Aris
Posey disappears in a flurry of gray wool the second my powers fade like tendrils of smoke across the dark mosaic tiles of the grand foyer. Her footsteps echo down a darkened corridor, the only sound for what feels like an eternity–an eternity spent willing myself to stand still and not chase after her.
We just returned from Silverhide moments ago. Me, my mate, and my parents and grandfather. Posey’s role is clear as I tuck my hands in my pockets. She’s going to help Ian using her alchemy. My parents, on the other hand, came here because…
I don’t feel like myself and they sense that and are concerned… among other things, like the fact I have a mate and she’s… powerful. So powerful. There’s a monster inside of me with a one-track mind, and it’s only thought is her, my mate. My mate and her comfort, her protection. My mate and her body under mine. My mate locked away somewhere only I can find her for the foreseeable future.
It’s a grating, unnerving sense of possessiveness that has burrowed so deep in my bone marrow that I feel like every nerve ending and insignificant cell in my body has been rewired and fine-tuned to her wellbeing. I want to scratch my eyes out. I want to scratch my family member’s eyes out for even looking at her. I want to rage and bite something. I want to bite her again.
“Aris?”
I close my eyes for a moment, take several deep breaths, and slowly turn to the trio waiting in the shadows for me to come back to my senses.
Mom steps forward, Dad and Grandpa Ryatt falling into her shadow. Her smile is sweet and genuine, and her silver eyes glimmer in the faint amber light of the chandelier glimmering several stories above her head. Her hair falls loosely around her shoulders. She begins to approach me, and for whatever reason, I bristle, the idea of her touch like someone pressing a molten rod to my bare skin.
“Kenna,” Dad says in warning, and she halts, that smile fading so quickly I wonder if she even smiled at all.
Grandpa Ryatt’s footsteps are the loudest as the men approach. Dad takes Mom by the elbow and walks her back into the smooth curve of the foyer, putting what would usually be an unnecessary distance between us, like I’m a live bomb of power ready to explode if she so much as breathes too close to me.
I know, somewhere deep in the still functioning recesses of my mind, what’s happening to me. I know what this is. I don’t like it–the violence brewing. The knowledge that other people are aware, and my family is walking on eggshells around me. I’ve heard the stories of the effect a fresh mate bond can have on a man, Ryan’s being the one that stands out the most, seeing as he felt so out of control that he wasn’t able to rein in his beast form, but thankfully Aviva took that in stride.
My shadows feel like lead. I’m holding on for dear life against the pull to drift into those shadows, to disappear and guard my mate like a dragon curls around its hoard of gold and gems. The worst part of this is that Posey and I have a lot to discuss about the future. I want to be sure this is actually what she wants because she’s never been given the opportunity to make a decision for herself. That knowledge curls around the desire to pin her down and never let go.
“We’re not going to stay long,” Ryatt says, eyeing me with overt sympathy. “I’ll return after the Solstice celebrations are done.”
I nod, my jaw clenched and flexed to the point of pain. I’ve been here alone for weeks now while my parents tended to my sisters and their growing families and my grandparents semi-retired in Maatua. I was… lonely. Clawing at the silence of the normally loud, busy castle, and now, all I want is everyone to just… get the fuck out my house.
Grandpa Ryatt takes a tentative step forward and stops, his cloak swaying around his feet. “Does she have everything she needs?”
I angle my body away from the trio and run my fingers through my hair. Outside, another storm rages, this one wetter and warmer than before but guaranteed to coat Veiled Valley in ice, nonetheless.
Silverhide has real seasons. Winter there is just as glorious as the rest of the year–calm, stable, steady. Ryan and Aviva’s had been warm and cozy, smelling like cedar and evergreen, a perfect nook to rest in the gleam of the Solstice season, and yet, all I could see was the way Posey’s cloak flared as she knelt in front of Lexa and placed her skilled hands on Ian’s wolfish body, reading his resonance, she calls it, and that’s all she needed to do to know how to fix this when several other powerful, incredibly skilled members of my family came up short.
She hid this for so long.
She is so precious, so priceless.
I am, forever more, tasked with guarding her life with my own. Gladly.
“She does. If she doesn’t, she’ll know how to source and make what she needs.” I eye Grandpa as the words slip from my mouth, booming through the foyer. He reads between the lines just like I knew he would.
He knows. Everyone has to know by now that Posey is powerful. Maybe more than Blake, Maeve, or me in her own way.
But she’s mine.
Mom makes a small noise in her throat and pries Dad’s fingers from her arm. I’d feel awful about the way he’s keeping her away from me, her own son, if I didn’t have a grasp on the situation and how dangerous I could be to her right now. It kills me the way he assesses me like I’m a threat, but he’s right, I am.
“I’d like to talk to her, if that’s okay. I won’t touch her, Aris. But she seems very tired, and she’s a lot thinner than the last time I saw her. Granted, it’s been a year or more since I visited Sapphire Ridge,” Mom says softly.
“I would appreciate that.” I force the words out even if my body screams against the idea of anyone in Posey’s space. “She’s in the eastern spire, the one overlooking the forest. I’ve had a hard time getting her to eat or sleep.”
Mom nods, glancing at Dad, and he grits his teeth and gives her a knowing look. Mom slips into the shadows at a hurried pace while I clench my fists to stop from chasing her down and stopping her.
Dad makes a move, crossing the distance between us to stand beside Grandpa Ryatt, angling his body to block the corridor where his mate’s footfalls are fading.
I close my eyes to my dad’s voice telling me to take my time and breathe. Ryatt agrees, adding that they’ve been through this, it’s normal, but I’m having an especially hard time.
And then it all comes out.
“She’s a fox,” I grind out, opening my eyes to fierce slits. “She is a fox shifter, fully, no wolf at all. And she’s been hiding from her family for years. She’s been secretly practicing alchemy for years, right under their noises. And she’s brilliant, and I don’t know what to do or how to keep her safe.”
Dad moves in, but I step away, shaking my head in warning. “Don’t. Don’t touch me right now.”
“She’s a fox,” Dad says slowly, rolling the word “fox” over his tongue. “You’re completely sure?”
“I saw her. I thought–there was something about her I couldn’t figure out, something that nagged at me for months, since this summer.” I nearly bring up her heat, which now makes glaring sense. It was my fault. I kissed her. I kissed my mate for the first time under the pretext of crossing something off a mental wish list, and it dragged us both through the coals within days. I put my mate into heat before either of us understood what was happening between us, that there was a bond there, trapped behind our primary powers, waiting for a spark.
That spark had ignited when I saw her getting tossed like a rag doll in her fox form. I hate that. I wasted so much time.
Grandpa Ryatt is looking down at his boots in thought. Dad runs his fingers through his hair exactly the same way I do. “This is serious.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” My voice trembles, threatening to break. “I have an obligation to her family to tell them I plan to marry her. In fact, I will be marrying her as soon as fucking possible, with or without their consent. She cannot be without protection. Mine–and yours.” I eye each man, my voice deadly serious.
“Her father is a smart man. I find it hard to believe he isn’t aware of the level of skill she possesses,” Dad argues, but Grandpa’s looking right at me, those quicksilver eyes shining like pure steel.
“Her father was willing to marry her off to whomever had even a slice of the power she kept secret to keep their precious bloodline strong!” I spit out.
“You cannot make enemies of the Sapphire Ridge pack. They’re the only Alchemists left. Her family in particular.” Grandpa Ryatt finally steps forward, his sword catching the light of the chandelier.
“They put her in an impossible situation,” I protest. “I owe them… very little, as it stands.”
“And what about Roman?” Dad’s voice drops several decibels. It’s nearly a whisper between us.
“What about him?” It’s bitter. Like acid on my tongue as I continue, “He was only worried about Posey’s lack of wolf abilities affecting his marriage prospects and his rise to his father’s throne. She has always been secondary to everyone but me.” I look at Grandpa Ryatt, then my father, silently… begging. Fuck, I’d fall to my knees. “How do I keep her safe?” The words come in a strangled whisper. It’s agony, this torture. Maybe they can see it, sense it flooding off my skin because Dad takes one more tentative step forward and grips my shoulder.
“This feeling is going to pass.”
I shrug him off, turning for the shadows. “Don’t!”
Grandpa Ryatt sighs heavily and moves into the faint light trickling through the windows, which makes the silver shine reflect like water on the tiles. “Posey is, and will continue to be, powerful. Her powers are only going to grow the more she practices her alchemy. Alchemists are rumored to have been the ones who built the Firestone forges, their magic the ones that filled those basins and allowed the Firestones to build their fortresses and weapons, but that’s only rumor. A myth. A fairytale. We know so little about that war, even with people like Aviva and the Fae in Pantharas able to fill in some gaps, but it’s never going to be enough. One thing is true, Aris, and that’s that you, out of all your siblings and your cousins in this generation, have the heaviest burden on your shoulders.”
I blink at him, narrowing my eyes like that’ll help me decipher his words more clearly.
Dad grits his teeth. “Ryatt, not now. Not when he’s like this.”
“It’s better this way. Let him hear it, Evander, while he feels like he would tear the world in two for his mate.”
Grandpa Ryatt unsheathes the shadowsword in a fluid, silent motion. The tip clangs against the tile, with light, rapidly moving silver and deep blue shadows skirting all around us and up to the rafters. The castle trembles and groans, and my bracelets awaken, riling my powers as they shine.
“Take it,” he commands sternly.
I look at Dad, whose eyes are lined with dark circles, his face washed out by the shadows he’s known about his entire life. His mate used that sword when she went through the Shadowsynger ceremony to pass the kingdom from one hand to the other. Grandpa Ryatt has warred and killed with the same blade. Kingdoms have fallen against its edges and risen in its wake.
And it calls to me like never before.
“Take it, Aris. It’s yours. It’s made its decision known.” He looks toward the corridor, to the shadows dancing under his control. “It’s calling out to her, as well.”
“What?” Dad and I echo, glancing at each other before looking at Grandpa Ryatt again.
“Has she… been to the caves?”
I lunge, my teeth bared, and I lose whatever sense of control I had over my wolfish urges and overwhelming emotions.
Everything goes black.