Page 13 of My Hexed Honeymoon (The Bridgewater Pack #2)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

By the time we make it to the clearing where the ax throwing contest is underway, the whole damn pack’s gathered around. Laughter, razzing, and the thunk of blades hitting wood fill the clearing, loud and unguarded. Not to mention soothing in a way I didn’t expect.

Ahh, normalcy.

Show-off that he is, Conall’s throwing one-handed, Kerrigan tucked against his side, beer bottle in the other hand.

He’s got to be twenty yards from the target, twice as far as we typically throw from.

As if that’s not enough of a challenge for him, he dips his head and kisses Kerrigan as he lets the ax fly. It lands deep inside the center of the bullseye.

Cheers, whistles, and applause ring through the impressed audience, and I notice wads of cash exchanging hands. Not sure who’d bet against him, but I’m sure that’s why they’d upped the ante with the additional challenges.

That was the thing with Conall, and why Nissa and I had chosen him as the alpha of our little pack of misfits back when we were only teens. Nobody questioned his authority—not until Kerrigan showed up, anyway.

For a moment I wonder what either of us was thinking, having me challenge him for a position I didn’t know what to do with. It’s not that I don’t have my fair share of opinions or didn’t have faith in my strength—in a lot of ways, that was all I had faith in these days.

But I wasn’t showy or loud, or anything else Conall had been. If I’d known I’d be in this position, I might’ve given more thought to what kind of leader I wanted to be. With vampires beating down our door and a bigger war looming, all I can think is that it shouldn’t be me.

Yet my pride and the surging power in my veins balk at the idea of giving it up.

If I’m being honest, part of me always wanted to go toe-to-toe with Conall, no holds barred, just to see what I was capable of.

As much as I hate to admit it, even if only in my head, I’m afraid I’ll discover at the worst possible time—at the expense of my pack and family—that I wasn’t meant to lead.

“Lucky shot,” I shout just to be a dick, and so that I can drown out my plaguing feelings of doubt.

Fuck that, it’s not me.

Conall flips me off over his shoulder, and Kerrigan loops her arms around his neck and takes the kiss to such incendiary levels, I’m surprised the meadow doesn’t burst into flames.

Although that might be a pinch of jealousy talking, as I’d love nothing more than for Natalia to do that to me.

Letting my hand rest lightly against the slight curve of her lower back, I incline my head in her direction and speak a little lower, not that everyone won’t hear anyway. “We judge by three things: distance from the target, accuracy, and depth.”

“Ah, so that’s why he’s standing so far back?” she asks.

“He’s standing that far back,” I say, raising my voice, “because he’s a cocky bastard who prides himself on never losing a match.”

Chuckles ring the semi-circle of observers.

Conall cocks back his arm, taking his sweet time aiming.

If he wanted silence for his toss, he should’ve gone already.

I cast Natalia a side-long glance to see how she’s soaking it all in, and she has the most adorable half-smile on her face. I can’t believe she’s never had a s’more before tonight.

She catches me watching and shifts nervously. “What?”

“Just watching you take it all in.”

“I’m seriously digging this, and I one hundred percent mean that. It’s the kind of thing I’ve only ever read about in books.” She cranes her neck to get a better angle of Conall’s next toss. “Not my magical textbooks, of course. But the fictional kind I snuck under my covers at night, because…”

She screws up her face, affecting a stern, uber-grammatically correct tone. “Until you learn to cast spells and astral project, Natalia, you don’t deserve to read for fun.”

Christ’s sake, her mom was a cunt.

“Anyway, go on,” she says, rubbing her hand up and down my upper arm like I might need soothing after her traumatic memory. “Tell me more about how it works.”

“You line up your shot, see?”

Conall lets the ax fly, end over end, to lodge so close to dead-center he’ll inevitably count it.

While I might’ve never challenged him for the position of alpha before it became necessary to his happiness, it doesn’t mean I’m not competitive.

Or that our battles hadn’t resulted in hits that landed way too hard.

“You want the tip to go in first,” I say.

Natalia does just a horrible job of hiding her growing smile behind her hand. “That’s the general consensus, yes.”

I nudge her side with my elbow, basking in her giggle. “Smartass.”

“It’s from reading all those books I wasn’t supposed to,” she replies, skipping a little closer to the throwing grounds and dragging me along with her.

“My turn!” Twenty-two-year-old Elias dislodges an ax from a stump and steps up to the usual line, demarcated by a row of flat white stones that glow in the moonlight. As our youngest member of the Lead Guard, he was enthusiastic in a way few of us older dudes were.

“You got this, babe!” Gabriel cheers from the sideline, even though everybody knows he doesn’t stand a real shot against Conall—not even from the closer line.

But Gabriel hollers for him like it’s the Olympics, and the two of them have been training all year.

A squishy sensation I’m not accustomed to overtakes my chest as I watch the couple give each other twitterpated grins and blow kisses back and forth.

Recently official, although that hadn’t exactly come as a shock to anyone who knew either of them, it was almost a tragedy before Kerrigan saved Elias’s life.

Shit, now my throat’s growing too tight, too.

At the reminder of the silver flash bomb and sigil trap that seared off a layer of skin and left Elias unable to regenerate, conflicting emotions arise, and every single one of them involves the witch at my side.

As much as I longed to forget who she was and bask in the fun night, the safety of every person in the compound now lands squarely on my shoulders, and I didn’t want to get it wrong.

But I’d also seen how Andromeda treated Natalia—Talia. Personally, I thought Natalia suited her better. That’s a name that warned me I’d never be able to have such a gorgeous creature, this woman who was far too ethereal for even Earth herself.

Most disturbing of all, however, is how much I like the idea of calling her mine.

Maybe even meaning it in the way Conall did when he’d brought the veterinarian in on one of our big pack meetings, letting gold roll over his eyes as he said, “You will give her the respect she deserves, or as I mentioned earlier, you’ll have me to contend with. ”

The saying about it being so quiet you could hear a pin drop?

That would’ve been loud in comparison to the silence that followed.

Werewolves weren’t exactly known for being quiet, either.

It’s one of the many reasons we lived fifteen miles outside an already tiny town, where we could have acres and acres of forest to roam.

Admittedly, I’d been right there with the rest of them during that pack meeting, insisting Conall shouldn’t bring in an outsider.

But I’d held Elias in my arms while he gasped and choked on his own blood.

It’d been eerily similar to the day Conall and I found the kid in the woods, severely malnourished and beaten within an inch of his life. Leaving him there to die for being gay, archaic in a way I thought we’d overcome.

Anger rises again, and the unfairness over how much pain he’s experienced from such a young age has me clenching my fists at my side. It gnawed at me that we’d never found the assholes and paid them back.

The self-sabotaging urge to demand Talia help me find the witch or witches responsible for the sigil trap bubbles up.

This is why I don’t get to kiss her breathless as my friends whistle and give us shit.

Why I can’t call her mine or go thinking she truly is—there are simply far too many complications for that type of true-love, fairy tale nonsense.

My gaze tracks the clusters and pairs that make up the members of our pack, names rattling through my brain and responsibility stacking like bricks on my chest.

Even when Conall first agreed to marry Natalia—a foregone notion that causes a jealous flare of sizzling, bubbling heat—Kerrigan had stayed at the compound, treating every single injured werewolf who couldn’t regenerate.

Even though most of the pack was still accusing her of being a witch.

She loved Conall enough to save his people, even when she didn’t believe she could have him in the way she so desperately wanted.

Now those faces have turned their hate-filled leers toward my wife.

Letting my alpha power flow, I level a glare at every single sneer and disrespectful glance aimed at Natalia, until nobody dares to look our way.

Yeah. That’s what I thought. Assholes.

Except I should probably point that sentiment right back at myself and make a decision already. Who was she to me? Enemy? Ally? Villain? Wife?

Shifting my weight from one foot to the other, I frown at the downer thoughts that creep up as if I’m not painfully aware of the stakes.

As if I need another reminder that I’m responsible for every person gathered around the fire and all of the people gathered to watch the ax throwing event, as well as those who stayed indoors during tonight’s festivities.

It’s not just about keeping the peace or enforcing rules or even about being super nice and giving a witch we barely know a chance.

It’s about ensuring that none of them—her included—die.

Talia and her powers might be the only thing standing between us and a war we can't win. The other wolves didn’t get a glimpse of the Hollow like I did.

Not the darkness lingering just inside, watching and waiting, clawing toward her the instant she stepped inside.

It wants her.

So do I, which is playing a huge part in my confusion and conflicted feelings.

Since I still don’t know what to do with them, I decide to go my usual route. Stuff them inside, shove a lid on top, and pretend they don’t exist.

It’s not like I can do it forever.

But every single person in this meadow deserves a break before hell comes to greet us, be it vampires or hunters or whatever other threat is out there lying in wait.

Just for tonight, I decide to let my people laugh and drink and get a little rowdy and shout. It might be the last carefree night they get for a long, long time.

I shove up my sleeves and throw down the gauntlet. Might as well treat them to a real competition, too. I hold my hand out to my wife like we’re about to fuckin’ dance in some fancy ballroom. “Ready to take a spin?”