Chapter 54: Tonight’s Forecast: Thunderfang Tantrum

Both Thunderfang brothers were standing at the front of their pack, suits glowing, looking across the clearing at the Emberclaw section. Nova hadn’t realized they were watching her until this second. The one who had carried her earlier, who had held her in his lap and kissed her knuckles and wiped the tear from her cheek, was upset. The kind of upset that she could see from forty feet away and the kind that made her eyes burn.

She had no wolf or matebond connecting them. But that man had been kind to her on the worst day of her life, and right now there was nothing she could do to be kind back to him. She swallowed the lump in the back of her throat and tore her eyes away.

Then Derek Thunderfang’s voice cut across the clearing, loud enough for every person to hear.

"Hey Emberclaw. That cloak she’s in? Mine. Smells like me. Every time you inhale, just know you’re getting a noseful of Thunderfang. Consider it a free sample."

Nova’s blood ran cold. She glanced at the cloak. His cloak. She had been wearing it for so long that it had become hers in her mind, which it wasn’t. The temperature had dropped to the point where even wolves were uncomfortable, and the man who had given it to her was the only person standing in the Thunderfang section without one to keep him warm. It felt wrong keeping it while he stood there cold.

She wanted to give it back to him. The moment her mouth opened to ask Maverick if she could, pain lanced through her chest.

It was the same pain from before. Her jaw locked and her vision tunneled and she fought the scream that wanted out through clenched teeth. When it finally ebbed, another wave hit, worse than the last. Maverick let out a grunt behind her and his arms tightened immediately, she assumed in response to her muscles locking. He probably was confused why she kept doing that.

Then he kissed the side of her head.

The gesture caught her so off guard that her brain stalled mid-pain-cycle and rerouted all processing power to the spot on her temple where his lips had been. She didn’t know what to do with it. She didn’t have a frame of reference for a man holding her in front of his entire pack and pressing his mouth against her like she was something worth being gentle with.

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

More lightning split the sky. Thunder followed.

The noise jolted Nova. That was the second time lightning had made her jump in the last few minutes. In her defense, those were very loud.

Maverick was unbothered by any of it, focused on one of her cuffs, turning her wrist slowly, studying the silver with eyes that were still molten gold and focused with an intensity that said he was doing math on a problem he intended to solve tonight.

"Breathe, Nova. I’m here." His mouth was at her ear, the words only for her, spoken into the space between them that the rain couldn’t reach.

She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until he said it. The air came back in a rush.

"I feel it too. I think it’s the silver hurting you." His thumb traced the edge of the cuff without touching the metal, mapping the boundary between skin and prison. "I’m going to get these off of you, pretty girl." He kissed her ear, soft, deliberate, the kind of kiss that says I know you’re scared and I’m not going anywhere.

Nova was beyond stunned. No one had ever called her that and he did it so naturally. This man was something she hadn’t anticipated. She genuinely wondered if maybe he had only been in that cigar room because he had approached Starborne with an offer, which also blew her mind by itself. Because even if he did catch her scent, cloak meant she was deformed and he still made an offer.

The recontextualization hit her so hard it almost knocked the pain out of first place. Every moment in that cigar room reshuffled. He hadn’t touched her. He had been the voice in the corner who told Starborne to let her get rejected first, which she had read as cruelty but was starting to understand as strategy because getting her rejected at the Moonfire meant she got out of that room. He had sent Maria to the trail. He had brought her water at the ceremony. He had caught her when she stumbled.

He had been there the entire time. She just hadn’t known what she was looking at.

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

Triple lightning tore across the sky in succession, each bolt brighter and angrier than the last. The thunder came in rolling waves that shook the ground and vibrated up through Nova’s shoes into her chest. It was getting worse. The storm had been building all night and whatever was feeding it was accelerating.

The Thunderfang section was surging at the same time. Both brothers’ suits were glowing so bright that the wolves around them had created a perimeter of personal space that was less a choice and more a survival instinct.

Maverick looked straight ahead, his chin now resting on Nova’s head and his arms still locked around her, not sparing the Thunderfang section a glance.

The head elder cleared his throat.

"Celeste Starborne, Princess of the Starborne pack, silver flame, is matched with Alpha Maverick Emberclaw of the Emberclaw pack."

The clearing went dead quiet, and not the good kind. Eyes ping-ponged from Maverick Emberclaw currently wrapped around a glowing slave and not even looking in Celeste Starborne’s direction, to Celeste Starborne whose eyes were glued on Landon Thunderfang, to Landon Thunderfang, who was staring at the glowing slave against Maverick’s chest like he had just been robbed and was about to make it everyone’s problem.

"What?" someone in the Wavecrest section said, loud enough to represent the entire clearing’s confusion.