In This Iron Ground (Natural Magic #1)

by Marina Vivancos

For some reason incomprehensible to Damien, the moment their eyes met, he burst into sobs. Unlike his tears before, which seemed to be a deluge pressing down on him, digging him into unrelenting earth, these seemed to be ripping something from him. They were a baptism of salt water as he was purged and emptied.

He felt Hakan nod against his neck. Felt Koko settle behind him. He closed his eyes again. Damien felt like the land inside him had been scorched, fields and forests reduced to nothing but exhausted ash. But Damien could feel, when he lay very still and concentrated on Hakan and Koko’s breath, a wind picking up. There was rain in the horizon that foretold good tidings. A softening of the earth.

“I heard you like plants too,” Cameron said. Damien looked up at Cameron’s face, nodding. “I’d love some help, if you would like to do some gardening with me.” “But…this is your space,” Damien said. He understood about corners of the world you didn’t want to reveal. Cameron smiled. “Yes, and I’d like to share it with you.”

“What’s wrong?” Damien slurred sleepily, the concern not quite breaching the fog around him. There was a pause. Hakan shifted closer. Damien could almost imagine his warmth. “You’d tell me, right?” Hakan said quietly, as if he were sharing a secret. “You’d tell me, if you weren’t okay.” The quiet stretched between them, no less soft. Intimate. “Yeah. I’d tell you,” Damien replied, knowing that there wouldn’t be the slightest change to his scent. He closed his eyes, and the summer burned away.

“But pack…pack is like this flower. Or like the earth, like the forest. It’s meant to grow as much as it is nurtured, to give what it is given, to flourish. At least, that’s how the Salgado pack works. I know they can be intimidating, but they return tenfold whatever they are given.”

She spoke as if Damien was part of what she was too. As if he were tied to this land. It may not have been true literally, but he felt the bonds of being a creature of the earth nonetheless. He felt something inside flourish from the iron ground.

These feelings weren’t new. They had been trembling awake for months. But in that sunlit moment, they coalesced into something tangible. Something Damien could feel in the pit of his stomach, a shuddering creature as new as it was ancient.

Damien closed his eyes, but he could still see the afterimage of Hakan’s smile burnt right through the darkness.

Damien was used to time weaving its thread unevenly through the coarse material of his life.

“Oh, my sweet, summer child. My sweet, twinky, summer child,” Koko cooed, slinging her arm around him. Damien gaped. “What?” “Babe. Boo-boo. Fragrant cherry blossom of the night. You are a top’s wet dream. Like…the eyes. The freckles. Your fluffy hair. Like, seriously.”

Damien gave him a quicker hug, although no less tight. When Hakan pulled back his nose wrinkled slightly. “Who do you smell like?” he asked.

There was no awkwardness or heat. It was family. Pack. Comfort. Damien had come to realize how important scent and touch was for werewolves, how they came hand-in-hand. It was their way to build bonds, to show affection, to feel at peace in a world in which they weren’t alone. Damien closed his eyes and wasn’t alone.

Hakan moaned. His hand tightened at the back of Damien’s neck but he didn’t push him any further. Damien swallowed, and the way Hakan said his name broke Damien a little in some place inside.

He was pressed further into the door. It was disappear into it or into Hakan. Hakan kissed him like he was enjoying a meal of prey. Slow, languid. Possessive. The want was the scent of blood in the air.

A shredded sob heaved out of Damien. Everything was flayed open by Hakan’s presence. At its core, that was love. It was an automatic lowering of defences, whether you wanted it or not.

Damien could do nothing to stop it. God, he was sick of this. He was tired. He was so, so tired.

The very thought of it was exhausting. The very thought of having to sit there once a week and talk about it. To reveal the mess that had been made of him. That he himself had made. To have to carry all that again. To have to relive it.

“Sometimes we refuse to acknowledge the validity of our distress and difficulty so much that when we finally do, it hurts. But it’s a good kind of pain, Damien. It’s the pain of healing.”

This is what they didn’t tell you. Some families were given, and some families were found.