Greykin Valley

| 24 | Lock and Key

Damon snarled quietly. "We'll head around it. Come on."

Jackson walked on Damon's side as he navigated the pack around the trees and towards the camp, and once they were out of the tree line, Jackson burst forward and hurried over to the cages.

He wanted to run to Wilson first, but Sebastien was still ensnared in silver, and if they didn't get him out soon, he had no idea what might happen to him. "We gotta get him out first!" he insisted, watching as the pack hurried over.

"Jack!" Wilson called. "You're okay?"

Jackson looked over at him. "Yeah, we just gotta get Sebastien out first."

Wilson shook his head. "Yeah, yeah. All good."

"How did you get out of your cage?" Tokala asked, gawping at what remained of the cage Jackson was locked inside.

"Uh...my demon form. I kinda just...burst out," Jackson answered, watching Damon inspect Sebastien's cage.

The Alpha then stopped in front of Jackson. "Can you use your demon form again to break the other cages?"

Jackson glanced around at the pack. "I can try." He didn't want to let himself overthink it. His demon form helped him get out of a silver cage, so he had to be able to use it to help Sebastien and Wilson out, right?

He turned to face Sebastien. "Oh, the inimă," he said, looking at Damon.

"Can you not do it without the inimă?" Damon questioned.

"You have the form now," Tokala said. "The initial discovery of a demon's true form is always the hardest, but once you get through that, it's just like shifting into your wolf form."

Jackson frowned unsurely. He didn't know how any of this demon stuff worked; would he have to use the inimă now that he'd used it to first find his demon form? Would Tokala know the answer to that? He glanced at the orange wolf, but then he saw the concerned look on Damon's face. He could also see the unnerved pack. Was Damon asking him to try without the inimă because he knew some of the wolves were unsettled by it? That made sense. The last thing Jackson wanted to do was scare anyone, so...he'd try.

He nodded and faced the cage again. Then, he left his wolf form and concentrated on the part of him the inimă helped him discover. And there it was.... He didn't know how else to describe it other than by saying it felt like his wolf form was sitting inside him right next to his demon form...as though they were both switches inside his proselytes. They were, after all, two different ethos', right?

With a deep exhale, he focused on his demon ethos, and when he slipped into it the same way he did when shifting into his wolf, he felt his wings and horns appear on his body. His wings weighed on his back, and his horns made his head feel a little heavier, and to his relief, when he opened his eyes, he wasn't seeing in shades of blue, and the wolves around him weren't shimmering red. Whatever his vision became while he was hunting was something he'd ask Sebastien later. Right now, he had to focus on getting the hound and Wilson out.

The inimă only empowered the ethos he already possessed, didn't it? So even without it, he still had resistance to silver; he wouldn't have been able to pull the amulet out of Lewis' tent if that wasn't the case. But then his eyes shifted to the padlock keeping the cage shut. The lock was silver, and he was sure the key to it was, too. But if he could touch both the lock and key, then he could just unlock the door, right?

He looked around for Lewis' severed legs, and when he spotted them over by the fire, he hurried over and rummaged through his pockets.

"What are you doing?" Wilson asked.