His eyes swung around to survey the group, Shaun looking concerned, but Ethan? There was something quietly horrified there, and I needed to know why.
“Well, I guess we better make sure we pack some lube and restraints,” Axel replied. We all just looked at him, confused. “When I surrender, I need at least those things, maybe something else.” He moved over to the bedside tables, pawing through the brand-new sex toys that seemed de rigueur in guest rooms in this place, and pulled out a sizeable dildo, hefting it in his hand. “Gotta make sure no one’s left feeling empty.”
“You’re bigger than that,” I said.
“I never said it was for you.” His smile was lazy, remarkably unfazed as he tossed it into his bag, along with some other stuff he dug out of the drawers. “I don’t like feeling empty when I come either.”
Which of course led us to turn and stare at Ethan, who seemed to take an involuntary step backwards.
“Dildo it is,” Axel said with a shrug and then zipped up his bag, shouldering it.
“So no one’s going to talk about going through the gate, to this…shrine?” Ethan asked. “They want us out of the picture, away from Sanctuary.”
“And why wouldn’t they? We’re a threat,” Shaun said, moving closer and wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “If we can be safe at the shrine, I’m happy to go.” His hand slid up my neck, digging his fingers into my hair, sending a shiver down my spine. “We want Bec. She wants us. We’ve been barely able to keep our fucking hands off each other since we came together, and that just plays right into the hands of whoever this Branwen is.”
He shook his head slowly.
“I remember…the bullshit with Jules and Sylvan. We want to be somewhere safe, somewhere we can’t hurt anyone else.”
“Where we play right into her hands.” Ethan bit the words off, then turned, picking up the bag next to him and shouldering it, and walked out the door.
“It’ll be all right. Everything will be fine,” Shade insisted, and I caught the strange light in his eyes, right before he followed Ethan out.
“Everything will be fine,” Shaun agreed, grabbing a bag of clothes that had been left for me and his stuff. “I won’t let it be otherwise.”
Ophelia met us at the door as we walked out, escorting us to one of two big Humvees, guys in fatigues standing by the side of the car.
“I feel like we are abandoning you right as you’ve come to Sanctuary,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders. “This is not what I would have wanted for any of our citizens.”
“But you have to protect the rest of them,” I replied. “I understand.”
She smiled slightly, but it was a sad thing.
“Trust in your strength—the strength you’ve shown in living outside of Sanctuary for so long, thinking you were the only one of your kind. You have everything you need, right here.”
She placed a hand over my heart, but when she did so, she looked across at the men clustered at my back, the feel of her palm making something shift and twitch inside me, but a growl from my Tirian stopped that. Finally, Ophelia nodded, then pulled away, leaving us to get into the cars.
I was wedged between Shade and Shaun when we went through what was apparently an interdimensional portal. Locked up behind a high fence, there was land surrounding the whole pathway towards it, wolves running along the side of the cars as we drove up to a massive menhir, the gap between it glowing electric blue.
“Hold on, this can get a little hairy,” one of the guys in the front seat said.
That was all the warning we got as it felt like we punched through the portal, reality and existence all disappearing for a second in a mad scramble of bright blue light, no body, no car, no land, no horizon, no nothing.
Except for her.
She pushed through the light, a white wolf the size of a several story building, looking down at whatever we had become with glowing green eyes.
Trust, my daughter, she told me, mind to mind, and you will emerge triumphant.
Chapter 29
My first look at an alien world was curiously anticlimactic. The cars rumbled out onto a wide green plain, grass spreading out as far as the eye could see, a forest of trees on the horizon. A large mine site broke the flat expanse, trucks moving in and out, a sprawling camp set up around it.
“That’s the gold mine that keeps Sanctuary kicking along,” Shaun said. “Gold is nowhere near as rare in this world as it is in ours. We have to be careful, since selling too much of it devalues the price in our world, but we’ve gotten pretty adept at keeping a healthy balance.”
“Cool.”
I couldn’t say too much, my hands curling into fists, my spine feeling like it’d become a steel rod. Shade moved, his hand edging closer before he wrapped his around mine, dwarfing it with his massive one. My eyes slid sideways, and I saw him looking at me through that long black hair, his amber eyes blinking slowly, but the moment was broken when Shaun slung his arm around my shoulders, ruffling his fingers through my hair.