Dispensing with any kind of student-teacher decorum, I ran at him and hugged him. Having basically grown up under the shadow of his intellect, its absence made me feel listless. Seeing him after so long caused something inside me to fracture.
“Sophie,” he said, his voice uneven. “What’s the matter?”
Just like that. He was up to his eyeballs in supernatural criminals, but he slipped back into his mentoring ways with the greatest ease. “Things are just a little overwhelming,” I said. “How come you’re here?”
He pulled away and nodded his head towards the Cabin. “Who do you think set the wards and the spells on the cages? They didn’t want any real First Order mages here. Their secret is too explosive.”
“They’re dying.”
His jaw set grimly. “I know. It’ll be time soon for Max to make a decision.” He glanced down at me and for some reason he shook his head. “You’ve had to grow up so fast. I never realised when the low witches stepped into my classroom it would be the beginning of something monumental.”
He saw the look on my face and backtracked. “There’s still work I need to do inside. I just came out here because Shayla would like a word with you.”
“Oh. I don’t know if I should. I’m not actually allowed in there.”
He turned his back and started walking regardless. “Come, Sophie.”
Sighing, I went to face the woman who the old gods had chosen to be my mother-in-law.
36
For as long as I lived, I would never be prepared for the sight of the alphas so withered and frail. They weren’t immortal like the pure-blooded Fae or Nephilim, but they still had the extended longevity of a supernatural. Most of them tended to die in battle against the demons. The ones who lived old enough to die of old age somehow managed to do it gracefully. This thing that was happening to them was completely unnatural. It stole my voice as I crept behind Professor Mortimer down into the cells.
Durin perked up almost as soon as I took a step off the transportation circle. The alchemy rattled inside me, agitated in an instant. Professor Mortimer picked up on it too. “What does your blood magic sense in him?” the professor asked.
“Tortuous despair,” I said at once. “Like whatever is happening to him is completely against the natural order of things and it’s killing him to take their essences. But at the same time, he can’t stop.”
The professor exhaled slowly. “I’ve tried everything to exorcise it. Astrid has attempted to burn him with her angel blade. We’ve even had your Chad from the compound try to exam him with human medical equipment. Nothing has been fruitful.”
I brushed my hand over my arm to stave off the cold that suddenly settled over me. “We need Lex.”
This time his sigh was drawn out. “As hard as it may be, perhaps it’s time we all learned to live in a world without her.”
“I don’t want to.”
He stopped mid-step. “To be honest,” he said. “Neither do I. Isn’t it odd how you get used to sarcasm until things seem almost dull without it? I could have lived my whole life without knowing what a knuckle sandwich was. And yet, I miss it.”
“Sophie?”
I blinked and closed my eyes at the strained thinness in Shayla’s voice.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Professor Mortimer said. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
What I needed was to be away from this place of insidious decay. But I met Shayla’s eyes that she had passed down to her boys and made myself smile.
“Don’t bother, sweetheart,” she said. “We both know I’m not going to win any beauty contests. At least I still look better than Yolanda.”
A hacking cough erupted from the room behind where Shayla stood. “Watch your mouth,” Yolanda wheezed. “I’m still your alpha female. Even if I do look like death.”
When Shayla turned, I stepped up beside her quickly and supported her elbow so she didn’t topple. She leaned into me. “You know,” she said. “It’s not the lack of strength that gets to me. It’s this feeling that all the joy has been sucked out from the world.”
Inside the room, Yolanda sat huddled with her back against the wall on a small cot. There was a two-seater couch on the opposite side with a glass end table holding a miniature everlasting flame. It gave off a constant heat that managed to leach the chill from the air a fraction. On the wall behind the couch was a rectangle mirror that was currently not showing anything.
“Can’t risk it,” Shayla informed me when she saw me looking. “If anybody outside catches wind that we’re this ill, that will be the end of our autonomy.”
I helped her to a seat on the left side of the couch. Unsure what to do with myself, I sat down beside her and folded myself into as small a space as possible.
“It’s not a disease that you can catch,” Yolanda said. I balked. My mouth opened to explain, when I saw the skin around her eyes crinkle.
“I’m sorry,” I said for the millionth time.
“Rule number one,” Yolanda, “an alpha does not apologise when they’re not wrong.”
“Ummm...I’m not an alpha.”
The noise that came out of Shayla could have been a cough or a snort. “Maybe not yet. But another duty of an alpha is to protect the pack at all costs. We’re not exactly fearsome down here and we need to know the pack will be in safe hands when we’re gone.”
“They already are. They have Max.” I laced my hands together.
“You still trust him.” A statement full of a mother’s pride.
“Always.”
“Even after he went crazy?”
Now seemed like a great time to tidy up my bedraggled nails. “He won’t always be like that.”
Shayla’s wrinkled hands stopped me fidgeting. “Yes, he will be. Without the mating link, he’ll be tormented until the day he dies, and he just
