Shadow Kissed (Magic Side: Wolf Bound Book 4)
Shadow Kissed: Chapter 34

Savannah

Jaxson stalked out of the overgrown ring of stones. His posture told me I needed to get to him before he murdered someone, so I broke off my conversation with the Ontario loremaster and hustled through the pines toward the patch of blue sky.

He stood at the edge of the rocky shoreline, overlooking the lake. Rage still coiled around him, so I stepped up and gently placed my hand against his back. I could almost feel his heartbeat and pulsing blood.

I said nothing, just let our connection do its work. Silently, we watched the waves roll in and break on the stones, then tumble out again.

Once his breathing calmed, I traced my fingers lightly along his spine. “Are you okay?”

He grunted. “My wolf was eager to have a conversation with Camila. Are you okay? I know it was a shit show, but you impressed a lot of pack leaders today.”

“Well, I was certain we were going to get eaten when I stepped into the ring, so mild cooperation is a win.”

“Thanks to you. You stood your ground and stared them down. You showed them how the Dark God is manipulating us. You convinced some of them, when I couldn’t, to work with your family. A month ago, I would have thought that impossible, yet here we are.”

Thankful for the praise, but too embarrassed to accept it, I gave him a wink. “Well, it helps to have an evil eldritch power bearing down on us all.”

“You’d make a good alpha.”

Regret tugged at me, and I looked back out across the water. “Yeah, if only I had a wolf.”

“You will. Once this is over.”

“If she forgives me.” If I can forgive myself.

“She will,” he grunted. “If Big Mac can set aside his grudges and work with your family, then your wolf will forgive you.”

I shook my head and took his hand. “She’s not the same as your wolf, Jaxson. Yours is a part of you. I’m a twin-soul—two separate souls in one body. She’s another person, and I just kicked her out of her body because I couldn’t control her.”

He took my hand and turned toward me. “You did what was necessary to stop the Dark God. The hard choice.”

I studied his face. He was smiling for me, but beneath it all, there was so much anger and pain. I reached up and brushed a lock of his hair aside. “Are you really alright? I mean, your own father turned on you today. That can’t be easy.”

His expression hardened, and he looked out over my shoulder. “I’m sorry you two met this way. Deep down, he’s a good man, if hard and stubborn. He was just doing what any alpha would—putting his pack first. Trying to protect them.”

“It’s not his pack, it’s your pack.”

Jaxson shook his head absently. “Once an alpha, always an alpha. That’s why he moved away.”

Frustration and outrage pulsed through me, but I kept it locked down. “He turned on his own son.”

Jaxson gave me the stark look of a weathered soldier. “Being alpha means putting the pack first. Always. Before everything, even family. Because thousands of people depend on you for work, for opportunity, for protection. He was trying to do what he thought was right.”

I couldn’t help but think of my own parents, who sacrificed everything to protect me. Family ties, community, maybe even their lives in the end. Jaxson had none of that.

I suddenly felt very rich and heartbroken, and I squeezed his arm. “That’s toxic. You know that, right?”

He shook his head. “It’s what being alpha means. It’s how my father lived. How my sister lived. It’s why I resisted our mate bond at first. I knew that if it came down to my mate or the pack, I would never be able to choose anything over you. That I would no longer be able to do what was right or necessary.”

Jaxson had said some of these things before, but I’d never understood how deep the roots of his scars were. How could he watch his own father turn on him and still forgive him? Did he really believe that the man was just doing his duty?

Despite his words, I could sense how much the betrayal had hurt him. The low throb of a remembered pain. Old scars, a constant knife cut, layered over itself again and again.

He’d said many times that his sister was meant to be alpha, that she’d been born for it. I’d thought that he meant he didn’t measure up, but I wasn’t sure. He’d had the job dropped on him. From what Sam said, his father had broken down and just faded away, and Jaxson had been left holding Magic Side together. Whatever he’d been before that had disappeared.

I brushed my fingers along the edge of his cheek. “Tell me about the time before you were alpha.”

He gave me a wistful smile, and I suddenly knew that I hadn’t even scratched the surface of the man beside me. He shook his head at last. “It was another life. It doesn’t matter now. I’d have given it up a hundred times over to spend this one with you.”

Warmth flushed through me at the soft intensity of his words, his attention. I blushed and looked away, suddenly conscious of what a walking disaster I was. “I’m afraid you get to spend your last few days on earth with the widely hated herald of the end times. How lucky.”

He turned my face back toward his and met my gaze with hard, loving eyes. “You are not. You’re the woman on whom all our hope hangs. I feel it in my gut. Don’t let that dream or the council or the prophecy make you doubt yourself. I believe in you more than I do any prophecy.”

Before I could deflect, he bent his head and lightly dragged his lips along mine. My body melted, and I closed my eyes as I pressed my mouth against his.

It was so soft, so gentle, the opposite of the hungry passion we’d shared two nights before. Tender. Beautiful and probing. Lips that weren’t desperate but searched and discovered. And with each kiss, I found someone who fit perfectly against me.

Slowly, Jaxson’s kisses traveled from my mouth along my throat. I tilted my neck and slipped my arms around him. Pulling him close, I buried my chin against his shoulder. He slowed and broke off his kiss just to hold me.

The world was collapsing so quickly around us, and I didn’t want to let go. I just wanted to hold on to him forever in that moment. To draw it out. To never have to face the future or the past.

But eventually, I opened my eyes to face the world that was.

A woman looked back at me from the woods. I tensed and dug my nails into Jaxson’s shoulders, and then she was gone.

“What is it?” Jaxson whispered. His body was taut and ready, but he didn’t look around.

“Someone was watching us. Maybe someone from the council?” I disentangled myself from his arms and headed up the slope to where she’d been standing.

No sign. I sniffed, but my wolf-less human senses were pretty terrible. Why did people even have noses?

Jaxson did the same. “I don’t smell anything but our own scents.”

My heart began pounding. Magic? Ghosts? Could it be one of the Dark God’s agents, spying on us? I closed my eyes, searching for the presence I’d felt at Pere Cheney and the Dreamlands.

Nothing.

“I don’t feel him here. It’s something else,” I said.

Jaxson nodded.

We moved from tree to tree, searching for any trace, but there was no sign of the watcher.

Then a subtle movement in the corner of my eye pulled my attention. I whipped my head about as a faded figure stepped around a tree. She looked at me, then moved out of sight behind the trunk of a nearby pine.

My heartbeat accelerated as my wound began to itch. That meant one thing: we had an ethereal visitor.

“What did you see?” Jaxson whispered.

“A ghost. A woman.”

We moved cautiously, scanning the woods. After a minute, the ghost emerged ahead and motioned to me with her finger, then moved off into the woods and was gone.

“She wants me to follow her, I think. Alone.”

Still searching in vain for the ghost he couldn’t see, Jaxson said, “Not a chance. I’m coming with you.”

I shook my head. “I have the feeling that she won’t talk if you’re there—just like the first time I met the witch of Pere Cheney.”

He gave me a frustrated glare. “It could be a trap. One of the Dark God’s agents.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t feel his presence. And so far, ghosts have only given us warnings.”

“So far,” he muttered.

I started moving off into the woods. “I’ll shout if I need you.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he growled quietly.

The spirit led me deeper into the woods, slipping from tree to tree. She was there and then gone again, like the glow of a blinking lighthouse in the night.

Where was she going?

Jaxson followed behind, keeping me in sight. The land began to rise, and soon, I found myself on a ridge, looking down at the waves battering stones on the shore. There was something hypnotic about the way the water churned, and something familiar. For a second, I saw a dark shape lying at the lake’s edge, rocking in the water, and then it was gone. A black wolf. A memory I would never forget.

Billy.

I sucked in my breath, and the vision faded. The spot was similar, but that was a different place and time.

“You killed my mate,” a woman said from behind me.

I spun and instinctually called for my claws, but I had none—once again.

The ghost stood five paces from me. I recognized her instantly from pictures.

Stephanie. Jaxson’s sister.