Amy clutched at her chest as though she was having a heart attack. “We can never, ever do that again.”
“I hope not,” I said, hugging myself. She shook her head.
“No,” she said, “you don’t get it. That wave of pressure, that intensity. That wasn’t just normal dominance. It was a territorial link. There hasn’t been an alpha who could command it since before Durin.”
She swiped a hand over her face. A territorial link. The connection between a rightful alpha and the land in which they lived. It meant when he came to power, if they were ever attacked again, Max could command the very earth to come to their aid. The link was something gifted to a warrior by the old gods that had ruled over the shifter dimension.
I swallowed. My tongue felt like a limp muscle.
“That means...”
“Yep,” Jeremiah said. “We just defied the old gods. As if this could possibly get any bloody worse!” The ending was more of a growl than it was words.
I didn’t know what to say. “Thank you.” It seemed meaningless.
Gwen approached. There was blood caked to her nostril. As Max’s beta, she would have taken the brunt of his displeasure. It was a wonder she was on her feet at all.
“You’ll leave his house immediately,” she said. “Any and all contact will cease. You won’t make a sound if he decides he wants to get into bed with every female in supernatural society.”
My will was too weak not to wander over to Anastasia. “Screw that,” she said. “I’m not living with that kind of crazy for the rest of my life. I’m not somebody’s consolation prize.” She scraped a hand nervously through her hair. It was only with the tresses slid across her face that I saw there was blood smeared inside her ears.
Gwen snatched my arms to draw my attention back to her. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” I nodded. “It would be better if you left the Reserve altogether.”
I had thought the same thing. I’d even prepared for it. But Cassie’s words rang in my ear, and I couldn’t get the image of Charles lying in a bed in the elite guard facility out of my head. What would it do to him when he woke to find that I’d left too? I thought of Luther dousing himself with potion to stay awake because he was afraid of missing something again. And finally, I thought of the weeping, wailing child that I had locked away in the depths of my mind when Lex had left. A logical part of me understood why she had to go, but the selfish core of me was angry at her. Furious that she would leave me behind to pick up the pieces of myself. Missing her like I had lost a part of my soul.
“I’m staying,” I said. “If I can survive what’s to come, then I’ll know once and for all that I’m strong enough to walk away.”
They were shifters. They understood the need to find their balance. “I’m taking the guard off you,” Gwen went on. “But I will do up a roster with all the females in the pack to protect you if you need it.”
I understood why they had to be females. Right now, Max was so volatile it was impossible to say what he would do if he caught the scent of a male around me.
“I’ll be fine without a guard.”
She nodded. “We need to move, people,” she said. “Make preparations. Slot yourselves into any sentry shifts to take the burden off him...” She snapped out orders, one after the other, with the calm competency of somebody who was completely comfortable with the world around her. Sometimes it made me wonder whether the shifters should get over their obsession with dominance and let the most cerebral amongst them lead for a bit.
When Noah tried to sneak out of the conference room with the rest of the shifters who leaped out to make preparations, I drew a circle around him and held him in place.
“I need you to talk,” I said.
“No.”
Not feeling like playing more dominance games after what had just happened, I called on the other dangerous emotion: guilt.
“You were meant to guard me,” I said. “Instead, you let Agatha abduct me and throw me into a pit to die. You owe me.”
“I sacrificed myself!” he snarled.
“So what? If I’d given in, you would have died. But I would be the one carrying that burden around with me for the rest of my life. I’m still carrying around my great-grandfather’s burden even though it had nothing to do with me.”
He turned his head away. I stepped closer. “You’re asking too much,” he said quietly.
“But I’m still asking. Please. I need to know how he did it.”
He shook his head. “Why? So you can throw your life away as well?”
“If I do, it’ll be my choice. I’m so sick of everyone trying to decide things for me like I’m not capable of handling it myself. What about what I want?”
“Sophie...”
“I’m tired of living in a cage, Noah. If my family had been shifter, they would have killed us rather than force us into captivity. It would have been a mercy. Everywhere I turn, there is a wall slamming down on me. Please don’t make me go back.”
He took in a shuddering breath. His eyes closed.
“Please.”
When his lids peeled open, his eyes were glassy. “I’m only ever going to say this once,” he said. I didn’t answer, too afraid of spooking him. “He summoned a demon before he did the rituals.”
“Why would he do that?”
His hands clenched and unclenched. He looked down at them like they were foreign objects. “The rituals he performed, they were set up to entice a demon.”
“Entice?”
He nodded. “There were sacrifices. Goblets of blood and fresh animals to devour. There were...humans...” His voice trailed off as nausea fluttered through my gut. “He wanted supernatural power,
