AllFreeNovel
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A lot of things seemed impossible to me when I was sitting in my dark cell though. Now, I’m free. I’ve made best friends, found pack members, and met my mate. So maybe “impossible” things are really just things we haven’t quite figured out on the map of our lives. I can practically picture the map, a happy life somewhere ahead in the trees, but the path to get there is concealed, due to it not yet being traveled.
“But I figure it’s just a failure of imagination,” she says, drawing me from my thoughts.
“And made more difficult to see by our unfinished mission,” I conclude.
She considers, then nods again. “Yeah. A dark cloud won’t lift until Simon’s accounted for.”
My mate sounds so sad, so tired, that it breaks my heart. I would give anything to give her the ease she feels in sleep while awake. Even if I’m not always a man who is intune to the delicacies of emotions, I know I’m right about what weighs her down in waking hours.
I certainly don’t know a lot about making someone happy, but I’ll try. I’ll try, no matter how clumsily I do so. For Asha. For my mate.
Within me, my wolf’s awareness of his mate echoes through me. He moves inside me. Restless. Wanting to shift again and run. Wanting to be with his mate while free in the woods.
Not yet, I whisper to him in my mind. But soon.
“But let’s pretend,” I tell Asha, the idea forming in my mind, “for the moment that we’re on the other side of it all. Join the power of our two imaginations together.”
She gives me a look. “Pretend? Since when do you have such a colorful imagination?”
I grin. “Since I have something worth imagining.”
Her pale brown eyes soften. “Okay. Let’s pretend.”
You can do this. “We’re in a world after Blood Mages.”
She chuckles, a spark of amusement in her gaze. “You sound like a movie trailer. In a world…”
I smirk. “Even the cinema couldn’t capture our story.”
“No kiddin’.”
I refocus, wanting to give her this moment. “We’ve settled on your pack lands?—”
“Our pack lands, Orson.”
The feeling in my heart comes again. That’s right. I’m in this fantasy of hers. Part of her life and part of her pack. And nothing could be better than that.
“Right, our pack lands, alongside the survivors of the Blood Mage’s terror. Is the Blood Pack safe finally?” I prod, hoping this will have the effect I so desperately want.
“Of course,” she answers, as if it’s a foregone conclusion.
But she’s overlooking an insidious threat. “After suffering the protracted experiments of their captors, it’s safe to say they’ve all been seeded with dark magic. We saw as much. What they used to attack the enemy, that wasn’t the bright light you’ve used.”
Fuck. That was the wrong thing to say. I’m really not good at this.
Her face darkens somewhat, suspecting the direction I’m headed. “No, they used dark magic. That doesn’t mean they’re like the others.”
I attempt to approach the point tactfully, since there’s no going back now, and I’ve stumbled down an idiot’s tunnel. An idiot’s tunnel filled with things I was worried about in the very back of my mind, but never planned to share aloud. “Given the same dark magic consumed that unfortunate soul who took the face of your brother, do you suppose there’s a chance?—”
“It could happen again?” Her eyes fall into the darkness beneath the glovebox. She stretches her legs into it and grips her thighs with nervous hands. “I suppose there is a chance.” Her eyes brighten as they rise to meet mine. “But they also never escaped, which has a silver lining, because it means they never had the chance to use their dark magic until we freed them. In the dungeon, they were chained up, physically and magically. Meaning, even if they did hear the call of the darkness, they couldn’t have really answered it. Ergo, their souls remain untethered to the toxic side of magic.”
She’s got some hope. Good. Hope is what we need.
“And now that they’re free to use their magic as they see fit, will they be strong enough to resist the pull of the darkness?” I ask, not leading, but genuinely inquiring. I want to know what she thinks. I trust her. As the only person I know who’s experienced the seduction of dark magic and rebuffed its advances, her opinion is the most well-informed.
Her opinion will also help to shape our future, and separate fantasy from real life. If her people will eventually become dangerous, we need to reform our plan not to include them, as painful as that might be for Asha. Still, it’d be better to flesh out this dream in a logical way now, so we all know what to be prepared for, and we have time to form a different picture.
I read in her expression the understanding that my curiosity is well-intentioned. Asha knows I wouldn’t doubt her, not after everything we’ve gone through together. “I hope—no, I believe they will overcome its attraction. In the same way that I have you and Max and Braxton, they have each other, and us. Dark magic relies on isolation. Once we rebuild, none of us will be isolated again.”
