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“What would you have us do?” Alpha Bryson’s question was blunt, but Holly didn’t take offense, even as she saw Kallan stiffen. He was only asking so the shifters would hear her answer.
“We need you to report any suspicious activity in your territories to Pride Leader Sadara and Alpha Bryson. Bethany and Cody will be leading the team responsible for tracking the escaped prisoners down to bring them to justice.” Exchanged looks and murmurs broke out in the crowd as they grew restless at her words. She knew some of these shifters likely had family members who were among the escaped prisoners. She tried to see who was most upset or angry about the news, but it was hard to tell.
“And what about Roland and Vanya?” someone yelled from the crowd. “When do those traitors face justice?”
The shouted question stirred up the crowd even more, and Holly stiffened slightly as growls whispered through the group up to her. She had to be diplomatic about the answer or risk the crowd getting more agitated. “A decision has not yet been made. The focus right now is on the escaped prisoners.”
“Why not?”
“How long are they going to get away without paying for what they did?”
“They need to pay!”
The crowd erupted, and Sadara and Bryson took a step forward, growls rumbling from their throats, but it did nothing to quiet the stirred-up shifters. Two bodies slid by Holly as Kallan and Kieran took up a protective position in front of her. A gentle hand tugged on Holly’s wrist, and Synora moved her a few steps back, covering half of Holly’s body with hers.
The shifters at the front of the crowd looked at her mates with disgust and distrust in equal measure, their ingrained hatred of the Elves and Fae clear. Holly knew if she didn’t act soon, this would escalate to a point they wouldn’t be able to recover from. She would have to use her Empath magic to de-escalate the situation, and quickly.
This time, instead of just pulling a trickle of magic out, she lowered the walls to the section she kept that part of her magic in and let it surge into her bones. When her brow broke out in sweat at the effort of keeping it back, she released the surge, directing it into the crowd of people. She let it weave in and out until she had extended it to the forest line behind the group. Then, in the next breath, she pulled it back into her, dragging the excess anger and violence out of the shifters as she drew her magic back.
She grunted as the first wave hit her, her stomach rolling violently. She forced it down and kept pulling. The next wave almost threatened to take out her knees, but she stiffened and locked her muscles. Almost there.
There were a few people toward the front who were angrier than the rest. Their violence had a bitter aftertaste as it hit Holly’s body in a final wave. It was only sheer will and years of practice that kept Holly upright. She wouldn’t show weakness. Not here. Not now. This last wave kept coming and coming, but she kept pulling. She needed to de-escalate. This couldn’t descend into conflict. She couldn’t fail her first outing as an Ambassador, fail Claire.
It wasn’t enough, though. Through blurry vision, she saw one of the shifters whose violence had spiked the strongest shift and lunge at her mates. Sadara and Bryson shifted in the blink of an eye, showcasing their alpha strength, and leaped at him, intercepting the shifter before he could get to them. She heard shouts of “Get them!” and braced herself, but no other shifters lunged their way. Her Empath magic rose to counter the stirred-up crowd, and her vision blurred. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her eyesight, and saw some other shifters being restrained. They were the others that violence had radiated off. Her stomach rolled again, and Holly knew she was going to lose its contents soon.
“This way,” Bethany murmured in her ear. Holly could barely see anyway, so she squeezed her eyes tight as Bethany led her away, focusing on keeping her stomach contents inside her even as bile coated her throat. Bethany was probably the only one in the clearing to guess what was happening to Holly right now. She didn’t talk about her Empath magic often. If she talked about it, people wanted her to use it, and the physical cost to her body was too high. She had spent years suppressing it, telling everyone it was faint magic, not capable of anything big. That meant she had never learned to use it, too afraid to draw attention to it or let it grow stronger and out of her control. She had no idea if there was any way to temper the physical side effects of it.
Her earth magic rose as Bethany led her into the woods. “Here,” she said, before releasing Holly and stepping away, knowing she wanted her privacy.
Holly fell to her knees, barely able to open a small hole in the ground with her earth magic before she vomited up her dinner. She heaved for what felt like eternity before nothing but bile came up.
She used the back of her hand to carefully wipe her watery eyes, clearing her vision. Before the vomit in the hole could turn her stomach more, she waved a shaky hand over the hole, closing it up and clearing the smell out of the air. She let her hands fall into her lap, tears watering her eyes for a different reason. All that pain, and she had still failed in her first outing as Ambassador. The gathering had gotten out of hand. Shifters had tried to attack her mates, and she couldn’t stop them.
She gave herself a few more shaky breaths to have her pity party, then straightened her spine. She wiped the corner of her mouth with her hand, making sure there was no trace of her sickness on her face, then stood, using the tree trunk for support.
She turned and almost lost her balance when she saw Synora standing a few paces from her. She opened her mouth and then shut it as Synora stepped closer. “Here.” Synora’s tone was almost impossible to read. “Chew this. It’ll help.” She held a leaf in her hand that Holly recognized as the perturbus plant. She had a few leaves in her own bag, back at Bethany’s house.
She didn’t say anything as she took the leaf and placed it in her mouth. She chewed softly, and after a few swallows, her stomach settled. She spit the leaf out into her hand and dropped it to the grass. “Thank you. I must have eaten something at dinner that didn’t agree with me.” The familiar lie slipped off her tongue before she even thought about it. She didn’t mean to lie to Synora, but she was so used to hiding it she didn’t even think about her response.
“Mmm,” Synora hummed. She opened her mouth to say more, but Kallan and Kieran appeared through the trees.
Kallan took one look at Holly and barked, “What’s going on?”
CHAPTER7
Holly opened her mouth to try to find an explanation, but Kallan interrupted her again.
“You’re an Empath, aren’t you?” Kallan accused.
Holly took a breath. There was really no use hiding it like she usually did from new people. Especially not from her mates. She shrugged and gave Synora an apologetic look. “So I’ve been told.”
“Why does emotional manipulation cause you pain?” Kieran demanded. “It shouldn’t.”
“It just does,” Holly said. “I try not to use it often, except in extraordinary circumstances,” she admitted.
Kallan and Kieran exchanged a long look, and if Holly wasn’t still feeling so shaky and felt more of a badass like Bethany, she would have stomped her foot and demanded to know what the look meant.
“We need to go to the Fae lands,” Kallan said abruptly, breaking eye contact with Kieran and looking at her.
