The Danger of Destiny (27 page)

“Of course I do.”

“You always going to be such a tough guy?”

“Tough guy?” He dug his fists into his pockets. “You're killing me, Hedi. You keep walking into danger. Some bitch opens a portal and throws fire at you and you jump right through it after her. You didn't take a gun. You didn't take water, food, or shoes. You just … jumped.”

“St. Silas's man had a gun on me.” I looked down at my feet and then away. Ash coated one of Varens's moccasins; blood stained the other. “You should have told me about the prophecy. You should have told me that you always meant to fulfill it.”

“I can't abandon my Raha'ells here without trying,” he said. “I won't be that guy. It's not who I am anymore. I fought to claim them as mine. I'm their Alpha. You don't toss that back.”

I used my thumbnail to push back the cuticle on its twin. “You loved Varens.”

He nodded.

“And you love the Raha'ells.”

“Yes.”

“And you love me.”

“
Yes,
” he said with quiet emphasis, “I love you.”

I knew that.

“Being an Alpha is what I'm meant to do,” he said. “It fits. But you fit me too. You and me … it's more than just sex and mating pheromones. You remember me the way I was before everything went to crap. You see the screwup I was and the man I've become. You don't expect an Alpha, or the Son of Lukynae. You don't even want them. You see me. And I see you.”

His gaze roved over me.

“Yeah, you fit me. The way your skin slides under my palm, the way you make me laugh. Even when you piss me off or scare me so bad I want to punch the wall.” Tiny flickers of blue light spun in his eyes. “I had a taste of you before I came here. And I wanted it back. Every night I'd go to sleep thinking how I could get back home. And every morning I'd wake up in my camp knowing I had to find a place for my Raha'ells so they won't be hunted like fucking animals anymore.”

I folded my arms around my waist, hugging myself.

“Believe me,” he said. “I was never planning on bringing you here. I knew it would be dangerous, and I knew you weren't ready for it. I was going to buy a few kilos of iron shavings, pack them in a backpack, and use the fairy portal in Creemore on my own. I thought I'd be back before you knew it. But then the witches screwed up that plan and you had to jump through the Safe Passage, while I was handcuffed to a fucking fence. I saw you going, knew what was waiting for you … Nothing could have stopped me. I would have brought the entire fence through the passage if I needed to.”

Wonderful words, but his back was still braced against the wall, his shoulders stiff, his fists hidden inside his pockets.

He rocked a bit. “I can't go back to being just Robbie Trowbridge. And I can't pretend I don't know what I'm leaving behind me if I don't try to make this better. You talk a lot about Karma and fate, and all that Fae stuff. Maybe this is my destiny.”

A wave of weariness did the obligatory wash.

Well, well, well.

There's that stinking word: “destiny.” Seriously, seven months ago, standing by the apartment window, I would never have believed that my future would lead to anything other than a long stumble from one poor-paying job to another. But in those days, I didn't like looking into the crystal ball. From what I could see, my life was going to be nothing but a wasteland of loneliness and wanting.

I couldn't say that anymore.

Now I had the ingredients for everything I'd ever wanted. A mate. A brother. Friends. A place to belong in a pack—something I was never aware of how much I'd secretly yearned for.

But of course, having it, even briefly, came with a terrible price tag.

Because Trowbridge was who he was and I was who I was. He meant it when he said that he couldn't live with himself if he turned his back on his pack. A year ago, I might have been incapable of understanding such a sense of duty, but my slacker conscience had been a bur under my butt ever since that day My One True Thing walked into my Starbucks.

I don't know how he did it—how he could be the catalyst for so much change in me. But he was. Loving him made me love more. And now I was thigh deep in a freakin' epidemic of love: I loved him, I loved Lexi, I loved Merry and Cordelia, and given time, I'd probably be awash in gooey sentiment over Anu.

But damn if all that loving didn't come with side dishes I don't recall ordering, the most onerous being an inescapable feeling of responsibility. That sense of duty was getting out of hand, growing faster than Boston ivy over crumbling brick mortar. I felt culpable for Lexi's fate, I felt an uncomfortable obligation about Mouse's future, and—
damn, damn, damn
—I now freakin' well felt answerable for an entire race of people.

Wow, someone hit the reset button.

I am so not the hero type.

And yet I couldn't pretend the life of a wolf in Merenwyn wasn't as bad as all that. I knew the truth. I'd seen the hunt. I'd spent a night in a trap. For crap's sake, I wore Varens's slippers. Could I walk away from the Raha'ells and still be me? Could I force Trowbridge, using my questionable skills with feminine tears and whimpers, to give up on them too?

No. I couldn't. I wouldn't want to live a life with a man who turned his back.

Crap.

All or nothing. A long life of nothing much special or a short life filled with—
oh, someone just shoot me
—higher purpose.

Crap.

Life without loving people isn't much of a life, is it?

I performed a brief mental burial of me-first Hedi and walked over to my man. He watched me warily as I placed my feet between his.

“I can't, Tink,” he said. “I just can't.”

“Shut up,” I said, scraping some mud flakes from his throat. I pressed my lips against the beat of his artery. His blood was warm; his pulse, strong.

My blood runs in his blood. My life ends with his.

I turned my head to rest my cheek on his chest. “I'm no hero, Trowbridge. I don't like being hungry, I don't like being hunted, and I really don't like feeling threatened all the time. It scares me to think what might be ahead of us. But it is twisted, what they do to the Raha'ells in this realm. I thought I could walk away from it—I really wanted to—but I can't. I can't un-see what I've seen. I guess I'm not that girl anymore either.”

“Tink,” he whispered.

I pulled back; then I cupped his face with my hands. “Listen up, Balto.” I tilted his jaw downward until his lips were out of easy kissing range and I was staring at him eyeball to eyeball. “You should know that if we make it through whatever hellfire is facing us, I intend to be a fully participating Alpha's mate. I stand beside you.” He started to smile; I could feel his skin crease under my palms. “I'm not going to take every word you say as a done deal; I'm going to want to discuss.”

His arms slid around me. He pulled me until we fit together, my hips cradled by his, my chest crushed against his. “You mean situation normal.”

“Don't be a smart-ass. So let's discuss—and come up with a plan for breaking your pack out of jail in addition to doing everything else on our list. And let's make it a good one, because I want at least a three percent chance of walking out of the castle relatively intact. My last breath is absolutely
not
going to be taken in a place called the Spectacle.”

A comet spun in his blue eyes. “Sweetheart, even if we survive—”

“Don't like the word ‘if.'”

“There's no guarantee you'll ever see Creemore again, Tink.”

I called up a wavering smile. “Guess your mother's wallpaper got a reprieve.” I brushed the corners of the Son of Lukynae's firm mouth with my fingertips, then shook my head. “What a surprise package you turned out to be. I thought I was hooking myself up to rebel without a cause and what do I get? Maximus and Robin of Locksley, all rolled into one.”

Robbie Trowbridge lifted his brows. “You're talking movies again, right?”

“
Gladiator
and
Robin Hood
.”

“Saw
Gladiator
. Crap ending.” He leaned to kiss me again, then he stopped and lifted his long nose. He sniffed, and sniffed again. “What the—”

I'm not sure what level of profanity my mate was going to tag onto that question and I never got to find out, because a dark form chose that moment to sprint past us for the relative safety of the outside of the cave.

Not fast enough.

My mate was thoroughly capable of disengaging from me and grabbing Mouse's collar before the kid managed to scuttle out of striking range. Trowbridge hauled the kid and gave him a ruthless shake.

“Hasn't anyone told you what a dumbass move it is to spy on an Alpha?” shouted Trowbridge.

 

Chapter Seventeen

“I wasn't spying!” squeaked Mouse.

Trowbridge had hauled him out of the cave. Mouse stood with his clawed hands bunched at his waist, his shoulders hunched under our glares.

My tone was flint. “What I want to know is how he got past us. He was by Seabiscuit not ten minutes ago.”

“It's what I do.” The kid's fingers spasmed. “I slip in and out. Quiet as a mouse.”

“Open your hands very slowly,” Trowbridge told him, “and show us what you have.”

With a wince, Mouse obeyed, opening his cupped fists and tipping the contents of his palms. Gray ash plumed as the small charcoal remnant of Lexi's evening fire bounced along the stone floor.

“What were you planning to do with that?” Trowbridge asked too softly.

“Hedi of Creemore never got to eat her crumbs.” Mouse blew at the blister forming on his palm. “I thought I could make a fire. Then if I could find some game … a squirrel or other creature. Her belly's been grumbling all morning. She needs feeding.”

Trowbridge cocked his head. “Do you know how to use a bow?”

The teen's cheeks reddened. “No.”

Mouse's tattered dignity clawed at me. “I haven't eaten for over thirty hours,” I said. “Does that qualify as being a long time between meals in Merenwyn?”

“Yes,” said my Trowbridge. “That's a long time between meals.”

Thank heavens, because it was twenty-six hours longer than my previous starvation record. “I could eat a squirrel,” I said. “If it was skinned and cooked over a fire.” Another bad thought occurred to me. “I don't have to skin my own squirrel yet, do I?”

“No,” said my mate softly.

Had it come to this so quickly? I was actually looking forward to tearing into a meal of charred rodent on a stick? I scowled at the streak of ash marring Varens's moccasin. “How long will it take to get to the castle from here?”

Lexi spoke up. “It's two hours south.”

Is that all?
A quarter had been flipped, but it had not fallen and now it spun, caught in a loop of an endless rotation. I needed that sucker to land. To read the verdict, be it heads or tails.

I could wait to eat.

*   *   *

I turned to Mouse. “You said that the Gatekeeper took you through a tunnel that brought you out of the castle.”

Trowbridge stiffened with interest.

“Aye,” said Mouse. “And you want me to tell you where to find it.”

“Yup.”

“Make me one of you. I heard every word you spoke in the cave. And I know that the Son of Lukynae and the Brave Hedi of Creemore have come to lead the Raha'ells to a better world or die trying to do so. I want to fight with you.”

You see? This is precisely how myths are made. A wisp of truth is taken, gilded with gold leaf, threaded through a silver needle, and sewn into a cloth fabricated by half-truths and complete fantasy. Mouse had listened, and processed incorrectly. And now—poof—I'd gone from a girl caught in a trap to “the Brave Hedi of Creemore,” the most unlikely addendum to a prophecy you'd ever meet.

His gaze burned mine. “Make me a Raha'ell.”

Right.
Like I had the power to do that.

Mouse continued his pitch. “Don't trust my mistress to show you the right way into the castle. She'd rather die at the hands of the Son of Lukynae than face what the Royal Court will do to her for her treachery. But I know where it is—she showed me. I'll take you right to it. And once inside the castle, I can get you food,” he bargained. “Meat for the Alpha and all the sweetlings you could wish for, Hedi of Creemore. Clothing too. Whatever else you need. Let me be there to see the walls come down. And after that the Fae can kiss my backside. I'll be one of you.”

One of you.

My gaze went to Trowbridge's. His expression was hard to read, but his eyes asked me silently,
Can we trust him?

Mouse waited for my verdict. Thumbs up. Thumb down.

Would it be kinder to leave him? To let him carry on until he drank the last drop of his stash of sun potion? For if we brought Mouse into our epic quest, his blood would be almost certainly staining my hands.

These were the sort of decisions an Alpha makes.

You asked for equal partnership.

You got it.

My nod to Trowbridge was slight and far more reluctant than sage. The Son of Lukynae considered the teenager, then said, “I only take men who are willing to fight.”

“I am willing to fight.”

“And willing to die.”

Mouse didn't so much as blink. “That too.”

“Say it.”

“I'm willing to die.”

My stomach twisted again.

“You'll have to find your rank among them,” said Trowbridge. “You'll be at the bottom until you prove yourself deserving to be higher. Now, do you want to be known as Mouse or by another name?”