Page 92 of Renegade Kingdom
“If something goes wrong...” I started.
“It won’t,” she said.
“If it does.”
Her eyes held mine. Steady. Fierce. “Then I will drag you back. I’ve already lost one person today. I’m not losing another.”
That shouldn’t have comforted me. It did.
Dean stepped up beside me. Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him, could almost feel the wolf pressing against his skin like something trying to break through. His hand gripped my shoulder, and for a moment we just stood there. Two brothers who’d been through hell separately and were about to walk through it together.
“Ready?” he asked.
I thought about the nightmare. About the months I’d spent trapped behind my own eyes, screaming into a void that didn’t care. About the things my hands had done while something else drove them.
And I thought about what Nymeria had said.You were always stronger than what lived inside you.
“Ready.”
Dean’s eyes went amber. Full amber, no blue left, the wolf surging to the surface with a completeness that should have been terrifying. His grip on my shoulder tightened, and I felt his body coil with that predatory tension that meant the animal was in charge.
Then his head dipped, his mouth found my shoulder, and he bit down.
Pain.
Not like a wound. Not like a blade or a fist or any of the hundred hurts the nightmare had inflicted over the years. This was deeper. Hotter. It burned through my blood like someone had poured molten metal into my veins. I felt it race down my spine, through my chest, into my fingers and toes. Then something cold and sharp followed that pain, a wild, savage thing that tasted like pine and cold air and moonlight. The wolf. His wolf, pushing into me, and for one blinding second every cell in my body screamed in protest.
Then Dean pulled back. Blood on his mouth. My blood. His eyes were still amber, and they were watching me with an intensity that made me think the wolf was looking for something. Waiting for something.
I stood there.
The burn faded. The magic settled. My blood hummed with something new, something foreign, a presence that hadn’t been there before. I could feel it, faint and distant, like hearing music through a wall.
And then... nothing.
No collapse. No coma. No dramatic surge of power or transformation. Just me, standing in the centre of a dead god’s throne room with a bite wound on my shoulder and the taste of copper in my mouth.
Silence stretched. One second. Five. Ten.
“Damon?” Alyssa’s voice, careful. Controlled. But I could hear the edge underneath.
“I’m fine.” I flexed my hands. Rolled my shoulders. The bite wound throbbed but the burning was gone. The foreign presence in my blood was still there, that distant music, but it wasn’t growing. It wasn’t changing. It was just... sitting there. “I feel fine.”
Dean looked at Maddox. Maddox looked at Ryder. Ryder looked at Tank. Tank looked at Alyssa.
Nobody said it. Nobody wanted to be the first to say it.
Ryder said it. “Should something have happened by now?”
“He should be unconscious,” Maddox said quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Maybe it’s different for him,” Ryder tried. “The nightmare could be...”
“Blocking it,” Dean finished. His voice was flat. Dangerous. The voice he used when he was trying very hard not to let the wolf take over. “The nightmare is blocking the wolf from settling.”
The worm stirred.
I felt it uncurl in the dark. Lazy. Almost amused. Like a cat that had been watching a mouse try to escape and had decided the game was getting boring.
