50. Jax

50

Jax

She was cowering in the mud again, her father's body dead at her feet. Water poured over her head and lightning struck as she stared at me. "What are you waiting for?" She whispered.

"Kill me."

"I can't," I told her. "You're not the same woman, and I'm not the same man."

"But you're not a man at all, wolf. You're a wolf. A shifter. An alpha. A pack to guide and protect. What am I? You're the only one who is going to miss me when I'm gone. I'm barely a wolf. I'm a freak of nature."

Still, I couldn't kill her. Not to save my pack. Not to save the mountain. "You're mine. That's all that matters."

"Then you're not the hero I thought you were." Her eyes turned dark, like ink spilling from the pupils. Slowly, she rose to her feet, but she didn't stop there. Shadows appeared at her wrists, and they lifted her into the sky. As she hovered, she smiled sadly down at me. "I wonder if that makes you the villain."

"What are you doing, Anna? What's happening?"

"You know what's happening. You knew it the moment the crone told you I had to stay with you. You tried to save me, but you couldn't. It's all right. I didn't deserve to be saved."

Suddenly, her head shot back and shadows poured out of it. Desperately, I tried to call out to her. To tell her to stop. To fight it. But there was nothing but darkness.

Then, the picture froze.

"Interesting," Lunessa said as she walked out to study Anna. "And slightly weird. Clearly, she is the villain here, but she's calling you the villain. Or rather, you're calling you the villain, since it's your dream."

Tearing myself away from Anna, I stared at the witch. "You can walk into people's dreams?"

"The Darkwyn coven are witches of the moon. There's not much I can't do that's touched by the night. I've been trying to reach your mind all day, but something is shielding you. I imagine it's one of the other witches trying to cut off communication."

I was so caught up in the dream that I almost lost touch with reality. This wasn't real. "Is this what a null is? Darkness inside?"

"The opposite, actually. If you're asking me if this could happen, the answer is no. Anna is not a void that can be filled with dangerous magic. But…perhaps…well, that's not a thought I want to entertain right now. You need to wake up. I'm here, and I don't have much time."

"Here? Where?"

"In your bedroom, alpha. Wake up."

Instantly, I was awake. Next to me, Anna slept peacefully. The sheets were twisted around her waist, so I pulled the blanket up to cover her bare breasts.

At the foot of the bed, Lunessa smirked. "Your concern for her modesty is touching."

"How can you be here?" I growled. "I have security. Good security."

"You do, but any wards that Irene put up against magic failed when they took her magic. I'm guessing she hadn't considered that. I will put the wards back up when I leave. Something happened in the woods tonight. I felt death. Explain."

There was no fucking way that I was going talk to a witch while I was naked in my own bed, so I got out and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. Only then did I explain Amaya's death.

"Amaya. I never met her," Lunessa mused. "But the mother did mention not long after my initiation that Amaya was missing. I started my studies not long after that, and I never heard the name again. I'll need to reach out to the coven for more information."

When she scowled, I chuckled. "Not ready to face your family's wrath?"

"Neither would you, in my position," she muttered.

"We're having a hard time explaining how we found her. No tracks. No scent trail. She didn't defend herself."

"That's easy. She was probably killed in one place and then magically teleported to a spot at the time of her death."

Immediately, I grew rigid. "Witches can teleport in and out of my territory whenever they fucking want?"

"Calm yourself, alpha. It takes an immense amount of magic to teleport, and it requires contact on both ends. Something had to have been placed in that spot. A lock of hair or… yes, a spot of blood would do it. Then she was spelled for her body to connect. That kind of magic is draining. Whoever cast the spell would be very weak for days, if not unconscious."

"Then it's none of the witches here. They all looked fine, and I looked over that spot myself.

I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. There wasn't any blood on the leaves or grass. No hair."

"A fingernail. An eyelash. It doesn't take much." Walking to the window, she stared out.

"We have to assume Amaya was drained of magic before it happened. It's a problem, but not the biggest one. Someone has enough magic reserve to do this, but why? What's the point? They can't just be showing off."

"It interrupted the hunt, although it's not an important event, it made the other alphas question whether or not I can protect my territory," I said roughly.

"Not Maeve," Anna said huskily as she sat up. Thankfully, she didn't question why there was another woman in her bedroom. "When she walked me back today, she mentioned that you went after your witch when she did not. She respects you for that. It would take a lot of that support to waiver."

"London will follow you. He's no fool," Lunessa said quietly. "Well, he is a fool, but not when it comes to protecting his pack. He won't turn from an ally."

"Emerson isn't an idiot. He might have fun getting us all to point fingers at each other, but that's all it is. Fun. He knows it won't lead to anything." I walked to the bed to stand by Anna's side. Could she feel the dream in her bond? Know that I was unsettled or even see it?

If she did, she didn't let on. "Was the body spelled? Did you see it, Anna? Any magic on it?"

"No." Anna hesitated. "What if there was magic in the body? What if it gets released when Saul cuts her open?"

Lunessa shook her head. "Magic doesn't work like that. If it's there and you can't see it, then it's dormant. It can't just be released by a cavity opening. It needs to be triggered. Still, Anna should be there when they do the autopsy. Just in case."

"Great. Just what I wanted to do with my morning," Anna said wryly.

Lunessa studied her for a moment and then relaxed. "Of course. It's you. You're shielding him."

"Me? Who? What?" Anna frowned. "Who am I shielding?"

"Your mate. Through your bond. That's why I can't connect with him. That's fine. It's probably for the best. I need to see the body. If you would please let your healer know that someone will be with the body for ten or fifteen minutes, I would appreciate it. The less magic I need to use the better."

With that, she was gone. Immediately, I straightened. "What the fuck? She just told me that teleportation required a massive amount of power!"

"That's not teleportation. That's projection. If you'd try to touch her, you'd know that she wasn't really there. You keep staring at me like there's something on my face. What's going on?"

So she hadn't seen my dream. In that case, I wasn't going to tell her about it. Lunessa had laid to rest any fears that the void meant a holding place. That Anna was a carrying case for some horrific magic.

And I couldn't protect her.

"I just wish that things were different," I said. "That we could have time to do this differently."

"We had three years, Jax," Anna reminded me flatly. "It doesn't matter. This is how we're doing it now, whatever this is. If things were different, maybe I'd always have been Dirk's daughter to you. Who knows."

"Do you know that you're shielding me with your bond?"

"Half the time, I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing with the bond," she groused and slid back under the covers. "The other half, I kind of wish I could poison you with it."

"Comforting." I got back in bed and pulled her naked body up against me.

Turning, she threw a leg around my hip. "We've got good sex going for us. Why don't you give me a taste before I have to go watch our healer cut up a dead body?"

"This must be what they mean by the honeymoon period being over."