Chapter Fifteen

Goodness only knows how we look, the four of us in various states of disarray, standing in the middle of a sex club.

It's the first clear thought I've had since being beset by the Pack voices, and it's more than a little welcome.

I tighten my grip on Clíodhna's hand and, when the voices abate, open one eye cautiously to take in the Morrígan and Ciara, properly this time. I know them now, because I am Pack. Well, I am kind of Pack; not quite in the way that they are, but Pack-enough that they accept me.

The Morrígan is taller than I fully comprehended, and I wish I could have seen her wolf when she shifted. She feels different, like I should be baring my neck in submission to her. She raises an eyebrow at me and I raise one back. I might be Pack, but I'm not her submissive.

That makes her chuckle.

Ciara is slight, beside her, red hair tied up into a jaunty ponytail that swings behind her. She looks worried.

I turn my head, and Clíodhna leans forward, her lips brushing my cheek. It's all that I can do to smile tiredly at her.

No talking. I appreciate the fact that none of them are talking. No one in the entirety of the Golden Apple seems to be talking, in fact. I look around, and most of them seem to be cowering away from the Morrígan.

I'm the Dark Goddess, and that puts the fae on edge, she whispers in my mind, and I can hear the laughter in her voice. They can never be entirely certain what it is that I'm going to choose to do next. It's also why you can still hear me, when the rest of the Pack is blocked out by Clíodhna.

It's a curious predicament to be in. Definitely a better one than being trapped in the body of a giant snake, or being hunted across a room by red-eyed banshees that look like they want to suck the marrow from my bones.

Do I want the voices to go away completely?

I don't know. It feels like a tether, a bond to other people, and that's something that I've felt has been missing from my life for a long time. And now I feel like I have two of those bonds, one to the Pack, and one to Clíodhna.

Clíodhna feels very still and very quiet. She's been still and quiet, especially when she was building the tension for me on the cross earlier, but she never felt still or quiet. She's like a livewire, zinging into action, taking up the air in every space she walks into.

Her sister walks into my sightline; the hair on my neck pricks up and both Ciara and the Morrígan turn defensively towards her. It's like we are all three in sync, and I can sense the disappointment from Clíodhna beside me. She feels left out.

I squeeze her hand. "If it weren't for you," I say, "I wouldn't bother with any of this."

She doesn't reply with words, but the answering squeeze of her hand tells me everything I need to know.

"Teach me how to shut them out," I say to the Morrígan. "Please."

She nods, and then literally shakes herself out of her skin. All of a sudden, I'm face with a very large, very red, wolf.

"I didn't know wolves come in that colour," I laugh, my nervousness showing through.

Her nose nuzzles up against my hand and it's okay, she's Pack. I recognise her. This time I don't hear her thoughts, I see them, like flashes of film, running through my brain. She's showing me strands of thread, all different colours and it takes a minute or two with being bombarded with the same images, over and over, but I get it. The threads are the different voices in the pack. That makes sense.

Then she sends me an image of a pin and I understand what she's meaning for me to do. I can pin the threads to a different part of my mind. They'll always be there if I need them, but they won't be overshadowing every minute of every day.

It takes longer than I'd like to put what she suggests into practice. Lots of thinking really hard in a particular direction, and twitchy fingers, trying to pull and move and coax things where I want them to be.

Most of the threads don't mind too much about being moved, but there are three that keep flashing in my mind's eye, as if they're pretty outraged at being pushed to one side. They're the first three voices that I heard, and part of me feels sad that I won't be able to hear them, so I bundle them around their very own pin, so that we can talk separately from the rest of Pack if we wish, and they seem to calm down after that.

Eventually, I'm able to disentangle my fingers from Clíodhna's, and test out all I've been doing.

Silence. Blessed silence.

I nod, and then collapse back into Clíodhna's arms, turning to bury my face against her.

She's still naked, hadn't even paused to put clothes on before she sped after me. Her skin is cool, clammy to the touch, and I can feel in her skin how scared she was for me.

"What could have happened?" I ask her.

Her face distorts, as if she doesn't want to answer, and then reluctantly she does. "Mortal brains aren't made to process that amount of information at once. I'm surprised it didn't break you."

I blink. This may be one of the only times when my ADHD might actually be mistaken as a superpower. Usually when people say that, it's a glib comment that doesn't consider the stress and trauma that comes from growing up neurodiverse in a world that's designed for the neurotypicals. But right here, right now? It seems fitting.

I came here because of my brain. I came because I craved the quiet relief from a never-sleeping brain, that I sensed submission could gift me. And in the end, it was that unrelenting brain—the brain that literally rewires itself when it can't do something—that helped me survive. I'm so used to processing all of the sensory input, all of the time, that the whole of Pack in my head? Not a problem.

Looking around, I catch Aoibheall's eye. "Okay, you started this. I've got three trials to overcome? What's next?"