Page 31 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

“I needed to be closer to read it.” The reading was finished before I moved but he doesn’t say anything about it, just looks down at the stone in his hand. I could tell him what’s in him, right here, with it still under his skin and nobody near enough to hear. But I’m not telling a man what he is on the strength of nothing.

“Valen.” He looks up and waits for the rest of it. My fangs are still down. I put them up before I open my mouth which takes longer than it should.

“We take it and go.”

He gets up with the stone in his hand. The heat still hasn’t gone out of him when I take the place at his shoulder, putting myself between him and the far side. A stride. I started this morning at three steps. We cross back over. Nothing touches either of us.

The pack has come the whole way to the near end of the causeway to watch us come off it. Nobody speaks or moves until we’re close enough that they have to. Then they open up and let us through. The Alpha isn’t with them.

I walk down off that ridge beside him and say nothing the whole way. It’s harder than it was this morning.

Chapter 20

Nyxiana

Valen makes it off the ridge and out onto the plateau before he stops. He goes down on one knee and spreads a square of oiled cloth on the rock. The stone’s been in his hand since he lifted it out. He sets it down in the middle of the cloth: dark, four-sided, small enough that I can close both my hands over and heavier than it looks, going by the way it sits in his palm. He folds the first corner over, hand shaking., presses his palm on the cloth until the shaking quits, then creases it with his thumb. The next one goes the same way before he runs cord around the bundle twice and pulls the knot tight with his teeth.

I’m at his shoulder. Nobody down the path is close enough to see his hands. He’s still throwing heat, it hasn’t dropped since the rock twenty minutes ago.

“Let me take it as far as the edge,” I say.

“No, I’ve got it.” He puts the bundle into his pack and pulls the flap down over it. I don’t argue. Enough people up here have told him what he can’t do. He comes up off his knee more slowly than I’ve ever seen him move. The pack goes on his back before he looks up the path toward the settlement. His eyes are all gray, steadier than his hands were a minute ago.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he says.

We walk. There’s no wind down here. The only sound is our boots on rock and his breathing, like a man carrying something up a hill.. He sets a pace well under what he’d normally walk. I match it saying nothing. If I push him, he’ll hold a pace he can’t, and do it in front of them. The pack rides high on his back. He doesn’t shift it once. The Alpha is waiting where the path comes into the settlement. He came down ahead of us so he’d be here first.

“The terms are concluded,” he says. “The way back is closed behind you.”

He doesn’t use Valen’s name or say goodbye. His eyes go to the pack on Valen’s back while he says it. I read him. He wants us gone before whatever happened up on that rock happens again. I keep that to myself. He steps out of the path, Valen nods once and walks past him. The path runs straight through the middle of where these people live. Low stone houses set into the slope, roofs gone green with moss, woodsmoke and cold rock over all of it. Wolves in the doorways, along both sides of the path, three deep in places. A man leans out to look then shuts his door. A woman lifts a water can out of the path, holds it against her hip. Someone pulls a child off a wall. Nobody speaks. All I hear are boots on gravel and people breathing. They give way before he reaches them. The ones nearest the path back up while he’s still coming. One female pulls two young wolves in behind her legs, keeping her hands on them until he’s passed. Heads go down as he comes level. Not one of them holds his eyes.

Valen’s pace doesn’t change. His eyes stay forward, not looking at a single one of them. I try to think about the walk out, the route, how much light we have left, the phase at the end and what it’s going to take out of me. I keep coming back to him. We pass the last house and the path runs out onto open rock. Nobody follows us, for the first time since we came up here no one’s behind or ahead. Valen takes the pack off, sets it down, sits back against a boulder and closes his eyes.

He keeps them closed for one breath and opens them again. That’s all he takes. I look at him. He’s still pale, face wet at the temple, breathing hasn’t come all the way back down but he doesn’t turn away from me. Then the heat rises up in him again. He goes rigid where he’s sitting, one hand closing hard on his knee. White comes up in his eyes and goes out again. There’s no stone under his palm out here, no crossing left to walk. Nothing is doing this to him. Then it stops and e relaxes against the boulder.

“Nyxiana.” He takes a moment with the rest. “When I had my hand on that stone. What did you see in me?”

I could tell him, he’s never asked me before. He’s also empty, on the range that raised him and Faelan gets closer every day we spend up here.

“The map answers to you,” I say. “That’s why the reading ran through you.”

He waits.

“Whatever was under that stone was cut out and sealed over. Drakoria is missing the same layer. Same depth, same clean edge where it was taken.”

“You’re sure?” He asks.

“Two realms, cut the same way. Somebody did it on purpose, and they didn’t stop at one realm.”

“And?”

“And” I say, “that’s proof. It’s the first thing we’ve had that closes us on Faelan.”

None of that is what he asked me, he knows it, I know it and he doesn’t answer when I stop, he looks north along the ridge at nothing I can see, gets up and puts the pack back on.

“Let’s go home,” he says.

I step up and put a hand on his chest, the other around his arm above the elbow. He breathes out, the first easy breath I’ve heard out of him since we came up here. One of his hands comes up and settles on my waist. It covers most of that side of me. He leaves it there; I feel how warm he is through my shirt. All that heat I’ve been reading off him is under my palm now and under I can feel how fast his heart is beating - we’ve been standing still for a while.