Page 69 of Renegade Kings

My gaze moved across the surrounding landscape. This was a place where what had once been the impossible for us was everyday life. So maybe I just needed to believe it enough for it to actually happen.

Maybe I just needed to believe in the magic enough to actually use it.

I needed to stop thinking of it as this strange new thing that made no sense in the world I’d been born in and look at it from a Nymerian perspective. Doubt and second guessing wouldn’t get me anywhere. If I could accept the fact that magic was real, then I needed to apply that to the way it was used.

And that was so much easier said than done.

I was starting to think it was my brain that was the problem. I already knew I was broken. Maybe there was no hope for me at all.

“Are you always like this? You’re exhausting.” The wolf sighed. “Go find our pack.”

I resisted the urge to point out that he was more exhausting.

But this wasn’t getting anywhere. My brain was telling me I needed to calm down, like meditate or some such shit. As if that was ever going to happen.

“Shift,” the wolf demanded.

“What? How is that going to help?”

“You did it last time when we shifted. Shift. Run. Hunt. Lean into your instincts to calm your mind.”

Unfortunately for me, the wolf was making sense. It also led us to an entirely different problem, and a feeling of uselessness flowed over me.

The wolf said nothing, but I could feel the fucker smiling. He was going to make me say it. He really was just another side of me.

“Fine. How do I shift?” I asked with a sigh.

His wolfy laughter filled my mind, and then he talked me through it. It was easier than I expected, and a whole hell of a lot less painful than last time. It was also something else we needed to practise. I wanted to shift in a split second in case I needed him in a fight. The moments it took now to shift, whilst not that long in the grand scheme of things, were still long enough to get us killed.

Something else to add to the list.

With that thought, the wolf shook out his fur and took off into the trees at a speed I’d never run before. I sank into the background of his mind as he darted between the trunks, seeking a scent I didn’t recognise. His joy to just run flowed around me as I turned my mind back to that feeling of magic at my centre. Might as well be productive while I had the chance.

This would make us stronger. Finally, I had something I could use to protect the people who meant the most to me. I just needed to get them all home again first, wherever home turned out to be.

Chapter 25

Alyssa

“So, we’re not worried about Dean then?” I asked for what felt like the hundredth time.

Tank and I may have got distracted this morning for a few hours, but I hadn’t known my grumpy mate had wandered off on his own. It also meant I was feeling a little less chastised about doing it myself.

Although now that I was experiencing the worry of not knowing where he was for myself, the guilt of putting the guys through that was hitting me pretty hard, too.

This was one life lesson I was not enjoying experiencing.

“No. He does this all the time,” Maddox told me as he ducked under the blade of the practice sword Ryder swung at his head.

“It’s not exactly the same though,” I pointed out.

I could feel Fizzle glaring at me because I wasn’t concentrating on what I was supposed to be doing, which was training, of course. But I was going with a strict ignore-it-and-it-would-go-away attitude with the whole thing.

When a blast of air slammed into my back and floored me on the training sand, I realised my error.

“Rude,” I grumbled, dusting the sand off my front as I climbed to my feet.

“Rude is asking someone to help you train and then ignoring them,” Fizzle snapped. “You have regressed to the same uselessness you had as a three-year-old. Did you not practise at all in the human realm?”