Dusk Rising

TwentyOne.

Tristan

“F*ck, I need a drink,” I said as I threw myself down on the couch. “Booze for breakfast, sounds like a great plan. What kind of a role model are you trying to be for your sister,” Roane blurted.

But as I looked at him throw himself onto the other length of the couch, I knew that he was debating on having one with me.

This is the most disheveled I’ve seen him in some time, with his hair a mess, tie loosened to the point where it just hung on his neck, and the top three buttons of his shirt undone.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was a look in his eyes that seemed different and strange. If I had to describe it, it looked like there was a hunger that had never been there before and for some reason Kesh didn’t like it.

Dylan was sleeping in my room with Lecia and Nico was asleep on the floor near them. Yesterday had turned from a long day to an even longer night and by the time I had carried her up here, the other two had refused to leave.

Kesh had been anxious about letting her stay with us as we talked with Noel well into the evening, but I knew that if I would have made her leave that room things might have turned out badly.

She had fallen asleep on the table sometime in between one of Ezra’s crazy a** rants and I had Reg bring in a blanket for her until we had finished.

Carrying her in my arms had felt so surreal and I had to keep reminding myself that I had truly found her and she was here and safe with me.

No matter what I felt, Kesh kept grumbling because he had wanted to come forward and help me, but I refused.

Dylan was by no means a small or tiny girl. In fact, she had the body of most of the female sentinels that used to guard Black Sol, but holding her all curled up in my arms as we rode the elevator made her seem like a child.

I had taken to stay in the guest room, which didn’t bother me, but I honestly wanted to sleep as close to her as I could.

When Lecia and Nico had trudged into my room after me, I thought that they were just up to say good night or something, but then Lecia shucked off her shoes and crawled under the covers.

“Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing,” I demanded, but all she did was look at me, roll her eyes, and cuddle up to Dylan’s sleeping body.

But it was when I saw Nico’s half zombie self try to do the same thing on the other side of the bed that I thought he was trying to tempt fate.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing,” I asked as I practically flew at him and grabbed him by the collar of the shirt.

He didn’t put up a fight, just looked at me like I was stupid, “getting in bed, obviously.” I smacked him on the back of his head and then felt bad when he yelped, “Ow, what the hell dude!”

Well, I felt a little bad, but there was no f*cking way I was about to let this guy get in bed with my sister, I didn’t care how damn close they were.

Lecia grumbled something about letting him sleep on the bed, but when Dylan whimpered and rolled over into Lecia’s embrace, I had a feeling that she wanted their closeness.

Still, I had no intention of letting him be on the bed, so I gave in and grabbed him a pillow and blanket from the linen closet in the hall and threw them on the floor at the foot of the bed.

“Take it or leave it,” I told him as he looked at me while still rubbing the back of his head, but he only grumbled as he laid down on the pillow, covered himself with the blanket, and was snoring by the time I made it to the door.

Micah had laughed as he went to the kitchen and made himself a snack. I swear there is nothing that can keep him from eating and I wondered again if he was part wolf.

Now that we were all sitting in the living room, I finally had a moment to take a breath and try to let all the tension slowly ooze out of my muscles.

Kesh was still pissed about the fact that I had let Nico stay in the room, but to be honest, I knew that he posed no harm or threat to her, and I had seen the way he looked at her and it wasn’t like a boy in love.

Plus, she had a mate that she had been forced to leave back in Blood Mist. No, she may still have a mate. God I better watch the way I say that. If she hears me say it like that out loud she may get upset.

Sh*t, and that’s another thing. I hadn’t really believed what they had all said about Dylan and the damn weather, but there was no denying it at this point.

Everyone in the building is talking about the crazy a** storms we’ve been having lately, but the few that were in and outside the room with Reg and the rest of my personal team know.

It truly is Dylan who is causing the storms to appear, but I had absolutely no idea how she was doing it. I’ve never heard of a wolf being able to have that type of, well, magic I guess.

But I noticed that Blane and Ezra, and even Micah hadn’t seemed as shocked by the revelation as the rest of us had and I needed to look into that further, but there were more pressing matters.

Once Lecia had appeared and thankfully been able to calm Dylan down from causing too much damage to herself or anyone else, we sat down to get as much information from Noel as we could.

Apparently, Noel is one of Alpha Rogan’s private guards, and has been working for him since he took the position from his father.

But the thing that made him come here to seek out Dylan was not on his behalf, but on her mate and Vit. Eren Bluera was the only son of his best friend and Vit had been caught trying to help him and Dylan.

At first it seemed that Noel was being difficult and I had to restrain Kesh from bursting forward and attacking him, but it was Micah who figured out what was holding him back.

In the middle of every male in that room bombarding him with questions, Micah, who had seemed to be watching him closely, asked, “what is it, a geas or a charm?”

All eyes had immediately turned to him and he had taken over the center of attention, but it was Noel’s reaction that let me know what was going on.

The small licks of violet flames flicked on Micah’s fingertips and they were reflected in his eyes and I knew he was searching for it.

Noel had gone still as a statue and we all seemed to realize what was preventing him from being as forthcoming as he had seemed to wish to.

I watched as Micah’s fingers moved as if he was scouring Noel for whatever he knew was there, but right when he found it I reached out and put a hand on him.

“Can you just conceal it or prevent it from working? If you remove it and he goes back without it, they will know that it was broken.”

The cold flames seemed to glow brighter for another second before he looked at me and nodded. I watched as the purple turned a deep bluish black and then vanish from both his irises and his fingers.

But I heard the sudden rush of air come from Noel and he was leaning forward against the table and grabbing and rubbing at the black material that covered his chest.

“How? How did ya do it,” Noel asked loudly, and he sounded so out of breath that I wondered what he was feeling right then, but Micah explained quickly, “your geas is not broken, but altered.”

Ezra and Blane seemed to be extremely interested in hearing the explanation because they both demanded, at the same time in that annoying way that they sometimes did, “how!”

“I modified it by adding new lines to the geas with my magic. Originally, the bearer could not repeat certain things the Alpha had commanded, but he can not speak freely when he is outside the Blood Mist wards.”

Ezra and Blane seemed really interested in hearing more about the geas from Micah, but I had my eyes on Noel and Roane.

Noel seemed like he was learning how to breathe for the first time or as if he was finally able to take a deep breath for the first time in a long time.

But Roane had sat there and seemed to be puzzling over something in his head and I was curious as to what it could be that was distracting him from the excitement of the room.

Once Noel had been able to get a drink into him and calm the sudden shock to his body, his entire demeanor had changed and that is when the real story, or at least what he knew, came out.

Noel had come to Blood Mist twenty-one years ago with Brook Triver, the heir of the Shadow Stone wolves, because he had come to live with his mate Eleanna Bluera.

Brook had died only a few years after Eren had been born and he had stayed to help watch over Eleanna and Eren.

Along the way, he had proven his loyalty to Rogan by his actions and deeds for him and for his sister. According to him, Eleanna was the one and only thing that Rogan truly loved.

But as Eren got older and traits of Brook had begun to manifest, Rogan and his wolf had taken to trying to force their dominance on him in any way that they could.

When Noel was going over the details of his story, I watched as every word that pertained to Eren seemed to hurt my sister, as if she was being lashed or cut by a blade and I couldn’t stop myself from going to her.

When I had gone and sat on her other side, I noticed that every wolf in the room had seemed to move a bit closer to her as well. It felt like if she was the sun and they were the planets orbiting around her.

Even Noel, who had continuously kept glancing at her, had seemed to move his chair a bit closer to her. To my surprise though, Dylan seemed oblivious to it, but I noticed who else in the room wasn’t and Kesh did also.

So as Noel finished his story, I felt Dylan sink closer and closer into my side until she was practically sitting in my lap with Lecia glued to her other side.

The scent of her blood had mixed with the scent of her tears and still filled my nose and Kesh was demanding that we do everything we could to make sure that we never scented either again if we could help it.

But as Noel continued with his story, the scent of her tears practically seared my nostrils.

According to what he said, he was unaware of Dylan’s presence until she was a few years old and he had accompanied Rogan to the orphanage for a visit.

Rogan did not speak much about Dylan and her story to anyone, but he had heard the story around the barracks, but one thing he had recalled was the strict rules that Rogan had placed upon her caretakers and her.

When Dylan flinched at those words, Kesh had started to growl and snarl and I had reached around and wrapped my left arm around her shaking body.

He would pay for the sh*t that he put her through, Kesh raged, but it was his next words that pushed us over the edge, and I mean the entire room.

Noel explained that the fae that worked for Rogan had put not only concealment charms and enchantments on Dylan, but her wolf had a geas on her as well.

Everyone in the room except for Micah and Dylan had stood from their seats, but Noel just looked at her as he continued.

“That is why she was forbidden from making friends and shifting in front of others. I think her wolf may not even be able to tell her everything about herself either, but from what I last heard they were wearing off.”

I had immediately known that the fae that Noel had spoken of was Micah’s younger brother, but here was neither the time or place to talk to him about that. The look in his eyes let me know that he knew it too, but we would talk about it, and soon.

Noel had stated that he had warned Eren to conceal his mate bond with Dylan and he even shared that while he hadn’t been part of the plan to help them escape, he would do all he could for the boy.

But my biggest questions were not about the boy or even Vit. I wanted to know how he had figured out who she was so fast?

I had been seven years old when my family had been destroyed, but I knew enough then to know what my sister was supposed to mean not only to our pack, but to our entire race.

What bothered me was how he had known. While my mother had not had the ability to control the weather, I wondered if that was something from the legends that I just hadn’t found yet and, if so, how had he known?

Looking at him, it was obvious that he was well into his fourth or fifth decade of life, so, of course, he has had more years on this earth to hear the tales, but I wanted to know if there was something else I was missing.

So, when I had started to broach that topic, Blane had immediately cut me off with a question about the patrols that Noel had previously mentioned.

And when I turned to look at him, I noticed that Roane was looking away, but Ezra had the silver haze in his eyes from the link. It either meant one of two things, either they still didn’t trust Noel, or they knew something that I didn’t.

Fortunately, the conversation had shifted to a plan of how we could get a group of our soldiers back into Blood Mist to try to extract Eren and Vit from the cells below Rogan’s private offices.

That is what had taken up the last few hours of our meeting. Reg had brought in food and drinks, but no one had eaten much except Nico and Lecia, who was only eating to try to force food into Dylan’s mouth as we continued to talk.

We knew that we would have to let Noel leave sooner than later and we would be back in our own meeting rooms to plan this mission out, but I wished that I could keep Dylan from those meetings.

Even though Noel had shared a bit more about Dylan’s life in Blood Mist, I knew there was so much that she had not yet opened up about and I didn’t want her to be thrust back into that kind of darkness again.

Ezra and Blane had taken Ezra out sometime before sunrise and I had brought Dylan back here with me, but I knew that today was far from over.

There is a saying that there is no rest for the wicked and it has never run truer to me than it did now because I was far from a saint and I would become a sinner if I could get any kind of vengeance for her and all the others Rogan has wronged.

Roane’s voice took me out of my thoughts and back to reality. “Hey,” he said with his head thrown back on the couch and looking up at the ceiling, “what do you think about what he said about her wolf?”

His words made me sit up because of everything we heard in that room with Noel earlier. Why was that what he seemed the most curious about?

Kesh was wondering the same things as I was, but I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions just yet, so I asked, “what about it?”

“Well,” he said, taking his tie all the way off his neck and wrapping it around his palm, “why don’t you have her shift so that we can get a look at her wolf and Micah can try to find the geas?”

Nothing seemed off about the request and it honestly even made sense. If anyone could possibly remove a geas, it would be Micah, but Kesh wasn’t buying what he was saying.

I was too tired and unprepared for him and he forced himself to the surface in the blink of an eye and was up on his feet in less than a second.

Watching was all I could do as I fought for control, but he had already gone to the couch and grabbed Roane by the front of his shirt and was lifting him off the couch.

“Enough with the bull shi*t, what is it that you want from her and don’t tell me another lie because while I won’t kill you, I will hurt you,” Kesh snarled.

Micah had made his way over to us and while he stood beside us, he did not stop Kesh from what he was doing.

And when Roane realized it, he finally choked out, “because I heard him, my wolf, I heard him and I know that it was because of her. I want her to help me.”