Blood & Wine

37 | Iris

"Our Alpha has a Mated mark now," Jagger told me as he walked in. He looked around the empty house, his eye black and already healing. He sniffed. "Where's your Mate?"

"You smell like Sarah," I pointed out, picking up a beer bottle and tossing it into the garbage can. "Dasher is back at the Coven House."

The Coven House had been finished about an hour ago with the help of the werewolves. It was a three-story building, made to look like a manor with nineteen bedrooms on the third floor—not all the witches were staying there—and classrooms on the second. It still had to be decorated by everybody who moved in, but the witches were going through and putting their final, magical touches on.

Dasher was helping.

Eden, still too weak, or so we thought, had been resting the past two days in the cabin with Fynley, who we thought was helping her heal. But if he had accepted the Mating Bond, if they both had accepted it, I didn't think any kind of healing had been done.

Good for him.

It was about damn time.

"Sarah is back," Jagger told me with a grin. By the look in his eyes, I figured she had been back a day—and it made sense why I hadn't seen him at all yesterday. He bent over and started picking up beer cans, too, making a game out of it by throwing it into the bag.

I rolled my eyes at his antics. "Is she now? She didn't stop by to say hello?"

"She's... indisposed. Lack of werewolf strength and all that."

"Go easy on her, Jagger." I grinned, though. If anything she had told me had been true, he was the one who needed some ease. Or, maybe not, I figured when I looked at the smile on his face. "If she wants, I'll stop by and visit."

"Of course she wants that. You two are good friends," he told me. "She mentioned you, actually."

My nose wrinkled. "Hopefully post-coitus."

"Yes, post-coitus." He chunked a beer can at me this time, and I laughed and caught it. "She wanted to schedule a double-date."

Oh. A date with Dasher? We had avoided those because of the threat, but, apparently, there was no threat on his life. Perhaps... I'd talk to Fynley, who would talk to Eden, and they'd decide if it was safe.

I didn't want to put him in the slightest danger—and if he went somewhere, I would end up going with him.

As it was, with him leading the Rogues, I'd have to leave La Luna one day—the only pack I had ever known. I'd virtually be packless. The thought was terrifying, but when I remembered I had a Mate, it made it that less terrifying.

Calla had updated us slightly—told us that Dasher's life was not in danger, and that we could relax on him being killed. We still had to make sure he wasn't kidnapped, though. Dasher, of course, had taken it calmly.

But, later, he mentioned that he wished he could just kill his father already and get it over with. He was ready for everything to be done. The deaths of the pack were weighing heavily on his shoulders—and what he couldn't carry, Fynley was carrying. And what the two of them couldn't carry was being held by me and Eden. Because that was what Mates did. We shouldered the burden, the sadness, those ugly feelings so they could be better.

"Iris?"

I looked up. I had been standing there with two bottles of beer in my hands. I realized I hadn't answered his question. "I'm sorry," I apologized, breathing out. I had been doing this all morning while trying to clean. It was why the house barely had a dent in it. I had been staying in the apartment with Dasher because he had the room to himself. Calla had been staying with Ezekiel, who had been overbearingly asking about her. "I just—my mind wandered."