Page 72 of WitchCurse
“Is it not to your tastes, wolf? Feel free to leave.” I said, not moving from the wrap I’d made myself on the bed. The drain of the fae on my power had been slow, but like a lingering toothache, never waned. Everything they’d given to me from theHuntattack was gone, a test, to see if their lure had worked, and all that remained were those fluffy dark bites I’d devoured. My space didn’t waver, and the realm we’d created seemed stable.
“Not what I expected as a sanctuary for a prince,” he said as he crossed the room and set the tray on a table near the fire.
“Mortal titles mean little to the fae. I was never a lord, only a tool for the lords to throw into battle.” Until I turned on them all.
He stared at me another long moment; gaze less aggressive. Nick had worked out whatever the wolf had demanded. I kept my shields firmly in place and him out of my head, no one needed to linger in the darkness of my self-pity. “The food is from Liam and Seb, but they also sent a map.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Local for two, but a growing thing across the country. Shadows?” He frowned staring down at the screen. “I haven’t shared it with Nick, as one of them is his old house.”
The dark fluffy bits of this world then, if I spread them out, could I feed a long time, keep Nick and Toby alive without going mad and destroying everything? Hunger rose, reminding me of the constant drains on my magic, but wrapped up, cozy and still mostly warm, I had no desire to move. If the alpha were wise, he’d put a lock on the door and leave me here to expire. Maybe if the wolf and Nick weren’t close to me, they could be saved?
Toby sighed and took a few steps to the bedside and crawled into it. I flinched, feeling as though my sanctuary were invaded, but he only lay down beside me, and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “I know you’d rather have Nick, but he’s sorting through some stuff,” he said quietly.
Adjusting to his newfound hate for me, I was certain. Who could love a monster? Isn’t that what they’d always taught me? Why I’d run from Underhill in the first place, found the ripple in the veil, and crossed into a world I thought would give me a chance to escape my fate, yet here I was, cursed by the witches of old, fae, and fate itself. I bowed my head into the blanket and closed my eyes, it was easier to not deal with the world at all.
“Never expected you to be the type to curl up and die,” Toby said.
“Fuck you,” I muttered words I heard often from Sebastian.
“If we’re going to die, can it be in a blaze of glory?” Toby asked.
I blinked until his face refocused. “Are you mad?”
“Like insane, you mean? A little, I think. But I’m not wrong. The consensus seems to be that we are going to turn either into some nuclear explosion of magic, or change into a beast that Sebastian will have to devour? Can we choose where we do the most damage?” Toby asked. “I’d like to be on Zephyr’s doorstep when it happens.”
“Because he wants the omega?”
“A little. But also, because he’s a narcissist and a manipulator.” Toby glanced away. “I am far too familiar with those.”
“He is as most fae, trying to find a way to survive.”
“But that’s all life, right? Everything is trying to survive. The trees, the animals, humanity does a really good job at trying to kill itself off even while everyone is trying to survive. The fae… What gives one, more right than another?” Toby reached down and tugged another blanket up to cover us both. “It’s a fight I have with my wolf a lot. Who should be in control? Him or me? Only we are one and the same, so what does it really say for my sanity?”
“Does your wolf seek destruction?” I wondered.
“Dominance, control, power…not destruction really, though I think some of those things would require destroying things to achieve. My wolf thinks we need to control the omega.”
“Good luck,” I said thinking controlling Sebastian was a bit like caging the wind. He was a wild thing, bound by fate to the one man who could probably tether a shooting star without caging it.
“It’s not a sexual thing,” Toby said after a few minutes of silence. He rested his head on the pillow beside me, his touch not demanding at all, and the tension began to ease as he lingered. “It’s more like…a need to protect him from pain?”
“But hurting the alpha would cause endless pain for the omega,” I pointed out.
“I know.” Toby put a hand on his chest. “This me knows, at least. I’m not sure the wolf part understands. It’s strange how it is me…and not me.”
I reached out with my senses to find where he’d been sundered before. The gash was faded, almost as though his soul were scarred? Like stitching a severed limb back into place, present, yet the movements disjointed, slow to respond, and never as fluid as it would have been.
He shivered and pressed up against me. “It’s strange when you do that.”
Technically as my scions, there was nothing they could do, no barrier they could erect that could keep me out. Only my respect for them kept me at a distance, giving them space, privacy, and some semblance of freedom.
“I apologize,” I said, pulling back the power.
“It’s fine. Not…painful or anything. I like when you touch me. You bring warmth and calm to the space inside.” Toby lay beside me a bit longer. His fingers running along my arm, slow and gentle, not a caress exactly. I closed my eyes and let the touch soothe some of the tension I had at his presence. Without the wolf in control, he was not nearly as demanding. “I don’t want you to hate me,” he said quietly.
“I don’t hate you,” I told him. My disquiet with his wolf had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with long buried memories of trauma.
“I’m in the way,” he said. “Always in the way… You and Nick…”
“Have danced to a delicate tune for a long time,” I said.