CHAPTER 38
JONATHAN
My vision collapsed as the edges of the world bled into shadows while the snarls of the Lycans, the wind whipping through the trees, and Erik’s voice slowly faded away.
For a moment I didn’t even know I was still thinking. It was black. I couldn’t hear anything and I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t feel…I couldn’t smell… Where was I?
And then, a cold realization slowly crept in…
Had I died?
The last thing I remembered was Erik’s fangs closing on my throat. Was this…what came after?
Blanchette’s face surfaced in the darkness.
The memory of her wasn’t clear at first. It moved through the void like a reflection in deep water as nothing more than a shape.
A feeling. Then her eyes. Then came the way she laughed when she was trying not to.
The warmth of her hand against mine. Her lips.
I had a sad disappointing thought that I had failed her.
It settled with a weight that felt heavier than any mortal wound. Erik had her somewhere in this forest, nearby, and yet I had walked straight into his trap.
I had failed to protect her.
And she’s still out there alone, I thought as anguish rose.
I hated to admit it, but I wanted to cry. But I couldn’t feel my face, didn’t know if I even had tears. The silence stretched while a million thoughts blazed through my mind.
Then something appeared.
At first it was just a faint point of light far off in the distance, so small it could have been mistaken for a tiny star. It hovered in the black space ahead of me, unmoving and muted.
I watched it grow.
The change was so subtle I thought it might have been my imagination. The light didn’t move toward me so much as the darkness around it began to pull inward. The tiny star widened, trembling softly against the endless black.
For a moment I wondered if this was what death looked like—some distant doorway opening somewhere beyond reach.
And then I heard a strange voice, faint and slithery, almost lost in the endless void around me. It felt…ancient.
“Whooo…are…you…?”
Great. Just my luck. I was dead and now being fucking interrogated. Not really what I expected.
The light pulsed brighter, then the voice came again, louder this time.
“Whooo…are…you…?”
I wasn’t even sure how to answer. I couldn’t feel my body anymore. No breath in my lungs. No tongue in my mouth. Just thoughts drifting through the dark like loose broken sparks.
Did it expect me to speak? Could I even speak? The silence stretched, heavy and waiting. Then the thought slipped free before I could stop it.
Jonathan…Wolfe.
The light flickered.
“Whyy…are you heere…?”
Panic stirred in my chest.
I didn’t know what it wanted. I didn’t know what the right answer was. Hell, I didn’t even know if I was actually dead. My thoughts scrambled uselessly for something that sounded meaningful. Noble. Worthy…but nothing came. All that remained was the truth.
I…I don’t know.
The voice came again. “Taaake…or…proteect…?”
My thoughts drifted to Blanchette.
I wished I could see her again. Wished I could tell her—
No.
Wished I could protect her.
The light changed.
The faint, cold star hovering in the void began to glow warmer, its pale silver deepening into something brighter. The glow spread outward as it seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting in a slow rhythm like a living thing.
And then the world began to return.
Sound only at first. Faint at the edges of my awareness—the rush of wind whipping through the circle, the low growl of wolves, and finally…Erik’s voice.
My eyes opened.
Power surged through me like a second heartbeat. It rolled through every muscle, every bone, burning away the weakness that had pinned me to the stone moments ago. My lungs dragged in a full breath as my body rose from the ground almost mechanically.
The shift tore through me.
My bones cracked, out of control. Something deeper surged within me, older than instinct or memory. Voices were trapped inside of my skull. A pull. A command. A hunger that felt insatiable. I staggered, teeth bared, claws digging into the earth.
I’d always been Lycan, but this…this was something else entirely.
My limbs were heavy, dense. Claws flexed against the stone beneath my hands, longer and darker than before, and the world sharpened into an unnaturally narrow focus.
My vision tunneled forward as though I were looking through the slit of a visor.
Everything beyond the center faded into dim peripheral shadows.
What had been a chaotic fight only moments earlier now played out in slow motion. I watched one of Erik’s men lunge toward me, his claws extended, his mouth open in a snarl that had barely finished forming.
He never reached me.
Movement stirred at the edges of the circle with shapes rising out of the darkness like something breaking the surface of deep water.
At first they looked like shadows, but they were too solid for that.
Black silhouettes gathered in the mist, tall and indistinct, their forms separate from the night around them.
They penetrated and surrounded the circle.
Fear rippled through Erik’s pack instantly. Several of them turned toward the shapes, snarling and backing away as the silhouettes advanced. One of the shadows reached forward, its form stretching like smoke, and seized a Lycan by the shoulders.
He roared…but not for long. The shadow pulled him downward, swallowing him into the land. Another shape did the same to a second Lycan, dragging him from the circle floor as his claws tore uselessly at the air.
Panic erupted. Erik shouted something that sounded like an order, but his voice sounded thin against the storm building around us.
My body moved before the thought had fully formed. The distance between Erik and me vanished instantaneously as my claws tore through the air, raking across his chest and driving him backward.
He tried to recover but was too slow.
Erik twisted away with a snarl and staggered, his golden eyes wide now, confusion replacing the arrogance that had been there before.
The look in Erik’s eyes told me that whatever I had become…he had never encountered before.
I wanted blood. Not justice but blood.
This is what you’re part of, something in me whispered. Give yourself over to it.
I drove forward with a savage swipe across his jaw, my claws snapping his head sideways. Before he could regain his footing, I seized him by the throat and hurled him across the ground.
Erik landed hard, claws scraping pathetically against the stone as he tried to rise. But I was already on him. My claws hammered into his chest again and again, each strike preventing him from catching his breath.
I leaned in close, voice low. “I’m not my father,” I growled. “But this land is mine…and I protect what’s mine.”
I pressed him harder into the stone.
“And you’re trespassing.”
The final blow came as my claws ripped upward across his furred torso, lifting him up as he crashed through the invisible boundary surrounding the Circle of Thornblood.
The impact shattered the barrier in a violent burst of light, throwing his body beyond the stones where he skidded across the dirt.
Then, the dark shadows slowly receded into the night. Where Erik’s pack had been seconds earlier, there was nothing. No trace of bodies. Just the Circle of Thornblood and its hollow silence.
Erik raised his head weakly, his gaze sweeping across the clearing in mounting horror as the realization settled over him. The pack he had brought with him—the Lycans who had pinned me to the ground and torn into me—were simply gone.
His eyes lifted slowly to me.
For the first time since I had met him, Erik Skoll looked afraid.
Then his strength failed as he collapsed onto the forest floor and didn’t move again.
I stood there a moment, breathing hard, with this strange power still burning through my veins. I didn’t know what had happened to me or why the forest had answered the way it had. Maybe this was what my father had been hinting at. Only it had saved me.
One thing was painfully clear…Blanchette was still out there somewhere.
And I needed to find her.
I needed to protect her.