Page 101 of Renegade Kingdom
She turned when she heard me. Something crossed her face that made the wolf push hard against my ribs. Not surprise. She’d known I was coming. I could feel it through the thread between us, that thin, bright line that hummed when I got close to her.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
We stood there. The space between us felt charged, the way air feels before lightning. The thread pulsed, and I watched her fingers tighten on her own arms, and I knew she felt it too.
“Rhidian sent you,” she said. Not a question.
“Is it that obvious?”
“He’s not subtle.” A small smile. “Perceptive, but not subtle.”
The silence settled again, but it was a different kind of quiet now. Expectant. Warm. The wolf pressed against my ribs and I pressed back, gently, the way you’d calm a dog that was pulling at its lead.
“Can I ask you something?” Alyssa said.
“Anything.”
She uncrossed her arms and turned to face me fully. The light in her veins brightened slightly, responding to something I couldn’t read. “How do you feel? And I mean honestly. Not theversion you gave your brothers because you didn’t want them to worry.”
I almost laughed. Almost. Because of course she saw through that. Alyssa had always seen through everything, even when the nightmare had been driving my body and I’d been screaming behind my own eyes. She’d looked at the monster wearing my face and known I was still in there.
“Different,” I said. “Everything feels different.”
“Different how?”
I looked down at my hands. The shadow magic curled around my fingers, dark and fluid, responding to my mood in ways I hadn’t figured out yet. It moved when I was calm, thickened when I was anxious, and right now it was doing something in between. Reaching toward Alyssa in tendrils that I had to consciously pull back even though I wasn’t entirely sure how I was doing it.
“The silence,” I said. “That’s the biggest thing. I keep waiting to hear it. The voice. And it’s just... not there.” I swallowed. “I know that sounds simple. But you can’t understand what it’s like to have something whispering in the back of your head every second of every day and then suddenly have it stop. It’s like going deaf, except the thing you’ve stopped hearing was something that wanted you dead.”
Alyssa moved closer. Not touching me, not yet, but close enough that I could feel the warmth of her. “Is it really gone, Damon? Not just hiding?”
I’d been asking myself the same question since I’d woken up on the floor of the throne room. The nightmare had been old. Ancient, even. A creature that had survived in the dark corners of the Winter Court for longer than anyone alive could remember. Could something like that really be destroyed by a wolf that was barely an hour old and a surge of magic I didn’t understand?
“I think so,” I said. “The space where it lived... it’s not empty. The shadow magic filled it. All of it. There’s nowhere for it to hide, even if some part of it survived.” I hesitated. “But I’d be lying if I said I was certain. Something that old, that entrenched... I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely sure it’s gone.”
Alyssa nodded. She didn’t offer false comfort, didn’t tell me it was definitely gone, definitely over. I appreciated that more than I could say.
“And the wolf?” she asked. “What’s that like?”
That one made me pause. Because the truth was, it was strange. Wonderful and strange and a little bit terrifying all at once.
“He’s young,” I said. “I can feel that. Like he’s still figuring out what he is. He’s not... he doesn’t talk to me the way Dean’s wolf talks to Dean. It’s more like emotions. Impulses. He wants things, and I can feel what those things are, but it’s not a conversation yet.”
“What does he want right now?”
I looked at her. The wolf surged forward with an answer that was so clear it was almost a word.
“You,” I said. “He wants to be closer to you.”
Alyssa’s breath caught. Just slightly. Just enough for me to hear it.
“That’s the bond,” she said.
“I know.”
“Does it scare you?”
