Page 33 of The Alpha's Warlock
A faint clank of shifting chains distracted me; it was Ian, finally stirring, his eyes open to show slits of gleaming blue amidst the bruises and cuts covering his face. His chin lifted. For an instant, it seemed like he glanced at me, but then Matthew caught his attention and held it.
I thought I’d seen Ian glare before. No, no I hadn’t. The force of his rage and betrayal nearly bowled me over, and I wasn’t even the target this time. It was like one of those cartoons, with little lines radiating out to show that a character was about to explode — almost palpable, and all the more impressive for Ian’s total helplessness.
“It’ll be all right, Ian,” Matthew whispered, his face a mask of misery. I’d never seen him look so young and lost, even when he was a teenager. “I’m sorry. I’ll make it right.”
“He will indeed,” my father cut in smoothly. “By swearing a blood oath to do no harm to me or mine — or to the Kimball pack,” he added, almost as an afterthought. Which it was, since he fully expected the Kimballs and the Armitages to go to war sooner rather than later. “Because my son succeeded, for once, in carrying out his part of the plan, I suppose I can be generous and spare the weres who kept him alive to be useful.”
And that — that was such a bizarrely twisted rewrite of the past few days, I could hardly breathe. No, no, no — it was too much. Ian turned away from Matthew at last, the leather muzzle creaking as he did, and stared at me, eyes so bright they nearly burned me like lasers. I squeezed my own eyes shut and tipped my head down, tears leaving burning trails down my cheeks.
Everything Ian thought about me had been confirmed, in a few lying words. And I couldn’t contradict them. I couldn’t do anything, or my father would change his mind and kill both of the brothers in a heartbeat.
I thought I’d felt despair a few minutes before. That was nothing.Iwas nothing. Nothing to Ian, nothing to anyone.
“All right,” Matthew said, his voice tight with strain. “I need to call my pack council, let them know to stand down. They were a little on edge when I left this evening without much explanation.”
“Fine,” my father said. “Make it quick.”
I stayed slumped where I was, not even bothering to open my eyes. Ringing echoed out of Matthew’s phone. He’d put it on speaker? That was odd enough that I glanced up through my lashes. Kimball and his shaman were conferring in low voices across the room, while my father was doing something with a bowl over by the sink. Preparing the bond-breaking ritual, I guessed.
And then someone picked up Matthew’s call.
It wasn’t one of his councilors. A deep voice rolled out of the phone’s speakers, overcoming their cheap tinny sound with a power that reverberated through the barn, ricocheting off of every surface. The voice spoke in a language I’d never heard before, guttural consonants and sharp, extended vowels weaving an incantation with an otherworldly, overwhelming texture.
Dor. That was Dor’s voice.
My father spun with a snarl, his hands raised, and Matthew tossed his phone across the floor, sliding it toward the opposite corner and jumping in front of my father, his face set. The shaman ran for the phone, Kimball shouted and raged and popped his claws, demanding answers, and my father’s magic hit Matthew square in the chest with a bright red flash and a muted pop that left my ears ringing.
As Matthew crumpled to the ground, the shaman reached the phone, but he was too late. For a second everyone hung suspended, frozen in time —and then the very air exploded around me as every piece of magic in the vicinity — the wards, the spelled chains binding Ian and me, the half-completed spellwork my father had been working on — blew like overloaded fuses.
Sparks swirled in the air and I yelped as the chains binding me burned hot and then disintegrated, crumbling into ash. The room went dark. My arms fell, numb and useless, and I tumbled onto my side. My shoulder hit the floor with a painful crack. I was blinded, physically and magically, the room before me in total chaos, just shadows and screams and the flicker of suddenly ignited flames. The wiring in the barn must have shorted out in the magical surge. Acrid smoke drifted through the air, getting stronger.
I started to crawl toward Matthew — gods, I hoped he wasn’t dead, but I was so afraid he was. He’d tricked my father, he’d finally made the right choice, and he’d probably died for it. Sensation started to come back: my palms, raw against the gritty floor, agony in my legs as they moved for the first time in hours, and then — Ian.
I could feel Ian. The mate bond was there again, a thrumming presence in the back of my mind and soul that felt like cool water after crawling through the flames of hell.
My hand hit something soft. Matthew’s face, slack and cool. I scrabbled for his throat, feeling for a pulse, and then reached out with my magical senses too, worn thin as they were. He was alive, but I had no idea how much damage he’d taken.
“Ian!” My voice sounded thin against the uproar. “Ian, help me with Matthew!” He wouldn’t come for me, but he would for his brother, no matter what Matthew had done.
Sudden light made me flinch and cover my eyes. After a second of adjustment I saw the shaman, a glowing ball of witchlight between his hands, slumped in the corner of the room with blood pouring down his face from a gash on his scalp. His legs were splayed at an impossible angle; he was injured, badly, and maybe dying. Kimball was gone. He must have run for it. If the shaman hoped the light would show him a rescuer, he was going to be disappointed.
In the middle of the room, two figures strained against each other, locked in what looked for a moment like an embrace.
Ian and my father, and they were doing their damnedest to kill each other. Power flickered around my father, wreathing him in reddish sparks that lit the smoke in the air like lightning in thunderclouds. They separated, my father wrenching out of Ian’s grasp, and Ian staggered, his left arm hanging limp. The skin of his hand blackened as I watched in horror, whatever curse my father had cast on him writhing up his arm like a snake.
I could feel it through the bond, a dark, venomous thing, sucking Ian’s life away and pulling mine with it in sticky tendrils.
Panic rose up in me, stealing my breath and making my vision white out.
Instead of giving in to it, I channeled it. No. Not Ian.He couldn’t have Ian. For the first time, I opened myself fully to the bond. Ian’s alpha power surged through me, tainted with the darkness of the curse, and instead of forcing it away I immersed myself in it, reaching for those black ripples andpulling. The blackness coalesced, hovering around me, slowly, too slowly pulling away from Ian and clumping at my end of the bond.
The real world wavered and dimmed, but I could barely see Ian staggering to his feet, his lips curved into a snarl. His arm still hung blackened and useless, but the curse hadn’t spread. Not yet. I was clinging to it by my magical fingernails, but it hadn’t spread.
My father circled, moving in on Ian. “Leave him alone!” I screamed, my broken voice cracking.
As distractions went, it wasn’t much. But for a fraction of a second, my father’s attention shifted to me, his eyes flicking my way.
And it was enough for Ian. He lunged, so fast I couldn’t follow his motion, his claws flashing in the firelight like shards of steel. His right hand plunged into my father’s stomach.
