Page 246

The next few days were a series of sacrifices.

The first was to Kade. He’d been shaken by what he’d felt down his bond with me, and demanded to be brought down to the clinic.

He hadn’t gotten the details. Renee explained that our natural parental instinct to protect our children stopped inappropriate information coming down the bond.

Danger and pain had leaked past this barrier though, and for a while, Kade regressed somewhat.

“No,” he said, clinging like a spider monkey to my side. I’d been set up in the lounge room against the doctor’s orders, propped up on a bank of pillows and swathed in blankets.

“C’mon, mate, just a quick shower,” Aidan asked, reaching out a hand.

“No!” he’d cried, burying his head deeper into my chest.

“It’s OK. I’ll do it,” I said, moving slowly, gingerly. Whatever I had done had given my natural reserves of strength a knock.

“No, Flick,” the guys said as one, all rising to their feet, but Kade just clung harder.

“Yes, Flick,” I replied, and hobbled to the bathroom with my son.

One of them had brought me a chair, and hands went to my shoulder as I watched Kade wash through the blurry glass. And he watched me, his face no more than a smudge of grey, white, and black from behind the textured glass, but I could see those dark points staring as he showered.

Then back into my arms, while we ate, while we watched TV, and when he fell asleep in them.

“I’ll take him,” Aidan volunteered, the others watching us with haunted eyes.

What they needed tugged at me, prompting me, pushing me to meet it, but I was so tired.

I wanted to, to separate everything that was in me and parcel it out by need, until they were full.

But I was empty, so empty, and whatever core of vitality I possessed was being used up entirely by Kade.

“Not yet,” Noah said with a shake of his head when the others turned. “She can’t.”

“She can’t do this!” Aidan snapped. “She…” I watched him swallow twice, like that would dislodge the lump there.

But I knew from experience it wouldn’t. That’s not how it worked, or the countless cups of tea and water would have done the same for me.

I looked at him with sympathetic eyes, because that’s all I could give. “She nearly fucking died.”

“That’s why he’s like this,” Peter said. “He knows on some level.”

He got to his feet, bent over the two of us, and lifted us into his arms, Kade only stirring slightly, before carrying us into the bedroom.

His muscles didn’t even quiver when he put us down onto the bed and then crawled up beside me to lie at my back.

My body sagged, using his to support it as I had the couch.

The others followed, Aidan curling around Kade, but Noah and Sen just waited.

“We should—” Sen started to say.

“No, you shouldn’t,” Aidan shot back. “Get on the bed and get as comfortable as you can. You’re in for the long haul. You know you are. Neither of you would be able to walk out of here after that, unless she tells you to.”

I felt the moment they all settled, the little points of contact between us all. It fuelled me somehow, as if all the energy I’d expended was slowly leaching back. I let out a long breath, sinking into the bed, and then into sleep.

That night, I dreamed as a predator would.

I was a shadow, padding through the night, my gleaming red eyes shining in the dark and scaring the prey from their hiding points, only for my jaws to snap down on them.

When I woke sometime in the night, my mouth was filled with the taste of blood.

My tongue inspected the interior, looking for bites or cuts, but found none, so I wriggled my way free and went to the kitchen for a drink of water.

I wasn’t surprised when he followed me.

Sen stood in the entranceway of the kitchen, his eyes shining red in the darkness, an answer to my own I was sure.

“You know what I have to do,” I said.

He nodded. “He’s sick, broken. He’s chasing down wildlife right now, catching them in traps and?—”

“I know what he does with them.”

“He’s refining his skills, pushing himself further down the spiral. The police are investigating what happened to those backpackers, but?—”

“You see all of it.”

He nodded. “I think he’s a warning. To you, obviously, but this is Lonan’s or whatever he is, his statement to us.”

“The balance has to be restored. That was the price he told me, the Black Wolf.”

“That’s gonna be a hard ask. The matriarchs are pretty rigid about it.”

“Then he’ll keep sending Ricks and their ilk until they do. So, you’ll help me?”

“Always, you know that. But what you want to do, it won't be that easy. To…” I saw myself padding across the peach carpet in my old house, the stone ashtray in my hand. “To kill a man, to execute him.”

“What else do we do? I’ve seen what he wants to do. To Kade…”

“I know, love.” His voice was a warm caress his hand echoed when it rubbed up and down my arm. “I don’t disagree, I’m just saying it's harder than you think.”

I moved in closer and put my head on his chest, wanting that animal comfort for just a moment as all the consequences of my choices crashed in on me. He stroked my hair as the tears came, those horrible, silent, hacking ones, and kept on holding me until I was done.