Chapter 14

My eyes blinked open in the dim alcove, and I pushed myself into a sitting position, not sure how long I"d been out without the direction of the sun. Our little camp was already up and running, everyone milling about quietly as they prepared for our long day ahead.

An aroma of something warm and sweet wafted to my nose, and I followed it, finding Callan sitting by a small fire, heating a small pot of stew. I sat next to him, our legs touching as I leaned my head against his shoulder.

"You didn"t wake me, did you?" It wasn"t a question. I could tell by the set of his shoulders, the bags under his eyes. If he"d slept, it hadn"t been long enough. Instead of replying, he turned, planting a soft kiss on my head as he dished me a bowl of food. I was slightly startled when I took the first bite, not expecting the warm sweetness that coated my tongue. "Fruit soup?"

"Unfortunately," Callan said, reminding me of his hatred for the fae eating habits.

"It"s delicious," I told him, one eyebrow cocked. I reached my free hand to his exposed wrist, sending a slight zing of energy through him. Immediately he sat a little straighter, his head hanging a little higher. "Enjoying your new trick?" he asked me.

"I am," I said, satisfaction warming me. I was like an instant battery pack, and it was cool as shit. "But what I don"t understand is how I remembered it." My thoughts drifted back to my conversation with the Goddess Prim, her telling me I"d never be able to recover my memories. That trick had most definitely come to me in a memory. "I need to talk to Prim again."

"I think that would be wise," Callan said. "Once all this is done, I"ll go with you."

"You should stay with the pack," I told him, but I wouldn"t fight him if he wanted to come with me. I"d be grateful for it, even. The more time I spent with him as my mate, the harder it was to imagine a life where he wasn"t there. Things I used to do by myself were now things I wanted to do with him. "If you become Alpha, that is."

"I"ve been thinking about that a lot. It"s not that I don"t want to, but..." he trailed off, struggling to find the words.

"You"re scared," I said after he didn"t continue, knowing in my heart that it was true. Of course, he was scared. Last time he had been an Alpha, his entire world had been torn apart, by his mate no less. "And I get that. But I want you to know that I"ll be there for you. Every step of the way. I mean it when I said that I would do this with you." His head turned to meet mine, intensity burning my face as he stared at me. My palms turned clammy, his sharp attention always making me nervous, my body jumping at any chance it could to react to him.

I licked my lips, his eyes darting down to them as I continued. "I know Lexi messed everything up for you, and I know there"s a lot of trauma there too. But I"m not Lexi. I will never be Lexi, and I would rather die than hurt you the way that she did."

"It wasn"t entirely her fault. I see that now. Parts of it were, yes. She never should have gone along with a fake mate bond. But even then, she didn"t deserve to be sold to the fae either. She deserved to die for her crimes. With her people, by her people. And I thought I"d done that for her." Sorrow and regret filtered through our bond, which I"d all but given up trying to block. The longer we were together, the more I enjoyed knowing what he was feeling. He wasn"t a man that shared his feelings lightly, and it was like having a little cheat code, a window into his psyche.

"I can"t imagine what that was like for her," I said carefully. I hadn"t known Lexi the way he had before she"d snapped. All my memories of Lexi were bad, and I didn"t regret for one second taking her life. But he"d known her differently, and that was something I had to get used to. "We"ll get revenge for her too."

We sat in companionable silence for a while, eating our fruity stew. Even though it was made from only fruit, it left a comfortable weight in my belly, warming me from the inside out. If we weren"t on a quest to save my best friend, I might have been inclined to lie down and take a long nap.

"I"ll do it," Callan said, breaking the silence. He reached over, taking my hand in his, the heat of his skin making me shiver. His eyes darkened, and I knew he was reading me through our bond, but he ignored it. This was definitely not the time or place for us to get busy. "I"ll take over the Clover pack."

My eyes widened, a smile breaking across my face. "Okay," I agreed. "We have so much to do. We need to rebuild, recruit more people."

"In due time," he said, moving his hand to my thigh with a squeeze that shot straight to my core. "For now, I need you to listen to me. Not that thing you do where you pretend to listen, but do the opposite. I need you to really listen to me. I need you to promise me that if things go south in there, you get out of there."

I opened my mouth, ready to protest the ridiculousness of his request. We both knew I wasn"t going to do that.

He closed the distance between us, his hand reaching out to cover my mouth. My eyes went wide, shooting daggers out at him. "I know you can handle yourself," he said quietly, his gaze intense. "But I also know that we are doing something very risky. You are the most important person we have right now, and you have what she wants. Do not let her get that ring. If it comes down to you saving one of us, or protecting that ring, you have to choose the ring."

His words made sense, I knew that. One life versus the lives of the entire realm. But given the opportunity, could I trust myself to make that choice? I didn"t know, but still I nodded against his hand. Hopefully it wouldn"t come to that. Sensing the shift, he dropped his hand, replacing it with a much too quick kiss on my lips.

With breakfast settled and our bags packed again, we started out back into the dark tunnels, Oliver"s flame lighting the way ahead of us. Eldrin walked with Finn, the two of them deep in animated conversation as they quipped back and forth. They reminded me of two brothers, always goofing around and cracking jokes at each other. Callan, Nia, and I stayed center, with Oliver keeping quietly up in the rear.

After several more hours of traveling through the winding underground passageways, the group came to a halt before a section of the wall that appeared to be no different from the rest. Finn and Eldrin exchanged a look, nodding to each other in silent agreement.

"This is it," Eldrin explained, his hand resting against the cool stone. "We can make a branch off here, it"s about a mile in this direction until we hit the prison."

"Which part of the prison will it be?" Nia asked.

"The east side, near where the inmate cells should be if Oliver"s intel is correct. In a perfect world, we"ll be able to get in and out before they realize what"s happened."

"The alternative?" I asked.

"Be ready to open a portal," he said, looking from me to Oliver. "Chances are it"s going to be hot, and we"re going to need a quick escape route. Won"t matter if she knows we"re here by that point."

Eldrin stepped forward, placing his palms flat against the surface, closing his eyes as he concentrated. Slowly but surely, he began to pull huge chunks out of the earth. Finn joined in, helping loosen and guide sections in tandem with Eldrin, steadily carving a wide tunnel in the dirt. At the pace they were going, a mile was going to take at least a full day.

Nia moved closer to me as we waited, her face somber. "I had another dream about Lily last night," she began in a hushed tone, not wanting the others to hear. "She wasn"t being tortured this time, but she doesn"t look good either. I tried to wake her, but I couldn"t. She was in pain, and there was nothing I could do to help her."

My heart clenched at the description, anger and sorrow flooding through me. "We"re going to get her back, I promise. She"s my family."

"She"s mine too," Nia said. "At least, I hope she is. I love her more than I"d ever thought possible." That soft glow again, in the general direction of her chest, something she clearly didn"t notice. I didn"t bring it up, scared that me pointing it out might interfere with their connection, make it fade somehow. Any information we could get from Lily, the better. "Seeing her like that, it"s haunting. I don"t know if I"ll ever get it out of my mind. If something were to happen to her, I don't know what I'd do. We have to help her."

"We"re so close," I told her, reaching out to give her hand a firm squeeze. "I will use this ring to raise Lucifer from hell if I have to. Whatever it takes."

"I don"t know who that is," she said, confused.

"It"s a human thing," I said, waving the conversation away. We had nothing better to do, but the idea of trying to explain religion and the devil to Nia seemed daunting.

"Didn"t you have dreams with Callan before your bond cemented?" she asked me, and I fought the small smile that tugged at the corner of my mouth.

"We did. It seemed like the closer we got, the more our bond strengthened."

"Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you hadn"t killed Lexi? Would you still not know you were mates?"

"I don"t think we would have ever found out," I told her honestly. "Their bond was blocking ours. I do wonder if his bond with her had never existed, when it would have surfaced. Oliver said it"s not always instant like it is with normal shifter mates. I think it has something to do with the progression of your souls."

"I think Lily might be my mate," Nia said, seeming confused by her own words. "But I don"t know how that"s possible either. They feel so real, but maybe my dreams are just that. Dreams. Maybe we get in there and no one has even touched a hair on her head." I highly doubted that, but I wasn"t going to say that. I knew Cas more than I"d like to, and he was sadistic at his core. They wanted to hurt me, so they"d hurt Lily too.

"True mate bonds are based on the soul," I said finally, glad she had come to the true mate conclusion on her own. There was still a faint glow in her chest, and I breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn"t messed anything up. She"d voiced it first, so I felt like that freed me up to talk about what I"d observed. "In my opinion, I think you"re mates too. I can sometimes see magic, and I see something when you two are close."

"What do you see?"

"A glow," I answered, a helpless shrug shaking my shoulder. Skepticism crossed her face, but she didn"t say anything. "In your chest. I"ve seen it on her too."

"If you can see that, why do we not have a bond yet?"

"I wish I knew how it worked, truly. When the time is right is really all I can say." It sounded weak, even to my own ears, but she nodded, retreating back into her own thoughts.

"This is going to take a while," she said, watching the boys work on the new tunnel, a small opening now wide enough for us to walk through, but nowhere to go. Sweat dripped down their backs, clinging to their clothes, as they continued, now focusing on pushing the tunnel outwards in the direction of the prison. "I"m going to take a nap." She moved off to the side, laying down on the cold stone and closing her eyes. It was a weird thing to do, trying to take a nap among all the noise the tunnel digging was making, but I knew it was because she wanted to see if she could connect with Lily.

If she could get any details to help us, we"d be one step closer to getting her out of there.