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Remy poured her power into the words and put her not-cut hand on his forehead, pushing the power into his body. Kodi's body naturally reacted, and she could see him swallowing her blood. If he said the words to complete the ritual, it would also bring Kodi and his pack into the Great Plains pack. She kept her hand over his mouth until the cut healed from her rapid healing. Finally, Kodi stopped taking the blood in, and his eyes opened again.
"What is mine is yours, and yours is mine. I accept the bonds with this pack and become theirs as they are mine."
After her decision, Remy felt the bonds snap into place. She looked at her father, who was beaming with pride. Remy had saved Kodi's life and possibly his pack's lives as well.
Chapter twenty-four
Remy
Remy found the altar without Kodi's help. Lykos and Bryan had to tie Kodi up and keep him contained when she went looking. The Dark Dimension may not have had its hold on Kodi any longer, but they wanted to be sure he would not get in Remy's way while she searched the grounds. None of the pack made a move against her. According to the new pack hierarchy, she was tied to the Alpha, and they had to obey her. For a moment, she considered using those bonds to have them take her to the altar but decided she didn't want to force them to do anything while adjusting to being part of a new pack once again.
The stone that was Morgana’s altar was a simple two-pillar structure holding up a single slab. Remy spent much of her time sniffing around the area before getting to the altar. No scent would tell her that Morgana was aligned with the dark dimension. If anything, it smelled as though she was a healer witch. Many smells of sage, lavender, and chamomile were in the air and around the ground. Remy's knowledge about witches gave her the advantage of knowing the difference between a white and a dark witch. If Morgana had been practicing dark magic, there would be a lot of blood, death, and sulfur in the area instead of what she smelled currently. How the dark mansion managed to take over such a pure soul and later take over her brother was out of her wheelhouse. This was going to be something she would have to add to her letter to Adrian.
The pack piled into cars as Remy, Lykos, and Bryan packed into theirs along with Kodi, bound to the point he could barely move a muscle. As an added measure, Lykos commanded Kodi not to move. An order from the Alpha meant the Lycan would have to listen, regardless of any outside or inside influence. It was another part of pack magic that allowed the Alpha to control the pack when necessary. If someone were a danger to the rest of the pack, it would enable the Alpha to command the pack to stay away from that member or that member away from the rest of the pack. Right now, that is precisely what they needed in order to keep everyone safe.
They would all travel to the Great Plains until Kodi could think for himself. Even after pulling him into the pack, Kodi was still not himself. He completed a shift and was inside his Lycan form. With no way to communicate with him, they thought it best for everyone to return to the pack house and slowly integrate the pack with theirs. If things sorted themselves out, Kodi could take the pack members back to their home and sever the pack bonds once again. This was just until they knew Kodi had no trace of the Dark Dimension in him and wouldn't go berserk any time soon.
No one spoke the entire way home. Remy did not know what she could say to make the situation lighter than it was. Kodi would have tried to kill her. Lykos would have had to make the decision to save his son, who was the natural person to be the Alpha of the Great Plains, or his daughter, who was already learning how to be the Alpha in his son’s absence. Bryan was still taking in everything that happened, and she noticed he was muttering to himself to rationalize everything they had gone through. It was a continuous battle for their lives.
How was the Dark Dimension spreading its infernal influence this much? From what she could see, there were no openings, tears, or portals. Lykos had sent people out to look for an opening after he learned about it. By now, Fenry would have sent notices if he received reports of a magical portal in his kingdom. They needed to find the opening and bring Kaida to the kingdom to close it before it took over the whole kingdom.
What if it is in Fenry? It could spread into the packs. Fenry is the conduit to take over every Lycan in the kingdom. Remy thought to herself.
It is something we are going to have to figure out as we go, her Lycan answered.
This is not something that anyone should be taking on as it happens.
There isn't enough information to do anything else. The information we have is the only information available. We can do nothing more when we don't have enough information to move forward.
For fucks sake! My brother is lying next to me, fighting off an evil dimension inside of him; the only reason he isn't losing that battle is because I decided to override his Alpha bond to bring him into our pack, and we still don't even know where the hell this opening is!
It could be worse.
How the hell could it be worse?
He could have died instead, and this time permanently. If you had not done what you did, your father would not have had much choice other than to kill him.
As much as she understood that was true, Remy did not like that it was their only option. This tour was to build bridges with other packs inside of the kingdom. Instead, she found a new mate that rejected her, figured out the one that initially rejected her, nearly got killed a few times after two packs decided to revert to the Old Ways, and somehow only built two bridges. Remy understood it would not be guaranteed to be granted whenever someone asked for an alliance. Not every pack liked another pack. There would always be rivalries between packs, especially those who were not as well off as her family and could not provide for their pack as easily. After visiting these packs, she understood just how many people truly despised their pack for being as well off as they were. Was it their fault? No. But that didn't mean they would settle their hatred just because it wasn't logical either. They still had a human half. Humans made mistakes and had emotions that were hard to express and rationalize, no matter how hard they tried.
It was agreed upon that, once they arrived at the pack house, Kodi would be put inside a cell. He could not be trusted with a dark dimension running through his body and taking over his mind. As much as Remy wanted to disagree with this plan, she was outvoted. Kodi was still in there and did not try to attack them in any way until he was angered. As a Lycan, it was a hard thing to keep their anger in check. The Lycan was all animal instinct and logic. They didn't understand that anger was something that needed to be controlled. An animal responds when under attack. Even though it was just questions about the altar, the Lycan inside of him did not understand that. Kodi thought she was implying that his ex-mate was evil. That thought triggered his Lycan to respond in a hostile way because it dishonored his dead mate. The Lycan wanted Remy to pay for saying something like that about their mate, which triggered the Dark Dimension to take over.
It is weird to think that a dimension is a living being. Can it think for itself and know when to take over someone's mind? That's frightening to think about.
When they pulled up to the pack house, Tala was on the porch. Remy knew many expressions were flashing across her face when her eyes landed on Kodi’s form, and Lykos and Bryan pulled him out from the back seat. Watching her mother's eyes fill with tears and wanting to run to her child made her heart hurt. Tala was not going to want to listen to them at that moment. She was under the impression her son was dead just as much as everyone else. Seeing him there in the flesh was going to make her want answers, but the answers weren't exactly something she was going to want to hear.
"Is that... how can that be?" Tala asked as Lykos and Bryan transported Kodi past her and through the door.
Neither of the men answered her, so Remy approached her mother and hugged her. "It is a long, stressful story. I'll try to give the highlights. We made alliances with two packs, one of them being Chase Monroe, one of my fated mates. The other is Myles Damascus, who rejected me after smelling Chase on me. The other two packs decided that the Old Ways were a better way to go and nearly killed us. One of those packs was the bastard who rejected me, sent me to that island, and left me for dead. That led to us jumping out of a several-story window to survive the attack, and then we stumbled on Kodi in the middle of the woods. Somehow he has been alive this whole time, mated a Witch, and then had to kill her because the Dark Dimension has been set free inside of our kingdom and is running rampant, possibly infecting the dumbasses who have been attacking us."
Tala blinked at the information Remy gave her. After several seconds of nothing, Remy gave her a curt nod. "I think that covered everything. Do you have any questions?"
Remy didn't wait for an answer. She walked past her mother and followed the scent of her father down to the cells in the basement. Kodi was already thrown into one, and the ropes that kept him constrained were cut. Lykos and Bryan looked a little beat up and bloody, telling Remy that Kodi put up a fight after being cut loose. Now, he sat in the back corner of the cell with his head buried behind his legs folded into his chest. Lykos ordered Bryan to check in with the rest of the pack while he dealt with the reigning Kodi back in. Now that he was part of the pack again, Lykos was still more dominant than Kodi and could keep Kodi under control. Without Lykos present, Kodi could lose control of his Lycan. That was a problem when it came to dominant Lycans. The only person who could keep the beast in check was someone more powerful than them. Bryan was not happy about Lykos giving the order. He wanted to remain with Lykos due to Kodi being unpredictable right now. Remy watched her father give Bryan a look, and Bryan growled, bared his neck at Lykos, and then walked up the stairs. He did not like this order, but he wouldn't defy his Alpha.
Remy heard Bryan's footsteps disappear, and then another set of feet descended to them. Her mother's scent filled her nose, and she heard the shuffling of her feet behind her.
"I, I, I don't understand. How is Kodi alive? I felt it. I felt it when his heart stopped beating."
Remy stepped back and put her arm around her mother's shoulders. "Like I said, he mated himself to a Witch. She apparently brought him back to life and squandered him away in a cabin in the woods. She had him under a love spell, making his brain fuzzy on us even existing."
