––––––––
“Fuck, I feel like Igot run over by a bus,” Amara groans, stirring awake as I carefully lay her on the bed.
Gently brushing her hair out of her face, I offer a tight-lipped smile that comes off as more of a grimace. “Why don’t you get some more rest? You pushed yourself farther than ever today and need some time to recover.”
She stiffens, everything coming back and hitting her at once. Whipping her gaze to her arm, she turns it over and back again, but the only sign that anything happened is the dried blood flaking off her skin. Turning her attention to Stone, she demands, “What did you do to me?”
His face is still as pale as when we left the mountain. “Cut off the blood flow to your brain until you passed out, and not a second longer. I figured it was the fastest way to make the pain stop and put your dragon out of commission at the same time. You’ve only been unconscious for about thirty minutes, but Raiden carried you the flight back here and was only now about to set you down in your bed, but planned to stay until you woke up so you wouldn’t be vulnerable.”
Slowly, she dips her head in acknowledgement. “Okay.” Exhaling heavily, she swings her legs over the side of the mattress. “Thank you. It’s the best I could hope for in that situation, and you did ask first. I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t trust you, I’m just...” Standing up, she scrubs her palms over her arms. “I’m a little shaken up, but not upset. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
Kodi looks like a kicked puppy. “I’m so sorry. It’s my fault for pushing the issue.”
She shakes her head, standing a little straighter. “No, it needed to happen, I’m just... not there yet. Once the thought crossed my mind of something crawling around inside of me like a parasite? Giving it the reins to my body and not knowing if it would pass them back, feeling the way it wanted to claw its way out of my skin?”
A violent shudder races down her spine and she gets a green sheen to her complexion. “Nope, I was done. I know I’ve got a dragon afterall, and that’s enough for me. I’m not defective, Stone boosted my healing, and now I know how I’ve been fucking up with my abilities. Things have never been better.”
She slips past me to head for the bathroom. “I’m going to scrub my skin raw until I can’t feel it crawling anymore, then I’ll practice pulling energy from everything other than myself, so someone should probably stock up on lightbulbs around here.” Her throat bobs with a hard swallow. “I’ve never shifted before, so I don’t need to start now. I have three mates willing to fly me around, I’ll buy a car for when you’re busy, and I’ll work on electrocuting people to defend myself. No claws necessary. Hell, even the wolves carry guns these days.”
The door snicks shut, leaving my brothers and I at a loss of what to do. When the sound of the lock clicking into place comes, I take the hint and usher the other two into the hall ahead of me. Gently, I close her bedroom door behind us, resting the back of my head against it and closing my eyes.
“Well... today didn’t go as planned.”
Kodiak snorts. “You can say that again. Are you sure we should be leaving her alone right now? What if she’s in the shower crying or something?”
My chest tightens, a volatile warning sound wanting to burst forth that I do everything in my power to suppress. “Then that’s how she wants to deal with this, and she doesn’t want us there to witness it. So we’re going to give her some room to breathe, and drop the subject until further notice. We can all sleep easier knowing she’s capable of shifting. That doesn’t mean she has to.”
Kodi sighs, but nods. “You’re right, she needs time to make her peace with the beast. It’s probably resentful as fuck after being suppressed her whole life. I just know how much it bothered her to think she was defective, and I wanted to-”
I ruffle his hair on the way past. “You did well,bràthair. Now come on, you can put those men out of their misery and let the six of them know they made the cut. Call them from my office and we’ll arrange a meeting to introduce them to the head of the recon team and get the ball rolling so we can focus on winning this war before it begins.”
Stone follows us into my office without a word, closing the door behind him. I turn to him with a raised eyebrow, waiting.
He looks anywhere but at me. “I think I’ve figured out what’s actually wrong with Amara.”
Kodi instantly snaps, “There’s nothingwrongwith Amara.”
Stone scrubs a hand down his face. “Shut the fuck up, you know I didn’t mean it like that. I think... I think Malcolm’s using her as his own personal battery.”
Kodiak damn near shifts in the middle of my office, growling, “What the fuck do you mean-”
I clap a hand over his mouth, shooting him a warning glare to quiet down in case Amara comes looking for us so she doesn’t overhear anything out of context. “Kodiak’s right. What the hell are you talking about, Stone?”
“You know how the wolves go feral from the build up of demonic energy unless their alpha siphons from them, hence their need for pack hierarchy?” he asks, pacing between stacks of folders. “Think about it. She gets run down easily, to the point she was getting sick before we came along. Even after I gave her the bloodstone to help, her healing increased, but she still passed out for two days after that lightning bolt.”
“We literally just determined that was because she was pulling energy from her own reserves,” I object.
Kodi threads his fingers behind his neck and tilts his head to the ceiling, sucking down a few deep, calming breaths through his nose. “First time she slept with you, the two of you were down for the count for a couple days too, remember? You, it makes sense, but a small surge shouldn’t have knocked her out that hard. And she was groggy as hell when I woke you two up to the point I debated hunting down Stone in case she was getting sick, but she perked up after she ate something, so I wrote it off as sleeping too long, like jet lag.”
My heart beats a slow, heavy rhythm, blood pounding in my ears. “How would something like that even be possible? He didn’t touch her, and I know for a fact Malcolm’s a dragon, not a wolf alpha.”
Stone glances at the door, moving closer to us and dropping his voice even lower. “When she was actually pulling energy from the air and made those couple of bolts, I had my hands on her, tracking the flow of energy to make sure she wouldn’t hurt herself or pull from one of us by accident. And there was this sort of... leak, I suppose is the best way to put it. Like it was rushing out of one spot nearly as fast as she could pull it in.” Swallowing, he croaks, “At her upper arm.”
White noise fills my ears for a moment, deafening in its silence. When my ears finally pop, I hate myself for putting the theory into words, like that will tempt the universe into making it real. “Where he tattooed her.”
Stone gives a terse nod. “Every other mark he made was by carving into her skin. Why notstartby giving her a tattoo? That’s more in line with the appearance of dragons’ mate marks like he was after. But instead, he saved that one for last, almost as if he wasn’t ready to do it yet. So it has to be something in the ink, right? A connection between the mirror images that allows him to pull energy from her?”
I think I’m going to throw up.
