Page 90 of Renegade Kingdom
“It’s also contained,” Tank added. “One way in, one way out. If the worst happens, we can seal it.”
Nobody said whatthe worstactually meant. Nobody needed to. Nobody wanted to. Because the nightmare was strong even now, and what if we were handing it a weapon.
Ryder leaned back in his chair. “So we’re doing this in the room where a god just died. That’s not ominous at all.”
“Shut up, Ryder,” Maddox and I said at the same time.
Ryder raised his hands. “Just noting it for the record.”
“How long do we wait?” Maddox asked. The practical question beneath the emotional one. He was looking at Damon, and I could see the weight of what he owed his brother written acrosshis face. “He could be out for days. Longer, maybe, given the nightmare.”
“Could be shorter,” Ryder offered. “Could be different entirely. None of us were bitten in Nymeria, let alone the Fifth Court and by a brand new alpha who’s never done it before.”
“You’re really not helping with any of that,” I told him.
“I’m managing expectations. Someone has to.”
“He’s right, though,” Damon said from his corner. Everyone looked at him. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. We can plan for the standard process. A few days unconscious while the wolf settles. Someone watching me at all times in case the nightmare tries something while I’m under. But we should also be ready for the possibility that it goes differently.”
“How differently?” Alyssa asked.
Damon’s eyes met hers, and something passed between them. That thin, flickering thread in the bond that connected them. Not a full mate bond, not yet, but the potential of one. The shadow of what was coming.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I can feel this place. It’s been pulling at something inside me since we arrived. And whatever it’s pulling at, the nightmare doesn’t like it. It’s been louder since we got here. More aggressive. Like it knows something is coming that it can’t stop.”
Silence settled over the room. The kind that meant everyone was thinking the same thing but nobody wanted to say it.
Tank said it. Of course Tank said it. “Then we do it now. Before the nightmare adapts.”
I looked at Alyssa. She looked at me. The bond between us hummed with shared understanding, shared worry, shared determination.
“Now,” she agreed.
Damon got to his feet. The chains rattled, and for what I hoped was the last time, the sound of them filled the room.
“Get these off me,” he said quietly. “If I’m going to have a wolf, I’d rather not meet him in shackles.”
Taking those damn things off him felt like a sign.
Damon stood there for a moment, rubbing his wrists where the metal had worn the skin raw. He rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck. Such small, simple movements. Such ordinary things. But watching my brother stand unchained for the first time in months made the wolf howl with something that felt dangerously close to joy.
Rhidian stood up from the table. He’d been quiet through the whole discussion, watching with those careful eyes, still figuring out his place in a world that must have felt so different even though he hadn’t been apart from us for that long.
“For what it’s worth,” Rhidian said, and his rough voice carried clearly in the quiet room. “I intend to be standing right there when you wake up. I owe you that much. Whatever I can do to get you through this, consider it done.”
Damon looked at him. At the man he’d given up his cure for. Something passed between them that I couldn’t quite read. An understanding, maybe. A debt acknowledged without it becoming a burden.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Damon said.
“I owe youeverything,” Rhidian corrected. “But we can argue about it when you wake up and you’re finally free of that thing.”
When.Not if. I noticed that. So did Damon.
The ghost of a smile crossed my brother’s face. The first real one I’d seen in longer than I could remember.
“Yeah,” Damon said. “We can.”
I took a breath. The wolf pushed forward, eager, ready, certain in a way I wasn’t.
