The Second Covenant

“So how can it be worse?” Dax said into the quiet and I took a long swallow of the water. “We don’t know what the big nasty thing I kicked out of the club is. I’ve had it come to me in my dreams, it pushed a projection of blood onto the glass of soda I had that the club. I felt it’s satisfaction and your pain.” I said to Dax and he frowned. “We assumed you scented the blood.”
“Only from the glass. I knew it would shift it’s attention from you to me if I powered up.”

Declan frowned at me hard. “You drew it to you so we could get Dax?” I nodded and sipped more water. “I was still thinking you were just unnaturally hot humans.” Donovan pointed his finger at me imperiously. “We’re hot, and fairly unnatural, but we’re not human. You’re our Lupa, you are not allowed to take risks for us anymore.” I lifted a brow at him. “What kind of Lupa would I be if I asked you to risk something I’m not willing to risk myself?”

Druex licked my hand and ruffed. He liked that answer. “Fine, be willing, but don’t do it anymore.” Dom snapped. “What’s a Lupa?” Tristan asked and Dax looked at me questioningly. “They’re my family.” I said and he inclined his head to me and then looked at Tristan. “Lupa is the dominant female of a pack. We,” He made motion with his hand at the men on his side of the couch. “Are a pack.” My Aunt Paige cleared her throat. “Well, you all seem like dominant males, wolf packs aren’t structured that way.”

I smiled to myself at her observation. Dax also smiled, lightly. “No, not usually. But we’re special. Like any pack of wolves, we do the dominance challenges. The one strong enough to work his way through the ranks of the many dominants is called Ulfric. King of the wolves basically. There are other qualifications that make a king though like…” Druex backed up from me and the light swirled around him again. “That.” He said shaking his hair back from his face, once again, bare-chested. But still wearing his leather pants. He touched my cheek gently. “Are you hurt?”

I shook my head and turned my face into his hand, breathing deeply of his scent. “We could spend hours telling you about our customs, but that’s not really important right now. Cherish is being hunted by something, not our kind, but yours. She is Lupa to my pack so whatever you need from us to kill the bad guy, we’ll do it.” I felt a collective sigh go up from the mothers, and the tension drop a few notches. “What does that mean, Lupa to your pack?” Peyton wasn’t demanding anymore, but he was still radiating anger.

I opened my mouth to answer but Druex’s thumb stroked over my lips. A gentle, but very clear shush. I looked up at him, but he was looking at Peyton, his presence filling the room and I sighed. Great. They were doing a dominance thing. Men. I rolled my eyes and looked at my mother, at aunt Kate. She was relaxed still, but looking at her son with a narrow look of displeasure. “She holds the form of my beast. But she can’t shift, she fights to hard. But like you saw, she can choose to give it to someone. She definitely chose not to give it to Declan. Because he is not Ulfric. He is not King to her Queen.”

I saw Riley’s lips twitch. “Your majesty.” He said with a flourish and I threw a pillow at him. “Not time for a joke.” I said firmly, but was trying not to smile back. I looked at Declan more closely and saw the scratch marks on his throat, the tears in the leather of his jacket and I fought tears instead of a smile. “Don’t get upset Cherish.” He said with a grin. “Druex warned me, touch you and die. I shouldn’t have. It’s okay.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He inhaled slowly and nodded. “I know. We know. You’ll react more out of instinct right now because the wolf is so new to you. It gets easier after a while to separate and control your beast. She didn’t want me, and that’s the way it should be, I’m not your mate.”

Druex’s hand was sifting through my hair, rubbing the curls between his fingers. “Mate?” Peyton growled. “She’s eighteen for god sake!” I threw a pillow at him too and it exploded in a cloud of feathers a foot away from him. Oh dear, he really was pissed. “Damn Druex, you’re almost robbing the cradle.” Dax said dryly. “Why is everyone so hung up on how old I am? Your parents got married at nineteen and had you nine months later Peyton. Ya wanna shut up?”

Tristan coughed to hide his laughter and waved his hand to reform the pillow and float it back to my lap. “Thank you.” I said to him primly and my mother swallowed a giggle. “Can we get back to the problem at hand here? You don‘t know what it is that wants our Lupa.” Daire said firmly, with more command than I’d yet to get from him. “Well we know it’s male.” My father said in a tired voice, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. “It cant physically send anything past our ward here, and now at the club so think of both places as safe houses. He tried to breach the ward, with bats. Lots of bats.” He gave me a dark look. “Cherish blew them up.” Riley whooped. “I did too, it was so cool. They just kind of whooshed and…”

We all looked at him, grimly shooting holes in his excitement. “What? I like blowing things up okay?” He said defensively and I rolled my eyes. “You’re worse than your father.” His mother told him and Riley grinned. “I know.” Reid threw his arm around his son’s shoulders with a gruff look of pride. “Ten times worse. Bats are disgusting. But did they burn to ash or sort of just burn and disappear?”

I frowned and tried to remember. “Disappeared. I didn’t even smell charred flesh.” Druex said above me. “Then they weren’t real bats.” Reid said and looked at my dad. “You can send bats with Creation. The spell is wicked complicated, but very doable.” Now everyone frowned. “But Creation is one of our spells.” Tyler said and Reid shrugged. “Yeah, but who created the Creation spell?”

Huh. Good damn question. “Well then that would mean it’s someone of our line, or another line with the same power. European coven?” Pogue suggested and my dad started pacing. “Maybe. Chase?” Reid said and everyone of the elder witches growled. “Didn’t sound like him and he liked to brag.”
“Offspring?” Tyler. It was impressive to watch them working out a problem together, they all thought so alike. “He’d be same age as the kids.” Reid said and raked his hand through his hair. “Hey um…you want to clue us in here?” Declan said with a wave and got completely ignored. “Yeah but that would mean he’d have had a born son when we met him. And even then the kid wouldn’t have been old enough to carry a grudge. He’d be alone and scared like Chase, not knowing what his power was, but there wouldn’t have been a way for him to find out about us.” Pogue insisted and my dad spread his hands wide. “Chase found us.”

My mother cleared her throat. “Honey, we’ll figure that out later. Right now we need to decide where Cherish is the safest. With the Coven or with Druex and his wolves? Something wants her and I don’t care if it’s Chase, his kid, or some witch from another coven, it’s not going to get her.” Druex pulled me up off the couch and into his arms. “Damn right it’s not.” He growled. He was so growly. It was sexy.

Tristan somehow managed to be the voice of reason. “We shouldn’t be asking is she safer with us or with the wolves.” He pointed at Druex. “You said whatever it takes, what if whatever it takes means us all working together? She’s your Lupa, fine. But she’s ours too. We can’t keep her behind wards for the rest of her life.”

Dax snorted. “Why the hell not?” Tristan laughed shortly. “You try and keep her where she doesn’t want to be. Good luck.” I blew him a kiss. “I meant what I said. If I could, I’d bring my whole family down here to put in front of Cherish. Unfortunately that won’t happen.” Tristan waved his hand around. “Fine, so what do we do?”