“Rhydian? Yes, son,” Finn’s dad replied. “He’s… There’s no other way to say it, son. He’s not doing so well. I’ve told them and told them—this is too much. We could keep pushing out sons forever if they just took better care of us, but I can’t get them to let him see a medic. The prick ran off by all accounts.”
“How…how bad is it?”
“He’s running on empty. We all are, but Rhydian’s run down. That’s why the cells aren’t that full. They wring everything they can get out of us, and then we go into decline. Max’s trying his best. That fucker Lian has made him his pet. He asks for us, for medical help, but they just laugh. They want us as studs, need us to keep giving them sons, but they won’t even give us basic care.”
I watched Grey, because that’d be who he was, the last of Grace’s mates. His hands balled into fists, th
e tendons and bones pushing out through the surface of his thin skin, the muscles shaking with the effort. Rhydian lay in a messy heap of long stringy hair and ragged clothing. I reached for and took Finn’s hand, fishing the crystal out with the other, and it gleamed with a gentle green glow in the low light. The Volken seemed to be able to use the crystals as a means to channel the Great Wolf’s power. I thought of those green tendrils in the darkness… Perhaps we could do the same?
Both men’s eyes turned to it, with quite different reactions. Finn nodded, a desperate need burning inside him. He held my hand tight, the power of the bond throbbing through us like an electrical current. But Grey’s reaction was something else altogether. He scrabbled back, obviously seeing it as yet another means to coerce him.
“No, Grey,” I said, “this will…”
He shifted over to hunch protectively over Rhydian’s prone form, the other man groaning in response.
“Dad, it's not that kind of crystal,” Finn said. “Look at the colour, Dad. This comes from the White Wolf.”
We weren’t getting through to him. His lips pulled back to reveal broken fangs, a growl building in his chest. I closed my eyes, the sudden all-encompassing blackness uncomfortable in ways it hadn’t been before, especially when I felt a low rumble below us. Death, I thought, regrowth.
I was never good at meditation or visualisation. My mind went in a million different directions as the instructor spoke in even, sleep-inducing tones. The crystal piano and dolphin soundtrack playing in the yoga studio I’d gone to made me wonder why dolphins were seen to be so spiritual. Like, there was no cow mooing or cats mating in meditation music. But the never-ending blackness motivated me. God knows how I was going to sleep tonight, but right now, I wanted that darkness gone.
Green tendrils in the dark, green shoots, green plants, green…
I tried to talk myself through it, tried to imagine the same explosion of plant life I’d seen in my dreams. Why? I wasn’t sure, but I figured—as we seemed to be led around by the nose by the Great Wolves—I may as well use what abilities they’d gifted us for good. Green spots appeared in the seamless black, then disappeared, smothered by the gloom. I sighed.
Like this? my Tirian said, and my internal landscape erupted. Green, formless, and growing rapidly, the spots spun and spiralled in my mind’s eye, chasing the black away and eating up each speck of darkness like some kind of verdant vacuum cleaner.
“Jules… Jules!”
My eyes snapped open to see both Rhydian and Grey were sitting up, blinking as they inspected each other, wide eyed.
“Rhy?” Grey said, reaching out to touch the other man and then jerking his hand away. Rhydian looked a million times better. He was still too thin, particularly for a man from Sanctuary, but his cheeks were no longer as sunken and there was a little more padding on his ribs and torso.
“Grey…” The other man’s voice was no more than a whisper, easing out of his chest as he wrapped his arms around his mate. They clawed at each other, fighting to get closer as if needing that skin to skin contact.
“Get the keys.”
Finn’s voice was the sound of hell’s doors creaking open. His fingers dug into the corroding bars, sending flakes of rust to the ground. His eyes glowed phosphorescent green as he watched his fathers embrace.
“Get the keys, now!”
I planted my feet, imagining them rooted there, no more able to move than blocks of stone. The command smashed into me, shoving me over and over to do his will. But I couldn’t. I knew if it was my parents in there, I’d be using whatever damn mystical bullshit I had in my arsenal to raze this place to the ground.
Which would only further feed Lonan.
We had to be smart about this. I glanced down the rows of cells and saw the guys ferrying the food around while conducting hushed conversations. Aaron was scoping out the breadth of the building, creating a mental map in his head and conferring with his team, while Sylvan’s eyes were on the captain’s office door. We had to stick to the plan, which is what I told Finn.
He just stared at me for a second, as if unable to believe I hadn’t moved, hadn’t rushed to do his bidding. He kept a lid on using his alpha powers, using them as sparingly as possible, but I think a small part of him held on to the fact that he could force things if he wanted to. I’m not sure how he felt about the fact he couldn’t do that with me.
“Finn?” Rhydian finally seemed to see that his son stood there, peeling his body from Grey’s and approaching the bars. “Son?”
“Yeah, Dad,” Finn replied, his voice breaking. The tears shone, then fell openly, and I touched his hand to feel why. I gulped air in as it all hit.
I’d buried both my parents—Mum dying of cancer, Dad of a heart attack some time later—so I lived in that weird space orphans did. You love someone who you’re never going to see again, the very bond you have with them ripping you open and wounding you at odd times.
I often wondered if my lack of concern about having kids came partly from that. That when I had a baby, I’d be where Mum was, taking the same steps she took, more or less, only to at some point leave my child like she had, just as unwillingly. It certainly affected my openness in a relationship.
It’d taken a while, but that had to be what held me back when the guys had been falling all over themselves to give me their dicks and their hearts. Love is pain. It’s both the most intense joining you can have with another being, and as a result, the most painful. You place so much of your self-worth, your identity, your wants and needs, your being into the other person, who then places that in you. And then comes the magic—what they give you becomes more important, transcending the almighty ego and need to survive, and becoming something so much bigger. So, I felt Finn’s burning need as if my own, partially through the lens that I’d give body parts to dark gods for another chance to hold my parents, while realising I needed to deny Finn just that. Tears slid down my own cheeks as all he felt pulsed inside me, and I just held that, treasuring that for a moment before I pushed back with what I knew.