Chapter 21

Tristan

"F*ck, I need a drink," I let slip 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.

As I looked at him throw himself onto the other length of the couch, I knew that he was already debating on if he should be 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 on the bed 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 with her head on the table sometime in between one of Ezra's crazy a** rants and I had pulled her onto my lap and had Reg bring in a blanket to wrap her in 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 with her, but I had refused him. 

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

I had taken to sleeping in the guest room, which didn't bother me, but I honestly hadn't sleep much since I wanted to be as close to her as I could for as long as possible.

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

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

Annoyed, I was willing to let it go this once before I saw Nico's half zombie self try to do the same thing on the other side of the bed. Immediately Kesh rushed forward as he considered if Nico was truly trying to tempt fate.

"What the hell do you think you're doing," I growled 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 dense, "getting in bed, obviously." Without even thinking about it I smacked him on the back of his head and then felt a bit bad when he yelped, "Ow, what the hell dude!"

Well, I felt slightly 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, he softly grumbled as he laid down on the pillow, covered himself with the blanket, and was snoring before I even made it to the door.

Micah had laughed as he went to the kitchen, and he made himself a snack. I swear there is nothing that can keep him from eating and I wondered if there wasn't some wolf blood in him somehow.

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. I had seen the way Nico looked at her and it wasn't like a boy in love looks at a girl.

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

Sh*t, and that's another thing. I hadn't fully 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 around the room with Reg and the rest of my personal team knew.

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 noticed that Blane, Ezra, and even Micah hadn't seemed as shocked by the revelation as the rest of us had been 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 became the alpha of Blood Mist since he had previously served his father the old alpha.

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 had been holding him back.

In the middle of everyone in that room bombarding him with questions, Micah, who had seemed to be watching him closely, randomly 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 his answer.

Noel had gone still as a statue and at that moment 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.

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

"How? How did ya' do it," Noel asked loudly, and he sounded so shocked and out of breath that I wondered what he was feeling right then. 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 now 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. It felt as if he was finally able to breath deep enough to truly enjoy being alive.

Roane however sat there and seemed to be puzzling over something in his head. I was a tad bit curious as to what it could be that was distracting him from the excitement in 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. Unfortunately, that is when the real story, or at least what he knew, began to come 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 Noel had decided to stay 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.

As time passed and Eren got older his traits that were too similar to Brook had begun to manifest. That was when 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 pain my sister, as if she was being lashed or cut by a blade and I couldn't stop myself from going to her.

By the time I had gone and sat on her other side, I noticed that every wolf in the room had already moved significantly 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 somehow moved his chair a bit closer to where she sat. To my surprise though, Dylan seemed oblivious to them all. I also noticed who else in the room wasn't and Kesh made sure to mark them.

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 still glued to her other side.

The scent of her blood had mixed with the scent of her tears. They both 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.

Of course, we hadn't been able to prevent it for long because as Noel continued with his story, the scent of her tears had begun to practically sear 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. One thing he had recalled was the strict rules that Rogan had placed upon her caretakers for her.

When Dylan flinched at those words, Kesh had started to growl and snarl, and I couldn't help but wrap my left arm around her shaking body as tight as I possibly could. 

He would pay for the sh*t that he put her through, Kesh raged, but it was Noel's next words that pushed us both over the edge, and not only us, but the entirety of the 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 may be wearing off or breaking."

I had immediately known who the fae that Noel had spoken of was. It was Micah's younger brother, but here was neither the time nor place to talk to him about that. The look in his eyes let me know that he knew it too, so 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 always do all he could for the boy.

My biggest concerns were not about the boy or even Vincent. 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?

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.

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 Vincent from the cells below Rogan's private offices and search for Eren.

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 were both trying to force food into Dylan's mouth as we all continued to talk.

We knew that we would have to let Noel leave sooner rather 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 away 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 Noel 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 rung 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 let out while 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 so casually suggested for what it was.

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

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

"Enough with the bullshi*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 bad enough to keep you away from her," 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.

It wasn't until Roane realized it to, that 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."