Page 7

CAIUS GATHERED the needed ingredients from his office, along with three small bowls and brushes.

He’d never intended to need them, but an unspoken rule for a pack alpha was to always have the necessary components for a binding spell on hand.

Even though the Order claimed most mages, there was the occasional mage like Max, or those who Sparked but weren’t powerful enough for the Order to deem them worth the trouble.

He took everything to the living room and set the three bowls out on the live-edge coffee table.

The ingredients were simple enough: crushed mage ivy, blood anise, and wolf knot blossom. He mixed a batch in each bowl, then added a small bottle of black tattoo ink to each.

“Okay,” Caius said, sitting back and glancing towards the dining room, where the others were watching him. “All that’s left is a few drops of blood from each of you.”

Lukas tossed his empty beer bottle into the trash before joining him in the living room.

He picked up one of the bowls before sitting and flexing a finger, his nail shifting into a sharp claw.

He cut his finger and squeezed some blood into his bowl, watching it expectantly. “Isn’t it supposed to do something?”

“It needs mage blood.”

“Can’t believe I’m doing this,” Max muttered under his breath, almost quiet enough that Caius’ shifter hearing didn’t pick it up.

Caius waited until Max stopped on the other side of the table before offering his knife.

Max couldn’t hide all of his flinch, staring at the knife like someone familiar with the sharp edge of a blade. He flexed his fingers, and Caius pretended not to notice the tremble in them as Max took the knife and cut his own finger to bleed into the bowls.

Lukas’ lit up with a soft fiery orange glow.

“Holy fuck,” Max breathed, staring at it as if he still couldn’t believe he was a mage with power.

Quinn gently pried the knife from Max’s slack grip to add his blood to his own bowl and watched with a grin as it lit up.

Caius took the knife back, wiped the blade on his pants, and added his own blood to the last bowl.

“Now what?” Max asked, pressing his thumb against the cut on his finger.

“I was thinking of using your back, unless you have a preference,” Caius said. He picked up one of the small brushes and stirred the mixture in his bowl.

When Max shrugged, Quinn grabbed one of the chairs from the dining table. Max hesitated, gripping the hem of his shirt before letting out a loud breath. He pulled it over his head and turned to straddle the chair, wrapping his arms around the solid wood back.

Caius barely contained his growl as he looked over Max’s back.

The entire expanse of it was littered with old scars—cuts and tiny circles and the familiar pucker of a bullet wound in his shoulder.

That solidified his plan. As much as he hesitated to expand his pack, he’d need more than the four of them to take out Savino.

It might take years, but Max’s father was as good as dead.

But that was a problem for later.

For now, he took a few calming breaths and stood behind Max as he dipped the brush into the bowl. When he brushed a streak of black across the center of Max’s back, Max twitched with a soft yelp of surprise.

“Fuck, that’s cold.”

“Sorry,” Caius said, watching as the ink shifted and rearranged itself in response to the image in his head.

Binding marks were as close as a shifter would ever get to touching magic for themselves.

As he added more ink, the mark expanded into that of a wolf, its head tipped back and mouth open on a silent howl.

The black ink on Max’s skin lit up with the same orange glow, until the wolf image was completed.

When the glow faded, the ink turned white like Caius’ own wolf, shades of black and gray adding texture and shadows.

Lukas snorted softly when he leaned in for a look. “Bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

Caius ignored him and stepped aside, letting Quinn take his place.

He sat on the arm of the sofa as Quinn and Lukas made their own marks.

When they’d finished, Max’s back had three wolf tattoos.

A white wolf howling at a crescent moon.

A red one curled up beneath a blooming hawthorn, pink and white blossoms littering the ground.

And a black one standing on top of a cliff, eyes and ears forward, keeping watch.

As Lukas made the final brush stroke, the weight of power charged the air.

Their marks rearranged and resized in a smear of ink and magic until they were connected into a single scene.

It covered the entirety of Max’s back and hid most of the scars.

The glow faded from the tattoo and the bowls, the sharp ozone scent of magic dissipating.

Max’s fingers were bloodless where he gripped the back of the chair, his breaths short and quick.

Caius crouched beside him, recognizing the wide-eyed look of panic from years of serving.

It was the same look new recruits wore during their first mission.

“Max,” he said firmly, gripping the back of Max’s neck.

His skin was hot, nearly feverish, when Caius flexed his wrist to brush against his pulse point, scent marking him and claiming him as pack. “Max, look at me.”

Only when Max’s eyes snapped to his did he realize he’d tapped into the binding. He cursed silently. The one fear all mages shared was being bound to a shifter. Mages could bind other mages, like the Order did, but a powerful or stubborn mage could resist the compulsions of another mage.

But the magic of shifters and the magic of mages were fundamentally different.

Mages were elemental, drawing their powers from the natural forces that made up the universe.

Shifters were the remnants of divine magic granted to their ancestors millennia ago, and divine magic always outweighed the natural.

At least enough for shifters to dominate a mage when bound.

There was nothing to do about that now.

“You need to breathe,” Caius said, drawing in a deep breath, holding, and slowly breathing it back out. He did it again, then a third time, before Max was able to draw a shuddering breath.

Max coughed and latched on to Caius’ wrist with a bruising grip as he struggled to steady his breathing.

“You’re safe. What’s wrong?”

“Hot,” Max choked out, the scent of smoke coming from him a moment before tiny flames sparked along his arms and hands. “Burning.”

Fuck. Caius glanced at Quinn, but he didn’t need to say anything; Quinn was already rushing up the stairs. He straightened and scooped Max up with his right arm to follow. Max felt far too light, but that was another thing to worry about later .

He went upstairs and directly into the cold shower without bothering with either of their clothes.

After the incident that morning, he should have expected this.

A binding increased the abilities of both sides, sharing power between them.

Now that he saw that sharing in action, maybe three bindings was a bit more dangerous than he expected.

Max gasped as cold water rained down on them. It took a few moments for his death grip on Caius’ shirt to loosen and his labored breathing to ease.

Caius waited until the feverish heat faded before setting Max on his feet. “Better?” he asked, keeping one arm around the mage as he turned off the water.

With a nod, Max slumped into Caius.

Quinn hovered near the door with a fresh set of dry clothes. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Max said, though his voice was faint and he was starting to shiver.

Caius snagged the towel hanging over the curtain rod and wrapped it around Max’s shoulders before nudging him out of the tub.

He bit his tongue against saying anything; giving orders was second nature to him at this point, but he wasn’t sure if the bond would turn everything he said into a compulsion. He settled on asking, “Need any help?”

Max shook his head and let go of Caius to lean against the counter instead, pulling the towel over his head and scrubbing at his face.

Caius pretended he couldn’t smell the salt of frustrated tears and stepped out of the bathroom behind Quinn, pulling the door shut behind him. He glanced down at himself with a sigh, his clothes already forming a puddle. “Can you grab me some clothes?”

He ignored Quinn’s snicker and looked at Lukas, who had a shoulder propped against the open bedroom door. “Do we have ice packs?”

Lukas peeled away from the door, and Caius took a moment to breathe once he was alone.

He didn’t regret binding Max since it needed to be done, but he hadn’t realized how difficult it could make controlling his magic.

The sooner they found someone who could train Max in the basics the better, but he didn’t know where to start.

There weren’t many mages not controlled by the Order, and he doubted any would want to put themselves in the Order’s crosshairs.

He turned when the bathroom door cracked open.

Max’s hair was still wet, dripping down his neck, but at least he didn’t smell like terror, and his heartbeat was steady.

He opened his mouth to tell Max he should rest before snapping his mouth shut.

He’d have to figure out where the line between suggestion and compulsion was with the binding eventually, but for now he’d have to censor his words.

“You can rest if you want. We’ll leave you be as soon as I change,” he said, waiting for Max to step towards the bed before taking his place in the bathroom.

He tossed a towel out to soak up the puddle he’d left, then stripped his clothes and tossed them into the sink.

When he heard Quinn return, he stuck his right arm out for the dry clothes, keeping his back to the mirror as he dressed.

Bad enough that he could see the hint of silver on the left of his chest; he didn’t need to see the full spiderweb around the bullet wound.

A mess of scar tissue and silvery blue veins covered most of his left shoulder where the aconite bullet had exploded.

He still couldn’t lift his left arm more than a few inches, and since he was lucky to be alive at all, he considered it a fair trade.

Healing might have been possible by a high-level mage with the talent and patience to deal with aconite poisoning, but the one he’d been referred to was so expensive, he would have had to give up any plans of forming his own pack, even one as small as this one.

He scrubbed a towel over his hair and finished changing before stepping out of the bathroom.

Max was slumped on the bed, a gel ice pack clutched to his chest like a teddy bear.

“You good?” Caius asked, stopping at the foot of the bed to look him over.

“Yeah.”

“Yell if you need anything,” he said, feeling the weight in the words that made them a compulsion, but he couldn’t regret it if it meant Max asked for help when he needed it. He left the door cracked a bit and headed downstairs.

Quinn and Lukas followed, sinking into their usual seats on the large sofa.

“We’ll need to be careful of the binding,” Caius said, sinking into his overstuffed armchair and rubbing his forehead. “I didn’t think it would be so easy to tap into it.”

“Probably because he agreed to it,” Lukas said, slouching into the cushions before propping a foot on the edge of the table. He motioned to the discarded bowls with his chin. “What about those?”

Caius sighed and stacked them, leaning over to set them on the bottom of the TV stand and covering them with some junk mail that hadn’t been thrown away yet. “They need burned with mage fire.”

“Whenever he’s able to control it enough not to burn the house down,” Quinn said.

Lukas snorted. “That’ll be a while. He smelled like a campfire before you got him in the shower.”

Caius groaned as he slumped in his chair.

“He needs help. And we need spellwork laid down.” He might have been willing to risk Savino or his rivals attacking without the benefit of protective wards, but that was before Max.

As soon as word of a mage not claimed by the Order spread, they’d be facing a far wider range of potential enemies.

“I might know someone,” Lukas said after a long moment.

Caius rolled his head against the back of the chair until he could look at Lukas directly. “Someone you trust?”

Lukas shrugged. “He saved my life a couple times. I saved his. He hates the Order, and I’m pretty sure he’s one of the few not directly bound to them.”

Caius raised an eyebrow. There weren’t many mages who fit that last. “Rían?” he guessed. When the brass needed to call in a mage who could get the job done, Rían was one of the few who even the generals spoke highly of, despite working for the Order.

If Lukas had a way to contact him, Caius certainly wouldn’t complain.

“Yeah. Not sure I can get hold of him or not.”

“Try,” he said, before turning his attention to Quinn.

Quinn met his eyes and shrugged. “Well, now that he’s bound, we should probably take him shopping. He needs clothes and his own laptop. Apparently, he’s only two semesters from getting his degree.”

“Okay. We’ll head out after breakfast.”

When neither of them brought up any other issues, he bid them good night and headed upstairs.

His room was on the third floor, over the guest room Max was in.

If he was still and listened, he could pick up the steady breaths of Max’s light sleep.

Hopefully, he’d remain that calm for the night and until they could get another mage to help him.

With a groan, he sank into his bed. Civilian life was supposed to have been easier, but at this point, he would have preferred the endless paperwork and interpersonal responsibilities of his regiments. At least they were familiar.

He had no idea what he was supposed to do with a mage now that he had one.