Page 68 of Renegade Queen

They both at least looked like they were taking me seriously, and for a moment, Dean’s eyes got that far-away look in them like he was talking with his wolf.

“How are you both feeling about the changes you’re going through?” I asked cautiously.

I knew they’d done this to get Damon back, and I doubted they would ever regret that. But I couldn’t help but wonder how they were feeling, suddenly not being entirely in charge of their bodies anymore.

It would be a lot to cope with, especially considering they hadn’t even known about shifters before all this craziness had started.

“It… it feels like I’m finally how I was always supposed to be,” Maddox slowly explained.

Now that wasn’t what I’d been expecting.

“What do you mean?” I asked with interest, taking a hasty gulp of the cold water we’d at least been able to refill our bottles with at the river. I could tell from the look on his face that he needed a moment to try and arrange his thoughts.

I was shoving everything back into my pack when Maddox finally figured out how to explain how he felt.

“There isn’t a part of me that I don’t recognise anymore. A darkness you blame for your most terrible thoughts. Instead, there’s an animal in its place. And the ruthlessness, the need for blood, it all makes sense now. It wasn’t wrong; it was just a part of me that didn’t fit until now. Until the final piece finally slotted into place.”

My eyebrows raised in surprise, not because of the confession that the man in front of me hid a darker side, but because of the sense of rightness he was describing. Were they always supposed to be joined with Nymeria, or did every human feel as incomplete as Maddox described?

Dean grunted in agreement, picking up his pack as well as my own. Placing one on his back and strapping the other to his front, he looked down at me with that stern, challenging look like he was begging me to fight him for it.

“You seem to have picked up something of mine,” I told him, the playful smirk coming to my lips as memories of his body pressed against mine back at the inn filled my mind.

When we finally gave in to each other, it would be a night we’d never forget. In the meantime, it would be so much fun playing with him.

“You need to set the pace and show us where we’re going. It makes more sense for me to carry it.” He shrugged like him saying it made sense, meant it actually did.

But I was far too tired to fight him on this. So I did something that I knew surprised him, perhaps as much as it did me.

“Thanks,” I muttered, standing and brushing the grass from my trousers. “It’s not much further. Can you both press on for a few more hours?”

I already knew the answer. I think I was saying it out loud because I wasn’t sure if I had enough left in me. Magic might be energising, but when you stopped and let your body rest for a moment, you started to feel the fatigue. The certainty that I could run for hours was slowly starting to ebb as the pain in my legs replaced it.

But we couldn’t stop now. Our only choice was to endure.

“We’ve got your back,” Maddox told me, not answering the question I’d actually asked.

It was the answer I needed to hear, though.

Looking around, I set off at a light pace. It wouldn’t be long before we were at the base of the mountain, and it would at least give us some illusion of privacy. From there, it wouldn’t take long to find the crevice that housed the entrance to the passageway.

And then we could rest.

It wouldn’t be enough, but it would have to do. We needed to get in and out as quickly and quietly as possible to meet back up with the others.

We couldn’t make it back to the portal in one day. We’d have to stop along the way. Having another army bearing down on us while we tried to escape wouldn’t make that possible. So we needed to approach this with more finesse than I’d displayed up until now.

I wasn’t even sure I had it in me.

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t try. I could see the desperate need in the guys to get to Damon. It was why I’d agreed to help them in the first place. I’d seen it in all of their eyes back at the bar, and it hadn’t faded since we’d set out on this mad journey.

If we failed, I didn’t know how they’d survive. One thing I did know for sure was that the men I’d gotten to know over the past few days would disappear, and in their places would be the feral animals I’d infected them with.

Chapter 30

Maddox

Something about making it here without coming across a single problem made it all seem suspiciously too easy. But as Alyssa slipped into barely more than a crack in the mountain face, I could understand why she was so confident that no one knew about this route. No one would think to see where this crack led, let alone try and squeeze through.