Chapter 40

Forty

WESLEY

I paced the room more like a caged cat than the Stag I was. Magic crackled around me, the full weight of it returning after a forced nap that had me growling at Seb, and brought his mate upstairs to tell me off. Upsetting the omega turned the whole pack against me as the tension in the house raged until Seb soothed them with cookies and sweet words. That his mate could easily refocus him from ready to turn me inside out to the Martha Stewart of werewolf omegas, made me worry about Finn.

Sally Homemaker I was not. He was so screwed with me as a mate.

Ari appeared with a plate of cookies and a huge glass of oat milk.

“I’m not hungry,” I snapped, eyeing the plate for signs of magic. Robin slipped through the door behind them, disdain and irritation clearly displayed on his cat face. The Cheshire cat guise was only slightly less disturbing than his creepy kid form. Pucks were wild magic and chaos wrapped into one. “No,” I told the cat.

“Robin’s trying to help Xiao get in.”

“Who’s Xiao again?” I waved my hands banishing answers I didn’t need to clarify, “I mean I know he’s that cat you sent, but he’s fae?”

“Part fae, like most of us,” Ari agreed.

Strong for part fae if he could breech the realm of a king who wanted no one in but himself. I met Ari’s gaze, though they said nothing more about Xiao.

“He didn’t seem to like Finn much.”

“Xiao could sense Finn was part of the Autumn king. I asked Xiao to protect you . I didn’t know you were mated to the Autumn king.”

“Surprise for all of us then.” I struggled to parse how they were related. Finn, with his steel resolve and sweet kisses, and the shadow beast dripping ooze, maddened with Winter’s curse and madness.

Seb had dropped off a picture of Xander, but they looked nothing alike. Glamour? Or something else? Finn’s memories of himself left no physical impression, and using Google to search for cursed forests and a time frame left me with too many options to narrow. “Sebastian gets the king of calm, and I get the monster broken and distorted.” The comment bit deep, and felt like a half lie. Finn was Xander, Xander was Finn. But were they really? How much was the cursed wolf and how much the mortal soul along for the ride?

Ari shifted, their form morphing into one similar to Seb, not a mirror, but an obvious relation, smaller, long red hair, resting bitch face on tap. “Would it help to be angry with me like this?”

“That’s almost as creepy as the puck.”

“You made daddy cry.” Ari folded their arms across their chest, expression cold.

“He’s Summer king. With a strong link to Autumn. He should be able to break through the barrier and reach Finn.”

“But Finn is the Autumn king.”

“Right now, he’s human,” I continued to pace. “Is it normal for the kings to have the power to tear their soul apart and give it new life?”

“Autumn has always been a transition. Life and death, hot and cold, light and dark,” Ari said. “Never considered the strongest. Summer and Winter receive those titles due to the extreme shift, but we’ve already seen how incredibly powerful Spring is. Autumn would at least be his match.”

And Spring had accidentally called a dozen hurricanes to fruition when Winter dared harm his mates, then ripped his lovers from the jaws of death, and resurrected them as if they were flowers to rebloom. If Summer and Winter had power to match that, I hadn’t seen it yet, and it scared the shit out of me. Then there was Autumn, who was meant to be mine. A curse of fate, or something else?

“Witchchild, don’t play with me. I saw Finn’s dreams. The first nightmares of his parents’ deaths. He became something, I don’t know what it was. A bane over the land, some sort of nightmare to keep the humans out. Is that Winter’s curse?”

“No. Autumn is like daddy… part elemental chaos. Winter’s curse feeds on energy, that’s why she took you. With the rise of each new king, her power lessens and she drains anyone she can to hold on to it.”

She’d kept me chained to the floor and drained me dry over and over like a refillable juice bag. The biting memory of cold made my nerves ache, though it had all healed thanks to my heat and Finn’s intervention. Now I couldn’t get the idea of Finn sliding into me out of my head. Had a heat ever been that good? No one previous focused on giving me pleasure during a heat. A thousand times more satisfying than my dozen of encounters with Zephyr at Winter’s command.

Of all my visions I hadn’t a single one of the new rise of Winter. The last round had been queens, this time all kings. Which I thought was a dumb idea of the fates since men thought with their dicks more than their brains sometimes, myself as proof since I could still taste Finn’s kiss. But maybe that’s why they were all gay so far and mated? Who was Winter and his mate? “That hag needs to die already. Where’s the new fucking Winter king?”

Ari flinched, but made his way to a small table in the room, in which a teapot sat. The strawberry blend wafting with warmth and magic. Seb trying to soothe me with his baked goods, sweet teas, and omega magic. Bastard, I cursed him silently.

A tiny fox appeared on the chair beside the table, white in color, with a small red patch over one eye and his right ear. Ari set the tray of cookies on the table and the fox swiped two, peering over the tabletop at me.

“Xiao, I presume?” A dozen puzzle pieces falling into place as the fox morphed into the kitten I’d had in the Autumn realm, and then the white leopard. Free of Autumn’s influence I could sense his power, and my gut flipped over with instant worry. I met Ari’s gaze, their expression giving a silent warning to not overstep, but here before us was the Winter king, or at least the one meant to step into the role. And his mate. Ari reached over and scratched Xiao’s ears, the cat returning to his fox form and cooing at Ari.

Did Seb know?

“Fuck,” I muttered.

Xiao tilted his head in my direction, studying me. How old was this king? Kiran had been the first of the courts to be reborn after Spring passed centuries ago, then Autumn, though I hadn’t known it was Finn or Xander, broken as he might be. Summer passed shortly before Seb was born, and Winter still lived. How many other young Winters had she killed to keep her choke hold on power?

“What can I do to help you protect Finn?” I asked Xiao instead.

Xiao stuffed the cookies in his mouth, and leapt off the chair, shifting with insanely fast magic to a young man, maybe mid-teens with white hair and the icy gray eyes. He looked more like a true kitsune of story than any of the other kings had, even Seb, who often cursed how much his fox bled through to his human form.

“Bond,” Xiao said, touching his forehead. He still had fox ears, which I had to fight the sudden urge to touch. I took a step back, his magnetic pull as king muddling my thoughts. Holy fuck, this baby king was powerful. No wonder he was mated to the Witchchild.

I shook my head to clear out the waves of magic rippling through him like chaos. If Sebastian’s hadn’t been suppressed as a teen, he would have been as wild with power as this fox. “We fucked, but if there’s a bond, I can’t seem to find it.”

“A bond is more than sex,” Ari said.

The last thing I wanted to do was talk about sex with the Witchchild. I’d end up on the wrong side of the werewolf alpha wizard and his grumpy mate. “Explain to me how it works? How to get back to Finn, or find our bond or whatever? I may be a seer, but right now I’m as blind as the rest of you.”

“He won’t be able to complete the bond until restored,” Robin said, appearing in his creepy kid form and taking a single cookie from the plate, to which Xiao looked on with sadness at the loss.

“I have more downstairs,” Ari assured him.

“If I can only find him through the bond, and we can’t complete it until he’s restored , which I’m assuming you mean not torn from his wolf half, whatever that might mean, then we are screwed.”

Someone knocked on the door. I continued to pace thinking it would be Seb or Liam, but it was Toby, Spring’s wolf. He held out a bottle filled with a clear fluid. “This is the best I can do without testing him for side effects.” He glanced my way.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s a sleeping potion,” Toby said. “Meant to get you deep into your subconscious, which should help you connect with Xander.”

“I know nothing about Xander,” I grumbled, irritated that they seemed to know the mate I was mated to more than I did. How much alike were Finn and Xander? A thousand stories of the king of werewolves and Sebastian’s youth hardly led to a clear picture. Many painted Xander as a monster to be feared, which I could see especially when the wolf ruled, but also benevolent and protective, as he did everything he could to keep from slaughtering the wolves who lost themselves to their beasts. The first dreams of Finn’s parents lead me to believe he hated humans, yet there were dozens living amongst his wolves which he cared for as fiercely as he had any of his pack.

“Xiao will try to slip through when you dream. Robin will amplify his link through you.” Ari said. Their gaze lingered on Xiao, worry defined on their young face, though now the pair looked close in age. I wondered which was worse, fated to a broken Autumn king known for terrorizing shifters, fae, and mortals alike, or the reincarnation of Underhill itself.

I took the bottle from Toby, uncapping it to smell it, found it with a mild bite of alcohol.

“Sip it,” Toby said. “Don’t chug it all down, I’m not certain if you will wake up from that.” He bit his lip, staring at the potion. “It’s from one of Seb’s forbidden books. Remember the old adage that if you die in a dream, you die in reality? Try to follow that if you can, ‘cause it might actually happen with this. Strong magic mixed with alchemy and part science. I didn’t tell Seb. He won’t ask. Liam knows, but they are leaving the choice to you.”

I put the cap back on it without drinking. The Summer court’s benevolence made me sigh. Choices weren’t my strong suit, not without a vision to guide me and I hadn’t had one since I’d left Finn’s side. “This sounds like a bad idea. Maybe we should find Finn’s moms.”

“And do what? Tell them he’s the torn soul of the fae Autumn king reborn? Witchborn, and cursed by Winter?” Toby folded his arms across his chest. “Do you want to know what the cards say?”

I pointed at myself. “I’m the seer.”

“Who’s blind to his own future. I got the hanged man and the lovers card.”

“Which, let me guess, means we’re doomed?”

“It means there will be a sacrifice for love. It’s not a bad reading, or a good one really. It could go either way. The choice is yours.”

“I’m fated to the man, how is that a choice?”

“You could walk away right now,” Toby said.

I couldn’t. The idea knocked the breath out of me. I assumed it was fate tying us together. A few days with him and I’d begun to feel something for Finn, a need to be closer. Sure, the sex had been good, but I wanted to know more about him. What if all he had left to show me was the trauma of his past that made him the Volkov, werewolf king of nightmares?

“Could you have walked away when you met Kiran?”

“I did. My wolf and I fought over it for months, the wolf tied us to Nick until the next step had to be Kiran. If I hadn’t been broken, there would have been no fight. He’s mine as much as Nick is. We are stronger together.”

And all a little crazy from the glimpses I’d caught into the Spring realm. Kiran refused to hold back and built a kingdom with his magic that would rival the courts of old, while Seb hesitated, layering his magic more gently over the mortal overlap between his realm and the earthen one.

I turned away to sit on the edge of the bed, dry-washed my face with my hands and wished the constant headache I’d had since I’d first woken up in Seb’s realm, would go away. “I don’t know Xander at all. He doesn’t know me either.”

“But you aren’t looking for Xander,” Ari said. “You’re looking for Finn.”

I held up the bottle for Toby to see. “A sip? How fast does it work?”

“Fast,” Toby said.

“I’ll have food ready each time you wake up,” Ari said. “Xiao is going to try to get in, but it may take more than once.” They glanced at the pretty fox boy, heart in their eyes. If Seb didn’t know yet, he was either blind, or purposefully ignoring their relationship. “If it’s not safe for Xiao, I won’t let him enter the realm either.”

“Can you do that?” Toby asked.

“I would do a lot for Xiao,” Ari said.

“Creepy. You talk to your dads about all this? Get the birds and bees talk and all that?” I got under the blankets, uncapped the bottle and took a tiny sip, then set the bottle on the table beside the bed, expecting a one-two knockout punch. “Tastes like vodka and lemon?”

“I improvised,” Toby said.

“Birds and bees?” Xiao asked, gazing up at Ari.

“Sex,” Ari amended.

Xiao flushed, “Oh.”

“ Apa and daddy understand,” Ari said, their voice fading as the room wobbled.

“Not a kid,” I grumbled. “Witchchild or not.” I couldn’t keep my eyes open, but that was okay as long as a dream brought me back to Finn.