Chapter 27
Phoenix
“Karrick!” I cried as my mate, the last person I ever expected or hoped to see again, burst through my bedroom door in a shower of splinters.
But I didn’t have time to say anything else before my parents were already forming offensive spells. I only caught snippets of their chanting, but their movements left little to the imagination. They meant to kill Karrick, and fast.
Karrick, however, was faster.
With a sudden burst of light, I watched as his claws extended, his eyes filled with rage, and all that untapped elemental magic inside him burst forth in spectacular fashion.
The room exploded into chaos.
Ice crystals burst from the floorboards beneath Karrick’s feet while vines erupted through the walls, their thorned lengths wrapping around my father’s legs before he could complete his spell.
My mother shrieked as a gust of wind slammed her backward against the window, her carefully styled hair whipping around her face.
Glass cracked, but the frame held her weight before she slipped to the floor in a heap.
But Karrick wasn’t done. He roared again, a sound that was more beast than man, and I watched in awe as flames danced along his claws. Not just any flames, they burned with the same golden orange color as my own fire magic, as if our bond, though dampened, was somehow amplifying his power.
“You took him from me!” Karrick snarled, advancing on my parents with deadly intent. My father tried to raise another shield, but the vines tightened around his ankles, sending him crashing to the floor. “You stole my mate!”
The magical rope around my wrists suddenly felt looser, as if Karrick’s beastly magic was interfering with its binding properties.
I twisted my hands, trying to work them free, desperate to help him.
My heart soared with relief and love so intense it physically hurt.
He’d found me. Somehow, impossibly, he’d found me.
My mother scrambled to her feet, her face twisted with fury and fear. “You abomination! You’ve corrupted my son with your filthy beast magic!”
“The only thing corrupted here is you,” Karrick growled, and I felt a surge of fierce pride at his words. The temperature in the room dropped several degrees as frost began forming on the windows.
Behind him, I glimpsed movement in the doorway, more figures rushing in. A werewolf with his golden eyes blazing. A red-haired man I didn’t recognize. Others I couldn’t make out in the chaos. Karrick had brought help, a tiny magical battalion made up of monsters and witches.
“Karrick,” I called out, my voice cracking with emotion. “The rope! I can almost—”
He turned toward me for just a split second, and I saw the moment his eyes found mine. The raw relief and love in his expression made my chest flutter. But that moment of distraction was all my father needed.
From the floor he shouted something in old Welsh, his hand thrust toward Karrick.
And I watched as the binding spell hit him square in the chest. Horror filled me as his massive frame suddenly locked up, frozen mid-step.
His eyes went wide with shock and rage, but his body wouldn’t obey him anymore.
He was like a living statue and no longer breathing.
“No!” I screamed, finally managing to slip one hand free of the loosened rope. But before I could do anything else, my mother was beside me, her hand pressed against my forehead.
“Sleep Phoenix!” she cried, pressing her spell against my skin. “And when you wake, this will all be nothing but a passing dream.”
“Not so fast,” the red-haired fae said, green magic forming around his hands as he suddenly appeared next to us.
Before my mother could even form a syllable, the fae touched a finger to her forehead, and she went limp, crumpling to the floor. Then, with a snap of his fingers, she disappeared completely.
“What did you do with her?” I gasped, watching my mother vanish before my eyes.
“Just a little relocation spell,” the fae replied with a wink. “She’s taking a nice nap in the garden shed. She’ll be quite confused when she wakes up.”
My father bellowed with rage, still tangled in the vines sprouting from the walls. The werewolf with golden eyes pounced on him immediately, pinning him to the ground with a growl that made the hair on my arms stand up.
“Phoenix,” the fae said, turning to me. His eyes glimmered with an otherworldly light. “I’m Wild. That’s Elias over there helping your boyfriend.” He gestured to a dark-haired witch who was already examining Karrick’s frozen form. “We need to get that binding rope off you completely.”
With nimble fingers, Wild helped me remove the magical rope from my other wrist. The moment it fell away, I felt my magic surge back through my veins like wildfire, hot and urgent and desperate to be released. The connection to Karrick flared back to life so suddenly it left me dizzy.
“Karrick,” I whispered, stumbling toward his frozen form. His eyes followed my movement, the only part of him that could still move. The rage in them had been replaced by something softer, more vulnerable. Fear. Not for himself, but for me.
“What did my father do to him?” I asked, my voice breaking as I placed my hands on Karrick’s chest. He was cold to the touch, his skin like marble.
“Binding spell,” Elias replied with a scoff. “And a pathetic one at that. I was doing these at the age of twelve.”
Elias reached into his pocket and drew out a two-foot-long wand wound with gold and copper. With a few muttered words and a tap to Karrick’s forehead, I watched as the spell melted away, a breath finally filling Karrick’s lungs. Relief washed through our bond as I threw my arms around his neck.
The moment Karrick could move again, his arms came around me with crushing force, pulling me against his chest as if he could somehow absorb me into his very being. I buried my face in his neck, breathing in his familiar scent beneath the lingering smell of magic and adrenaline.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered against my hair, his voice rough and broken. “I couldn’t feel you through our bond. I thought—”
“I’m here,” I managed, my own voice thick with tears I’d been holding back for hours. “I’m okay. You found me.”
His massive hands cupped my face, tilting it up so he could look at me. His brown eyes searched mine desperately, as if checking to make sure I was really there, really whole. “Did they hurt you? Did they—”
“No,” I said quickly, though my cheek still stung where Thomas had slapped me. “Not really. They were planning to, but you got here first.”
Relief flooded through our bond so intensely it made my knees weak. Karrick pressed his forehead against mine, and for a moment the chaos around us faded into nothing. There was just him and me and the overwhelming gratitude that we’d found each other again.
“Uh, guys?” Wild’s voice cut through our reunion. “Not to interrupt this touching moment, but we should probably get moving before—”
The sound of footsteps thundering up the stairs made us all freeze. Heavy boots, multiple sets, moving with military precision.
“Backup,” Atlas growled from where he still had my father pinned. “Security must know we’re here.”
My father laughed, the sound bitter and triumphant despite his position on the floor. “Did you really think it would be that easy? The entire Purity Front has been watching this house since the moment you breached the wards. We knew you were here the entire time.”
My blood ran cold. This had been a trap all along.
“We need to go. Now,” Elias said urgently, already moving toward the window. “Wild, can you create another portal?”
“Not after what I did to get us in here,” Wild replied, his face pale with exhaustion. “I’m tapped out for the next few hours at least.”
The footsteps were getting closer, accompanied by voices shouting orders I couldn’t quite make out. But I caught enough to know they weren’t planning to take prisoners.
“The window,” Karrick said, releasing me just long enough to stride across the room. Without hesitation, he drove his clawed fist through the glass, sending shards cascading to the ground below. “It’s not that far of a drop.”
“For you maybe,” I said, looking down at the fifteen-foot fall to the manicured lawn below. “Some of us are human-sized.”
“I’ll carry you,” he said, his eyes fierce with determination as he scooped me up in his arms. “Hold on tight.”
The footsteps had reached the top of the stairs, but we were already out of the window, my stomach lurching as we plummeted through the air.
But Karrick, thanks to his Beastkin strength, landed easily in the grass without so much as a huff.
My weight was nothing to him and despite the danger, he was still purely focused on me.
Behind us the others came down. The werewolf carried the blonde witch and Wild came down hand in hand with Elias, the pair of them coming to a stop a few inches above the ground before dropping the rest of the way slowly.
Karrick didn’t look back as he headed for the edge of the property.
But he didn’t need to. I glanced over his shoulder, still cradled in his arms. Everyone was there, running with us. All five of them.
Wait. Five?
And that’s when the fifth figure suddenly swerved and collided with Karrick. There was a pained cry, a flash of agony through our bond, and then we were toppling to the ground, a tangle of limbs and fur.
I scrambled to my feet, panic surging through me as I finally realized who the fifth figure was. I stared as Thomas stood over Karrick, a wicked blade in his hand. Blood glistened on the metal, black in the moonlight, and Karrick’s massive form had gone suddenly, terrifyingly still once more.
“No!” I screamed, flames erupting from my fingertips as rage and terror coursed through me. But Thomas just smiled, that same smug, satisfied smile I’d come to hate.