Magic Claims

10

The cold evening breeze swirled around me. I leaned on the rail of our third-floor balcony and watched the last glowing coals of sunset burn down to a cool indigo. The days were growing shorter and shorter. Winter would come soon.

Voices and laughter floated up from the floors below. The shapeshifters were having one last feast before the battle tomorrow. Conlan was in the middle of it, soaking up all the jokes and the friendly snarling.

The forest hadn’t attacked again. Where their magic had been shallow and faint, mine was a deep, potent lake. It must’ve been quite a shock. If they tried something during the night, I’d know instantly.

The door swung open. Curran walked out onto the balcony and leaned on the rail next to me.

“Hey, baby.”

“Hey.”

We looked at the woods. Tomorrow would suck.

I sent a pulse of magic through the glyphs drawn in the corners of the balcony floor and our room. A soundproof ward surged up.

“Look at that. I’m trapped,” Curran said. Gold sparked in his gray eyes and vanished.

I dragged my mind out of the bedroom and back to the balcony. I’d been putting off this conversation for a long time. We had to have it.

“We need to talk, and I don’t want anyone to overhear,” I said.

“Never a good opening.”

“I claimed a town after I swore up and down that I would never do it again. And when we root out whatever is in the woods and find a good site for our new Keep, I will claim that as well.”

He nodded.

“You swore to never lead another pack. When Mahon came to you three years ago asking you to restart the Pack out of Jim’s territory, you told him that Hell would freeze over first.”

“True. I said that.”

“I have my reasons. You have yours. Let’s share.”

“On three?” he asked.

“One, two…”

“Conlan,” we said at the same time.

Right. “I’ll go first. You left the Pack because of me. Both because you knew I didn’t like it and because my father forced us against a wall. It worked for a while in Atlanta, because we lived in a village inside the city where everyone was friend or family. I thought people would get over my claiming the city and Roland invading, but they didn’t. Staying in Atlanta became more and more difficult. Again, that’s on me. My presence created that problem.”

“That’s not the way I look at it but keep going.”

“We decided to live in Wilmington, and we ended up in the exact situation that led to the deaths of your parents and sister. We are isolated and vulnerable. If Keelan and the Wilmington pack weren’t there, that fight with the Red Horn would’ve been a lot harder. As you said, Ned was able to walk right up to our door, and Conlan opened it for him. If Ned had been an enemy with power, our son could be dead right now. You built the Pack so when you had a family, it would be protected. I took that away from you and put you back into a place you worked so hard to avoid. I’m sorry. This isn’t what I wanted. Making you deal with the possibility that history might repeat itself isn’t what I wanted. I never meant to hurt you.”

An uncompromising harshness claimed Curran’s face. His eyes turned hard. An air of authority and a controlled, tightly coiled menace emanated from him, his presence expanding to take over the entire balcony.

The Beast Lord.

He never stopped being one. He just let him sink below the surface of an easy-going husband and father the way I had hidden my psycho killer inside my soul for the last seven years. Now the Beast Lord was out and in control, not because he was trying to intimidate anyone, but because I had brought up the moment his childhood had died.

“What I’m trying to say is that I was wrong,” I said. “I’ve tried for normal, but normal isn’t in the cards. Whether we live a quiet life or a loud one, someone will come for us either for help or for a fight. You and I and everything we can do isn’t enough to keep our son safe. We need others.”

“We had two obvious choices,” Curran said. “To raise our son in a pack, where he would be a prince and treated like one, or to raise him on our own, forging him into an exceptional fighter much faster than would be good for him. I understand why you reject both. The first way is what your father had done to his children. They all died. The second was what Voron did to you and it was cruel.”

When put that way, it did seem obvious.

“We tried a third way,” Curran said.

“And we did our best. But it’s not enough. I realized that when he killed that wereboar.”

“How did you find out?”

“Every time he saw the skull, he smiled at it. That’s why I asked you to take it down.”

“I didn’t tell you because you had enough on your plate that night,” the Beast Lord said. “I meant to talk about it later.”

“I know. I understand why you didn’t.”

Because talking about it would be shining a light on how close we came to ending up in the exact same situation as his parents.

“Conlan has too much of me and you in him to live a calm life where he doesn’t take risks or face threats.”

“Have you come to a decision?”

“Yes. Tomorrow I will accept Rimush and Jushur’s pledges and I will use them to the best of their ability. I’m going to accelerate Conlan’s training. When we develop a stable base, I will bring in vampires and train him to work with them. I’ve decided to embrace who I am. The violence, the blood magic, all of it. For Conlan’s sake but also for my own.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I want to bring Conlan with us tomorrow. We will be fighting for what might become our permanent home. I want him to be a part of it.”

No response.

“If you have any objections to any of this, tell me now. Please.”

The Beast Lord squared his broad shoulders, his face grim.

“I didn’t leave the Pack because of you. I left because I wanted to. The Pack as it exists now was never my vision. I was a damaged fifteen-year-old kid who shouldn’t have been in charge of anything, let alone other people. When I went to fight Andorf, you know what was going through my head? A part of me wanted a challenge, but a bigger part thought, ‘Oh, shit. If I don’t do this, Mahon might kick me out and I’ll be on my own again, alone and starving.’”

Oh no. “He wouldn’t have.”

“Now that I’m an adult, I know that. Back then, I didn’t.”

If Mahon ever realized that, it would crush him. He thought of Curran as his son. He was so proud of him, Beast Lord or not.

“I was given a framework and I implemented it. It put me at the top of the pyramid. Women fell over themselves to date me. When I entered a room, people looked at their feet to acknowledge my power. If I wanted something, it was brought to me. But none of that really mattered. It was safe.”

But it wasn’t. Not really.

“I never got off on adoration or bowing. To me, every shapeshifter who bowed his head was one more person I could’ve brought with me to fight the loups who killed my family. I had a mental count in my head: how many people would be enough? At first, Mahon and his bears were enough, but soon I needed more. I needed the clans. Then I needed a specialized fighting force, so I made the renders. It still wasn’t enough, so I established a security department that would give me advance warnings when a threat was coming, and I put the smartest, the most paranoid, the most meticulous man I knew in charge of it. I hoarded fighters the way some people hoard gold. And I did it without realizing it. I didn’t gain this clarity until I left.”

I shook my head. “How could you? If you had taken a second to try and get some clarity, Barabas would have put another piece of paper in front of you to sign. I remember days when we didn’t have time to breathe. There was always another administrative issue, or conflict to adjudicate, or threat to the Pack we needed to kill. No matter what happened, it came back to us. We had to take care of it, and you had done it by yourself for years.”

“It was a contract,” Curran said. “The Pack would give their lives to protect me, but I had to protect them in turn. It hit me somewhere in my early twenties—I was responsible for every shapeshifter under my command. Every single one.”

“That’s too much to carry for one person.” I thought so at the time, and I still stood by that.

“It is. And the worst part of it, I knew the Pack was broken. I started seeing cracks even before we met. We were turning more and more xenophobic. Rules and laws adopted on trial basis became set in stone. The rigid structure that was meant to provide stability made it difficult to expand and evolve. We fell into a pattern: the clan alphas bickered in constant competition, and I played the dealmaker and roared when they got out of hand. Every attempt at reform was met with resistance. When they attacked you while I was injured, it was the last straw. They broke the contract. I decided I was no longer bound by it.”

“But you stayed.”

“I did.” He looked at the woods. “By that point I had been the Beast Lord longer than I hadn’t. I didn’t know how to exit. I didn’t know what I would do if we left the Pack.”

“You don’t like uncertainty.”

“I don’t. What clued you in?”

“The morning after we spent our first night together, you asked me how long I would need to pack, because all my commitments and responsibilities were now over, and I was coming to the Keep with you. And when I said no, you told me we were done.”

“You weren’t safe. Your aunt proved my point for me that same day.”

“‘I want you with me,’” I quoted in my Beast Lord voice. “‘It’s not a request.’”

“I was dumber and more arrogant back then.” He reached for me and pulled me close to him, my back to his chest, and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m older and wiser now. I’ve learned how people interact outside of the Pack. How relationships work. I still want you with me.”

And he would have all of me. He was my world.

He hugged me tighter. “I love you the way you are. If you choose to change, I will love you still.”

The cold, hard knot inside my chest melted.

“You didn’t make me leave the Pack,” he said. “You didn’t make me move to Wilmington. I was the one who suggested it in the first place.”

“If you want to build a new Pack, I will help you,” I promised.

He squeezed me tighter to him. “I thought that to fix the Pack, I’d have to turn it over to someone else. I couldn’t do it because there was too much history. People expected me to act a certain way because I had done it for so long, and they wouldn’t have accepted a radical change. I thought Jim would make the reforms, and he has. Just not the kinds of reforms I would’ve expected. But it’s his Pack now and I’m good with that.”

I tried to turn to look at him, but he was holding me too tight, and pushing against those arms was like trying to move a building.

“I will start over. But I want more than just another Pack.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

He kissed my temple. “A new kind of place. Where we can be ourselves. Where our kid won’t be raised as a prince. He will never be a boy king, because a boy king has no need to grow up. We will give him a kind of place where he earns everything he achieves, and he won’t have to give up his human friends to do it.”

He kissed me again. “Stay with me, Kate.”

“I love you. Where would I go?”

His hold relaxed. I turned in his arms.

“When I finished that rhino and saw you,” he said, “you were walking to me. There were two dead bodies behind you. You were splattered with blood. Your sword was in your hand. You were smiling, Kate.”

“You told me.”

“I would fight the whole world for that smile.”

My heart made a funny little jump in my chest.

“You can’t say things like that.”

“Yes, I can.”

Oh my God. He was looking at me like I was the center of his universe.

“Because you’re the Beast Lord?”

“Because I’m your husband.”

He pulled me closer, and his mouth closed on mine. It was the kind of kiss that seared itself in your memory. It was possessive and hungry, infused with love and lust, a pledge and a declaration in one. It would chase you through the years, and decades later it would remind you, Do you remember how he kissed you? Do you remember what it felt like?

My head was spinning. Every sense had jumped into overdrive. I tasted him, I smelled him, I felt the warmth of his skin and the hard muscles of his body tensing under my fingers.

The kiss ended, and I would have staggered if he weren’t holding me.

He picked me up and carried me into the bedroom, slapping the balcony door shut behind him.

I wound my arms around him and kissed him again, tracing his mouth with mine. His lips pressed against mine, deceptively light.

“Lock the other door,” I whispered into his ear.

“Locked it when I came up.” His voice was a deep rumble.

He sat on the bed, with me in his lap.

Curran’s eyes were a molten gold. We’d been together for over a decade and yet they glowed with an intense searing need.

I slid my hand along his chest, under his T-shirt, feeling the strength in the hard muscle. Strong and warm… He cupped my cheek with his hand, lifting my head at just the right angle and kissed me again, slowly, deeply.

His hands slid under my clothes, stroking my back, pulling me closer to him, and I arched against his touch. Making love with him was more than sex. It was a connection, and I craved him like a woman dying of thirst craved a drop of water.

He pulled my clothes off and let them fall on the floor. The cold air kissed my skin. I shivered.

“Cold?”

He said it like it was a challenge.

“Yes.”

He stripped. “Let me help.”

Yes. I need help. So badly.

He pushed me onto the bed, trapping me under him. The heat of his big, powerful body warmed me, his chest almost searing my nipples. His hands slid along my body, cupping my breasts, stroking, teasing, touching. His thumb brushed against my nipple, and the glide of it sent little shocks through my body. His thick, hard length pressed against me.

He nipped my neck, just below the ear. “Still cold?”

I wasn’t. I was burning up, and he was the only cure. “Yes…”

He smiled. His body slid down. His hands pushed my legs apart. His head dipped.

Oh my God.

The wet heat of his tongue shrank the world to the insistent pressure between my legs. It built with each stroke, until it was so powerful, it was almost too much.

His fingers dipped into me, into the slick heat. He licked me again, and the pressure inside me broke into ecstasy. I floated in it, reveling in the pleasure and somehow shocked it felt that good.

“Need a minute?” he asked, smug satisfaction in his voice.

I pushed him to the side and onto his back. He let me, and I took him into my mouth, sliding my tongue over his blunt head.

He groaned, and the sound of him was so male and irresistibly erotic. I wanted to hear it again.

I sucked.

His hand slid into my hair.

Growl again for me.

I moved, licking, sucking, turning, teasing, pumping…

He snarled, grabbed me, and slammed me onto the bed, caging me with his body. His eyes were two burning coals. He pushed my legs apart and thrust into me.

Yes. That’s what I want. That, right there.

He built to a furious rhythm, and I matched him, cherishing every thrust. Another climax washed over me, dissolving into a sea of bliss. I screamed my way through it.

His body tensed, his muscles shaking. He came with a growl. I opened my eyes. He kissed me.

I loved him so much. My Curran. In the whole world, there was only one of him. I would do anything for him.

Later, as I lay wrapped in his arms, all my worries seemed far away. I felt strong and happy. I didn’t care what tomorrow would bring. Tonight it was just me and him, and nothing else mattered.