“You need rest,” he says, catching my eye. He looks stressed-out and exhausted himself, with his dark hair in wild spikes and shadows growing beneath his eyes above the scruff on his cheeks. I know I’m the one who put some of those shadows there. He lost sleep over my transition to witch. Hell, he kind of lost his mind over it and went on a witch killing rampage.
But he’s here now with his thumbs brushing gently over my biceps as he holds me on my feet. He kisses me softly, then guides me toward the house.
I’ve overextended myself, both physically and emotionally, and all I want to do is crash. But it turns out the cabin isn’t empty.
Amora stands up from the couch as we enter, tossing one of Ridge’s magazines back onto the coffee table. “Oh, thank God. Is everyone all right?”
“We’re fine.” Ridge nods, stepping forward. “What are you doing here?”
Amora is one of Ridge’s oldest friends and confidantes, and she’s been almost sisterly to me in the short amount of time I’ve been here. She’s stunning, with a lithe body toned by hours spent running in the woods and long, shiny dark hair that falls in waves down her back.
“I was worried about you. All of you,” she adds, giving me a small smile. “I swear I went home and had every intention of going to bed, but I couldn’t. So I came back to wait up for you.”
Ridge grunts, and I’m not sure if the sound is meant to be a thank you or one of irritation. They’re such old friends that they have a sort of shorthand communication, and I haven’t learned how to interpret all of it yet. He bypasses the couch, and Amora, heading for the back of the house.
She looks at me and raises a dark eyebrow, but I just shrug and lead the way after the alpha.
Amora grabs the blanket off the back of the couch and tosses it around my shoulders, then squeezes me in a side-hug as she falls into step beside me. “How you doin’, Sable? You okay?”
I tug the edges of the blankets closed around my naked torso, touched by her thoughtfulness. She remembered without prompting how uncomfortable I feel naked. Most shifters don’t really give nudity a second thought, since stripping down naked is usually a precursor to transitioning to wolf form.
“Scared and tired,” I tell her honestly with a wan smile. “We didn’t exactly uncover nice things at my uncle’s house.”
She presses her forehead to my temple and guides me after Ridge. “Well, just remember you’re not alone.”
Amora splits off to head into the kitchen as I step into the bedroom with the guys. We all dress quickly, throwing on whatever we can find. I glance longingly at the bed as we all troop out of the room again.
Ridge grabs a bottle of amber liquid off the top of the fridge as we enter his small but serviceable kitchen. I catch sight of a familiar black label—a popular but cheap brand of whiskey my uncle liked. I help Ridge gather glasses, one for everybody, as the rest of our group chooses seats at the table.
I hold out my glass as Ridge tips the bottle over it, whiskey sloshing into the cup and casting yellow shards of light on the table beneath the overhead lamp. As he moves on to serve the rest of the group, I sniff experimentally at the glass. I’ve never had whiskey before—never even wanted to try it. But it smells strong, and I could use a little fortifying after the night’s events, so I take a sip. It burns on the way down and makes my eyes water, but I don’t hate the taste.
I just hate the memories it calls to my mind. All the nights my uncle got whiskey drunk and hurt me or made messes he expected me to clean up. The scent and taste recall each memory so vividly that it makes my heart hurt and my pulse race. I drink more, ignoring both the memories and the way it burns. Maybe a couple more glasses will help chase away the ghosts.
Ridge finally collapses into a chair and takes a swig of whiskey before he looks at Amora and says, “Are you really here because you were worried about us, or because you have more intel?”
She makes a face and sets her glass down on the tabletop. “Both. You know how fast rumors spread among wolves. I have it on good authority that word of your unique… situation has spread to the other packs.”
“Sable’s condition too?” Archer asks.
Condition.
The word stings, even though I know he didn’t mean anything hurtful by it. But it makes me feel like I’ve got some kind of terminal illness, the kind of thing you want to hide from strangers so they won’t treat you differently. I mask the rising nausea in my stomach with another, longer drink from my glass.
Amora nods. “Her powers. Your unorthodox mating bond. All of it.”
“Lawson’s flunkies,” Trystan snarls. “They told the other packs on purpose.”
I’m inclined to agree with him. Lawson, Ridge’s brother, attempted to incite a rebellion among the pack and take the alpha position from Ridge. But he lost that challenge and ended up languishing in a cell to wait for a trial by council. If anyone traveled to the other packs to spread the word, it was definitely one of Lawson’s followers.
Ridge sighs. “Fucking hell. I’ll be cleaning up the hate and unrest he sowed for months.”
Amora reaches out to touch his shoulder. “Hey. I’ve got your back. We all do. Lawson can be a smooth talker when he wants to be, and he convinced a few hotheads with too much fucking testosterone to join him, that’s all. None of them were on his side with any conviction, and now that he’s lost his challenge, they’ll calm down.”
I look at her long, elegant fingers resting on Ridge’s strong shoulder, and I expect to feel a surge of jealousy. That’s the normal reaction I’d imagine a woman might have when another strikingly beautiful girl is touching her man. Instead, I feel a strong surge of affection for Amora.
She operates like a second-in-command for Ridge, and their history means they work well together and carry a deep-seated love for one another. The kind of trust they share is something money can’t buy, and it’s definitely something every leader should have in a lieutenant.
Now that the mate bond between Ridge and myself is solidified, any trace of jealousy I might have felt before is gone. Amora and Ridge weren’t ever meant to be together in a romantic way. I was meant for him. Meant to be his mate, his lover, his confidant. Amora and he have a close connection, but I know it will never rival what he and I share.
The mate bond felt big and frightening before it finally happened. But now that it has, it’s a huge relief. I’m so sure of the bond between me and my men. More sure of it than anything I’ve ever known in my life.
“So what happened out there?” Amora asks, and I’m surprised to find she’s addressing me.
I glance around at the men, but Archer gives me a nod of encouragement. I launch into an explanation of how we went to the small town where I grew up and found that Uncle Clint wasn’t home. So we tracked him to a nearby bar and waited for him to emerge, then followed him as he walked toward his house. But once we turned off the main road and onto the long driveway that led through trees back to his house, he whirled around and launched an attack, trying to take us out by magic.
Unluckily for him, my mates aren’t so easily fooled. I tell Amora how they fought back and managed to subdue him, pinning him down so we could question him. But when it comes time to reveal what he said about me, I can’t form the words.