Page 8 of Alpha's Magic

We traveled through it, awkwardly bent almost double, and the passage opened up into a large room inside the cave, but with a relatively low ceiling. Lex went first, using a witchlight, which was a stone he’d pulled from his pocket to light his way. We both carried these stones, fired by our own magic. They were light, flat gray rocks that emitted light when someone who had magical powers like ours held one in their hand. Lex and I both had a good deal of the magic that ran strongly in our family. In our pack, Lex’s magic was the most powerful, so he was our leader, though I had almost as much. Harrison, Wyatt and Brandon had very little, though Brandon had recently developed some kind of “blood magic” with his new mate. Or so they claimed.

It was cold inside, though marginally better than outside, the cave being a constant temperature at least, with no icy wind blowing through it. We could see a fireplace carved out a bit inside a niche in the wall. It must have had a natural vent, because the rocky walls weren’t discolored by smoke. I wondered how old this cave was, and how many people had used it over the centuries.

“Grimora!” Lex called out loudly again, but still there was only silence in reply.

Scattered around the cave floor were heaped-up furs and blankets and discarded clothing and other items from an old sea chest. It didn’t look as if someone ransacked the place, but like they’d gone through the wooden chest in a hurry or a panic. On the vertical walls, a few wooden shelves had been built and they were still neat and intact, holding books and a number of jars and bottles, which were full of things like bats’ wings and what might have been lizards’ tails. There were iron sconces on the walls of the cave that indicated a place for torches, though none were there now. The sconces looked rusted and ancient, and I wondered again how long people had been using this cave.

There were several passages leading off this main one, and we’d need to examine all of them before we could build a fire and try to get warm. We didn’t want any ambushes or surprises.

Anyway, there was nothing in the short passage Lex first went down, except for some storage barrels and empty sacks. I turned toward the next and most likely-looking passage and took about two steps down it before I had to reel backward with a startled gasp.

Lex ran to my side, but I forced him back. “No,” I said. “You can’t go down there.” I practically snarled the words at him, and he fell back in confusion.

“What is it? What’s down there?”

In answer to his question, I dropped into a crouch and pulled my dagger, brandishing it at him and snarling, ready to attack if he took another step forward. “Don’t go in there. Mine.”

“Asher, what’s wrong with you? What’s in that other part of the cave?”

Because Lex was aggressive, dominant and a little crazy, he ignored my dagger and shoved past me, running in. He stopped after only a few more steps and came surging back out of there, stopping to grab me by my arm and drag me along with him. I didn’t want to go, and so I struggled, but he forced me with his magic. He glanced down at me, wild-eyed.

“It’s an omega. They’re in heat with the strongest scent I think I’ve ever encountered. You can’t go in there, Asher—it’s far too dangerous. I saw how you reacted to it.”

He wasn’t talking about danger for me, but for the omega. Alphas, when confronted by the pheromones an omega in heat emitted could sometimes lose all control. Particularly if the scent was strong, and this one definitely was.

“Mine!” I yelled at him, a little out of my head and breaking his grip on my arm. “Get back and leave me alone!”

Ignoring me, he covered his mouth and nose with his arm and dragged me even farther out of the passageway, although I was resisting every step of the way.

I growled at him again and tried to break his hold on me, but he shoved me to the floor and laid on top of me, holding me down. I think he may have used more than a little magic to help.

“No, Asher, stop this!” he shouted in my face. “I know you’re not thinking straight. Give it a few seconds and calm the fuck down. Think if that were Rory or Darcy down that passage. We can’t go in there. Think about it, damn it!”

I was trying, but my brain had stopped working. I fought him for another minute or two, using my own magic, but not really willing to hurt him, so I couldn’t break his hold on me. He was muttering a spell at me, meant to calm me down and finally, gradually, it began to work. I began to regain my senses and was horrified at what I’d tried to do.

My mind had begun to clear a little, and the compulsion to charge down that passage and ravish the omega was leaving me. A little. Mostly. I put a hand to my head and nodded at Lex.

“I’m all right now. Let me up.”

He moved over to sit beside me. We just stared at each other for a moment, both of us feeling shocked. Who in the world could that be down that dark passage? Grimora was an elderly man, and no one else was supposed to live here except for the wizard and his creature, Banshira.

Finally, Lex glanced back at the darkness and murmured to me in a low voice. “Brandon said the-the monster was a man, who had some kind of horrible, strange disease. Could it be…you don’t think it could be…”

“Banshira?” I gazed back at him in horror. “You think the omega in heat could be the monster?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered back fiercely. “Lower your voice—we’ve probably already scared the poor thing half to death. No one else is here. Only those remains on the beach. What if they belong to Grimora?”

“We have to try to talk to whoever is down that passage,” I whispered back. “Didn’t Brandon say the monster—I’m sorry. I mean the man—didn’t Brandon say he could speak?”

“Yes, I think so. Let me try.”

Lex got to his feet and pulled out a handkerchief that he tied across his nose and mouth. It wasn’t a bad precaution. The scent was terribly strong and even though Lex was happily mated with his own omega, such a thing could overpower him if he wasn’t careful, and he was no rapist. He didn’t want to hurt the omega in any way. Neither of us did, for that matter.

Not getting any closer, he tried calling to the omega down the dark passage. “We aren’t going to hurt you, I promise! We’re sorry if we scared you, but we were startled. We came here for refuge from the storm outside, and we mean you no harm!”

A small voice, decidedly male, drifted toward us out of the dark. “Please go away.”

The scared little voice did something to me. I was instantly filled with pity and something else I couldn’t quite identify. I wanted to protect and soothe the omega and help him be less frightened. No matter what the poor creature looked like, he was still a human being, and I was terribly ashamed that I had called him a monster. I knew better, and I vowed to be a better person.

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