Shift Into Me (Werewolf Shifter Romance) (The Alpha's Kiss) (17 page)

Damon’s eyes snapped open, flaming with rage.

“Hunter!” he shouted. “Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” Hunter replied.

“There’s something... some kind of gem or pendant. I only have vague memories but the warlock rubbed it when he came into the cabin. I remember him playing with. The demon threatened him and he pointed it at her, and she shrank away from it. Could that be what we need?” his question was half directed at Wilton and half at Hunter.

“Well,” the old man scratched his neck as he dug in his satchel for some kind of vegetal-smelling powder. “It could well be, if she fears the object, it could be what he uses to control her but—”

“No good,” Hunter shouted across the clearing. “No necklace, no pendant or stone or jewelry up here.”

Damon’s gaze flickered back to Wilton and then to Lily’s calmly rotating body.

Thoughts, all jumbled up and confused, rattled in Damon’s head. They all came in disjointed, nonsensical patterns with no discernible chronology or order to them. One thing happened, then another, then another, but in his head it was all just one big montage of confusion.

Why can’t I think?

“Trust yourself.” a familiar voice flooded his mind, clear as anything he’d ever heard. Instantly, he felt comfort, though it was tinged with the sharp bite of danger.

“Poko? Is that you?” Damon asked, aloud.

“Pokorann?” Wilton whispered, looking back and forth before understanding dawned upon him and he went back to sprinkling the herbal mixture in a circle around Lily’s dangling form.

“I’ve little time, young one,” the ancient elder’s voice caressed his ears. “Very little. Spirits can talk freely to those of your – of our line, but for others of us, it’s very difficult to... to maintain. For...”

“I’m listening, Elder,” Damon said. “A warlock has summoned a demon to help him start a war between us and the Carak. The demon has taken Lily.”

Pulsing from deep in his chest, Poko’s words faded for a moment, then returned. “I sense... flames. Purple flames – a succubus? It doesn’t matter. When you unseat the demon, she will briefly return to this world, and fight. The place from where she comes is such that she’ll do anything to escape it. Understand?”

“I don’t care,” Damon said. “As hard as the demon will fight, I’ll fight harder.

Lily’s everything to me, she’s—”

“Clear your thoughts Damon,” Poko whispered into Damon’s soul. “Let your feelings control your actions. Let them guide you. You can’t see thing the way Lily can, but through her, you can sense them. She will tell you everything you need to know if you...” his voice faded.

“Poko!” Damon shouted. “Help me! I can’t do what you’re telling me to do! I’m too weak, too...”

He fell to his knees and grabbed two handfuls of gritty dirt, squeezing them until the grains bit underneath his fingernails. “Come back,” he demanded. “Help me Poko!”

But he was gone. The voice in his mind faded with a rattle. Damon was, once again, alone. He drove his fist into the ground, then the other, and pushed himself up to his feet.

Vibrations pelted his body like wind through a tunnel.

“Alpha!” Wilton shouted. “Did you get your answer? Do you know?”

“No,” Damon said through gritted teeth. “But he told me to listen to my heart. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

“No!” Wilton cried out, grabbing for Damon as he strode toward the protective circle the shaman had laid on the ground around Lily. “If you break the circle, the demon will be unleashed! You’ll curse all of us.”

Damon snarled. “Not if I
kill
the demon after I let her out.”

He pushed Wilton back, and strode toward Lily’s floating body.

“Lily,” he whispered. “You give me strength. I know that now.”

His eyes were closed tight. He was guided not by reason or thought or fear, but only by the purest, deepest love. “I’m allowed to need you,” he whispered. “Being an alpha isn’t about being alone. It’s about trusting the people you can trust. There’s no way to get through all this otherwise.”

An unearthly shriek pierced Damon to the core, then an aftershock – some kind of magical wave – sent him to his knees, but he dragged himself back to his feet. He shook his head. “You won’t win,” he said. “No matter how hard you try.”

Wilton shouted something behind him, but Damon’s mind was only on one thing. Once he was back to his feet,
“forward”
is all he thought.

The closer he got, the worse it burned. Unseen energy flayed him, screaming through Damon’s mind, threatening to shred his sanity, but he pushed forward. Against the beating tide, against the pain shooting through his brain and his muscles, Damon strode onward until he was within a foot of his spinning mate.

He reached out, his hand beginning to smoke as he did. White-hot agony shot through him, but he wasn’t going to stop.

“I’m not stopping,” he winced. “If you kill me, I’ll haunt you in whatever hell it is you call home.”

One of his eyes went blind, and vertigo pulled at Damon’s stomach, twisting his consciousness.

His fingers on Lily’s hand brought him back, through the agony that wrenched him. He felt himself yanked violently down a tunnel.

“My... hand...”

“Lily?” Damon said, staggering to the left, trying to keep his balance. “Is that you?”

“Take... my... hand...”

Damon closed his blind eye and grabbed one side of his head. He fell to one knee, but on the way, managed to grab Lily’s hand, knocking it open.

In slow motion, he watched the little purple gem fall from her hand, and he grabbed it mid-fall before he fell backwards, out of the invisible force field surrounding her, out of the flames and the fire that had blackened his hand.

“That’s it!” Wilton screamed. “Shatter it! Break the stone!”

“If you break that, you’ll kill your mate.”

“Who are you?” Damon demanded, snapping his head back and forth. “Answer me!”

“You know who I am. You’ve seen me once or twice. You want me, don’t you? Everyone seems to want me.”
The voice he heard was soft, velveteen, but with some teeth in the background.
“Hold on to that stone, and I’ll do whatever you want for as long as you want it, you big, savage wolf. None of these other people mean anything to you, not really.”

“No, no, no!” Damon stood, defiantly, holding the flickering pendant at arm’s length. “I won’t listen to this, demon!”

The screaming in his head returned, increasing in intensity as he squeezed the rock. Behind him, Wilton shouted something he couldn’t hear, and in the distance, he heard Hunter struggling, but the only thing on Damon’s mind was the woman spinning in the air in front of him, not inches away.

“I won’t let you down, Lily,” he said.

Purple blurred his vision. Flames licked the skin of his hand.

“I’m not going to be weak. I’d do anything for you.”

Like she heard him calling, Lily turned her head toward Damon, smiled, and opened her eyes. She reached for him, and just like when he put his hand inside the invisible bubble around her, Lily’s skin burned when her hand left it.

“Squeeze... it...” she whispered. “You won’t hurt... me...”

Her voice was so weak, so vulnerable and cracking that the mighty wolf had to fight himself to keep back his emotions. He had to force himself not to burst through the forcefield to feel his love one last time before being engulfed.

“Listen to your heart, Damon,”
Poko’s voice fluttered back for one last gasp.
“Listen to... yourself.”

Unleashing a roar so mighty that the whole world seemed to tremble around him, Damon gripped the rock as hard as he can.

A crack – the first one – split the air around him, and a shock of heat blasted through his arm. Damon howled in pain, but squeezed harder until another crack met his ears.

“What are you doing, idiot?”
the succubus in his ears screeched, almost weeping in her desperation.
“You stupid man, you’ll kill us both, you’ll—”

“Shut up,” Damon growled.

He shoved his hand forward, once again piercing the veil that separated he and Lily. Her hand fell on top of his.

Purple flames licked both of them, poured out of Lily’s mouth and through her eyes. She blinked twice, and grabbed Damon’s hand, getting his attention. She smiled and opened her gentle blue eyes.

“You can do it,” she whispered. “For the pack. To prevent the war. You can do it, Damon.”

Damon shook his head. The crystal started crumbling in his hand, and the demon’s shrieking grew louder and louder. Not even the sound of Damon’s ragged breathing was audible over the screaming succubus.

“No,” he said softly, staring into Lily’s eyes as flames consumed his arm up to the shoulder. “I’m doing it for the only thing in the world that matters more to me than the pack.”

She smiled again with tears in the corners of her eyes.

“Hold my hand,” she whispered.

Damon closed his fist, oblivious to the pain in his arm, and the agony in his ears. The crystal pendant burst.

“Hold... on...” she said, eyes fluttering and heart pounding against his chest. “Hold me, she’s coming out, she’s... I feel her...”

“Close your eyes! Damon, Lily, close your eyes!” Wilton ran to their side. “You mustn’t look into the abyss she opens, or you’ll be claimed!”

Damon clutched his love to his chest, greedily keeping her away from the sucking pull of whatever was yanking the demoness out of her body. With her last conscious effort, she laid her hand across his face, shielding him from whatever it was they weren’t supposed to see.

A half-second later, Damon opened his eyes to a peacefully unconscious Lily on his chest.

“Is... is it over?” Hunter said, stumbling toward him. “Carrell just kind of... I don’t know, man, he made this really weird noise and then...”

“I don’t think he hears you,” Wilton said, calming the young wolf with a hand on his shoulder. “He’s got his mind on other things.”

Just as suddenly as he’d opened them, Damon closed his eyes again, lost in a sea of Lily’s hair, holding her tight against his chest like he was trying to keep her from slipping away. His seared black arm began to swirl, to crackle and to heal, but he didn’t notice.

He didn’t notice the scars, or the cuts, or the shards of shattered crystal in his hand.

He didn’t notice anything.

The only thing in the world that mattered to Damon was right on top of him.

Damon took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

––––––––

“T
hat wasn’t so bad, was it?” I laughed and slid my arms tight around Damon’s waist and adjusted my weight in his motorcycle’s familiar seat. “We’ve been through worse.”

He grunted a laugh. “Yeah, maybe. Probably not.” Damon’s voice was somewhere distant. I knew he was worried about his brother and about Poko and everything else. But mostly I think he was just glad to be done with Scagg’s Valley, and done with the pack politics.

The two days since our run in with the demon and the vanished-but-presumed-dead-we-guess warlock rogue wolf were slow. Both Damon and I were in declining states of shock for most of it, but about the time night rolled around on the third day, both of us were patched up – or, I was patched up, and he was in perfect werewolf health, I guess is a better way to put it.

Earlier that morning, everyone had come by to wish the Alpha well and see us off. It was tiring and about four steps past awkward, but during the few hours where everyone from Wilton, to the ice cream parlor owner, Steve, came through, it became clear that
something
was different.

“You seem like you’ve made some decisions,” I said to Damon as Hunter opened the door, fumbled with something, and shouted that he’d be back in a second. “More focused, I guess?”

Damon responded by turning and staring into my eyes for a second, then smiling. “I’m just ready to go home,” he said.

Home.

The word stuck in my mind as my thoughts drifted back to Danness and her purple smoke in my brain. “I never thought I’d say this, but yeah, I’ve never wanted to be anywhere worse than I want to be in Fort Branch.”

I shook my head to clear the cobwebs.

“Are you gonna miss this place, Damon?” I ran a hand down his leather-covered leg, leaning my head against his back.

Damon looked past me. In the creeping twilight, his skin looked like a mixture of slate and silver. The green and gray streaks in his eyes captivated me for a second.

“No,” he said plainly, and with a shrug. “It never much felt like home, even when I lived here with my parents. This is going to sound stupid.”

He always laughs when he’s pretending he’s not about to say something really emotional. I found his hand on top of his leg, wrapped my fingers between his, and squeezed. “You can tell me anything. Except that you’re cheating on me.”

Damon quirked a little half-smile. “Never. But, no.” he shrugged again. “I don’t know. I never felt like it was where I belonged. You used to say the same thing about Fort Branch. How it always felt like you were trapped there and wanted out?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t really think that anymore, not since—”

“Were you about to say ‘since you showed up’?”

I blushed, smiling, and looked down. “Maybe so.”

In one quick, smooth motion, he spun to face me. Damon grabbed my legs and pulled me close, draping them over his. We were so close that I felt his heat in my deepest places. That got me blushing all over again.

He grabbed my head in his hands, rough palms scratching gently at my smooth skin.

“Are you going to kiss me,” I asked, craning my neck. “Or are you gonna wait until your friend comes back so you have an excuse—”

Hot, full lips interrupted me, and the heat I felt between my legs surged all the way up my neck. I was sure a red flush followed. Our mouths opened for one another, each inviting the other in deeper and deeper until our tongues swirled together.

Sucking a breath, inhaling the scent of his hair, for one blissed moment, I was completely lost inside Damon.

The door slammed, and bare feet patted down the sidewalk. Damon pulled back, sucking my bottom lip gently as we parted, pierced me with those eyes of his, and melted me with another little half-smile.