Chapter 40
Henry
Henry couldn’t have said precisely how things unfolded once it was clear the sorcerer had somehow disappeared into nothingness. Deirdre, dangling a foot off the ground as Evershaw carried her around and refused to put her down, tried to assess the situation but eventually gave up. Henry focused on his own mate and making sure she was taken care of, then on his sister’s health. Nola had been rattled by whatever the sorcerer did and remained in her wolf form, snarling and snapping when anyone but Fran or Henry approached.
Fran took over managing his sister, leading Nola on foot back to Deirdre’s house. Henry hoped the short walk would clear Nola’s head and give her the chance to see through the magical haze. He meant to wait for a car to drive Ophelia back to the house as well, but gave up and carried her. He didn’t want her near that empty lot a second longer, in the off chance that the sorcerer returned.
Besides, it looked like Smith arrived, along with the bears and more of the wolf shifters, and Henry didn’t want any of them seeing Ophelia. Not until she was ready. The Russian bear wolf-whistled and called something about Henry’s “white wolf ass” but Henry waved him off and kept striding down the street. He needed to get Ophelia somewhere safe and warm, and the best place was his den.
He could wrap her up in blankets and put her to bed, then he could deal with Nola and Silas.
Henry clenched his jaw until pain ignited in his head. Silas. The poor bastard was in bad shape. Somehow the sorcerer forced him into a shift but then left him stuck halfway, so Silas was neither man nor beast. It was a stomach-churning mix and completely unnatural. He didn’t want to think about it, but he damn well wasn’t going to leave his friend in that condition.
Even Evershaw had been stunned at what Smith and his friends showed them. Smith managed to contain Silas with some weird fae force field, but warned it wouldn’t last long and wasn’t sustainable except for very short periods of time. The pack had to come up with another solution to managing a very pissed off wolfman, and fast.
Ophelia’s head rested on his shoulder, her voice whisper-soft in his ear. “Rocko said he left Silas…changed. Is he going to be all right?”
“We don’t know,” Henry said after a pause. He didn’t want to give her false hope; there wasn’t any reason to pretend everything would turn out perfectly just because they wanted it to. “We’ve never seen anything like it before.”
She shivered, then started to move around. “You should put me down. I can walk the rest of the way, and you can figure out what happened with Silas, and then—”
“I’m not carrying you because I don’t think you can walk,” he said, and meant every word. “I’m carrying you because I can’t stand the thought of you being out of my reach for another second. It might take a while before I put you down or let you sit somewhere that isn’t my lap. Fair warning.”
A smile crept over her face and her fingers traced over his chest, tugging on the mat of hair on his pecs. “Oh really. So we’re going to be skin-to-skin for the near future?”
He groaned and almost stumbled to a halt. It took all his concentration to keep walking and focus his attention on where they were going, instead of where all the blood in his body rushed. “You bet your sweet ass.”
“We have a lot of work to do and things are going to be busy,” she said. She still watched him from her eyelashes though, and it seemed like some of her confidence returned. A spark turned the air heated between them. “Deirdre and I can figure out what Rocko did to Silas, and we can fix him.”
“You and Deirdre?” He grinned, squeezing her tighter. “I like that you didn’t just assume she would do it alone.”
“Well, I know how Rocko thinks.” Ophelia shuddered and made a face. “I don’t like that we don’t know what happened to him, or where he went. He wouldn’t just die that quietly. It’s not like him.”
A sense of relief rolled through him when they finally stepped onto Deirdre’s property; he couldn’t have said why—magic, probably—but the moment he set foot on that block, everything felt calmer and more controlled. Henry eased onto the porch and elbowed open the front door, just in time to let Cricket escape with a disgruntled mrowr. Apparently they’d taken too long to defeat the evil sorcerer and get back to let him out or throw him more tuna to appease the master of the house.
“Ungrateful feline,” he muttered, then headed for the stairs.
“You can’t be serious about going to sleep,” Ophelia said, laughing. She didn’t start struggling as he climbed the stairs and turned toward his room, though she heaved a dramatic sigh. “There’s too much work to do.”
“There’s a lot of work to do,” Henry said, since he agreed with her. “But you need to rest. Whatever you did to that guy—it looked like it took a lot of effort. A lot of magic and whatnot. So stay here and rest and recharge.”
“Magic and whatnot,” she said, musing, as he dropped her on the bed and stood over her. Ophelia raised her eyebrows, some of that saucy attitude coming back. “I like that. Deirdre and I can name our coven that.”
He snorted and squeezed her foot before turning to his closet to retrieve real clothes. He couldn’t look at her in his bed for very long without getting entirely distracted, and she was right that there was still work to be done. He was about to suggest that Ophelia go back downstairs with him to distract Mercy or Fran, but when he turned back, still pulling on a T-shirt, he found her completely asleep.
Henry shook his head but thanked the universe she was safe and unharmed, and headed downstairs to see about taking care of the rest of the pack.
He checked on Ophelia every hour or so, but she stayed fast asleep. The only thing that changed was the volume of her snoring. And it wasn’t just her—apparently Deirdre passed out right in the middle of haranguing Evershaw about his deal with Smith. She was snapping fire and fury one moment, started yawning, and then slumped against her mate’s chest like someone turned off a light switch. Henry would have paid good money to see that, particularly the part where she handed Evershaw’s ass back to him, but he focused on getting Nola right first while Todd, Mercy, and Dodge focused on Silas.
They still struggled with the half-mad wolf by the time Henry and Evershaw approached the storm cellar where they’d dragged Silas after Smith finally maneuvered the wolfman onto Deirdre’s property. The fae hesitated at the boundary before edging through whatever magical barrier he sensed. Mercy, sweating and red-faced, stepped aside as Dodge took a turn trying to reason with the half-wolf, half-man monster who prowled the confines of where they’d trapped him.
Mercy looked on the verge of tears. “What if we can’t help him? No one can figure out whether he’s still there in his head.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Henry said. He caught her shoulder and pulled her against his side in a half-hug. “Once the witches are back to full-strength, they can take a crack at fixing all of this. We just need to keep him calm and prevent him from hurting anybody—or himself.”
Evershaw grunted, his gaze dark as he watched Silas stalk and pace on oddly contorted human legs. “This is fucked up. I want to know what happened with that fucking sorcerer, and I want his head on a goddamn pike outside my den.”
“We’ll get him,” Todd said, tone grim. He folded his arms over his chest. Dodge tried to tempt Silas with whiskey and cigarettes, two of his favorite things, but the half-wolf kept moving, his eerie gold gaze sweeping over everyone as he searched for threats. Todd shook his head and turned away, glancing up the stairs to the lawn outside. “Do we keep Silas down here or take him to the pack house?”
