Page 37 of The Alpha's Warlock
Dor shrugged and started to rummage in a pouch he’d pulled from some unknown recess of his robes. “It killed one of the more skilled warlocks in this part of the world. I’d say it’s not so unimpressive after all.” He looked up, his eyes gleaming an opaque, otherworldly silver in the moonlight. A shudder went down my spine, the kind of instinctive fear that made my brainstem want to crawl out my ear and slither off in terror. What the fuckwashe? Because he passed for human a lot of the time, but at that moment, no one would’ve thought he was for even a second. “And neither are you. Now come and help me set up a few surprises for our unwanted guests.”
My eyes stung.Not so unimpressive after allwas one of the nicest things I’d heard about myself in a while, especially considering I’d spent part of the evening with my not-so-dearly-departed father.
His severed head, lying in a pool of congealing blood, appeared in front of my eyes with a vividness greater than it’d had in the moment.
A second later, I was thumping to my knees, leaning against a tree and vomiting up more than I’d eaten in years, it felt like. On and on, with great gags and coughs, the inside of my nose stinging and my throat burning. The bark of the tree was rough against my hand, reminding me I still had scrapes and abrasions from earlier.
All at once, my whole body felt like it was about to fly into pieces and collapse into a nasty little heap of squishy parts. I shook, and I spat coffee-flavored stomach acid.
So much for being in shock, I guessed. My father was really dead. I’dkilledhim. No matter how many times I’d fantasized about doing just that, the reality was a stomach-churning blur of horror.
Something shiny appeared in front of my face, and I blinked it into focus. A water bottle, one of those super-eco-friendly self-purifying costs-more-than-my-rent deals. The Fleetwood Brougham of water bottles.
“Thanks,” I whispered, and took it out of Dor’s hand. Where the hell was he keeping all this stuff in his robes? Was he Mary Poppins now? I used a swig of it to wash out my mouth and spit, and then drank deeply, feeling the cool of it soothe its way down my esophagus and settle in my belly.
Dor took the bottle back once I nodded that I was done. “Humans really are so squeamish,” he said, sounding more bemused than anything. There was maybe, possibly, a thread of sympathy there, too. “Ready? I estimate we have less than an hour.”
I used the tree to shove myself to my feet. They wobbled under me, but I made it. Go me. “Yeah. Let’s get ready.” I did want to give us any edge we could get. An all-out battle between werewolves and vampires, and more werewolves, could end in nearly everyone dying. I thought of Ian bleeding out, his throat slashed open, and nearly threw up again. The stakes were too high for me to beat around the bush with Dor, even to spare my pride. “You know I really don’t know what I’m doing, right? I mean, no one ever trained me. At all. I’ve been trying to catch up over the last couple of years, but I still suck at anything really complicated.”
Dor shrugged. “I’ll show you what to do. I mainly need a second magic source to anchor my spells, since I’m going to string them across the road over there.” He pointed through the trees, and yes, that was the road, a gap in the forest where the moon shone brighter. Gods, my sense of direction sucked. I hadn’t even realized it was there.
I nodded and followed him back to his spell circle, pushing everything else out of my mind for the moment. I’d already proved my father wrong about me. I could do this too.
Chapter 21
Showdown
Waiting was the absolute worst. Well, no. Being chained up and tortured was worse than waiting, and honestly, hiking was maybe even less fun than the torturing.
But waiting sucked. Dor sat cross-legged a few feet from me, slowly running some kind of cloth over the edges of his sword, which wasn’t unsettling at all, and he seemed perfectly content to just hang out until the war started. This probably wasn’t his first rodeo. Hell, it probably wasn’t his thousandth rodeo.
I kept opening my mouth, closing it again, and then biting my tongue to suppress all the words that wanted to tumble out.
Since I didn’t have bitching and moaning to distract me, my mate bond was looming a lot larger in my consciousness. I could feel Ian, angry and worried and determined all at once, and after a while, I could feel all those emotions drawing closer, the bond contracting as he neared.
“I think Ian’s on his way here,” I said finally, unable to bear the silence any longer. And anyway, that was a useful thing to say, right? Not just small talk, or something stupid that would make Dor raise one of those thick, perfect eyebrows at me.
“I know,” Dor said. “Fenwick too. And the vampires are arriving, coming through the woods over there.” He waved a hand, and then went back to polishing his giant gleaming sword, the motion hypnotic. And a little sexy. But mostly scary.
I swallowed hard. I already had enough weird kinks. No adding to them, not allowed.
Distraction. I needed a distraction. But there wasn’t anything to do. We’d strung a series of spells across the road, the first rank meant to slow any intruders, the next to bounce them back across the territory boundary, and the last, Dor had told me blithely, to boil their blood in their veins.
Gross. Effective, but gross. He’d taken some blood from the Kimball shaman and used it to focus the spells so that, with luck, it’d only hit the Kimball pack. I’d paid close attention, hoping I’d be able to learn something. Gods, if Dor would teach me…and I’d have the courage to ask him for real instruction the same day Ian bought those throw pillows. Pink ones. With sequins.
“How do we even know they’re going to come from this direction?” I had serious doubts about all of this, and was pretty sure we were — with the exceptions of Dor and Charlie, who one hundred percent had their own escape plans that didn’t include anyone else — all about to get creamed. “I mean, if I were them, I’d circle around and come at us from the back.”
“Oh, they will,” Dor replied. “But we’ll draw as many of them as we can through the spell lines.” He didn’t sound all that worried. Maybe that was because he was truly confident, although I was afraid it was just that escape plan in the back of his mind.
Ian’s nearness became a beacon in my magical senses, and then he jogged out of the woods and stopped right at my shoulder. I scrambled to my feet, not wanting him looming over me quite that much.
“Charlie’s conferring with his people,” Ian said. “And the pack’s on their way.” His tone was clipped, all business, like he and I were strangers. He didn’t look at me. “Nate, you’re staying with Dor. No arguments,” he went on, as I opened my mouth to argue. “You’re my mate, which means you’re my weak point.”
“Oh, fuck you, Ian, if one more fucking person calls me weak tonight —”
“I didn’t say you were weak,” he snapped, finally turning to glare at me. Or try to glare. It didn’t work as well as usual, and it dawned on me why he’d been trying not to make eye contact: he couldn’t hide whatever unnamed feeling that was, lighting his pale blue eyes with something that shook me down to my boots. “You make me weak,” he said quietly. “If you’re hurt, if you’re in danger, I can’t focus on anything else.”
Oh, gods. I swayed a little, wanting so badly to fall into his arms. He was such a dick, and then this? The mate bond. It was all because of the mate bond. And because I was human, it didn’t affect me quite the same way, and everything I was trying so fucking hard not to feel was genuine, not magically created.
