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Kirsten looked skeptical, and I added, “On my honor, it will be awful while I do it, but she will have no lasting damage.”
Marco shook his head and looked to Mordecai. “I wish I could hitch a ride with the two of you. I’ve seen the show before, and I don’t want to see it done to someone I love.” But he couldn’t leave the realm without temporarily handing the territory over to me, and that could get complicated.
I’d been certain Kirsten wasn’t going to agree to leave, but Marco caught her off guard. “You would be okay leaving, so you aren’t here to be sure she’s okay?”
“Etta knows how important Cora is to me. She won’t bring harm to her.”
Chapter 13
Etta
Kirsten and Mordecai telepathed, and then they pulled the Amakhosi in. A few moments later, she pulled Cora in. Three minutes later, she stood and met my gaze. “I will take the two of you to Alfheim, where Cora can’t pull on the wolves. I’ll return here for ten minutes, and then come back to retrieve the two of you.”
“Fifteen minutes,” I said. “She’ll need a few minutes to recover once I’ve returned her energy. If it were anyone else, I’d ask for a half hour, but she’s strong.”
“I wouldn’t trust anyone but you to take my Etta to another realm, where I can’t get to her,” Marco told Kirsten.
“The magic is stronger on Alfheim,” Mordecai told me. “Kirsten can provide someone from her dungeons for you to work on first.”
I shook my head. “A former master hired me out. I’ve done work in other realms, including Alfheim.”
He nodded and kissed Kirsten’s cheek. “Take them and return to me, Kitten.”
I sensed telepathy between Cora and Ranger, her beta, which made sense. He’d take on the role of Alpha while she was gone. A few seconds after the telepathy stopped, Kirsten stood and offered her hand to Cora, who stood and took it. They walked to me, holding hands. I stood as they neared.
“This makes some people sick to their stomach,” Kirsten told me.
“Good to know. I’m ready.”
The landscape around us changed — we were still surrounded by a forest, but different kinds of trees, and the energy was completely different. Kirsten pointed to a cottage. “You’re free to do it out here or inside. The kitchen is stocked, and there’s a blanket on the sofa. Make yourselves at home. The outer perimeter is guarded at all times, but the security staff won’t come near, nor will they allow anyone who’s a threat to enter the area.”
She disappeared, and I faced Cora.
“I don’t want to do this.”
“I know,” she said.
I met her gaze, recognized her fears, and I respected her even more. Her greatest fear was failing her wolves. I probed into the fear and discovered there had been a learning curve, at first, and she hadn’t distributed the energy well when faced with a challenging situation in her early days. She’d never forgive herself for it, but she’d learned from it and hadn’t made the same mistake again. She stayed as strong as she could, and led from a position of power. She was the scariest bitch wolf she could be because that was the best way to keep her people safe.
I absolutely did not want to feed that fear, but her other fears weren’t big enough to do the job I needed.
And so, I fed it. She’d left Ranger in charge while she was gone, and I fed into the fact that he might make the same mistakes she did, back in the beginning, and that the weakest of her wolves might not be alive when she returned. I fed into the fact all her allies were in one place, and if a bomb went off when she was away... she fed me the answer. Her third was out of the territory, and her fourth was Mac, sitting with Ranger. Her fifth would be in charge until her third returned, and this terrified Cora. I hit her adrenal glands and then her pituitary gland. Adrenaline and adrenocorticotropin flooded her system, and now she had the biological agents for fear running through her veins, urging her towards fight or flight, but I’d frozen her in place, like the nightmare that doesn’t let you scream.
And I fed, sucking her fear into me like a metaphysical vacuum cleaner.
Cora went to her knees, her eyes wide open with her mouth in a silent scream while her pulse tried to escape her body. Drinking her down physically would’ve been the ultimate power trip, but that wasn’t in the cards on this day. Instead, I sucked energy from her and put it into a special place in my own energy field, so I could return it without running it through my power.
She landed on her ass and fell to her back, her heart racing in her chest. She rolled to her side and curled into a ball. I felt her wolf more now, and I fed the wolf some images of a grizzly bear eating her alive, sinking its paws into her belly, ripping the fur back so it found the sweet meat below, and biting at the muscles wrapping down from her back. The wolf fought to get out, and I left her alone while I focused on Cora’s human fears again. I saw her as a young teen, afraid of losing control around a younger male cousin, fighting not to change because he’d destroyed something important to her, afraid she’d hurt him badly. The human girl wanted to hurt him, but knew she had to do it as a human and not a wolf.
I fed into that, the loss of control that made her hurt people she loved. Loss of control due to her temper. She rolled to her other side, fighting her wolf even though she was too weak to change.
And finally, she passed out.
I stepped to her, went to my knees, rolled her onto her back, took her boots off, then her socks, and wrapped my hands around her feet.
Alfheim’s magic made it easier to freeze her and return her energy at the same time. I ate the fear inside of her while I returned the raw power I’d taken from her. I can’t manage this on earth, but it was almost easy, here.
She woke all at once, but I didn’t let her sit up yet. “You’re okay. Relax and let me give your power back to you.”
