Page 108 of Renegade Kings

Damon sighed in frustration, his eyes darting around like he was searching for anyone that would listen to him. It killed me to see him like this. It was so unlike the man who would have done anything to save us when we were nothing but kids. He still cared, that much was obvious, but the Damon we knew would never have backed away from a fight, no matter how impossible it seemed. He’d have been at the front, taking the full force to save us from ourselves if need be.

The people around us were looking for places to bed down and packs were dropped on the ground as weary fighters fell next to them. These people were facing down a fight that some of them wouldn’t survive, some of them didn’t even seem to want to. The last thing they needed was to listen to Damon freaking out and making them feel worse.

This situation could easily escalate to a point where we lost control, and we needed to get Damon in hand before it approached that level.

“What’s the nightmare like?” I asked him, grasping the first topic that came to my mind and then cringing at how terrible an idea it was.

Damon looked at me in surprise, his gaze darting side to side like he was looking for the catch. Or maybe it was the voice in his head, taunting him about how he’d never be rid of it.

“It’s… it’s evil,” Damon whispered, shuffling back a step, his shoulders curling in on himself as he let himself feel the pain of his situation for a moment.

Dean dropped his pack next to a cluster of rocks before stepping up to Alyssa and helping her take the pack from her back. I saw the way he kept his eyes on Damon the entire time. He was the enemy in our midst, after all.

“Do you think it’s getting weaker?” I asked, trying to draw Damon into a conversation until we could figure out what to do with him. “You’ve been in control for the whole day now.”

He looked confused as he stared at me, his gaze darting to the sun as if to gauge if that was actually true. It troubled me that he hadn’t been able to track the passage of time, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was because we hadn’t, in fact, been walking with Damon all this time and the nightmare had just gotten better at imitating our brother.

“You’re all going to die,” he whispered sadly, instead of answering.

Stepping closer, I reached out for him, only for Damon to cringe at the idea. I let my hand drop to my side, but I didn’t back away. We were losing him. Even if it wasn’t to the nightmare, it was to the trauma of what was happening. Damon was at his limit and he was about to crack. I couldn’t let that happen.

“What do you know about the deal it’s offering?” I asked. “You know you can’t take it, right?”

It was the one thing we were all worried about. Maddox was convinced that it would never happen. He’d already said Damon would rather die than live with the possibility that he’d always be a danger to us. This was the first time I’d started to think he might actually be right.

“It says I’ll be free, but it’s a lie.” The sadness in his voice had Alyssa moving closer. I could see the heartbreak on her face. “I’ll never be free. This is all I have now.”

I wanted to reassure him we’d find a way, but maybe the nightmare was breaking me too, because right now I couldn’t see how we could. This wasn’t as easy as striding into battle to fight an enemy that could be killed. This was so much more delicate than that, and all we’d been taught in life was how to break things. Damon needed to be fixed, not cracked wide open, and we didn’t have the skills or the knowledge to know how.

“What’s it like to have the wolf?” Damon asked, taking me by surprise. “Does it… Is it like you’re losing yourself?”

This was his fear talking. He was seeing his own fate in the rest of us around him, and I knew letting him think this would take Damon one step closer to the edge. Besides, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

“I’m not losing myself,” I told him firmly. “The wolf is a part of me, yes, but I’m still here as well. It feels like I was always supposed to be this way. Like I’ve spent my entire life walking around with a piece of me missing and I’ve finally found it. I feel whole.”

It wasn’t the right thing to say. A look of sadness swept over Damon, and I wished there was something I could do to take it away. I wished there was a way to show him what this was like, that he’d been there and gone through the change with us.

And then the thought struck me. What if he did? What if Damon went through the change as well? Dean and Maddox were both alphas now. They could give him the bite, and Damon could become a shifter. What if this was the answer? I’d thought it before that Damon should have been with us. I was convinced that had he not been sent to Nymeria ahead of us, he would have shared the same fate. He was like us. I knew it in my core. But if we could give him his wolf now, maybe it would make him strong enough to fight the nightmare. Maybe this was what he needed to take back control finally. Would the wolf be enough to push the nightmare out?

The more I thought about it, the more questions I had, and for the first time since we’d got Damon back, I had a plan. Well, it was a theory at most, but it was still a possibility. Something to look into. Hope sparked back to life inside of me.

We couldn’t do it now. It was too dangerous to think about doing something like that so close to a fight. Not to mention we needed to give the nightmare as little warning as possible, so we’d need to wait until just before the next full moon.

Fizzle would be my best option for answers. There was the book Alyssa’s father had left her, too. Maybe there was something in there. I wished we still had access to all the books back at the palace, but the likelihood of us going back there was slim. I’d have to make do with what I could get my hands on out here. Maybe the other palaces would have resources we could scavenge if we made it to them.

“Just hold on for a little longer,” I told Damon. “I’ve got an idea, and I think it’s a good one. Don’t take the deal, don’t do anything stupid. We can…”

Damon laughed. He threw back his head as loud laughter raked through his body, and I knew something was wrong.

“What makes you think he has any choice in the matter, little wolf?” the nightmare asked through Damon’s lips, and then he continued to laugh like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

I wanted to reach out and wrap my hands around his throat. I couldn’t see that this was Damon anymore, it was just the thing that had taken him from me, and red-hot rage clouded my mind.

Before I could even react, Dean strode up to Damon and slammed his sword into the back of his head. The laughter cut off abruptly as Damon crumpled to the ground. No one even attempted to stop his fall as we stared down at his unconscious form in the grass.

“We can’t afford the noise,” Dean said grumpily, as if any of us would have criticised him for what he’d done.

Chapter 43

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