Logan
I don’t remember falling asleep. I don’t remember much of the past day, actually, not since washing up on the shore on some nameless island.
I slowly sit up, wincing as bright, fresh pain ripples through my back. I press my hand to my chest where the bandages cover most of my skin and find them damp with blood, but it’s not fresh. No, I must have stopped bleeding like a stuck pig a few hours ago. That’s one thing going my way, at least.
A soft murmur beside me steals my attention from my pain, and I turn to find Brie fast asleep, her hands tucked beneath her cheek. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear her hair natural before. It’s wild and… lovely. But looking at her–at the soft, relaxed expression on her face as she sleeps–has me careening back to going into the water with her and realizing that was it.
I’m not sure how we survived. Call it divine intervention of the highest degree because there’s no other way we would have made it out without dying.
She’s bruised, however. Dark spots of deep purple and blue are fading to a cruel greenish-yellow as I scan her body. She fell asleep on top of the sheets, and her legs are bare, giving me a glimpse of the scrapes and bruises that turn my stomach and have fury surging to life once more.
I hadn’t been in my right mind yesterday, nor early this morning when Alex insisted he talk to both of us. Based on the sunlight filling the room, that was hours ago. It’s likely late afternoon now.
I scan the room, taking in the details of warm wood and dark blues and greens. The room–a bedroom, with a few adjoining doors I’m sure lead to a bathroom, maybe closets or sitting areas–screams a kind of loud luxury I hadn’t expected. Alpha Alex has money. He has power. Yet, there’s something off about him, something I can’t place.
I start to slide off the bed when Brie’s eyes fly open, and she sits straight up, blinking blearily at me.
“Go back to sleep,” I tell her, cursing internally at being carless enough to fall asleep beside her when there’s a perfectly good couch taking up a nearby wall.
Brie rubs her eyes and covers her mouth as she yawns. “What time is it?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I stand with effort, grimacing as the bandages pull and pinch my skin. “I’ll try to find some food–”
“You’re not going anywhere without me,” she argues, gracefully swinging her legs out of bed and storming toward me.
I allow her to rise on her tiptoes and place her hands on my shoulders. She presses down, forcing me back into a seated position on the edge of the bed.
“I’m going to fix you up, and then we need to talk,” she says with a sigh. “Because a lot happened yesterday, and I highly doubt you remember most of it.”
“Are you always so chipper when you wake up? It’s rather annoying.”
“I’m looking on the brightside, Logan.”
“The bright side of what?” I ask, following her progress as she walks toward a dresser and fetches a stack of fabric, tucking it under her arm as she whirls back in my direction.
“We survived. Somehow, against all odds, we made it. Now, we might be trapped on a pirate ship–”
“Alpha Alex isn’t a pirate–”
“I believe he might actually be,” she counters, cutting me off. “And whether we trust him or not, we have no other options. It sounds like he’s trying to leave KiloKilo, and we need to go home. So, we’re stuck with him and his pack, which means we just need to–need to do our best. Starting with replacing the bandages.” She taps the fabric. “I’m going to change and then I’ll help you. Don’t move.”
She whirls again, her hair whipped into a frenzy at the movement, bouncing across her shoulders and back in a mess of tight ringlets and looser curls that follow no pattern. She tries a few of the doors until she finds a bathroom and shuts herself in, and the room falls into silence once again.
Sunlight plays over my thighs and hands as they rest in my lap. I’m in a pair of… boxers, perhaps. Shorts of some kind that don’t belong to me at all, and I don’t remember putting them on. I remember being in my Ghost armor while swimming with the current, trying to keep our heads above the violent waves. I remember how cold the water felt and how high the waves were as we drifted further and further from the lifeboat, and Ron’s voice faded completely. I remember the sudden violence of reaching swallow water and rolling, hitting the reef over and over, practically drowning, before finally washing up on the beach.
It’d been pitch black when my body met solid ground again. I didn’t even have the strength to make sure Brie was still alive before I succumbed to exhaustion and pain.
Then… I woke up again, briefly, to Brie’s mouth on mine, and thought we were dead and I was… simply washed upon the shore of the Goddess’s kingdom–with my mate.
I close my eyes at the fractured memories that come next. Being dragged back to a camp that smelled like smoke and the scents of dozens of other men, other wolves. Waking up flat on my stomach with a bitter taste in my mouth, listening to garbled conversation taking place around me. Waking up again on a cot to an old man peering down at me, fighting him, and being subdued by six others… and then Alex appeared, wanting to know who I was and how we got here.
My head pounds as I squint into the tropical sunlight streaming through the windows.
The only thing I remember clearly was Brie coming to life this morning in Alex’s office. Her face had shifted from pure, unfiltered unease to a mask of… diplomatic grace as her spine straightened vertebrae by vertebrae. Even in a rag-like nightgown with her hair falling loose all around her face, she sat composed and unbothered, radiating a kind of unshakable energy that nearly brought me to my knees.
I don’t know who Brie thinks she is, honestly, telling these strangers our secrets, but she spun her truth in a way that made her shine like a polished gem.
Maeve might be ascending the throne of Eastonia, but I wonder if fate chose the wrong sister, because Brie… she’s a queen down to the marrow in her bones.
She rushes out of the bathroom in a dress of dark blue that brushes her calves and tapers tight around her waist. My throat bobs as I take her in, at the way her waistline and ample curves are on achingly full display in a dress that must belong to Alex’s mate. It's just too tight in all the right places, and it takes all of my strength to tear my gaze from the cleavage the frock allows. The three-quarter sleeves leave her arms exposed enough that I can see the bruises again, which is enough to drag me back to the reality of our situation.
“These were left for us,” she tells me, grabbing a length of cloth bandages and a jar of ointment from a table near the door. “Thoughtful, I guess. The healer must be sick of you after spending an entire day picking shells out of your back.”
She starts to kneel between my legs, reaching for the bandages covering my chest, but I stop her with a hand on her stomach. “I can do it.”
“Logan,” she says slowly, drawing out my name like a curse. “You look like fucking shit.”
Momentarily stunned, my lips part, sucking in a breath as I rasp, “I’ve never heard you cuss before.”
“I’m hanging on by a thread,” she admits, but smiles, even if it doesn’t reach her eyes. “We’re fine. We’re totally, completely fine. I have to keep believing that, or I’m going to completely lose my mind.”
She kneels, swatting my hand away, and begins unwrapping my bandages.
I stare at the wall over her head as she works in silence. I try not to wince when she slathers the sticky, slightly pungent ointment across my midsection with her bare hands, fighting the urge to lean into her touch.
But I notice the fine calluses on her fingertips and ask, “What did you do to earn those? I didn’t take you as a fighter.”
“I studied the wolf arts just like everyone else,” she says, glancing up at me. “I’m sure my level of shifting expertise is equivalent to what you practiced as a teenager, but I’m not a warrior.”
“What are you, then, Brie?”
She sighs, rising, her hands shiny with medicine as she looks back and forth for something to wipe them on. She settles on my pillow, ripping the case off and murmuring something under her breath to the tune of finding me a new one, and climbs onto the bed, settling behind me to start working on my back.
“I’m an older sister,” she says lightly as her fingers begin to move over my sutures. “I braid Maeve’s hair everyday, sometimes multiple times if she’s shifting between forms, that little witch.”
“What do you mean by multiple forms?”
She shrugs. “Her favorite thing to shift into is a house cat. I’m not sure why, but she’s silent on her feet when sneaking around the house that way. I’ve caught her lurking in the rafters of my dad’s office a time or two in the form of a little gray bird–a pigeon. She’s not very good at it, but she can shift to look like a different person, too, but the eyes always give her away.”
I turn as best I can manage to look Brie in the eyes. “Are you serious?”
“Did you not know? That whole family knows by now. Our precious, shape shifting witch. She can do other things, of course. Her silver fire, her… banshee screams that deafen entire villages. What else? Oh, she’s rather skilled as a warrior, but I think that has more to do with trying to keep up with Lexa.”
I blink, remembering Maeve as a baby. I remember her fire, of course, but the rest must be new.
Brie continues, “Maeve hasn’t even reached the peak of her powers yet. She will once she’s pregnant with her first daughter–that’s how it works. Firestone witches are their most powerful as mothers. Misty thinks it was a… biological defense mechanism to carry on their bloodlines. Men can’t be Firestones, even if their mother’s are, but they can pass gifts to their daughters. Firestone women can mate with shifters, etc, and still give birth to full blooded Firestone females.” She sighs heavily. “Well, that’s just a theory, of course. We’ll know more once Maeve’s line comes into existence.”
“So you have calluses from braiding your sister’s hair?”
“Oh, is that what we were talking about?” she laughs, shaking her head. I hear fabric tearing, and then she’s nearly flush with my back as she reaches around me to start winding the bandages around my middle. “I suppose so. I do a lot of reading and especially writing. I guess it’s from holding a pen all day.”
“What do you write?”
“Nothing you’d find interesting. It’s just studying–”
“Studying what?”
“Politics of past and present. Maps of territories from a time before now, and theorizing what things could be like during Maeve’s reign and forward. Misty published an amazing history book a while ago. I’ve read it several times, so much so I’m sure I have it memorized by now, but there’re others, especially in Veiled Valley. I keep our antiquities specialist, Arthur, busy.”
I was right when I thought in another life that she could have been a commander. She has the brain for it, always thinking two steps ahead of everyone else.
I look down at my stomach as her hands weave the bandages in place with expert skill, like she’s done this before.
I almost ask. I nearly pry, crossing a boundary I think we’ve inadvertently drawn in the sand.
We rejected each other. It was completely mutual. Nothing has changed for either one of us.
But I want to know her–even if it’s against my will.
“I’m done,” she says a bit breathlessly, sliding off the bed to examine her work. Her face is slightly flushed a rosy pink as her gaze lifts from the bandages to my face. “Does it feel better?”
I don’t know what I’m thinking. I can’t see past that moment when she ran to me across the deck of the yacht, forgoing the safety net cast by the lifeboat. She could have been home, with her family. Yet, she’s here… with me. She chose me.
“Brie,” I begin.
We both jump when a sharp knock sounds on the door.