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It’s actually kind of impressive. This makes it so that we can all move as one, as if we’re sharing a brain. And it makes us incredibly effective fighters. When we do a few practice skirmishes against other groups of fae that I’m not communicating with, we win every time. We’re just so much more effective this way.
All I do for the next day and a half is sleep, eat, and train. Nahini is strict about making sure I get enough rest and enough calories to keep me going. “You’re no good to us overworked,” she tells me when I ask her why she’s not pushing me even harder. “Do I look like an idiot? I’ve trained plenty of warriors. You need energy and rest, or your body will give out and your brain will be sluggish. Now let’s try again.”
The vampires arrive at the end of the next day. It’s a relief to see them. Not that I doubted the word of Willow, but it’s nice to have that physical confirmation that they’re with us on this.
The vampires are happy to help with training me once they learn of the situation. They play at being our enemies while I command all of the fae, or at least most of the fae, in skirmishes against them.
It’s the first time I’m going up against vampires where they’re really not intending to hurt us, and it’s a weird feeling. I have to work hard to smother down my instinctive panic, because if I’m panicked, then the rest of the fae will be panicked too. Whatever I feel, they feel. I’m going to have to be more in control of myself than ever.
We spend all day like this, until I feel like I’m going to collapse, and I can’t walk for anything. I feel not just tired in my body, but in my mind, like someone’s scraped all the energy out of my brain with a spoon.
“I think that’s good enough,” Nahini says. “You need to rest, and so does everyone else. We also need time to strategize and plan what we’ll do. We don’t want to wing this.”
Yeah, no, having a plan would be really nice. Even though I can control the fae and it works really well when I do, I’d like us to all know what the plan is ahead of time so I won’t have to improvise constantly.
I head back to the small building where my mates and I are staying. It’s just one room, which seems to be the norm here. I don’t think there’s a whole lot of multi-room houses, rather just clusters of small buildings each with one room inside.
When I get there, to my surprise, I hear quiet arguing.
My mates are arguing? That’s a rare thing. They all get along so well. Even when they disagree, they don’t fight about it. There’s just kind of an understanding between them.
I enter the hut to see that Cain and Raven are on one side and North is on the other. All three look firm, but North also looks angry, even a little betrayed.
“Guys?” I can feel their hurt and anger through our mate bond. “What’s going on?”
North and Cain glare at each other, so Raven clears his throat. “Cain and I suggested that North reach out to the shifter community to see if they can join us in the fight.”
“Which is a bullshit idea,” North snarls.
“No, you’re the one who’s being full of bullshit right now,” Cain snaps back.
“They’re not going to listen to me,” North says.
“You don’t know that,” Raven replies, before Cain can talk and probably make this all even worse. “The fae and the vampires are working together, and that’s something we never thought we’d see. Why not shifters, too?”
I don’t know if it’s so much shifters being, well, stubborn and prideful the way they can be, or if it’s the fact that North doesn’t think they’ll listen to him, specifically.
North has issues with his heritage. He’s half shifter, half fae, but he can’t use the abilities of either. He can’t phase through things or become invisible like fae, and he can’t use his Sight or his glamour. But he also can’t shift into his wolf form, even though he does have that superior strength and speed that shifters possess, even in human form.
It’s made North, understandably, a bit insecure. He’s not in touch with any shifters that I know of. I’m not sure what happened with his pack, but from what little he’s told me, I’ve gotten the impression that they didn’t really accept him since he couldn’t shift. He’s been on his own, until he met Cain and Raven and found them to be alone the way he was.
“North.” I walk up to him and take his hands. “I understand how you feel. I didn’t want to go to the vampires, but look at how that turned out. They were more receptive than we thought. Maybe the shifters will be the same way. And this isn’t about you or your one pack. This is about all of us. Roanac will come after them and won’t let them stand if he gets his power the way he wants.
“I know that it won’t be easy, but this is bigger than all of us, and I’m sure that they’ll see that. And you’re a good leader. I know you can convince them to listen to us.” I smile at him and squeeze his hands. “You got all of us to listen to you after all.”
North looks reluctant. “It’s been years since I’ve spoken to any of them.”
“We’ll go with you. The least we can do is try. We don’t know until we ask them, right?”
North shrugs and looks at the ground, like he’s a puppy that has to go to the vet. I don’t tell him it’s adorable because that wouldn’t help, but it really is adorable. “Fine.”
I take a deep breath.Good. We might get some more allies in this.
Which means we might actually win this thing after all.
CHAPTER16
Cain portals us to where North’s pack lives and roams, back in North America. Shifters definitely have their own territories, and they can be pretty picky about them.
