Chapter 33 — Ethan
Earning Xander’s trust ranks as my biggest win since arriving in this world. I’ve been busting my ass since day one. Hell, it seems like everything here is a challenge, from training to simply eating and breathing.
Xander understands the real problem here.
And he gets how much bigger this is than just having a Scarlet Wolf among his ranks.
I don’t know what will happen to Jayme after all this is done, but I guess I have to take this the same way I’ve taken everything else in this place: one step and day at a time.
We move through the halls as a group with Xander leading us, and I start to rethink my coming along.
As much as I’ve trained, I’m not a warrior.
Not like these guys. If Stasio is guilty and he decides to fight back, I don’t know how much help I’ll be to anyone, especially seasoned warriors like Akila, Conan, and Rhiannon.
Rhiannon nudges me. “Are you okay?”
I nod. Then I shake my head immediately after. “Not really,” I say with a nervous laugh. “Feeling a little out of my element here.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she says. “You’re doing well as far as I can see. You remind me of Thea when she first arrived.”
“Do I?”
She nods. “She was unsure of herself through most of it. And it was worse for her because a lot was expected of her before she even knew what she really was.”
“She’s right,” Conan says. “She was like a scared rabbit most of the time.” Xander shoots him a look of warning, but Conan doubles down. “She was! Just because she’s a warrior now—”
“Sorry,” I chuckle. “Did you say warrior? Thea? I mean, I keep hearing that about her, but it’s just a little hard to believe she could move like the rest of the Lycan soldiers when she looks like a beach ball right now.”
“Just wait until that whelp is born,” Akila says. “Then try challenging her in the training yard. She’ll wipe the floor with you.”
“That’s not exactly a flex,” I say. “I’m half as strong and at least a quarter as fast.”
“You’re faster than you were,” Conan says. “And you can anticipate your opponent’s moves. You’re a warrior, all right. Just a different kind.”
That makes me smile. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
As we round the corner and reach the door, Xander stops and turns to us. “Let me and Ethan go in first to speak with him,” he says. “I don’t want him to think there is any aggression—”
The sound of a thump behind the door stops him, and then a crash of glass rattles the wood of the door. Xander goes to open it, but it’s locked.
“Stasio!” he calls out. The roar of a wolf answers him.
Oh, shit. That doesn’t sound like a Shaman.
Xander kicks the door down with the rest of us behind him, just in time to see a large, dark brown wolf with patches of red lunge at Stasio. It’s Jayme 2.0 — the monster version.
Stasio’s guest chamber looks like a tornado tore through it, with overturned chairs and glittering fragments of a vase scattered across the floor. Broken furniture is splintered and strewn about like discarded kindling.
The Elder Shaman is on the floor, his face bloodied and bruised, a stream of red staining his white hair.
He throws a hand up and a translucent wall of light forms in front of him just as Jayme reaches him.
Jayme bounces off the shield, but not without hurting Stasio.
His arm bends upon impact, and he winces in pain. The shield flickers.
Xander, Akila, and Rhiannon all transform at once, their bodies contorting and shifting into large black wolves.
They all pounce on Jayme, devolving into a ball of teeth and fur as they battle.
Conan and I rush over to Stasio and try to help him stand, but the older man winces in pain with every movement.
Conan hoists Stasio’s limp form over his broad shoulders.
In one fluid motion, Conan’s body erupts into the familiar transformation, bones cracking and reforming, muscles rippling beneath skin that gives way to golden blonde fur.
Within seconds, Stasio is draped across the back of the wolf.
With haunches coiled tight, Conan launches himself through the doorway and into the corridor beyond, disappearing from view.
There’s no way in hell Stasio is behind this, not when he’s lying there broken and bleeding like a discarded rag doll. He’s lucky to be alive, assuming Conan manages to get him to Dr. Olcan fast enough.
All I know in this moment is that I still believe that Jayme’s a puppet. But if Stasio isn’t pulling the strings, then who is?
My brain kicks into overdrive, sorting through fragments of memory like shuffling through photographs. That first night. The dinner. Holden walking past me with that sharp, medicinal scent clinging to him like cologne. I’d written it off then, just another strange detail in this impossible world.
Blackroot.
The pieces slam into place with brutal clarity. Holden brought the Blackroot to Dr. Olcan. He chose to go right up to Jayme’s cell when he was attacked. Jayme has attacked all three of the Shaman by now, but Holden walked away with the least-severe injuries.
Holy shit.
The wolves snarl and snap in a chaotic mass of fur and teeth as they try to pin Jayme down. Xander’s black form collides with Jayme’s flank, sending them both crashing into what’s left of a dresser.
I need to tell them. But how the hell do I get their attention when they’re in full wolf mode, fighting for their lives?
“Holden!” I shout over the snarling chaos. “We need to get to Holden!”
Rhiannon’s wolf head whips toward me, golden-brown eyes bright with understanding. She glances back at Xander, who’s got Jayme backed into a corner. The Alpha’s wolf snarls at Jayme. They must be talking through mind-link, though, because Xander gives her a quick nod.
“Alpha, keep Jayme contained until we get back!” I call out, already moving toward the door.
Rhiannon and Akila bound ahead of me, their wolf forms eating up the distance in powerful strides. My human legs pump hard to keep up, my muscles burning as we race through the corridors. Servants press themselves against walls as we thunder past.
We skid to a stop outside Holden’s chambers. I grab the handle and twist. Locked. Of course it’s locked.
But Rhiannon and Akila are already in motion. They charge the door together, three hundred pounds of muscle and momentum each slamming into the wood. The door explodes inward, hinges screaming as they tear free from the frame. Splinters scatter across the floor.
In the center of the room, Holden sits cross-legged on the polished stone floor with his back to us, his dark hair falling forward as his head bows in concentration.
He’s positioned perfectly in the center of a glowing yellow circle that radiates an unsettling, pulsating light across the chamber walls.
Symbols I don’t recognize fade in and out along the circle’s inner edge, pulsing with the same yellow glow. Lines converge at the center, forming a triangle beneath Holden’s meditative form. A low hum coming from him reverberates throughout the chamber, raising every hair on my arms.
The destruction of the door breaks his concentration. His head turns toward us, eyes blazing that same eerie yellow as the circle beneath him. For a heartbeat, that supernatural glow bathes his face in harsh light. Then recognition crosses his features, and the brightness fades from his gaze.
“You!” I say. “I should’ve known from the beginning!”
“You’re too late, Truth Seer!” His face twists, initial surprise morphing into pure rage. “You’re too late!”
Light engulfs Holden’s form as his body lifts from the floor. He sweeps his arms forward, bringing his hands together into a triangular symbol and pressing it to his chest.
“Don’t let him get away!” I leap toward him.
A blur of black fur flashes past me, close enough that her coat brushes my shoulder.
Rhiannon. Heat radiates off her body as she rockets forward, and in that instant of contact, my heart stutters before locking into that same impossible rhythm from the courtyard.
Only this time it’s stronger, even more blended, like a single heartbeat split between two bodies.
A presence brushes against my mind. Foreign, feminine, and ferocious.
Ethan, what— A thought that isn’t mine slices through my head.
I stumble. Blink hard. It vanishes so fast I almost convince myself I imagined it.
Rhiannon’s wolf form stutters mid-leap, her head whipping back with a look of unguarded shock. She senses it too, and it’s thrown her off in the middle of an attack.
But she recovers her momentum and unleashes a thunderous roar that resounds through the chamber as she lunges toward Holden with deadly precision.
Right on her heels, Akila surges forward in her wolf form, her snarls echoing off the stone walls as she closes the gap with frightening speed.
Light erupts like a detonating star, flooding the chamber with blinding radiance. I throw up an arm to shade my eyes, squinting against the searing brightness as Holden’s power obliterates every shadow, every detail around us.
For a second, everything disappears. The room, the wolves, Holden himself.
All of it is replaced by the roar of blood in my ears and adrenaline rushing through me.
Only it isn’t just me. That same shared rhythm slams back into place, harder this time, like my pulse has latched onto Rhiannon’s and refuses to let go.
I can’t see her, can’t hear her, but she’s right there, beat for beat, like she’s hardwired straight to me.
The brilliance vanishes in a blink, and three sets of paws slam against bare stone where the young Shaman stood just moments ago. The room is empty. Holden has escaped.
The wolves’ bodies ripple and compress, their powerful forms shrinking and reshaping until Rhiannon and Akila stand before me in their human forms, breathing hard from the exertion.
Rhiannon’s fingers press flat against her chest like she’s checking her own heartbeat. Her gaze lingers on me for a few seconds before her expression quickly reverts back to hard and controlled. Whatever just happened in that blast, I didn’t imagine it. She felt it too.
Later. Think about this later. If there is a later.
“Fuck!” Conan emerges in the doorway, kicking the nearest piece of debris. “That bastard.”
Jayme, Rhiannon’s voice rings through my mind, loud and clear.
I jerk back. My mouth opens before my brain catches up.
“Jayme.” We say it aloud together.
Her eyes go wide. She knows what just happened.
Without warning, she bolts from the room.
The rest of us scramble to catch up, our footsteps pounding the stone floors, the frantic sound chasing us through the empty corridors.
We burst into Stasio’s destroyed chamber to find Xander crouched over Jayme’s unconscious form. Both are human again. Jayme lies curled in a fetal position on the debris-strewn floor, fresh wounds marking his bare skin, but nothing life-threatening from what I can see.
Xander looks up at us, sweat gleaming on his skin from the fight. “He just shifted back. One second he was trying to tear my throat out, the next he collapsed like this.” Xander’s eyes transfer directly to me. “What happened?”
“We found Holden,” I manage to say.
“He was using some kind of Shaman magic.” Rhiannon’s voice is strained from exertion and anger. “But he vanished before we could get to him.”
Xander stands determinedly. “Then it’s true. Holden has been controlling Jayme this whole time.”
I nod, watching Jayme’s chest rise and fall with shallow breaths.
Conan pounds the wall with a fist. “And now that mystical psychopath is loose somewhere, probably plotting his next move.”
Akila puts her hand on Conan’s shoulder. “We’ll find him.”
Rhiannon’s fist tightens at her side. “And when we do, we’ll make sure he never hurts Jayme again.”