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“You want to be taught about magic…from the being you hate most in this world?” Jack let out a little laugh, “And here I thought I’d just be answering questions.”

Nico studied him, his body, but mainly the way his fingers were twisting against each other. He was nervous, no matter how confident he made himself seem. “You want something from me.” He said, and he knew it was a fact, and he knew it from the way Jack’s pretty eyes darted away from him.

“It’s…” Jack gave him a weary glance over his shoulder, and shrugged. “If my head goes, this entire forest will crumble. The trees will cave in, the ground will swallow itself whole, the ocean will dry. Because the truth, Nico, is that I don’t want to die.”

“No?”

“No. But worse than that, I don’t want them.” His eyes moved briefly toward the window, toward where Nico’s men would be camped, drinking, laughing, sharpening their blades. “I know what the King’s men do to witches. They don’t just kill us. They carve us open, they take their time. They see how much they can wring out before there’s nothing left but a body that doesn’t even feel like one anymore.” His fingers twisted tighter together, knuckles whitening. “I live quietly. I keep the forest stable. I don’t curse villages. I don’t poison wells. I don’t lure children into the dark.” A bitter huff of a laugh. “I barely even leave my house.”

The cat lifted its head in Nico’s lap, tail flicking once, as if offended on Jack’s behalf.

“I want protection,” Jack said at last, meeting Nico’s eyes again, bracing for disgust, for laughter, for refusal. “From your men, the crown, and the inevitable moment someone decides I’m worth more screaming than dead.”

Nico’s teeth cracked against each other. He’d seen it, not witches, but prisoners, rebels, anyone the King decided needed to be made an example of. “And what,” Nico asked carefully, “does that protection cost me?”

“I want you to lie,” Jack whispered with a little shrug. “Convince your men there’s nothing here. That the magic’s already burned out. That the witch they felt has fled deeper into the world, somewhere inconvenient and far away.”

Nico’s brows drew together. “And when the crown sends more?”

Jack’s voice softened. “Then I need someone who knows how hunters think. An executioner knows how to hunt an executioner.”

“You’re a witch, Jack, and you’re telling me that you need protection?”

“When you’re the strongest witch in the land, yes.” Jack bit out, “I’m the thing that’s keeping our planet afloat. If I die, the planet follows. Slowly at first—tides pulling back farther than they should, seasons slipping out of rhythm, the forest eating villages whole. People will call it famine, or a plague, or the gods’ will.”

“But…”

“But if I live,” Jack went on, “and they take pieces of me…if they hurt me, if they break me, if they dim me even a little, then it happens anyway, just slower. Cracks instead of collapse.” His shoulders curled in on themselves. “Do you understand, Nico?”

Nico felt sick. He nodded, once, a dip of his chin.

Nico should have seen it coming, really. 

After all, his boy did kill off one of the most notorious gang leaders in all of Europe, when people had been trying for decades. The man was old, fat and wrinkly, handed Jack a gun, and nearly got his sweet slick onto his pudgy, disgusting fingers. Jack should have shot him ten more times just to be sure that he was dead, but his delicate flower would never. He didn’t even want to step foot into the sewers, so shooting the sick twat even one more time was definitely off the table.

When Ivan died, it caused an uproar in the Russian syndicate and all its allies, and Jack had a massive target on his shoulders. Given that Nico had been following him for a week before Ivan’s death, he knew his sweet boy would be their own personal slave to use whenever they pleased. And knowing that his sweet boy was a complete virgin before he met Nico… he didn’t want to think of that thought. 

Still, the target was high before Ivan’s death, as Jack Hughes had been one of the most desired Omega’s in nearly a dozen countries, and being a public figure certainly didn’t help that cause.

He did what he did best, and followed him for that week before the kill. Every time Jack stepped foot in a car, Nico was there on his bike. Every time Jack entered a building, Nico was watching him from across the street. Every time Jack was on a road trip, Nico was there, in the hotel, in the guest locker rooms, waiting and watching.

He should’ve stopped, let the cops or the Devils’ team or whoever the hell Jack had on payroll handle it. But Nico had never been good at letting go of control. Especially not when it came to his pretty little Omega, who smiled too easily and forgot too often that the world was cruel.

He watched Jack laugh with teammates, the way his head tilted back and his throat fluttered when he did. He watched him walk down busy streets like he wasn’t the kind of prize that made men greedy. He watched until his own chest ached.

When the Russians finally came for Jack, Nico wasn’t surprised, though, the rage that filled his body was instant. He was never good with his anger, he knew that, and that’s why his men followed him. Jack calmed him in ways that Nico couldn’t describe. He could relax around his sweet boy, and he knew it was a mix of his addictive scent, strawberries and cream, but it was also the way that Jack laughed, how he moved, how he was so gentle, so sweet, and entirely Nico’s.

They took him when Nico was down, a mission gone wrong. He should have sniffed the trap out. It was a perfect set up to take his Omega. It was too clean, too easy, and Nico had been doing this long enough to know better. But one mistake is all it took.

By the time his men dragged him back to the car, blood slick on his hands and a bullet in his shoulder, Jack was gone. His phone, his watch, his scent had all vanished.

The silence that followed was unbearable. Nico stood in the wreckage of what had been the ambush site, chest heaving, the metallic taste of rage sharp on his tongue. The air still smelled faintly of smoke and gun oil, and beneath it, something sweeter.

Jack had been there. Minutes ago.

And now, he wasn’t. His men were there in under ten minutes, bikes and cars screeching to halts. Nico was looking out at the horizon from where he stood on the docks, at the glittering ocean, his jaw tight. There was a cargo ship now miles out, and a plane that looked tiny to the human eye. His shoulder was throbbing, blood seeping out of the bullet wound. Pain, however, was a small thing compared to the hollow roaring that sat in his chest.

He’s lost men, he’s lost family–

None of it compared to this.