So, that was an insight into what insanity might be like. Coveney stared into the void, the empty road ahead, where the rest of them had been waiting.

The eagles had been reluctant to let them – Coveney, Ace, Rye and Knox – tag along on their little rescue mission, but his Alphas hadn’t budged. Ava was part of their prides, and they had no intention of being kept out of the action. They’d relented. Good thing, too: nothing could have kept Coveney away from Ava.

The eagles that had visited Dale in the past swore it was there. All he saw was a bunch of strangers, along with his Alphas and Knox, all waiting on the side of the road. Jas had stayed at their hotel with Zack.

The only thing that kept him from entirely losing his mind was that, somehow, he felt her.

“How does this thing work? According to Google Maps, there’s nothing here.”

“It wouldn’t be much of a magical ward if it showed up on Maps,” Knox remarked.

Still, he didn’t know it was possible to so completely cloak anything, let alone an entire city.

“Witches were a little more ‘hard rock’ back in the day,” the wolf explained. “Virgin sacrifice, firstborns, orgies. All that stuff makes for stronger magic than what they do now.”

“So when,” he wasn’t saying if, “she pulls the wards down, it’s going to appear on Maps. Can she put them back up?”

Knox shook his head. “No living coven I know of can manage that. We’re going to watch regulars freak out that there’s a whole city out there that they didn’t know a thing about. And talk about real estate value.”

An eagle chuckled. “Yeah, let them try to take it from us.”

“If I heard it right, the Flavian kept records old enough to make any historian hard. There’s no way…”

Knox stopped talking because all of a sudden, Dale was there, right in front of his eyes.

If no one had told him the place was called Dale, Coveney might have gone with the Garden of Eden, or maybe Olympus. Picturesque didn’t begin to cover it. There was a valley covered with fields, some green, some golden, smelling of freshly cut hay. He saw sunflowers, poppies, grapes; a few horses ran freely at the bottom of a large hill. Rows of cypress trees led to a white city; each flat-roofed, elegant house seemed fit for a king. Right at the peak, there was a palace. They were too far away, so Coveney didn’t see its fountains, its obsidian and gold halls, its statues by the world’s most acclaimed artists over the ages. Still, he said, “Well, fuck me,” right before he shifted, and started running towards his mate.

The eagles made it first, obviously. He knew they would. What he hadn’t expected was that none of them would have had any work left by this point.

It wasn’t like the rebels had all of a sudden decided to lay down their arms and surrender, either. By the looks of it, they’d at least attempted to fight their way out of it.

When he made it, Ava was standing naked in the middle of the forum, holding a stranger hard in her little arms. He was in an equal state of undress and bloodiness. It pissed Coveney off for all of two seconds, before he saw the tall, muscular shifter’s violet eyes.

Richard. That was her brother.

He forced himself to stay back, to let her have her moment.

There were various body parts at their feet, bird and human.

“You do know some of your avian friends came from China for this, right?” Knox mused out loud.

He didn’t seem to mind being thoroughly ignored.

The siblings finally turned to them, both grinning from ear to ear. The moment they did, Coveney let his animal pounce and rub himself all over her legs to make sure she was really there, really in one place.

“Richard, this is my mate, Coveney.”

He narrowed his eyes, zeroing in on the white tiger.

“A cat.”

Coveney roared in response. Would it kill them all to say ‘tiger’ instead?

“Oh, no, don’t you start being a pain, brother. Maybe if you’d looked at other breeds of shifters, you might have found your own mate.”

Richard snorted.

“See this?” he pointed to the bodies. “Mess up and you’ll wish I’d just dismembered you.”

“Threaten him and you’ll just wish I didn’t have incriminating pictures of you,” his mate defended him as he shifted back.

His tiger had needed reassurance, but so did he. Pulling her towards him, burying his head in her hair and inhaling all her sweetness, he finally breathed easily.

“What happened?”

“Everything went as planned.”

She was lying. He could tell.

“Ava…”

“She was reckless,” Richard filled in. “Hurt herself on her way down and found herself surrounded by enemies, with a bad arm. Which was lucky for them, or it wouldn’t have been a challenge. She’d managed to blind that one,” he waved towards a corpse, “and bite that one’s finger off when I made it. Gave her a second to shift. Then, well,” he winced, then shrugged. “They started it.”

Fuck. He wanted to ask how whatever they’d done had resulted in so many bits and pieces of people, but thought better of it.

Rye couldn’t help himself, though. “How the heck did you get a dozen full-grown eagles? I mean, they did take your flock.”

Ava averted her eyes. Again, her brother had no issue spelling things out. “We lost, last time, because none of us thought to fight. Our parents were too shocked, our siblings were too freaked out. I flew out immediately to try to find Ava…”

“And I’d run,” the woman filled in, darkly. “We lost because I was too cowardly to stay and fight.”

It was more than that, though. In a few days, he’d seen a shift in her. He didn’t know her as well as he wanted to – not yet – but he’d peeked at her insecurities, her belief that she wasn’t worth as much as the rest of her siblings, when he’d first met her. Perhaps thanks to Knox, or to the Alpha eagles who’d chosen to follow her, that was gone now. And what was left was a powerful, determined, dominant leader.

Coveney smirked. Yeah. He was going to be the bottom for the rest of his days.

The Alphas she’d called to her aid were watching, visibly uneasy at what they’d witnessed.

“Sorry, I did genuinely think I needed help,” she told them.

Her brother ruffled her hair, calling her an idiot.

“Still, you came, and I’ll keep my word.” She glanced towards Richard. “This place should belong to all of us. The whole history of the world, from the shifter point of view, is recorded in our library - I don’t think anyone else has a full account like that.”

“I beg to differ,” Knox piped in.

Her brother nodded slowly. “Whatever you say. This place gives me the creeps anyway.”

The Alphas didn’t seem reassured. Finally, one spoke.

“This isn’t normal. I’ve heard your family trained well, but it should have taken an entire flock to tear them apart like that. You… there’s a reason why you guys were the head of our kind.”

There was. Not one that she was willing to say out loud, though. She held the Alpha’s gaze without saying a word, until he looked away.

“Dale can become a public place if you want,” he said. “But the Ryder flock will still honor its pledge to your house.”

Ava was taken aback, but instead of seeming all awkward, like Coveney thought she might, she inclined her head at the same time as her brother, accepting it gracefully.

Each Alpha swore the same oath that day, as Ace and Rye carefully watched from a distance. Coveney stayed at Ava’s side, feeling like a queen’s consort. There were worse things. Especially since, while she may have the upper hand in practically every other aspect, there was still one place where he was on top.

“Please!” she yelled, shamelessly begging at the top of her voice.

He wasn’t having any of it, keeping her knees wide open and suckling on her folds, making her tremble and try her best to move. With her hands tied to the head of their bed, and her legs pinned in place, she had her work cut out for her.

“Please what, beautiful?”

He smirked as she glared at him. Shrugging, he just carried on teasing her pussy, stopping each time the pace of her breathing got faster, each time she started to reach the edge.

“You’re going to have to spell it out. It’s not like I can guess what you want me to do, can I now?”

The woman cursed him in a bunch of languages he didn’t recognize; he was pretty sure he got the gist of it, though. It was killing her. She was just too polite and well-bred to talk dirty, which made it imperative that he had to hear her do it.

Plus, she totally deserved it for making him worry for hours.

Eventually, she caved, screaming, “Please let me fucking come!” and who was he to deny his mate?

Flipping her to her hands and knees, he entered her painfully slowly from behind, relishing the feeling of her around him.

Damn, that ass. One glance at it, and he was pounding like his life depended on it; for all he knew, it just might. She met his hips, taking him hard and fast. The sound of their breathing, and the slap of his legs and balls hitting her, surrounded them until they fell off the edge together.

“Coveney?”

“Mh?”

“You do know my brother’s room’s next door, right?”

He laughed nervously. “Ah, hell. At least my last night on earth was pleasant.” She chuckled against his chest.

“Coveney?”

“Hm?”

“You know, that thing you said before, in Rome…”

Ah, shit. He knew she was going to bring it up eventually. He kissed her perky little nose and told her, “Don’t worry. I’m aware it’s completely insane to feel that way after… five days, was it? You don’t have to say it back.”

“I know I don’t have to,” Ava said. Then she left it at that. For so long he’d actually started breathing again when she added, “But I still love you, too.”