Page 12 of Renegade Kings

An icy feeling of dread grew inside me and I had no idea what it was coming from. I didn’t want to be back in this place. I didn’t want to see the abandoned places that had once been so full of life. But more than that. This wasn’t my life anymore. This was what I’d left behind and even though I was back in Nymeria once more, the Spring Court wasn’t something that I ever wanted to see again. It wasn’t my home. How could it be?

“I don’t like this,” Dean said, moving so close to my side that his arm brushed against mine as we walked. “We don’t know why they want you back here. Given who you are and what is wrong with this place, I can’t help but feel like we’re being marched to your execution.”

A low growl flowed from one of the others, and the guards looked at us with suspicion. As if only now realising that we were holding a conversation they couldn’t hear, they all moved closer and Dean glared at them in annoyance.

It was actually impressive that he hadn’t flown off the handle already. His wolf had to be pushing him to take down the threat.

But marching me to my execution seemed slightly dramatic, even for a newly made alpha.

He understood less about this world than I did, and I had no clue what was going on here. Nymeria WAS magic. To find a place in this realm without it shouldn’t have been possible. Yet, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Rhidian and Fizzle clearly thought I was the one who was going to fix it. But how was I supposed to fix a problem when I had no idea how it existed in the first place?

It was very unlike Fizzle to not be up-front with me about something like this. He never coddled me. He never hid the scary truth about my magic and all the risks that it posed. It was why I’d always considered him my closest friend. Not because of the time we spent together, but because we shared everything.

Except now we didn’t.

And I couldn’t even be angry with him about it. Because I hadn’t just left Nymeria, its people, and my place in this world behind.

I’d left him.

He’d been all alone and I couldn’t punish him for continuing to fight for the world I’d abandoned him in.

Chapter 6

Tank

Everything was going to shit. As soon as Alyssa and the others had separated from us on the way to the Winter Court, I’d known we were making the wrong decision. And now Dean was injured, we’d ended up in the one place Alyssa didn’t want to be, and we were surrounded by men I was almost certain weren’t here to be our friends.

The bear was shredding through my consciousness, fighting to be released. He wanted them removed from her presence and as far as he was concerned, there was only one way to do that—with teeth and claws.

Strangely, even though it was still taking conscious effort for me to do so, I had him under control.

Back home, it had been nearly impossible to have this level of control. He ruled. There were times when it felt more like his body than mine, that I was the secondary personality. The one who didn’t belong.

But here? It was so different here. Not that he felt different. I felt different. Almost like a part of me that had been missing had suddenly clicked into place. I just couldn’t figure out if it was coming from Alyssa and the bond we’d finally started to form between us, or if it was coming from Nymeria itself.

The bond was nothing like I’d ever heard described before. I kept feeling glimpses of her. Almost as if I had a direct line to everything that made Alyssa… well, Alyssa. And it wasn’t even complete yet.

The bear could feel it too. It wrapped around him just as tightly as it did me, and it gave him something else to fight for.

My gaze cut to the men clustering closer around us. Something about what Dean had said felt true. They were watching us too closely. There was no way they’d have let us just walk away. I could see the gleam in their eyes as soon as they’d set their sights on Alyssa. She was the reason they were here.

Which raised a question. How did they know we were here in the first place?

Fizzle had been at the portal as soon as we’d come through. And none of us had thought to ask him why. Why in all of Nymeria did he just happen to be at the portal site as we came through? He said he’d stayed in the forest after Alyssa had left, not being able to face returning to the rest of the world. But we already knew that wasn’t entirely true. He’d spoken with Rhidian. He knew what The Endless were and the things that they’d been doing to the people. He was connected with people that he couldn’t possibly have been if he’d stayed in that forest, waiting for Nymeria to take him.

But why lie?

It wasn’t as if Alyssa would have judged him for having a life. She would have been happy to know that he’d found his place in a world she’d had no choice but to leave behind.

Something more was going on here. That was obvious from how we’d been disarmed and were being escorted to the one place she didn’t want to go.

But the magic? How could it be gone?

I knew nothing about this place and it unnerved me more than I’d thought it would. Coming to Nymeria was always going to be a risk. I’d heard the stories about this place and I’d have had to be an idiot to think we wouldn’t face some kind of fight when we got here.

But magic? That was completely outside my wheelhouse. I’d rarely even seen Alyssa use her own. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she’d shown me the cathedral back at the garage and explained what she used it for, I’d have assumed she’d lost all magic when she came to the human realm. She wouldn’t be the first fae it would have happened to.

I looked around at the others and how they stayed close to her side. It was a wonder she wasn’t getting pissed off with the way we were all trying to shield her. That she wasn’t spoke volumes. Alyssa was worried, which meant she had no idea what was happening now, either.