Merc pinned his dark stare on the wolf. “They’d better be.” He pulled his phone out and dialed as he walked away, casting a cautious glance over his shoulder at me as if to say ‘keep an eye on him’ as he disappeared down the stairs.
I turned to find Knox eyeing me tightly. “Piper, we need to talk.”
“We should really get the others ready. Once Merc confirms that we have the talismans, he’ll want to collect the troops and leave. In the meantime, we should probably get the new wolves up here and feed them. Lord only knows what the food situation will be in Faerie, and we’re going to have to integrate them with the others at some point, so—”
“There will be no eating anything in Faerie,” Foust said soberly, “under any circumstances. Nothing there can be trusted.”
“Agreed,” Brunton said with a nod. “And you’re right about the New York pack. That’s a Band-Aid we need to rip off ASAP.”
Knox’s expression soured, but he chimed in his agreement. “Foust is right, which means Piper’s concern is valid. Brunton, round up our boys and the New York pack and get them into the kitchen. Brief them on the situation, and if any of the new guys gives you shit, you know what to do—you have my blessing.”
Brunton’s brow arched with morbid amusement. “And Kat? What about her?”
Knox let loose a tiny rumble. “Her, too, whether she likes being told what to do or not.”
With nothing more to say, Brunton made his way toward the butler’s staircase leading down to the kitchen soon to be full of wolves eating like they were headed into battle. I moved to follow, but Knox caught my arm gently and turned me to face him.
“We really need to talk, Piper.”
I wanted to argue that now wasn’t the time, or that I knew he was sorry, but the sad determination in his expression gave me pause. Instead of worming away, I stood strong in front of him and nodded.
“What happened...” he began, raking his fingers through his tousled blond hair. “We all knew it could go downhill fast and that’s why we didn’t want you to come. But I know you well enough to know that you would have blamed yourself—or the others—if anything happened to me, so I didn’t fight you on it.”
“And I’m glad you didn’t.”
He barely looked at me as he continued. “I didn’t want you to see that, Piper—any of it.”
“I know that—”
“I tried so hard to avoid the whole mess. I didn’t want any of it to happen, because Merc was right…it’s exactly what drove me mad before I fled to Alaska. That power…” His voice trailed off as his hands fell limp at his sides. “It’s all-consuming. Stealing it from another being…it’s like a drug—a bad one. The high hits hard and fast, but like all drugs and magic, the side effects are strong and brutal. They change you, sometimes for the short term…sometimes longer.” His expression grew more serious. “I don’t know why this happens to me here. Only once did I have to put down an Alaskan pack member in challenge, and I felt nothing but guilt. No magic. No power. There’s something about this city—about the wolves here, maybe—that affects me this way.” He turned his sad eyes to me, and I saw the desperation in their depths. “I don’t want to become what I was before, Piper…a paranoid shell of who I’d once been. I don’t think I could survive it.”
“You can and you will, because your pack—your real pack—loves and needs you, Knox,” I replied, taking his hand in mine. “And I do, too.”
He smiled faintly, then tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “I need you to understand something. Even in that madness…clouded by the darkness that power brings…I would never hurt you.”
I leaned into his hand as it lingered by my face and held his gaze. Because even as he said those words, I could feel the uncertainty they tried to cover—his lack of confidence in their veracity—and I wondered if his internal lie detector had called bullshit on him inside his own mind.
“I know you would never hurt me,” I said softly before I pulled his hand from my face and tugged him closer. My arms wound around his waist, whose injuries had healed, and squeezed him tight. “Do you know how I know?”
“No,” he replied, stroking my hair.
“Because I’d kick your ass if you tried.”
I bit my lip to suppress a laugh as he pushed me away to look at me. His incredulous expression melted as soon as he saw the twinkle of mischief in my eyes.
“You’d better.”
I scoffed at his response, which was a convenient way to clear my throat that was thick with emotions. “Please. You’re no match for my fire-bending. You’d be a charred little pupper by the time I was finished with you, which would serve you right, really…”
He laughed at my response, then looped his arm around my shoulders and escorted me down the hall. “Would I now?”
“Yes, you would. Unless I decided you deserved a Kingston-style burial, which would only happen if you were being extra douchey about it.”
“Of course—”
“Though I’m not even sure that dead-werewolf-power-altered you would be capable of that level of asshatdom—”
“Who is?” he asked playfully. “Don’t stop there, Piper. I need to know all the ways you could eliminate me…you know…for peace of mind.”
“Well,” I replied, tapping my lips with my finger for effect, “I suppose I could turn you to stone. A monument-slash-cautionary tale for the next poor alpha of the city—”
“Immortalized in marble,” he mused as we crammed into the narrow stairwell. “I think I could live with that.”
“But you’d be dead, you see, so…” I sucked in a breath between my teeth. “That’s a real conundrum.”
I slipped out from under his arm and didn’t look back as I led the way downstairs. The din from the kitchen grew louder with every step, but not so loud as to cover up Knox’s burst of laughter. It surrounded me like a warm blanket, and all I wanted to do in that moment was wrap myself inside it and sleep there for weeks. But we didn’t have weeks, or days, or even hours, if Merc’s call with the coven queen about the talismans proved successful. In no time at all, we’d be amassing the troops and launching ourselves into the unknown in a blind attempt to attack the fey royals and hopefully rescue Liam in the process.
There was no time for the lure of comfort and denial, no matter how attractive it might be.
Chapter Eighteen
It quickly became clear that my stomach was in no mood to tolerate food, so I slipped up the butler’s stairs unnoticed and made my way down the hall. I wanted to know how Merc’s call had gone. I needed to know how much time we had left.
My knuckles had barely grazed his door when it eased open. He smiled down at me, but I could see the tension in it; the slight creases around his eyes, the pinch between his brows.
“I’m guessing Sherry isn’t done yet?”
“And you would be correct.” He swung the door open wider, and I stepped inside. The snick of the latch clicked behind me. “Where are the others?”