I’m stunned silent. Briar is the opposite of a damsel in distress, and it’s one of the things I love most about her. I wish we’d had this conversation in private so I wasn’t put in my place with Pax watching, but it’s too late for that. Even Ellison, my oldest friend, is fighting a smile.
“Okay.” I put my hands on my hips. “All in favor of Briar, Pax, and me confronting Theron and the exiles while the rest of you cover us?”
“Wait.” Briar gives me a puzzled look. “You? You don’t even have your aromium on.”
I shrug a shoulder. “Guess my badass woman better protect me, then. I’m sure as fuck not hiding in the woods and leaving you alone with Greasy McGee.”
Amira bursts out laughing. Pax gives me the finger with one hand and raises his other arm into the air, stone-faced.
Briar doesn’t look away from me as she raises her hand and I follow with my own, her lips quirking with a smile. She wants to fuck just as much as I do right now—I can tell by her pebbled nipples.
“It’s unanimous,” Nova says. “Everyone else prep while Marcus, Briar, and Pax game-planpeacefully.”
There’s movement around us, but Briar and I are still focused entirely on each other. She grabs a fistful of my T-shirt and pulls. She can’t actually move me, but I indulge her by closing the distance between us.
I put my arm around her waist and lean down, putting my forehead against hers.
“Still love me?” I whisper against her lips.
“For now.” She kisses me softly. “Don’t make me change my mind.”
“Get a private, shit-covered, snake-infested cave, you two,” Amira quips.
I stand up straight, the gravity of what we’re about to do settling over me. My urge to grab the backpack and get the switch is strong, but Briar would be furious.
I’d be confident going into this fight with my aromium on. I’d have Flavius rip Pax’s throat out if he turns on us.
It’s just going to be me, though. Regular old, partially connected to wolves and the earth me.
I believe in Briar completely. I’d feel a lot better if it were just me and her doing this, but that’s not an option. We have to rely on Pax fucking Thatcher.
I never thought I’d see this day.
40
“There’s a brothel the former mistresses of the leaders are sent to. I can get hired to pick up and deliver the laundry there. I get it now. These are the relationships you were talking about.” - Decoded message from ILF undercover operative Nightingale to ILF handler Hiro Tanaka
Briar
“Keep your eyes closed when you call out through the connection,” Pax says. “Then open them and focus on your target. They can see through you.”
He’s standing outside the cave with me and Marcus, walking me through fully connecting again. It’s hard for me to summon fury like I did before, because we aren’t in immediate danger and now I know Marcus is okay.
“Practice,” Pax says.
I give him a puzzled look. “On who?”
“It doesn’t have to be a person. Have the vines squeeze a tree or a rock, just to practice targeting.”
“I won’t practice on any living thing that doesn’t deserve it.”
He knits his brows together. “Trees and rocks have feelings now?”
“Yes. They aren’t like our feelings, but yes.”
“It’s hard to practice when your feelings aren’t there,” Marcus says. “Raw, strong emotions like fear and stress get sent through the connection. I don’t think faking it will work.”
Pax shakes his head. “It’s not faking. She has to learn to control it. Otherwise she’ll turn into you—destroying everything around her just because she’s in a bad mood.”
