The Walls of Jericho

Fallout

When you accidentally knock something off the edge of your desk or a table, or inadvertently drop something to the floor, or maybe you observe someone else as something like this happens, there’s a split second between the initiation and the inevitable conclusion of that event when we’re all prophets. Simultaneously, we see the start and the finish with perfect clarity.

Maybe it’s the mess of spilled coffee and broken glass when your mug gets nudged off the table.

Or the disordered flutter of your papers to the ground when you knock them off your desk.

Some might argue that this isn’t true divination, but simply recognition of the inescapable outcome based on experience. And that might be true in some circumstances.

Like mine, for instance.

Whatever the case, it’s literally a split second. Which is incredible if you think about it.

That’s how quickly the sensory impulses zip along your nerves into your brain. That’s how fast that organic mega-computer in your head processes that external stimuli. That’s how rapidly you comprehend the initiating cause and the unavoidable effect.

You don’t get an ‘oh s**t’ ‘moment’, because there’s no moment.

Most of us feel comfortable defining relative speed by comparison to something measurable. We think in kilometers or miles per hour. Meters or feet per second. Liters or gallons per minute.

But some things, for all intents and purposes, are instantaneous. Even still, in that split second, we see the inexorable result of our actions before they actually occur.

Like Channing surging across the four feet of space between the two sofas at the otherwise tranquil little cottage in Northern Ireland where we’re alone together. So fast that there’s only the instant I process his snarl of rage and the next instant when he’s upon me.

“Why are you protecting him?” With his huge paw completely encircling my throat, he lifts me off the ground and menaces, “Do you want me to force it out of you?”

I grip his forearm with both my hands, trying to support my dangling body, trying to relieve the strain on my neck. I can barely draw breath, so there’s no speaking the answer to his question. You can’t force something from a dead person, and in our circumstance, it won’t be much good if you do. We’re mated, Channing. If I go, you go, and so does the dragon’s identity.>

There’s a long painful interval where he glares at me, his enraged snarl an inch from my face. This is where his lesson in humility comes in. My mate was arrogant enough to think that I couldn’t resist him. That his power over me as Alpha was absolute, as it is for the rest of the Avernus pack. He thought he was going to use me as a tool, a weapon against his perceived enemy. He thought I’d submit.

And that’s the very definition of arrogance. It’s the naked face of lacking humility. In my mate’s case, his arrogance can’t be extinguished until he throws off the yolk of his illusions. Until he sees himself as others around him do, just like his mother tried to teach him. His hot breath singes into my lungs with each shallow inhalation I gulp through my trapped throat.

Disillusionment is a real b***h.

It’s emotionally painful, and naturally we avoid pain. We all tend to overestimate our own capabilities about nearly everything. Depending on our attachment to our subjective self-image of competency, to our ego, we can go a long time bearing the pain of our humiliating failures without committing ourselves to personal growth. Channing’s hand on my throat opens and I drop like a lead balloon to the soft sofa beneath me.

“What is he to you, Jericho?” he demands, looming over me. His barely controlled resentment hangs on his scowling brow like a massive storm cloud on the horizon. “He kept you prisoner. Used you. For pity’s sake, he killed you! Why would you shelter him?”  

“Because you’re using me too, Channing. You’re holding me prisoner, just in a different kind of cage,” I cough out, slowly catching my breath and gaining momentum. “Neither of you is telling the whole truth and until I get it, I’m sheltering both of you from each other.”

His eyes go wide as he suddenly understands what had eluded him. In the same way I could potentially hand-deliver the dragon to Avernus, I could also potentially deliver Avernus to the dragon. He backs a step away, looking at me like I’m a timebomb.

“I understand,” I assure him. “I really do. Letting go of long-held beliefs can be grueling, agonizing, even impossible at times. You’re on the receiving end of a particularly bad beatdown, and the wolves have been for a while. I know it seems wrong. Try to understand. Even the Dali Lama isn’t more deserving of his life by comparison to Charles Manson simply for living it in an arbitrarily defined ‘good’ manner.” Slowly so not to antagonize him further, I gather my limbs under me and sit up so I can face him.

“Now you’re comparing wolves to Manson!? Jesus, Jericho! The guy was a paranoid delusional and a psychopath! What’s gotten into your head?”

“No, I’m not,” I state flatly. “I’m reserving judgment on both wolves and dragons.”

Channing slumps to a sit on the sofa opposite me, his stare almost glassy with shock.

“How many dragons were there when they were banished underground?”

“How should I know? It was thousands of years ago, Jericho.”

“Just give me a guess,” I encourage.

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head and frowns, looking at the backgammon board still laying in the floor space between us. “The histories say there were originally twenty-seven dragon clans when Veles and Ejder went to war. Each one was maybe ten to fifteen dragons, mostly offspring of a primary pair.”

“And at the end when the Wolf King captured them?”

“Every clan had been decimated. Some had been completely destroyed,” he replies defeatedly. “But so had many wolf and human populations. Even entire civilizations.”

“How many were left?”

“Six. Most of them were no more than three to four individuals. This is ancient history, Jericho.”

“I’m cutting you some slack here, have the decency to do the same,” I bite back. “Breaking down that façade you’re keeping up is taking a lot of wasted energy. How many were left when you tracked Cadmus to Belfast?”

“Two.”

“Cadmus and his brother.”

“Yes, but the brother had already taken a mate.”

“A mate you hunted down and killed.” I was throwing that out there to test the information, and Channing’s reaction confirms its truth.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Where do you think I learned it? You’re not the only one capable of recording the wrongs done you.” I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Want to tell me anything else about that? Or do you want me to tell you what I know?”

“Her name was Allya. She was the Luna’s sister. Ferdi’s aunt.” He gives up the words begrudgingly. “They took her when she was alone. Without any of the pack. Defenseless.”

His eyes flick to my hands, dangling in front of my knees. But I don’t need his cue to know what’s happening. As he’s telling me the story, Amber is peeling back the veil of time, helping me to see it clearly. Through the mage, Jillian’s eyes—through my eyes.

This was no abduction. No coercion. They approached her alone so there wouldn’t be a fight, so she could choose freely. Drake presented his offer to Allya, sealing it with a familiar treasure—the rosewood jewelry box filled with a king’s ransom of finely wrought jewelry and loose gems. She’d accepted him willingly as a mate.

“That’s when your father became Alpha? Or was Ferdi’s uncle still in power?”

Channing inhales deeply and sighs heavily. Then his pain-filled eyes close and his head hangs. “Ferdi’s uncle. He sent us—my father and me—after her. I told you already, he sent his enemies to the frontlines.”

“A pair of assassins to kill a wolf. To kill one of your own.”

He gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “To die.”

“Only you didn’t.”

“We got lucky. Nobody understood why, but he’d left her alone.” He opens his eyes and meets mine. “But he knew we were there. He was coming. We knew we wouldn’t get a second chance.”

“And?”

“You know I couldn’t do it,” he says bitterly. “My dad made the kill. I brought back the chest full of the dragon’s treasure. Afterwards, my dad told me I was weak. He paired me with Ferdi—to spar and train, to eat, to sleep, everything. He told me Ferdi’s obedience to his uncle was how a wolf was meant to obey his Alpha.”

“Why did you disobey the Alpha’s command?” I already know the answer, but I need it from his own lips.

“She was an innocent. As was her unborn child. She was delivering food, water and medicine to a devastated village of people. I could never have hurt her.” He laces his hands on his lap. “I’m not an automaton. I’m not a mindless killer.”

Against my finger, SOFie’s twinkly tingling is almost blindingly bright, and I sigh in relief. “I’m glad.”

“What is he to you, Jericho?”

“He’s part of the balance,” I tell him.

“Seems like a lot more than that.”

I can’t figure out if this is some kind of possessiveness or if there’s something else going on in his head. I peer at him through narrowed eyes, then finally reply, “Does it matter? You’re my mate.”

“And it sounds like whatever you’re hearing from him is making you question that decision.”

“I already said I know you’re both skewing the evidence against each other. Do you think I’m going any easier on him than I am on you?”

“Sitting in the hot seat I’m in, it’s a little hard to believe that I’m not. Might make me feel less persecuted if I had the opportunity to confront my accuser.”

I snort. “Nice try, beefcake.”

“You can’t keep hanging out in the middle, Jericho. You can’t be my mate and his protector. You put us all in danger. He’s not the only one who’s the last of his kind. So are you. If whatever plan you’ve got hatching in your head goes south and Avernus turns against us, one dragon, one mage and one wolf won’t be able to stand against all of them. No matter how strong or fierce any of us are. There won’t be any place to hide.”

“’One dragon, one mage and one wolf’?” I quote.

There’s something a little sad in Channing’s gorgeous blue eyes. “You know now we can reject each other. Separate and live.”

Tugging his phone out of his pocket, he opens the screen lock, then selects and icon. When he turns the phone to face me, he’s loaded one of the ridiculous selfies he took of the two of us together today. “You’re my mate, babydoll. I don’t want anybody else. If you’re going to insist on standing with the dragon, then I’ll stand with you until we fall. But I’d rather if we did something else.”

He shrugs and looks around. “That’s the whole point of being here. To check out our options. There were other packs once. Smaller ones. Like the dragon clans. Avernus became a stronghold. There was safety in numbers. But we don’t have to stay in a pack to stay with each other.”

“You know, sometimes, you’re pretty clever for a beefcake.”

He flashes me one of his megawatt smiles. A real one, one that touches his eyes and makes me melty inside. One that makes me confident we’ll get through this together, however it falls out.

“Another round of backgammon?” I offer.

Channing glances down at the board. “No. I already won. I want my victory spoils.”

Come and get me, big boy.>

My hormones do a jig of joy when Channing eases himself off the sofa and onto his knees because there actually is such a thing as male beauty, and my mate is living proof of it. He pushes the backgammon board aside and leaning forward onto his paws, crawls across the space to me. The instant the warm sand-salt-sea smell of him stirs in the air between us, I’m a goner. His deep blue eyes spit with erratic sparks of white-blue whorls, celebrating their conquest. You’re mine.>

I’m still leaned over, with my elbows on my knees, so we’re eye to eye when he finally crosses that gaping chasm of four feet between us. I think he means to kiss me. I hope he does. A gentle, loving kiss that slowly heats up to something more. My core slicks just imagining it.

Instead, he reaches one hand up behind my neck, gathering all my hair to one side. I close my eyes, when his fine lips brush against mine, his warm breath lingering as he moves towards my ear. I give a slight shiver as he mouths my neck, sucking gently and nibbling with his teeth.

Then his teeth close in the hollow behind my collarbone. Not hard enough to mark, just enough to make me draw a sharp breath as the hot sparks flare along my nerves and into my brain.

Mine> he reminds me, the bite morphing into the gentlest of kisses. Reminding me that I’m his. Reminding me that I’m wanted. Reminding me that I’m loved.

His hand curls around the nape of my neck again, this time to pull me towards him, to press his lips against mine. I can’t help my soft sigh, don’t bother to disguise the eagerness of my mouth against his. Channing’s tongue teases along the seam of my lips, enticing me to open to him. As soon as I do, his tongue glides inside, tangling erotically with mine.