Page 17 of Hidden Nature

Feeling restless, I slipped off Elias’s lap and started to pace, my magic churning inside me at my agitation. “Once I freed the other supers, I went back up to make sure Sutton was dead. I’d left him somewhat alive in case I needed him for something else. When I got back to his room, I found him dead, but before I could do much else, one of my team turned on me, which led to me gutting him. He told me as he was dying that I wasn’t ever supposed to make it out of that job. Instead, I was supposed to be captured and sold off like the rest or end up back with Dalilah, who was under the impression I could make her more omegas to sell. The final thing that he told me as I questioned him about the Senate was that I had to find out for myself how far this whole thing went.”

Taking a breath, I combed my hands through my hair, trying to get my emotions under control. “What if the Senate isn’t working with the Dark Ring, but they created the damn group? We all know that the humans involved with the Senate hate us supers. I could absolutely see them create a faction that’s sole purpose was to use and abuse us, keeping them at the top of the food chain. I mean, they fucking held a Light Elf for twenty-five years! There’s no way that could happen unless they had intimate knowledge of all supers’ weaknesses. The only text we have left is with the Senate, or at least that’s what you told me, Zander.”

Noah stood and stepped up to me, cupping my face between his hands. “Breathe, Finley, you need to take a deep breath, or you’re going to send yourself into a panic attack.” He could see that I wanted to argue, but when he gave me a disapproving look, I gave in. “Follow my lead, deep breath in… now let it out,” Noah instructed as he followed along with me. “Good girl, now, take a seat with Mason, and I’m going to get you something to drink and a blanket to snuggle with.”

My bottom lip popped out in a pout. I wanted to be upset about the fact that Noah felt the need to manage my emotions, but I listened since what he suggested sounded like exactly what I needed.

“Come here, snuggles,” Mason called, reaching out to me with a grin and grabby hands. “Clearly, you haven’t noticed it, but your omega side is having a meltdown.”

Shocked at his words, I took stock of my emotions and found that my wolf was indeed on the verge of hiding herself in a corner as my magic raged under my skin. It seemed that when I become agitated, it triggered my magic, and the fallout from that also seemed to upset my wolf.

She was whimpering and trying to find a place in my mind where the magic couldn’t chase her. I allowed Mason to pull me down, so I was sitting next to him, but that clearly wasn’t what he had in mind, so he pressed my head down so it rested on his lap. His strong fingers started to massage my scalp and I couldn’t hold back the purr from how good it felt. A soft blanket settled over me, and it smelled like Lane but also had a mix on Colt and myself from having been on the bed in the back.

Noah lifted my legs and sat next to his brother, tucking the blanket around me, then started to rub my feet. An automatic sigh of relief filled my lungs, and when I let the breath out, I felt a little more centered.

“Are both of you her Companions?” Rath asked with curiosity in his eyes, looking at the twins.

“I’m her full-time Companion. I guess you could say Mason is her Hunter, but she said he also feels like her Companion,” Noah explained.

Rath nodded, watching me with them as some emotion I couldn’t decipher flickered across his face. When I reached out to him, trying to figure it out, I found his shields were up, locking me out of his thoughts and emotions. Knowing how important he felt that connection was, it unsettled me that he was blocking me from reading him.

He seemed to notice and a soft smile graced his face. “Fret not, nin mel, I am simply trying not to add to the problem you are dealing with right now. More emotions would be counterproductive at this moment. I’m not trying to hide from you. Although I will say that I feel at a disadvantage since it seems that your omega nature is just as strong as your magic. They are linked, which is why your agitation set off the other. It will make it all that more important for us to get working on training you and your magic.”

“My wolf doesn’t like my magic at all,” I shared. “Just now, she was trying to hide, but my magic wasn’t allowing her to avoid it.”

“Hmm,” Rath hummed, tapping his chin. “I wonder if there is a way to get the two to be combined and work together as one instead of it being two separate entities in your mind. I will need to think that over a bit longer. Maybe I’ll do some checking and see if there is a way to find my commune or if anyone is left.”

“Do you think her magic is hurting her wolf?” Elias demanded, his face showing how he felt about that idea.

Rath shook his head. “No, I don’t think it is harming her. Her magic is something that is a part of her, just as her DNA is. The addition of the wolf is probably setting off some instinctual alert to try and protect her from a foreign entity. As far as I know, never in our history has an elf been bitten by a wolf and lived to tell us. I will say that back before the Elven War, we Light Elves were extremely protective in keeping our kind pure after seeing what happened when we mated with witches and wizards, and they tainted our magic, creating the Dark Elves. If it did happen, I wouldn’t have put it past them to kill the ‘infected’ elf to save them from polluting our blood.”

“What about now?” Colt snarled, his hands gripping the armrest so tightly it crumpled. “Do you view it the same way, elf? Are you going to kill her for being tainted by our kind? Because if that’s the case, I’m more than happy to give you a one-way ride out of this plane.”

The fight that I’d been worried about them having and thought we’d managed to avoid was now brewing. If Colt and Zander went after Rath, I truly wasn’t sure how things would end, but no matter what, someone would be dead.

“You better stuff that growl back down your throat before I do it for you, wolf,” Rath snapped. “Finley is my mate and perfect in every way. She is more than I ever could have imagined for myself and I plan to treasure her for the rest of my life. On top of that, if anything ever happened to her, we would all die. She could manage to live without us with how strong she is, but none of us would. To kill her is to kill those mated to her. It’s one reason our females are so protected. Take out the right female, and you could wipe out all the men with her. Some of our females back in the golden age had upward of fifteen mates. Now it’s more like three, so for Finley to have seven of us proves her strength.”

The others looked at Rath in stunned silence.

“Say that again,” Zander ordered.

Rath gave a frustrated huff rubbing his forehead. “Do you know nothing about elves these days? Anyone who is mated to Finley will die if she is killed. On the other hand, if she loses one of us, she will be able to recover physically, but I wouldn’t be able to speak to her mental state.”

“How the fuck would we know about elves when there are supposedly none left and all the books about them have been locked away by the Senate?” Mason muttered as he played with my hair.

“They what?” Rath asked. “Why would they hide away that information?”

Now it was Zander’s turn to snort, covering up laughter. “How old are you, elf?”

“I was alive when you were born,” he answered. “I’m not ignorant to the world as a whole, but when you are living in hiding, it makes it challenging to keep up with all the changes in the world. We keep an eye on the Senate more as a way to avoid them.”

“The first Senate that was created decided that all material pertaining to elves would be too dangerous to leave out where the public could access them. So their solution, not wanting to destroy the information, was to lock it away. My mother has been working with a friend who spent time with the elves, but now I’m wondering if it wasn’t the elves of old or maybe a commune like yours. Do you know if there are any other groupings, or is where you grew up the last of it?” Zander inquired.

Rath still seemed to be stuck on the fact that the Senate had tried to wipe his race from existence. “There might be others, but they wouldn’t have contacted us to ensure they stayed hidden. Creating a larger group is harder to hide.”

The speakers above crackled to life, letting us know that we were preparing to land. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was late afternoon at this point, and my stomach started to growl.

“Did you remember to eat at all without me around to nag you?” Mason asked with a chuckle, tucking my hair behind my ear. “Think you can survive until we get back to the house, or do we need to stop along the way?”