Jessica Andersen - Magic Unchained

“Are you okay?” His face instantly falling into concerned lines, he reached for her.

She edged back, out of reach. “Yes. No. I need to get out of here.”

“You… Oh, right.” His disappointment was evident, but so was his understanding. He of all people would get what it meant to feel trapped and unable to deal, needing to run free.

Without another word, he nodded, palmed his knife, and called his magic with a few murmured words.

She didn’t feel anything this time, but there was a low rumbling sound and the stone slab began to move. Relief slashed through her, followed by a sharp twist of grief. She didn’t let herself dwell on either, though, as the doorway cracked open.

From outside, Mac gave a joyous bark. A burst of radio static erupted from Sven’s armband, followed by Dez’s voice, a low growl of, “Tell me that’s you, Sven, and that you’ve got Cara and you’re both okay.”

“It’s us,” she called. “We’re fine. I’m coming out.” Without waiting for Sven, she surged through the widening crack and back out into open air and into a whole new reality, with no idea of how she was going to deal with the changes… or what tomorrow was going to look like.

Skywatch

“Hang back here for a minute,” Sven said in an undertone, waving Cara into the shadows of the cacao grove beyond the winikin’s hall, where the celebration was still going strong even though it was nearly two in the morning. “I’ll check things out and give you the all-clear.”

In the starlight he could just see her spine stiffen and her head come up, but he couldn’t see her expression, and vice versa. Which was probably for the best.

After the briefest hesitation, she nodded. “Roger.”

The two syllables were about all she’d said directly to him since they left the cave and reunited with Mac and a dozen very worried teammates. And for the thousandth time since then, Sven wished he’d kept his damn mouth shut.

In the middle of the cave, the magic, and the aftermath of the kind of sex that was guaranteed to make a guy say too much, too soon—telling her had seemed like the right thing to do. Hell, it’d seemed like the only thing he could do, because deep down inside, he’d known that if he didn’t tell her then, he might not ever do it.

That probably would’ve been better, though. It’d been bad enough when he had been the only one running from his feelings. He was an old pro at it, after all. For him to add that onto her plate now… Shit, bad timing.

So much for the whole “no regrets” thing. He didn’t regret the sex—that would be like saying, “No, thanks,” to breathing, especially when it had been just the one time, no harm, no foul—but he badly regretted bringing the other stuff into it. Because what was he offering her, really? He was the same guy he’d always been, and that guy wasn’t good for anything more than a short-term fling. Dozens of women could attest to that, and Cara knew him better than all of them put together.

Go? Stay? The thought-glyphs appeared in his mind at the same time a warm, furry body pressed against his leg, almost hard enough to knock him off balance, in the canine version of, Get your shit together and let’s do this.

“Stay,” he told Mac. “Protect.” Actually, he would’ve liked to have the coyote with him for the recon, but he had a feeling it’d take some doing to peel his familiar away from Cara. He wasn’t sure how much Mac understood about what had happened, but the coyote had been practically glued to her since they got out of the cave, bristling when anyone so much as got too close to her.

Then again, so was Sven.

He had managed to hold his frustration in check through their debriefing on the winikin’s treason, the coyote cave, his and Cara’s shared vision, and the nahwal’s message. He hadn’t let on to the others that anything sexual had happened between them, hadn’t even let himself look too long at her, trying to figure out what she was thinking. Instead, he’d done his damnedest to focus on helping come up with a plan to deal with the traitors.

In the end, it had circled back around to the two of them anyway: Cara needed to be in on their arrest for the obvious reasons; Dez had wanted only one mage involved, so the winikin wouldn’t feel like they’d been ganged up on; and Sven had volunteered with enough of a back-off glare to keep the others from chiming in.

Yeah, they could both probably use some distance, but he’d be damned if he took it at her expense this time. Besides, he wanted to get his hands on Zane.

Moving quietly, he crossed the packed-dirt open space between the grove and the training hall, then eased up the stairs for the second time that night, which brought a flash of disbelief at how much had changed in… what, six hours? Less? Christ, that was a mind-fuck.

The porch was deserted, the noise level muted compared to what it had been before, and when Sven eased to a window and took a look inside, he was unsurprised to find that there were only twenty or so winikin left. Those twenty were the hard cores, though: hard-core drinkers, hard-core rebels. And they were sitting at a central table, riveted to whatever Zane was saying.

The bastard’s body language was animated, but his eyes were cool and hard, like part of him was standing back and watching his own performance, weighing it. Was he trashing Cara’s leadership style and making a full-on argument for his own, or was he manipulating things more subtly, pointing out flaws in a seemingly positive way and trusting the others to reach the conclusion he wanted? Or, hell, maybe he was singing her praises, planning to play the bereaved suitor and friend when her body was discovered, and only then letting the others convince him to take command.

Lora was there too, sitting on the other side of the table, looking as rapt as the rest of them. Cara said she’d acted like she’d been brainwashed, as if Zane had found a way to give her the certainty and security she craved, albeit his own twisted version of them. As far as Sven was concerned, though, a weak character was no excuse for attempted murder.

Fuckers. Anger burned his veins at seeing them there, acting like it was nothing to have left Cara tied up in a flooding cave. If he hadn’t gone looking for her, or Mac hadn’t been able to track her… Shit. Forget Dez’s plan to question them; he should just fireball their asses where they sat.

Instead, he waved for Cara and Mac to break cover, and did his damnedest to harness some of the rage that snarled and snapped inside him. Because the plan wasn’t just to bring the traitors to justice; it was to keep Nightkeeper-winikin relations intact while doing it.

When Cara got up close beside him at the door, he said in an undertone, “They’re all at a central table. I’ll go in first; you stay behind me in case he panics and starts shooting.”

In the yellow illumination coming from the porch light, there was no mistaking the stubborn I’m in charge here set to her jaw. “That’ll make it look like I’m hiding. Nope, I’m going in first. You’ll just have to move fast if he threatens me.” She pinned him with a look, then lifted the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun she held across her body. “And remember, I’ve got this and you’ve got cuffs. Only use magic as a last resort.”

“Yeah, I got that part.” He didn’t like it, but he got it. A few days ago, the idea of a Nightkeeper blasting away at a bunch of winikin would’ve seemed ludicrous. Now it was far too easy to imagine, along with the political shitstorm it would create. “I’ll do my best.” He wasn’t promising any more than that. But he also wasn’t going to argue with her about going first, because she had a point. He needed to look like backup, not heavy artillery. So he eased open the door, which led to an entryway that would let them stay concealed for the first ten or fifteen feet. “After you.” His voice softened. “And, Cara?”