Page 25 of Alpha's Magic

I was vaguely aware that Asher and the villagers were systematically killing the wolves while Lex had fallen down beside me and had begun to lay his hands on me to heal me. I had managed to protect my throat, but the wolf creature that had attacked me had given me a terrible wound that I knew I wouldn’t survive. Between the shock and loss of blood, not to mention the excruciating pain, it was getting more and more difficult to draw in a breath. I wanted nothing more than to stop and let it all fade away.

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I swiped at them angrily. Tears never helped anything. They were unmanly, and I had no use for them or for the prayers I could hear behind me. When I was a child, I’d cried in those woods after I ran from my home, and I had begged the gods to help me, but not one of them had ever come or intervened.

No one came until Grimora. I became aware that Rory was beside me too, holding his cloak against my wounds as the blood streamed off my face, and he was crying softly while Lex pronounced his spells over me. They were working—I could feel the heat of them on my flesh, but I thought it would be nice to close my eyes and rest a while.

“Don’t you dare close your eyes!” Asher suddenly shouted from right over me. Then he swept me into his arms and began a long chant of healing that I felt all the way to my bones. The scent of him was making me feel drunk, so I closed my eyes and just drifted, breathing him in. It might not be so bad to die, after all, if I could do it in Asher’s arms. As if he heard my thoughts, he gave me a little shake.

“Wake up! You’re not dying!” he shouted down into my face. “And I said to open your eyes!”

Lex was pressing the arm that had been ripped off against the awful wound it had left behind, and a fiery pain was coursing through it. It seemed odd to feel pain in a limb that was no longer attached. I looked down at it in confusion and saw blue flames licking around my shoulder and moving all up and down my arm. Meanwhile, Asher was stroking his fingers over my face like a healing balm. Everywhere he touched me, it felt cool and soothed from the pain. The agony I’d been feeling began to drain away.

Rory took my good hand in his and began whispering something under his breath. I thought he was praying, his pretty face wreathed in concentration, and I started to pull away, having no use for his religion, no matter how well intentioned. Then I saw the little blue fire sparking around his lips, and I knew he was trying to heal me too. I felt very lucky to have three witches working on me at once.

Asher leaned down to kiss the corner of my mouth and laid a hand on my forehead. “It’s done. You can rest now, and I’ll watch over you. Go ahead. Close your eyes. Well, what are you waiting for? Close your eyes.”

“Open them—close them. Make up your mind,” I grumbled softly at him, and I heard him laugh. But there was something in the sound that made me think he might be crying at the same time. To make him feel better, I did as he asked and snuggled my face into that delicious scent of brownies.

Chapter Ten

Asher

It was late and Lex and I were sitting in front of the fire inside the bed chamber Lex said was “mine.” Rory was curled up beside him, with his head in Lex’s lap, fast asleep. It was very late, and we’d been talking for hours about everything that had happened, going over it again and again and letting Rory tell us the story as many times as it took for him to calm down. In the bed behind us, with the bed curtains drawn for his privacy, lay Leo, snoring softly.

The sound comforted me, though I’d still been over to check on him four or five times.

“I almost lost him, Lex,” I said, taking a sip of the whiskey in my glass. I needed it after the eventful day we’d had.

“I know, but you didn’t,” Lex said. “We got there in time, and we saved him. He’s going to be fine.”

I shuddered a little, thinking of how close it had been. We’d heard the screams coming from the old, abandoned house at the end of the road as soon as we entered the village, but the villagers themselves hadn’t heard anything at all until Rory had run up to them screaming and shouting for help. They were just marshaling their forces and gathering weapons when we arrived, but we didn’t wait for an explanation. We could plainly hear Leo’s shouts and the howls of the wolves from where we stood.

I don’t know how I got down that road. I may have flown for all I knew. But I was desperate to get to him. The next few minutes after kicking down the door to that shed were still pretty much a blur of blood and teeth and fur and wanting to rip the creatures apart with my bare hands.

The wounds on Leo’s face were terrible, and he was already unrecognizable. The scratches and bites were already oozing green bile from the dark corruption. He was breathing in quick, gasping pants, and I could clearly see the shadow of death on his face. Thank the gods Lex went to him straight away and began working on him, healing him with his powerful magic. The terrible stink of the wolves and the dark magic had already filled the tiny shed.

The wolves were a warlock enchantment, of course, but whose? Who could be so powerful, but still be unknown to us? And why had this unknown person come after Rory and Leo? There were only a few people in Morovia and Igella who were capable of pulling something like that off, and we knew all of them. We’d be checking on the whereabouts of each of them, but I had a feeling it wasn’t anyone we knew.

Lex was the most powerful practitioner I knew of, and I wasn’t far behind. It wasn’t bragging—we’d been tested and retested by the priests since we were tiny children, and we’d been in training most of our lives. It was one of the things that had caused us to have such a tight bond, and why Harrison had sent our pack, led by Lex, to Igella in the first place to confront what we thought at the time was the great dark warlock who was Vesper’s son.

Instead, we found Rory, who was powerful in his own way, but who didn’t have a drop of ill intent for anyone in his entire, small, beautiful body. Lex had fallen hard for him right away and tried to fight it with everything he had, but the love and attraction he felt for him was too strong.

I was beginning to know how that felt.

When I knelt beside Leo in the shed, after killing the wolves, Lex was working on his poor arm, which had been severed and was hanging on in thin strips of flesh. I went to work on his face again, taking up where Lex had left off, chanting the healing spell softly under my breath and watching a blue glow beneath my fingers as the flesh knit together again and the scars disappeared. The glow spread over his skin, restoring his astonishing beauty. I could hear his thoughts as plainly as if he’d said them to me. He had given up on himself toward the end of his struggle and was preparing to die. When he’d heard my voice, he thought he might die in my arms.

The idea of him leaving me like that was insupportable, and I knew in that moment that I’d only been kidding myself about not being ready for a mate. Like Lex had done before me and probably my other pack brothers had done with their mates, I made up my mind I wouldn’t deny Leo any longer. I was going to marry him in a religious service as soon as Lex could make the arrangements and claim him as soon as he was able.

Lex yawned and got to his feet, waking Rory up to urge him to his feet beside him.

“It’s been a long day. We’ll go so you can get some rest.”

“One thing before you leave…did you notice anything about those wolves today?”

“Like what?”

“None of them were malformed, like the chimaera. Either it was the work of two different warlocks, or…”

“Or the warlock is learning. Getting better with practice.”

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