Chapter Eighteen

Dom

A squeak and the slam of the screen door woke me up. I flung an arm over my eyes, realizing the sun was assaulting me through a gap in the blinds.

"Breakfast," Jack called.

I grunted, sitting up as Aaron walked through the open door to the room where I'd slept in the bed opposite Amelia's. "When'd you get back last night?" he asked.

"Dunno. Three or four." And then I'd crashed. When I didn't see Naomi at the picnic and couldn't go into Evander's pack house, I'd exhausted myself trying to find a place on pack lands where I'd pick up her link. No luck.

I grabbed one of the doughy fried treats in the kitchen and headed for the jam on the counter. "Amelia's nine days should be up soon, when she—"

My head snapped to the hallway. There was a noticeable absence of struggle and moaning. I dropped my breakfast back into the basket and went to the doorway. There Amelia was, sleeping peacefully for the first time in so long. She looked a mess, but a peaceful, exhausted mess. Nine long days were finally over.

She's out, let her sleep. The warlock? I asked over the link to just the guys.

Aaron went straight for the room where we'd bunked him with Carson. He's waking up, Carson's still out .

Let Carson sleep, bring the warlock here .

Aaron helped Jerod from the room while I shut Amelia's door, and we all gathered in the living room. He'd lost weight, having thrown up many of his meals over the past nine days, and he sank onto the couch in a filthy T-shirt and unkept hair. I stood opposite, staring down at the cause of this mess, waiting for an explanation. Aaron was on his left, Jack on his right.

"Anytime now, warlock," I said. "What the fuck happened?"

Jerod gave a weak laugh, sweeping his hair out of his face. "The deal with Zopphandomet was broken the moment that she-wolf knocked apart my ritual. Which is a travesty, because behemoths are almost impossible to summon, and I pulled it off. Is Dani okay?"

Dani, his friend, the witch from the battle. "Yes, her and the dragon are fine."

He sighed, smiling as he laid his head back on the couch. "Good."

"How exactly does Amelia falling into your ritual make this"—Aaron gestured to Jerod—"happen?"

A door in the cabin slammed open, and sleeping beauty was awake. Amelia, claws out, held herself in the doorway to the bedroom as her eyes rolled wildly in search of something until they landed on Jerod.

"You," Amelia snarled. "What did you do?" She didn't wait for an answer before she pounced on the couch, pinning Jerod in place with one hand at this throat.

"Air . . . darling . . ." he choked out.

"Amelia, we can't get answers if you suffocate him," I said.

She let go, stepping back from the couch and flexing her fingers, stretching everything out. Taking a deep breath, she turned to stare at me. "Everything's different. Haven't been postwithdrawal in . . ."

A long time , I finished over the link, just the two of us . It's been a long time, Amelia.

Her eyes shone, almost watering over, as she paused and assessed everything in her body. The feel of it, the way it moved. I had to admit, it felt slower off the Lunaria's Dream for the first couple of weeks, and there would still be that little itch of seduction in the back of our minds, wanting to fall back into the comfort, the power. But this, this had to be our new normal. There was no more Apollo and no more drugs.

"Welcome back, Amelia," Aaron said, barely above a whisper. She turned her attention to him, emotions turbulent on her face.

"Amelia?" Carson's sleep-roughened voice came from the hallway, and it broke the tension. A heartbeat later Jack, Aaron, Carson, and I were wrapped around Amelia, glad to be done with the last few weeks of our lives.

"Touching," came a snide remark from the couch.

I turned to Jerod, eyes narrowed. "All right, warlock. What happened after Amelia fell onto your spell? In the woods you said she spilled an offering and your summoned demon was pissed about it."

"That he was. To know what went wrong, you first need to know what part of my spell you fell into. That cup, or chalice really, held the essence of my soul, which I put on the line as bait for a deal with the behemoth. The offering was a connection to me." He met Amelia's gaze. "So when you fell into it, you bled into it. Into a cup of essence of soul. A cup that acted as the offering plate to a demon."

"That doesn't sound good," Jack said.

"Indeed it's not, my friend, it's good to know you're as sharp as you look," Jerod drawled. Jack's face contorted in confusion as he pieced together what that might have meant.

"So she was under the same contract as you," I clarified.

"Then what was that bullshit?" Amelia asked.

"You adding blood to the chalice is essentially a third party barging into our deal, and the behemoth did not care for that," Jerod said. "Nine hours of agony in exchange for his time, that's what I offered and what he accepted. I knew I'd go through some kind of hell, but it was supposed to be manageably temporary. His species of demon feeds off pain and torment. You'd be surprised to find how many demons feed from emotions or sensations. Much easier to contract away for services than, say, an arm."

"So it's done now?" I asked. "You can go back to wherever you came from and we can move on?"

"Not quite." He sighed. "I believe we felt a certain . . . fusing. Back before the contract began. Do you remember the pain being different before midnight?"

Amelia narrowed her eyes at him. "Yes, I do."

"I think both souls were fused together in the process, and our physical distance is going to be limited until I can untangle this mess," Jerod said.

"You what ?" Amelia rushed at Jerod again, pinning him to the couch.

A howl of fury booming through the cabin doorway caught us all off guard, and I kicked myself for being so distracted. Every head in the room snapped to the doorway as a great auburn beast burst in. Her wild yellow eyes locked onto the couch, and she full-body tackled Amelia, who shifted and snarled, letting out a howl right in the other wolf's face. The other wolf bowed her head; a demand for submission from a wolf with alpha blood wasn't easy to fight off.

"Wait! Carmine!" A human voice was calling as it came in the cabin's front door. Amelia looked up and snarled, and the auburn wolf took the opportunity to lunge and start the fight again.

"Shit," I snapped, and whirled back around to the front door where June was coming in, panicked. With no time to explain, I lifted her and shoved her into a corner, putting myself between her and the fight.

Pressed together, it would be easy for me to block any stray teeth or claws that came our way. "Rule one, June, don't throw yourself between fighting wolves."

"Carmine! Dom, why is she a wolf? What did she have here?" June said, her heart beating fast as she looked up at me with wide eyes.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, watching the circling wolves carefully.

"She just flipped out and yelled ‘Mine' and ran in here!" June cried.

"Fuck," said pretty much every wolf present with a human mouth to say fuck from. That meant exactly one thing to the wolves; Carmine had found her mate.

"Back down, both of you!" I snapped, and waded into the wolves to shove them apart. "You, Carmine was it? Shift."

Carmine whined, still watching Amelia.

"Now," I demanded.

Carmine shifted out of her wolf form and into the person I'd seen with June at the new moon. Her eyes were still wild as they darted the room and then settled on Jerod.

"Oh shit," I whispered.

"Tu es blessé? Je me battrai pour toi. Laissez-moi vous aider!" She pushed past the rest of us to make her way to Jerod, cupping his face in both hands. "What is wrong with your eyes, mon amour ?"

"Carmine," I said calmly, "he's not a wolf."

Her expression changed to shock. " Je suis . . . I am Carmine. It is nice to meet you."

For the first time, possibly ever, the warlock was speechless.

"What is happening?" June asked.

Carmine grinned, and the rest of the room might as well have been on the other side of the mountains, for all her attention was on Jerod.

"You smell amazing." She ran a tongue over her canines.

Jerod cleared his throat, now somewhat recovered. "Jerod Chang, ninth level warlock extraordinaire."

Carmine beamed, inching closer to him. "Spicy, I like it."

A slow smile spread across Jerod's face. "I believe we need to have a private chat."

She nodded vigorously.

"The incident you were witnessing between myself and Amelia—"

Carmine cut him off with a growl, looking over her shoulder at Amelia, who had also shifted back and was now pulling on a T-shirt.

"No, no, let's not start another fight over it. We have a lot more important things to cover right now. The incident you witnessed was from myself delivering some unfortunate news," Jerod said, looking between Amelia and me. "As I was saying, we need to separate our souls carefully, and we probably don't have much wiggle room away from each other. We can test that now, if you like."

"Yes," Amelia said, frowning. "Please take your impending fuckfest outside so I can speak to my wolves."

"Done," Carmine answered instantly.

"Are you serious right now?" June asked.

"Very." I ran a hand over the back of my head. "I'll give you the birds and the bees and the wolves talk later."

"Jerod, will you come with me outside?" Carmine put all the suggestion she could into her tone.

"This seems like one of those instances where you buy a guy dinner first," he mused.

"All right, out," I said. "Go figure this out in the woods. We need to talk in here."

We watched them go, and as the room settled down, we all found a seat in the living room. June was still absorbing what she'd just seen, and I found myself easily rubbing a hand on her back. "You okay?"

"I think so," she said. "That was intense."

"It's about to get a little worse. Do you think you can calm down on the porch for a bit? Take some breaths and get that heart rate down. I'll come out for you soon, and then we can have a little chat while I walk you back to the village."

June nodded, eyes lingering on Amelia for a moment before she gave me a strained smile. "Sure, I'll go do that."

Once she was gone, I found the room staring at me. Jack was grinning like a dumbass, and I rolled my eyes as I took a seat. "We need to catch you up, Amelia. Did you hear much of what we've talked about around here?"

"Enough," she answered. "Enough to know my sister is in that house with that bastard, and Smokey's the same pain in the ass he's always been."

"We're taking patrols with him in the mornings," Aaron added. "And working out at the fields. Between all that we've been running paths at night trying to pick up Naomi's link."

"And?" She looked strained. "Have you contacted her yet? Is she okay?"

"We don't know," I said. "We haven't gotten to see or hear from her yet, but Smokey says she's there. We were mostly waiting for you to get past that mess before we made any solid plans."

She looked down at the floor for a moment, and I could see the muscle in her jaw tick, which told me she was thinking hard. When her bright eyes came back up, they found me. "Thank you, Dom. I wanted to kick your ass for dragging me back here, but I agree. It's time to take down Evander."

"And take back Moonpeak!" Carson added.

Amelia gave a halfhearted nod. "The only thing I want right now is Evander's entrails scattered across the mountains. First, we focus on that."

I nodded, glad for not having a fight on my hands, but also reflecting on her choice of words. When we'd left Moonpeak she said nearly every day she wanted her pack back. At what point had that fallen from being her main goal?

"I think we decided that you'd spar with me, right?" Amelia was turned to face me again.

"As much as you want," I agreed. "We're ready to get in top shape. What about the patrols for Naomi?"

"Continue them," Amelia said. "Go in twos, no reason to be caught alone with that snake in the pack house. Don't trust him or anyone overly loyal to him. Go at night, and link the group regularly whether you've found Naomi or not."

The room agreed, and Amelia stood up. "I'm taking a shower, are we stocked on supplies out here?"

"We're being granted housing in the village," Aaron said. "The plan was to move in when you were better."

"We can pack up today," I agreed. "I'll be back soon, I'm going to walk June back and fill her in on a few things."

"Is that what the kids are calling it these days?" Jack smirked, and I did my best to ignore him as I left the cabin.