Chapter 17

SEVENTEEN

Orson

A full moon dangles above the forest, shedding layers of silvery light over the backcountry. I speed through it, having assumed driving responsibilities from Max while he and his brother grab shuteye in the backseat. They sustained more substantial injuries during our battle with the sludge beast. With the asshole member of Asha’s pack. Trouble curls into a little ball between the guys in the back, nubby tail pressed against Max’s thigh, head resting on Braxton’s lap. Like a little family.

We are a family. A pack.

On the passenger seat beside me, Asha lies sleeping beneath my jacket. The jacket has shifted lower with her sleepy movements, so I pull it up higher over her shoulders and see her relax even more deeply into sleep. I like her like this too. Without the weight of the world pressing down on her shoulders, she looks far younger, her face softened by sleep.

Maybe she’ll look this way all the time once we’ve found the answers to her brother.

My heart swells a little, feeling hopeful, before my mind moves back to the events after the not-Simon was killed. The debriefing with the Enforcers had gone well, probably due to the fact that everyone seemed to be under the impression that we wouldn’t survive. They’d been more than a little relieved to see we’d done all the hard work while they sat on their asses. No surprise there. They’d gone in to clean up afterward, asking about the survivors.

Max had reported that none of the Blood Pack members had been found, outside of “Simon,” and in doing so protected them from being taken into custody by the Enforcers. Most of the wealthy supernatural guests who had avoided being tortured and killed were crowded in a back corner of the manor’s garden. None of them had seen the pack members, nor did most of them seem to have a clear memory of what happened. Much to our good fortune.

After the basic mission debriefing, we’d all been questioned relentlessly about Asha and her powers. Between the three of our accounts of her heroism, I’m certain the Enforcers will see Asha less as dynamite that could go off at any moment and more like the valuable tool she could be to them. The Blood Mages weren’t the only dangerous beings in our world, after all.

Then I learned, which was no surprise to me, that the others had been questioned about me. Max had reassured me that he’d made it clear to his superiors that me, and my technology, would streamline the efficiency of all future missions. I’d been given a handshake by some high-up asshole and a reassurance that as long as I played my cards right, I wouldn’t ever again see the inside of a cell.

Lucky me.

Our team had been given time off until our next mission, with no mention of the final Blood Mage or our plans. Max had later explained to us that the Enforcers would have wanted to take part in this mission against one Blood Mage, and that Simon would likely be taken into custody. Depending on his state of mind, he might never be released.

It wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.

We would go in. Get Simon. And the Enforcers would likely arrive here within a day or two. Max hoped we could either extract Simon without drawing the attention of the Blood Mage and leave the Enforcers to handle them, or handle him together. Asha would prefer the man be wiped from the face of the earth, but Max had made her promise that saving Simon would be the priority.

As long as he’s still alive.

I turn the heat a little warmer to make sure Asha’s comfortable and mull over our future, then focus on the road. Great pines hedge the road, forming a corridor that reaches north, towards our objective. The last task of our mission. With the Blood Pack released, there remains only one member yet to rescue.

Asha’s brother Simon. And then we can rest.

With the window cracked and a cool breeze sweeping back my blond hair to keep me awake, I reflect on the path that stretches behind me. What a curious and wonderful journey . In the dark days of my imprisonment, I used to bemoan the misfortunes life laid at my feet, its turns that delivered me to that awful cage. I survived by paving over these thoughts with a cheery facade, wearing its mask until I felt its roots colonize my mind.

But now, in the presence of my lover, my mate, Asha , my reflection reaches deeper, undaunted, armored with the knowledge of my deliverance. My father’s violence, my mother’s depression, can be held alongside Asha’s tenderness and the brothers’ mercy. Each forms a curious shape, a rebel of geometry. Yet when their ragged edges meet, filling sockets with plugs, making smooth a texture once rough to the touch, something like beauty attends the arrangement. A portrait gains definition.

In its outer edges lies an expanse awaiting the final pieces.

I cast my thoughts into the future, attempt to predict how life will complete the outer bounds of the portrait. A bucolic estate. Family. Children. A pack of my own. Can it be so? Doubt circles my hope like wheeling buzzards.

Asha stirs in the passenger seat. After a moment, her eyes open, and she looks over at me. “How are you doing?” The words are followed by a yawn.

I smile. She’s cute when she yawns. “Fine.”

She reaches out and strokes my hair. “What’re you thinking about?”

I take a breath, cut my eyes at the radiant medallion of the moon. “The future.”

“Mm, what about it?”

Should I tell her? It feels like too much. I think normal people would have at least gone on a date with a woman before talking to her about houses, kids, and mates. But then, we’ve had a lot of late night meals at seedy diners. Do those count?

I realize she’s still watching me, so I search for words that won’t make me sound like a fool. “Oh, just trying to envision it.”

Asha pulls her legs up, setting her heels at the edge of her seat. She wraps her arms around her shins and places her chin atop her knee in a strangely vulnerable way. “It’s a little hard to see, isn’t it?”

“In the abstract, it’s relatively easy. The dream we all spun together.”

She nods. “But practically .”

Right. We don’t live in dreams. We still have a mission we need to complete. I need to continue fulfilling my obligation to the Enforcers, the one that allows me to remain free while also being part of this family picture we’ve created. And… we all carry so many jagged wounds. How do those improve enough for us to not only help each other create a happy home, but also ensure we ourselves don’t destroy our happiness with our own trauma?

“You’re right,” I admit reluctantly.

She takes a deep breath. “I think it’s because we’re not done. It sort of clouds the future. I mean, I can sort of picture it, but I don’t feel it, you know what I mean? Like it feels sort of…”

“Impossible.”

“Improbable.”

“Right.”

A lot of things seemed impossible to me when I was sitting in my dark cell though. Now, I’m free. I’ve made best friends, found pack members, and met my mate. So maybe “impossible” things are really just things we haven’t quite figured out on the map of our lives. I can practically picture the map, a happy life somewhere ahead in the trees, but the path to get there is concealed, due to it not yet being traveled.

“But I figure it’s just a failure of imagination,” she says, drawing me from my thoughts.

“And made more difficult to see by our unfinished mission,” I conclude.

She considers, then nods again. “Yeah. A dark cloud won’t lift until Simon’s accounted for.”

My mate sounds so sad, so tired, that it breaks my heart. I would give anything to give her the ease she feels in sleep while awake. Even if I’m not always a man who is intune to the delicacies of emotions, I know I’m right about what weighs her down in waking hours.

I certainly don’t know a lot about making someone happy, but I’ll try. I’ll try, no matter how clumsily I do so. For Asha. For my mate.

Within me, my wolf’s awareness of his mate echoes through me. He moves inside me. Restless. Wanting to shift again and run. Wanting to be with his mate while free in the woods.

Not yet , I whisper to him in my mind. But soon.

“But let’s pretend,” I tell Asha, the idea forming in my mind, “for the moment that we’re on the other side of it all. Join the power of our two imaginations together.”

She gives me a look. “Pretend? Since when do you have such a colorful imagination?”

I grin. “Since I have something worth imagining.”

Her pale brown eyes soften. “Okay. Let’s pretend.”

You can do this. “We’re in a world after Blood Mages.”

She chuckles, a spark of amusement in her gaze. “You sound like a movie trailer. In a world… ”

I smirk. “Even the cinema couldn’t capture our story.”

“No kiddin’.”

I refocus, wanting to give her this moment. “We’ve settled on your pack lands?—”

“ Our pack lands, Orson.”

The feeling in my heart comes again. That’s right. I’m in this fantasy of hers. Part of her life and part of her pack. And nothing could be better than that.

“Right, our pack lands, alongside the survivors of the Blood Mage’s terror. Is the Blood Pack safe finally?” I prod, hoping this will have the effect I so desperately want.

“Of course,” she answers, as if it’s a foregone conclusion.

But she’s overlooking an insidious threat. “After suffering the protracted experiments of their captors, it’s safe to say they’ve all been seeded with dark magic. We saw as much. What they used to attack the enemy, that wasn’t the bright light you’ve used.”

Fuck. That was the wrong thing to say. I’m really not good at this.

Her face darkens somewhat, suspecting the direction I’m headed. “No, they used dark magic. That doesn’t mean they’re like the others.”

I attempt to approach the point tactfully, since there’s no going back now, and I’ve stumbled down an idiot’s tunnel. An idiot’s tunnel filled with things I was worried about in the very back of my mind, but never planned to share aloud. “Given the same dark magic consumed that unfortunate soul who took the face of your brother, do you suppose there’s a chance?—”

“It could happen again?” Her eyes fall into the darkness beneath the glovebox. She stretches her legs into it and grips her thighs with nervous hands. “I suppose there is a chance .” Her eyes brighten as they rise to meet mine. “But they also never escaped, which has a silver lining, because it means they never had the chance to use their dark magic until we freed them. In the dungeon, they were chained up, physically and magically. Meaning, even if they did hear the call of the darkness, they couldn’t have really answered it. Ergo, their souls remain untethered to the toxic side of magic.”

She’s got some hope. Good. Hope is what we need.

“And now that they’re free to use their magic as they see fit, will they be strong enough to resist the pull of the darkness?” I ask, not leading, but genuinely inquiring. I want to know what she thinks. I trust her. As the only person I know who’s experienced the seduction of dark magic and rebuffed its advances, her opinion is the most well-informed.

Her opinion will also help to shape our future, and separate fantasy from real life. If her people will eventually become dangerous, we need to reform our plan not to include them, as painful as that might be for Asha. Still, it’d be better to flesh out this dream in a logical way now, so we all know what to be prepared for, and we have time to form a different picture.

I read in her expression the understanding that my curiosity is well-intentioned. Asha knows I wouldn’t doubt her, not after everything we’ve gone through together. “I hope—no, I believe they will overcome its attraction. In the same way that I have you and Max and Braxton, they have each other, and us. Dark magic relies on isolation. Once we rebuild, none of us will be isolated again.”

Cruel logic rears its ugly head within me, and my picture of our future grows grainy and hard to imagine. Logic says that eventually these people won’t be able to resist the pull of the darkness. I’ve lived my life by logic and not emotion, so I tend to trust it over all else. Asha has to see what I’m seeing too, right?

“But the power will always live within. The possibility one might succumb?—”

Asha grabs my right hand and pulls it into her lap, holding it between hers. It’s not out of frustration that she silences me, but out of sympathy. In recognition of my mounting anxiety over her people and our future, she quells that panic with love. And in so doing demonstrates her point. She caresses the back of my hand as if to say, This is how we defeat the darkness .

Clenched muscles relax. I settle into the leather seat and focus on Asha’s touch. There’s nothing logical about Asha and I. About a criminal and a half-breed finding love, with a pack of Enforcers. Yet, it happened.

“Maybe the dark will take them, maybe it won’t, but I think with us by their side, they have more than a little chance of being okay.” There’s hesitation in her voice, but also hope.

I consider her words, and the impact of her touch. “Maybe love can defeat that darkness.”

If anything can, it’s love, matched with Asha’s determination to help them. It’s not logical, but it feels right.

“Tell me something, Orson,” she says.

“Anything you like.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

I lift my eyebrows staring back at her. But I quickly realize the triviality of her question belies a deeper connection. A lifetime of learning each other sprawls out before us.

And it begins right now.

“Brown.”

“Brown?” she repeats incredulously.

I smile. “It wasn’t always.”

“Sorry, but I don’t know many people who like the color brown .” She’s trying not to laugh. “When did it change?”

“Fairly recently.” I decide the hell with it. “When our eyes first met.”

Blush colors her porcelain cheeks red. “Oh, you’re smooth, Orson.”

I laugh, but I mean it. Brown is officially my favorite color and all because of her stunning eyes. “What about yours?”

“Silver.”

“And has that always been the case?”

She shakes her head. “Only since I discovered it was the color of my magic. Because it comes from goodness, from love. It reminds me of those I love. Like you.” We stare into each other’s eyes, possibly a second longer than would be safe while driving, but I want to linger in her gaze as long as I can. When she breaks, she throws a glance into the backseat and says, “And those two snorers back there.”

We continue this deceptively lighthearted conversation, favorite season, pastime, hobbies, movies, books, gradually entwining our souls together with every new detail we learn about one another. All the while, she holds my hand in her lap and strokes my forearm with delicate fingertips, banishing tension from my body.

Though quieted by this ecstasy, I still hear a voice of doubt.

Can these people be saved?

Will Asha’s heart be broken all over again?

I hope we can save them. But even if we can’t, I’m hoping Asha will find a way to be okay with it. Because this woman? She’s already had a lifetime of hurt.