Page 45 of The Alpha's Warlock
“Matthew isn’t human,” Ian put in. “So I don’t see —”
Dor shrugged. “Close enough.” Ian opened his mouth again, but I elbowed him in the side, hard, and he snapped it shut. “I don’t know how to remove it. It’s possible that only the caster can remove it. But I can see…tendrils, weaving between them, with the shaman as the source. It’s strong, too, strong enough to affect everything in his mind. Last night, I’m fairly sure he called me to dismantle the Kimball wards in an attempt to get the shaman away from Kimball, not to save your life, I’m sorry to say.” Ian’s face went white, and I winced. That was the one thing Ian had been holding onto: that Matthew might’ve let the pack down, but at least he’d come through for his brother in the end. Dor paused for a moment, looking as uncomfortable as he ever did, and went on with, “The colors tell me how long it’s been in effect, more or less, and the purpose. But I can’t tell you much more than that. You’ll need to interrogate the shaman to discover what’s to be done about it.”
“The colors.” Ian sounded very, very unimpressed, and a little hoarse, like he was trying not to cry. “That’s what you’ve got for me. My brother thinks he’s in love with some fucked-up Kimball witch, betrayed me — betrayed his pack because of it, and you’re telling me there are colored tendrils and that’s it.”
“It’s more than we knew before,” I said. Dor didn’t owe us anything, and Ian needed to simmer down and take a minute to process. “Thank you.” I nudged Ian with my elbow again, more gently this time.
He grunted and shifted a step away from me, and my heart sank. I mean, yeah, I was being kind of…me, but that little distance still hurt. “Thanks,” he said grudgingly, after a beat.
Dor shifted his attention to me, his black eyes assessing. “Nate. I think you might be the right one to question the shaman, if you’re willing to do so.”
“Fuck no, not a chance,” Ian growled. “He tried to kill Nate last night. There’s no fucking way he’s going in the same room with —”
“Why do you think so?” I asked Dor, loudly enough to drown Ian out. “What’s the play? Because I know enough about magic to tell what he’s leaving out?” Gods, Ian could be so annoying. Possessive was one thing; I was down with that. So, so down, especially when it came with his cock in me. Trying to control what I did and didn’t do? No. Absolutely fucking not. I’d had enough of that for one lifetime, and then some.
“Nate, it’s dangerous. I’ll deal with the shaman with Dor’s help, and that’s fin—”
I spun and got right in his face. “If you finish that word, Ian, so fucking help me —”
“I think you have it under control,” Dor said, with only the faintest, most insulting hint of irony. “Call me if you need a consultation.”
Ian and I both turned our heads to stare at him in time to see him step through a doorway in the air and vanish. He didn’t stick his hand back through with his middle finger upraised, but he might as well have.
“Well, that’s just fucking great,” Ian said. “We need someone with magic to deal with the damn shaman.”
Pressure boiled up in me until I thought steam had to be whistling out of my ears. I lunged forward and grabbed Ian by his shirt with both fists, dragging him down until his startled face was on a level with mine. “What the fuck do you thinkIam, Ian?” I gritted out. “I’m a warlock. I have magic, dumbfuck. And you. Do not. Own me. Are we clear?” I gave him a shake, not that it moved him much. The point got across, though. “If I’m part of this pack, I’m going to pull my weight, and that makes shamans my department. Are. We. Clear?”
Defensive anger rushed through our bond, and I tried something I’d never done before: I pushed back, inside the bond, sending as much of my own frustration as I could streaming in Ian’s direction.
At least, frustration was what I meant to send. But when I opened myself up, everything else I was feeling went pouring through without my volition: my soul-deep need to belong somewhere, my terror that if I didn’t make myself useful I’d be cast aside, my nearly frantic desire to be more than what I’d been, to be as competent and able as Dor.
Ian staggered back a step, eyes wide. “That’s what’s going on inside your head?” He sounded shell-shocked, sort of like I felt. “That’s — completely — that fuckingsucks.”
“Thanks a lot,” I snarled, stung so deeply I almost couldn’t feel it yet. I let him go and spun on my heel, putting my back to him to hide the hurt.
Ian followed me, pressing up against my back and wrapping his arms securely around my middle. “I could feel you,” he murmured into my hair. “Can you feel me? I’m not hiding anything. Can you feel what it’s like for me, to think about you getting hurt? If that shaman got loose. If something went wrong.”
For the sake of not making it too easy on him, I tried to pull away, but he held me firmly. Fine. I opened up again, this time trying to get a read on what was coming from him, rather than what was inside of myself.
I wasn’t a poster child for calm, but Ian’s anxiety nearly bowled me over. He wasterrified. There was nothing in the world that scared him as much as the thought of losing me.
“You still can’t make my decisions for me,” I said weakly, trying not to melt into a little puddle of goo. It was so hard to stay mad at him when he was like this. “You can protect me, and you can take care of me, but I’m not your kid, your subordinate, or your possession.”
He gave me a squeeze, flattening his hands over my abdomen. “I know you’re not. Just…be careful, okay? Promise me. I’ll try to back off a little. But you have to take care of yourself if you won’t let me do it all the time.”
That wasn’t perfect, but for an alpha…yeah, that was the equivalent of rolling over and showing his belly. I’d take it. For now. There was no limit to the number of his socks I’d destroy, enchant in strange and itchy ways, or otherwise misappropriate if he fucked up on this, but for now, I’d take it.
“You going to let me go sometime soon so we can split up and double-team your brother and the shaman, then?”
“Later,” he sighed. “You, I mean. Deal with the shaman later. He’s not going anywhere. I do have to talk to Matt again, and that can’t wait. For now, can you start prepping to set all our boundary wards? The right way. No expense spared.”
I knew that meant ‘Maybe we have twenty bucks for rock salt if I dig in the couch cushions downstairs,’ but I appreciated the sentiment even as I plotted stopping by my bank and pulling out a little of my own limited funds to supplement the Armitage budget. I also knew better than to suggest going into town on my own. I’d learned that some things weren’t worth arguing about, because I’d grown as a person and was better than that. And if someone else was driving, I didn’t need to worry about finding a parking place in front of the downtown Starbucks that was always fucking slammed. That was obviously secondary.
“Who’re you sending to chauffeur me around to my apartment and the grocery store? And we’re sure the cops aren’t going to mob me again, right?” He still hadn’t let me go. Strange as it was to carry on a whole conversation without even looking at each other, I couldn’t bring myself to pull out of the circle of his arms. Honestly, if I’d leaned back a little, I could’ve gone to sleep like that. After the day we’d had yesterday, five hours’ sleep had only added insult to injury.
Ian huffed. “Yeah, Charlie took care of that. He texted me. I guess Kimball was blackmailing a sheriff’s deputy.” Ian’s deep lack of thrilled-ness at getting texts from Charlie came through loud and clear. “And I’m sending Luke. You remember him? I know you’ve met a couple of times. You’ll get along fine, just, you know, don’t like him too much, okay?”
Seriously? Ian was worried about me preferring Luke to him? I did remember him, as Ian’s sullen, hulking, grouchy shadow on those occasions when Ian went out drinking or otherwise looking for trouble. For real, he even looked sullen, hulking, and grouchy next to Ian. Great.
