"Are you..." Tenebrys tried to form words. "You okay?"
"Not hurt. Fuck, Ten," she panted.
"Yeah," was all he could answer, and they lapsed into silence. Tenebrys was dozing when his knot went down a short time later, and his cock slipped free. He pressed his come back intoher, making Delphi moan. He couldn't see or smell any blood, which was a relief.
"You really hate the idea of me not calling you alpha, huh?" she teased, rolling onto her back. If he could have come again, he would have painted her flushed, heavy tits with it.
"It's about respect, not control, love. If you don't call me alpha in front of other clans,theiralpha might think your allegiance can be swayed to their side," Tenebrys explained, brushing her tangled hair back from her face.
"Why would they even want me?" Delphi snorted with a shake of her head. "No one has ever really wanted me except for you."
"Perhaps because you are a witch with power that hasn't been seen for hundreds of years and because you're so beautiful, you rob a male of his senses," Tenebrys said, unable to keep the snarl out of his voice. He lifted her in his arms and kissed her. "They will all have to get through me even for a strand of your pretty red hair."
Delphi tugged on his mane. "Fine.I will call you alpha if I need to in front of other clans, but don't you think for a minute that you're the master of me."
"Oh, Delphi, you really don't get it." Tenebrys shook his head. "I have been your slave since you first walked into my dreams."
34
The following day, Delphi stared at the soil samples in front of her and tried to figure out what she was missing. It looked normal, and it grew edible food, but she could feel the faint wrongness clinging to it. When she focused her magic on it, her own power would tingle in warning.
She added a drop of purifying solution she had learned to make with the help of a woman in Bellemere. She had created it for traders to use when testing water and food in other lands to see if it was poisonous.
Instead of cleansing the sample, the liquid sizzled. Tiny, necrotic threads of magic, black and sticky like burnt sugar, writhed away from the solution's touch. They didn't dissolve. They simply retreated, burrowing deeper into the granules of dirt.
"Fuck," she breathed, leaning back from the worktable. She had taken over the old laboratory again because she knew how to work with Narcisse's setup. The scent of old paper and beeswax was a comforting backdrop to her grim discovery.
The plague wasn't gone. It was dormant.Waiting. A cold certainty settled in her gut. She couldn't let Tenebrys call theother shifter clans for help. Inviting them here would be a death sentence. She had to cleanse the land first. No, she had to figure outhowto cleanse it and then do it.
A dull throb started behind her eyes, a familiar pressure that had been building since she'd woken up in Tenebrys's arms that morning. She'd dismissed it as a consequence of their raw, consuming night, and the mating bond settling into her bones.
But this was different. It wasn't a normal headache. It was a hum. A frequency just below hearing, vibrating through the stone floors, up the legs of her chair, and into her very marrow.
The heart of the château was trying to tell her something.
Curiosity overriding caution, Delphi closed her eyes and leaned into the sensation. For a moment, there was only darkness. Then, a spark. She focused on it, feeding it a trickle of her own magic, and the spark bloomed into a network of shimmering lines.
What is this?Delphi fed it more power, and the answer struck her. It was the entire estate, not as a map, but as a living extension of herself. She could feel the ancient roots of the building plunging deep into the earth, the precise layout of the shadowed hallways, the pulsing power of the crypts far below.
The sensation expanded past the stone walls, past the overgrown gardens. It spread into the Mistwood.
In her mind's eye, a tapestry of the forest unfurled for her. She could see the dense canopy and the winding game trails. It was a perfect, intuitive awareness, as if the château's heart had tethered itself to hers, granting her its secrets.
Pinpricks of shimmering light, scattered through the woods. They pulsed with a strange, otherworldly energy, a soft, ethereal chime against the deeper thrum of the earth.
The gateways.
The magic there wasn't just in the soil or the stones. It was woven into the very fabric of the world. Tenebrys had said theywere where the two worlds touched, and she could now see what he meant.
A dizzying wave of vertigo and wonder washed over her. Delphi gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles white as she pulled her magic back in and opened her eyes again.
All her life, she had been a ghost, haunting the edges of other people's lives. Rootless. Unseen. Now she was anchored to a fortress of living stone and a forest of ancient magic.
She was a part of something, tied so intrinsically to it that she could map its soul with her eyes closed.
The feeling was terrifying. It was exhilarating.
It was…home.
