her favorite hairbrush by accident and she refused to speak to me for six months. and then she drank me under the table, shaved my head, painted my scalp blue, and called me Smurf-head for the next year."

I grimace. "Oh. Super."

Caleb squeezes my shoulder. "I'll talk to her."

Alistair appears—I'd noticed him leaving the hall during the introductions to the pack, but thought nothing of it.

"Maeve." His voice is serious. "Come. It's important."

I move after him. We cross into the atrium, which is littered with bodies but is otherwise empty. The stench of Death is powerful.

"How many did we lose?" I ask Alistair, ashamed for not thinking of it sooner.

"Thirty-two out of one hundred and six," he answers.

"Where are the rest?" I ask.

"Combing this section for stragglers. There's another powerful ward through there," he says, indicating the doorway opposite the one we entered the atrium from. "But that's not what you have to see."

"Another ward," I mutter. "Great. I'm starting to hate fucking wards."

He sighs. "About that."

We enter through a doorway—another pair of guards lay dead, throats torn out by an animal of some kind. There are doors on both sides of this hallway, but only three are warded.

"Goddammit," I snarl. "More fucking wards."

I sigh in frustration and close my eyes, preparing to break them, but Alistair touches my arms.

"Wait, Maeve."

I look at him. "What? I assume I have to break them to let out…" I finally look.

In the first cell is a male. Like I was, and like the pack I just freed, he's nude. Long-limbed and skeletally thin. Huddled in the far back left corner, long, matted, stringy blonde hair dangling over his face and shoulder, touching the floor. No beard. Through the strings of hair, one brilliant, vivid, shockingly blue eye regards me balefully.

He…

I look at Alistair. "He's…he's like me." I frown. "Sort of."

I sniff, scenting the air, the faint hint of blood. I smell a hint of shifter, but his skin is the hardened and ivory pale marble of an unblooded vampire.

Alistair gestures at the next cell down. A naked female crouches on the cot on all fours, facing me, teeth bared in a rictus. Her hair is equally long, matted, and snarled, a lovely shade of strawberry blond.

I sniff the air again—honey and sunlight and starlight and cedar…shifter and fae.

I look at Alistair, horror flooding through me. "Mom got away. I lived free."

They're both about my age.

"They didn't," Alistair whispers. "The male is unblooded and wild with bloodlust, the female…"

I swallow hard. "If I don't have blood, I can't touch my prana. If I don't have prana, well…I've never gotten there, exactly, but it's not good. If she's part shifter, part fae, and has no prana, then I'm guessing she can't shift. And something tells me a shifter who can't shift…"

"Goes insane," Caleb rumbles, prowling silently into the hall. "It's agony. As bad as bond-sickness, but it won't kill you. You'll just suffer."

"They're dangerous," I say. "I can't just break the wards. They'll attack. They won't know any better."

"If she can shift, will she recover?" I ask.

He shrugs. "In time. It's like any mental illness. There's no cure but to shift, and then to find ways to…." he shrugs. "Get better."

I go back to the male's cell. "And him. He has to have blood. But once he does, he won't be able to stop. He has no coven, no one to pull him back. He'll create a nosferatu."

"Exactly," Alistair says.

"But we can't leave them here. I will not."

Alistair wraps an arm around my shoulders and kisses my temple. 'I know, dearest one. We won't. But come, there's one more you must see."

I frown. "More? I'm a vampire-fae, she's a shifter-fae, he's a vampire-shifter…" I go through the possible permutations and come up empty. "That's it."

He shakes his head. "Not another like you."

I stop in front of the last warded cell. On the other side is a male vampire. He's medium height, slender, with auburn hair—familiar in shade and texture. His facial features, the angle of his nose, the line of his jaw…the cupid's bow of his lip. I see those features in the mirror.

"No," I whisper.

He's standing in front of his cot, hands behind his back, his bearing calm and regal as if he's dressed in the finest three-piece suit. Chin high. Eyes steady and clear—brown, unlike mine. I got my eyes from Mom, at least. He's older than Alistair, I think, judging by the touch of silver at his temples.

He steps as close as the ward will allow, the corners of his eyes crinkling and tightening as he endures the tempest of heat from the ward.

"Daughter." His voice is rich and smooth and powerful. "You have your mother's eyes."