Page 89 of Renegade Kingdom
I stood there for a second, all the things I should say jamming together in my throat. I’m sorry I avoided you. I’m sorry I couldn’t face what happened to you.
What came out was: “You scared the hell out of me in that chamber.”
Damon’s eyes searched my face. “Which part?”
“The part where you gave away a cure.” I crouched down so we were at eye level. The wolf settled slightly, calmed by the proximity. “That was either the bravest or the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.”
“Coming from you, that’s saying something.”
I almost smiled. Almost. “You’re sure about the bite?”
“I’m sure.”
“Because once I do this, there’s no going back. The wolf is permanent. And we don’t know how it’ll interact with the nightmare. We don’t know if your body can handle both.”
“I know.”
“You could die, Damon.”
He held my gaze. Steady. Unflinching. And for a second I saw the brother I remembered. The one who’d been older, stronger, the one who’d taken the worst of everything so the rest of us didn’t have to. There was something so wrong with the world that Damon was the one the nightmare had tried to erase. It wasn’t fair.
“I could die sitting in these chains while that thing eats me alive,” he said quietly. “I’d rather die fighting it.”
“There’s still Alyssa.”
Damon looked away and I saw a flicker of shame cross his face before he admitted, “It’s not fair to put this on her, and you know we don’t have time to wait. This needs to be settled. There’s so much more that we need to do. I can’t be another one of the problems that she needs to solve.”
The wolf howled his agreement. Loud enough that I felt it in my bones.
I should have been insulted that he didn’t want to put this on Alyssa, but he was happy to put it on me. But I wasn’t. Instead, there was a part of me that felt kind of proud. That the man I’d always looked up finally saw me as someone that could be relied on. That he was willing to lean on me for a change.
“Okay,” I said. The word came out rough. “Okay. We’ll do it.”
Something shifted in his face. Not relief exactly. More like a door opening. “Dean.”
“Yeah?”
“I know you’ve been avoiding me.”
My jaw tightened. “Damon...”
“I don’t blame you.” He said it simply, without accusation. “I’ve heard the things the nightmare says with my voice. I’ve seen the way it looks at people through my eyes. If it were you in these chains, I don’t know if I could have visited at all.”
The knife in my ribs twisted. Because he was letting me off the hook, and I didn’t deserve it.
“That’s not...” I stopped. Took a breath. The wolf pushed at me, impatient with my inability to just say the thing. “I wasn’t avoiding you because of the nightmare. I was avoiding you because I couldn’t fix it. And I didn’t know how to look at you and not be able to fix it. It’s different. Having the wolf. Having another thing thinking in your head, not like the nightmare. Not pushing against you. But… a part of you. Another side of you that you never realised you needed before.”
Damon was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded. Once. The way we did. The way words weren’t always necessary between us because we’d grown up in the same hell and come out the other side speaking the same language.
“You can fix it now,” he said.
I reached out and gripped his shoulder. Squeezed once, hard. He leaned into it, just slightly, and the wolf settled into something that felt like peace.
“Where do we do it?” I asked, standing. Practical now. Focused. That was easier. That I knew how to do. Cut past the emotions and get down to the facts, to the thing that needed doing.
The question brought the others in. Ryder looked up from his conversation with Rhidian. Tank turned from the window. Maddox moved two steps closer and then stopped almost like he was too afraid to hope. Then Alyssa moved to the centre of the group, and I watched the shift happen. This wasn’t the soft side of the woman we loved that we’d witness when she’d been carried in Tank’s arms relying on her mates to ease the burden while she succumbed to her exhaustion. This was a queen stepping forward. The woman who made decisions.
“The throne room,” Alyssa said. She didn’t hesitate. “I’m stronger down there. More connected to this place. If something goes wrong, if the nightmare surges when the bite destabilises things, I’ll have a better chance of containing it.”
