“I had a bad feeling when you were talking to Ignatius before.”
“AboutIgnatius?” Grayson had seemed surprised. The older man was a close friend and mentor—a lighthouse helping Grayson steer the runaway ship that is his magic.
“No, just—”
Finn had shown Grayson something on his phone, and his soulmate’s eyebrows had dropped.
“Gray, you’re feeling good, though?”
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I’m tired and a bit freaked out. The Plain was sparking like crazy, but I suppose that could just be my bond with Nix.”
Gideon weighed that for a moment and shared a look with Jamie before nodding.
“If you feel fine, then for now, we don’t talk about Skye’s…crap. Our visitors will be here soon. We can hang on until then.”
And it had been surprisingly easy to move through life without talking about magic, outside Grayson’s obligations to the Guild.
The two weeks had also meant Jay and Leo navigating a lot of bureaucratic hullabaloo. Nix had alternated between feeling immense fatigue—not always his own—frustration, and increasingly recurring feelings of impending doom.
Not limited to Skye now, the warnings would come off and on in the afternoons and evenings when the pack was gathered for dinner, or when they were together talking about their days. It was getting so bad, Nix is sure he’s set everyone’s bonds jangling, what with his instincts all over the place. He tried to dial his bonds back, but the pack had staged an intervention where they’d insisted that only made it worse.
So Nix got used to keeping his bonds full-throttle and tried to ignore how everyone startled, growled, and in Rowan’s case, shifted.
When their allies’ plane is thirty minutes out, Nix pulls the now-wide-awake Rosie out of her car seat. He needs to burn off a bit of that antsy energy, so he walks along the chain-link fence, picking a few wild daisies and weaving them into a tiny crown while Jamie works on his laptop from the front seat.
In no time, the private aircraft touches down, and it takes another fifteen minutes for Ignatius, Elysia, and Nimue to exit onto the tarmac.
“Thank you for coming on short notice,” Jamie says, offering his hand to Nimue.
“Alpha Rhodes, thank you for inviting us to your children’s Moon Dedication ceremony. We are honored,” Nimue says. She looks tired and glad to be on solid ground, even after the short flight from Florida.
Ignatius is grinning ear to ear and shaking Jamie’s hand over and over in his enthusiasm. “Yes, yes. Such a privilege to attend such a beautiful event. My research—”
“Ignatius, perhaps we could talk about it another time?” Elysia murmurs—and it’s then that Nix feels her eyes on him. It’s more intense than the first time he’d met her in Florida.
“Oh, yes. Of course, of course. Alpha Rhodes, this is my partner, Elysia Noctis. Elysia, this is Alpha James Rhodes.”
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Noctis. Please call me Jay. You remember my mate, Nix? And this is our daughter, Rose.”
It’s Nix’s signal to approach the threesome standing amidst their three large bags in the late afternoon sunshine.
“Oh my, so lovely,” Nimue murmurs. “Hello again, Nix. And Miss Rosie.”
She keeps her hands to herself, which is surprisingly rare amongst humans when they’re presented with a beautiful baby. He’d been fully prepared to grit his teeth through polite requests to hold her, coo over her, or breathe all over her soft little face.
“Nice to see you again. Thank you for coming all this way. We’ll take you to your hotel, and then you can rest. Will you join us for dinner tonight?”
“Yes, yes. Gideon will have made something delicious, certainly. I read an article about him online just last week…” Ignatius says, voice fading as he follows Jamie toward the car, his suitcase in hand.
Nix and Rosie are left standing beside the strange and beautiful Ms. Noctis. Intense, her steady gaze is like a physical touch in much the same way as the first time they’d encountered one another at the Guild. He has the strangest sense that she isn’t seeing him at all—or at least, not on the outside.
He knows of her Affinity—he had seen it in action for only a few moments, but this is more. A muscle in her jaw twitches, sosmall and oddly human, but then her eyes flare as the scent of patchouli drifts from her skin.
“Is there something wrong?” Nix asks.
She doesn’t answer right away, and the silence stretches beyond what anyone else would call awkward.
Now, Nix has gotten used to letting others think. He’s learned not to interrupt silences—lets people create their own space and reveal all in the process. Working at Sentinel taught him that. He’s even learned to find calm in those moments and even make his own observations.
