Page 4 of The Alpha's Warlock
And even though my raw power meant I'd shaken off the effects of the potion faster than my captors probably expected, I still would've been screwed if it hadn't been for the sheer, overwhelming terror that hit me as I realized what they were doing. If I'd learned control as a kid, I’d have been so conditioned to only use my power carefully that the witchbane would’ve been enough to keep me helpless. But the fear and rage and blind, animal instinct toget away won't be bound again would rather die— it all burst out of me, in a wave of unchanneled power that disintegrated my chains, flung my kidnappers in all directions, shouting and slamming into walls, and blew out the side of the warehouse in a cloud of splinters and flying nails.
I ran, and I ran, and I must have used more magic to move faster, because when I came back to something like rationality, I was already less than a mile from the edge of the Armitage territory. I didn't know exactly where I'd started out.
“Okay,” Matthew said, after he'd digested that for a minute. “Why are you here?”
I blinked at him. “Is that a trick question?” The words came out a little slow, a little slurred. I was starting to fade, even though the nap I'd taken had helped me a little. I needed to eat, and I needed more sleep, and more than anything, I needed a magical fix.
Matthew frowned at me. “No. And stop wasting the little strength you have fucking around.”
“You needed to know.” He looked at me expectantly. I sighed. “And I needed your help, because who the fuck else is going to help me right now?”
“So I owe you for coming here and giving me a heads-up, and now I help you fix whatever's wrong with you? Fine. I'll buy what you're selling, if it's not too expensive. What do you need? Some herbs? A chalk circle, or something?”
“Patronizing much?”
He shrugged. “I'm not a practitioner.” Well, no shit. Werewolves almost never were. The rare werewolf who could cast actual magic became a pack shaman, and those fuckers were worth their weight in gold. The Kimball pack was as successful as they were in large part because they had one. “Anyway, make a list. You look like shit.”
Yeah, I was sure I did, if I looked anything like I felt. Which meant my time was running out, and I couldn’t put off the moment of truth I’d been tap-dancing around. Because I'd had a lot of time to think it over, making my miserable snail-like way through the woods in the middle of the night, and I'd come to a horrible and inescapable conclusion once I had.
I needed Matthew's help. Without it, I was as good as dead — and his pack was the only place I could get what I needed.
Chapter 3
The Only Option
“It's not a list. I mean, I don't need any supplies, or herbs, or fucking chalk, for fuck's sake. Jesus.” I closed my eyes for a second, and the world felt like it was tipping around me. My stomach roiled. This was the last thing I wanted, but it was this, or die. And it turned out, I actually wouldn't rather die after all. “The ritual was forming a bond.”
“Yeah, you said.” Matthew finally sounded impatient. I was surprised he'd lasted this long. Most people didn't, when they were talking to me. “Get to the point.”
“If I'd interrupted it a little sooner, maybe the magic would just have broken. But the shaman finished the part that created the bond on my end. He hadn't started the part where the other guy got bound up too, but I was already hooked.”
I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat, the words I needed to say dying out before I could even form them.
Matthew leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Tell me, Nate.”
“I need to complete a bond with an alpha werewolf. Or my magic's just going to keep draining out of a conduit to nowhere, and I'm going to die.”
“Complete a bond,” he said slowly, and then I saw the moment when understanding dawned. His eyes widened, and his dark brows climbed almost into his hairline. “You need a mate.”
I winced, and a twinge of pain shot all the way down to my toes. “Yeah, Matthew,” I said hoarsely. “I need a mate. A werewolf mate. And quickly.”
“It can't be me,” he said so quickly I almost wanted to laugh. It was kind of funny, but —ouch.
“Hadn't even crossed my mind,” I said untruthfully. “But — what's so wrong with me, anyway?”
“It's not what's wrong with you.” I glared at him, and he cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably. “Not that there is anything wrong with you. You know. But. This is definitely a not-you-it's-me situation. I'm the pack leader. I can't take a warlock as a mate without making everyone in the pack question my sanity. No offense.”
And they would, too. Any being with magic could technically and magically mate with any other, practicalities like matching appendages and orifices granted. That didn't mean werewolves did much mating outside their own kind. And there was the whole baby werewolves issue — as in, I couldn’t make any. Not that I'd have been a lot more welcome as a witch.
“That sounds a lot like anit's-definitely-mesituation, Matthew.” I tried to make it come off as a joke, but it landed like a lead balloon. I was hurt, and I was dying, and Matthew was kind of a friend. Or at least, maybe he could have been, a long time ago when we were kids, if my father had been the kind of guy to let me make friends.
I'd spent some time in Armitage territory, back then. I'd been nine or ten, Matthew maybe sixteen, and Ian and Jared around eleven. My father had been trying to make nice with Matthew's dad, who'd been the pack leader back then. Doing some commissions — a few wards for the territory's boundaries, a little healing for the few illnesses that werewolves' magic didn't cure without any intervention. Without a shaman, the Armitage pack couldn't match the magic of their neighbors, werewolves or other. My father saw a business opportunity, and he was never one to walk past a chance for profit.
While they talked I wandered around outside, falling in with the other boys. Matthew was, ironically, too mature even then to show any disgruntlement at not being allowed at the adults' table. While Jared mocked and insulted me, and Ian stared at me with way too much intensity for a kid that age, Matthew talked to me.
And once he'd managed to coax more than monosyllables out of me in response, he actually listened.
Yeah, I'd envied Ian his big brother. I still did. And Matthew — maybe I'd have liked him to be a brother, but he wasn't. And he was hot, and reliable, and decent. The fact that he didn't see me the same way, as someone with potential, stung a little.
