“As you’re so fond of reminding me, I watch a lot of movies. I wanted you to nail that mise-en-scène.”
Each step carried him farther away from his past, broke shackles that had tied him there for centuries.
Hadley had done this, given him this, the strength to silence his guilty conscience once and for all time.
“Race you to the portal,” she yelled, noticing his mood. “Last one there is a melted chocolate bar.”
Happy to let her win, he smiled at her exuberance. “I don’t mind losing.”
The Faerie air was giving her a high, whether she realized it or not, the magic infectious.
“That’s what all losers say.”
“We both know if I were chocolate, and I melted, you would lick me up without batting an eye.”
Pumping her legs harder, she yelled back, “I would lick you up even if you weren’t chocolate.”
The beast under his skin relished in the play and picked up her challenge. Fur brushed the undersides of his skin, prickling with his need to change and be wild in this untamed land, but he wanted to catch her in his arms and steal a kiss—a real kiss—as his prize for winning.
Throaty baying rose behind them, one voice louder than the others.
From the tenor of the song, a challenge to all who heard it, a new alpha was rising, but Midas didn’t care.
A glowing circle swayed in grass burnt low with magic, and he pushed them harder to reach it.
“Wait,” a voice yelled from behind him. “Alpha.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Hadley shot him an incredulous look. “You didn’t even kill that Ferro jerk.”
“He’s fae,” Midas reminded her. “Defeating him in front of witnesses might have been enough.”
Death might not be a requirement for a formal challenge leveled in Faerie. Alphas bested in battle could, but rarely did, choose to concede and accept banishment from pack lands. Since Midas had never meant to come back here, it wasn’t a question he thought to ask. Or an answer he wanted, honestly.
“We have got to stop accidentally collecting packs like those pennies you stamp on vacation.”
“Alpha,” the man called again. “Wait.”
“Ain’t happening,” Hadley yelled back at him then took Midas’s hand. “You ready for this?”
“I was ready to leave Faerie before we got here.”
“Good answer.” Hadley locked gazes with Ambrose. “Go, go, go.”
Hesitating one heartbeat, he clenched his hands, watched his fingers flex, then heaved a great sigh. He leapt into the circle, his expression pained, then disappeared from sight. As he vanished, Hadley staggered and gasped, clutching her chest and losing her rhythm.
“Why did you tell him to go without you?” Midas scooped her up without slowing. “That’s suicide.”
“He’s corporeal,” she panted. “He had to go through alone.”
The trip through the archive and into Faerie had made Ambrose realer than he had been since the early days of his bond with Hadley. He must have been too solid to fit back inside her. That, or he still held too much magic to rejoin her without short-circuiting them both. Either way, Midas experienced a corresponding pang in his chest that began radiating through his limbs.
Locking his arms around Hadley’s middle, he lifted her and made the leap.
Seventeen
I could tell my portal was held together with bubble gum and bobby pins by the mother of all headaches that slammed into me seconds before I got vertigo and melted out of Midas’s arms. I hit the ground, which wasn’t more than a foot away, and groaned from the jostle.
The bumpy ride sent him to his knees, and once I got out of his way, he lurched aside to empty his stomach on the grass. I would have joined him, a delightful couple’s activity, but I was a puddle of nausea and too queasy to roll over onto my side. Not choking to death on my own vomit proved to be a surprisingly powerful motivator to keep it all down.
“I don’t have long.” Ambrose knelt beside my head. “I wanted to thank you, again, for your trust.”
“We make a good team.” I swallowed convulsively. “I still have concerns, though.”
“I will prove myself a true friend over time.” He bent and brushed his soft lips across my forehead. They were as cold as winter’s kiss. Or the grave. “We have endless amounts of it.”
As he withdrew, I clasped his hand. “Maybe this won’t be the last time we talk.”
I don’t know why I said it, except he had to miss the sensations that came from being his own person. It might have been a kindness, or an admission of fear. Forever was a long time. We could become friendly—if not friends—but he was still a threat to me and to Midas. If the occasional shore leave kept Ambrose satisfied until Linus and I determined what came next, I was willing to give him that much.
“Maybe not,” he said, amused. “Eternity is a long time to live with someone and not speak to them.”
With that, he began to fade, to thin and darken until he was nothing but a wisp of shadow. Melancholy clouded our bond until it too faded as his magic regained its balance.
“We’ll figure it out,” I promised him. “Right after we mop the floor with the coven.”
The safest place to drop us would have been HQ, but there was no cell reception in Faerie. That meant I had no way to initiate the call sequence to divine its location for the night. Usually, the Faraday was a solid second choice, but that was a no-go. The area was under siege, and we couldn’t help the residents if we got ourselves locked in with them. The next best thing, the area I had the strongest attachment to, was the Active Oval.
Most nights I had company on runs, humans and paranormals alike, but we were alone.
The peculiar glowing light might have driven away anyone set on getting in their laps before bed, but I doubted it. In the age of social media, it was more believable that we would have been swarmed, photographed, and videotaped. Likely, we would have been hailed as alien invaders in tomorrow’s headlines.
Which, don’t get me wrong, would be so frakking cool.
Me? An alien? With a newspaper-worthy agenda?
It would be like Christmas came early.
It would also be damning for my career and put my life in danger from Society retribution, so there was that. I doubted I would still get elected to potentate if I unveiled the existence of paranormals, even if it was in an attempt to save five hundred thousand lives.
And there I went, compartmentalizing again to avoid thinking about Remy.
“Let’s not mention this part to Linus.” I sat up then rocked forward onto all fours, which I regretted immediately. “It sounds less impressive that we created a portal from Faerie when the ride makes you barf up your toenails.”
The other portals ran as smooth as an ice cube on a hot griddle. Ours was more like the little engine that could but really didn’t want to, but hey. It worked.
“Rollercoaster fame is based on terror, exhilaration, and vomit.”
“Let’s stop saying that word.” I got my legs under me. “Let’s stop saying all words pertaining to that.”
“Here.” Midas rose in a fluid motion I couldn’t have mimicked even before the portal. “Let me help.”