Chapter Text
“Wik!”
It was Dahlia that instantly noticed something was wrong when her Second King failed to block an attack that should have been child’s play for him during their daily morning training session. Luckily his ACE, Rook, managed to pull the blow at the last second, but Wikhn still fell to his knees, his entire body rigid. After a heartbeat, he began to tremble in place, as if it was taking all of his effort to remain exactly where he was. A horrified look crossed his face.
Dahlia tugged sharply on Dyshoka’s bond, summoning the Beta in an instant, even though she could already see Kyle fast approaching out of the corner of her eye.
Even before the flash portal had fully faded, Dyshoka had a soothing murmur on her lips for the Dark Fae and a general diagnosis spell on her fingertips, accustomed to this type of emergency summons. Usually having Kyle or Emily or one of the other Medics out in the training yard was enough, but occasionally something would go seriously wrong and Dyshoka’s level of expertise and care was quickly needed.
“Kyle, Quinn,” Dyshoka snapped out a heartbeat later when the first reading came back, a frown on her lips.
“Dy?” Dahlia asked carefully. The Beta rarely needed outside help when she was in her element or with a patient, so if she was calling in her brother…
“There’s Soul Magic involved,” Dyshoka said, answering the unspoken question. Instantly, the Alpha understood. With his ability to Soul Cast, Quinn was particularly learned in most things related to the soul and its magic and that knowledge would very much be an asset if Soul Magic was involved in whatever had triggered the Gheyo King. The Beta’s next words made Dahlia’s blood run cold, however. “I think it’s a soulscream.”
A whimper slipped through Wikhn’s lips.
Impossible.
A summons through a soulscream should have been impossible—Wikhn was already Bonded.
Except, only to Dahlia. Not to Shayla or Dyshoka or any of the ACEs or the others. It had been his sole request after her soulscream just over a year ago and while it had made her ACEs unhappy at the time, Dahlia had granted the request.
Because it was Wikhn and he rarely asked for anything, let alone something like that.
And now, she would pay the consequences of that decision.
Still, it shouldn’t have been possible.
So Dhalia had to wonder—just how desperate or broken would a Submissive have to be to summon an already Bonded individual to their side through a soulscream?
“Quinn’s not responding.” Kyle’s voice broke Dahlia out of her thoughts. “It’s like—like he’s off-realm.”
Dyshoka glanced at Dahlia.
When their eyes met, Dahlia suddenly recalled a conversation they had had years ago, shortly after she’d first started training Wikhn, settling him into his King rank so ideally, he, Rook, and Calla could form the base of a Suite—and what a Suite they would be, she’d thought at the time, the three Dark Faes working together as one unit.
But then she’d gotten attached and while Wikhn had thrived along the two other Dark Fae she had trained, he’d wanted to be hers and she hadn’t been able to let him go by the time his training should have finished.
Getting attached wasn’t a bad thing, Dyshoka had assured her at the very beginning, as long as she understood that he might not be completely hers, even after they started the discussions about becoming a bonded pair.
At first, Dahlia had taken that to mean that there might always be some distance between them, that Wikhn would never bring himself to trust her completely as a King should trust in their ACE—understandable, given that his previous ACE had tried to kill him on several occasions and had very nearly succeeded too.
Then her transformation from ACE to Alpha and her soulscream had happened and Dahlia had taken Dyshoka’s words to be referencing that incident, because a King could never really belong to an Alpha in the way that they would belong to an ACE.
Now she knew that this was what Dyshoka had meant. She and Wikhn might have been soul-bonded, but there was a Submissive out there also soul-bonded to the Dark Fae.
And it wasn’t Shayla.
Dahlia’s soul cried at the thought, but she knew what she needed to do.
Slowly, she knelt in front of the other Gheyo, locking her eyes onto his. They were nearly blood-red, she noted, either from the strain of resisting the soulscream for the past few minutes or because the situation he would be porting into would need that level of viciousness—not a very good sign.
“It’s okay, Wik,” she murmured. “Go. We’ll figure things out when you get back.”
Still, Wikhn resisted the soulscream’s tug, resisted despite the three assenting murmurs that came from behind Dahlia—from her three ACEs, she realized.
The Alpha sighed. Her approval, especially with the support of Rook, Harmony, and Gage, should have been enough.
So stubborn.
“Wikhn.” There was a faint hint of chastisement in Rook’s voice.
“Go,” Dahlia repeated, inflecting her voice with an Alpha’s order. She hated using that particular trick, but she would rather deal with the mess that was sure to be the aftermath of all this than have one of her Bonded dealing with a rejected—or worse, broken—soul-bond.
There was a flash of white-blue light and then Wikhn was gone.
A moment of silence passed before Dahlia accepted Rook’s offered hand and got to her feet.
“It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?” the Dark Fae asked as she stood.
“Well, it’s certainly not going to be good,” Dahlia returned, wincing when the tone came out harsher than she wanted.
Thankfully, Rook didn’t bat an eye; instead, he simply waited for her orders.
“Gage, Harmony.” Dahlia jerked her head in the direction of the training rings and the other Gheyos who were respectfully keeping some distance, silently indicating that she wanted them to take over. “Rook, you’re with me.” Given how raw she was feeling, she would need his support in particular when trying to explain the events of this morning to Shayla and to gauge what her Submissive thought of the possible options. “Dy?”
“With you,” the Beta said immediately. “Kyle, talk to Mama and find out what’s going on with Quinn.” She already had a suspicion, but her baby brother needed to be the least of her concerns right now. This way, however, her family Circle would be involved and could be an extra bit of support for whatever came next.
Dyshoka suspected that they would need all the support they could get.