Chapter 21 Ice #3
Jonen retrieved Corric’s pants, sliding them over his legs so he wouldn’t get cold.
Purring, he curled up against Jonen’s chest and let the alpha wrap him in his arms, warming him where the cool night air was kissing his skin.
Brushing hair from his sticky forehead, Jonen laid gentle possessive kisses on his forehead as he felt his consciousness beginning to wane.
Pulling himself from the brink of sleep, Corric opened his eyes. “But what about you?”
Jonen chuckled, nosing at him. “Let me hold you while you sleep, Omega. That’s all I want.”
It was a lie; they both knew it. Corric could feel the press of Jonen’s thick cock against his thigh, and he smelled like an alpha on the edge of rut. But falling asleep in Jonen’s arms sounded like the best thing Corric had ever heard.
He drifted off to the smell of his alpha, surrounded by his warmth, with the promise of a future just like this on the horizon.
“Scale Breaker!”
Corric jerked awake, hands curled into fists as he gasped for air.
His skin pebbled, goosebumps erupting along his skin as the icy chill of his nightmare faded.
Throat aching, he blinked into the dim light of an unfamiliar tent.
It took him a moment to remember he’d fallen asleep with Jonen the night before.
Coming down from the dream, Corric laid a palm against his chest and felt the erratic beating of his heart begin to slow.
When he made to pull it away, his skin stuck.
Looking down in confusion, he peeled his hand away to see it was coated in something sticky.
Touching his fingertips together, he tried to identify whatever he’d gotten all over his hands.
For an embarrassing moment, he thought it was slick. He smelled iron.
Then the hearth beside him flared to life, briefly illuminating the tent enough that he could see the tacky brownish stains on his hands.
Blood. Gasping, he looked down at himself to see where it was coming from.
No pain or injuries made themselves apparent, his skin only marred by bruises Jonen’s hands and teeth had left behind.
“Jonen…” he started, turning to look at his alpha. Face turned away, Jonen’s hands were crossed over his stomach as he slept. Not wanting to rouse him with his stained hands, Corric used an elbow to shove at him.
One of Jonen’s hands slid off his body, limp.
“Jonen?” Corric tried again, forgetting about his hands as he reached for his face. Fingers wrapping around his shoulder, Corric shook him. Jonen’s head rolled to face him, brown eyes open and unseeing.
Crying out, Corric grabbed Jonen’s chest, only the feel this sick squelch of pooling blood.
It spattered up to his elbows, still warm.
No longer blocked by Corric, the light from the hearth spilled over Jonen.
His chest was awash with blood, thick and congealed, it poured out from a dagger sticking straight out of his chest.
Corric’s dagger.
He looked over his shoulder as if the dagger he’d placed the night before would still be there and not sticking out of his alpha.
“No, no, no,” he cried, hands shaking as he tried to feel Jonen’s neck for a pulse.
His skin felt cool and clammy under Corric’s wet fingers.
Tears clouded his vision as he desperately clawed at Jonen’s plump cheeks, shouting his name even as he felt the stillness of Jonen’s chest under him.
Dropping his forehead to Jonen’s, he sobbed. His chest ached and he prayed this was a terrible dream. A continuation of the nightmare he thought he just woke up from.
“Please, no, please,” Corric begged, hands hovering over the blade as he debated whether he should pull it free. He couldn’t think. His thoughts felt too quick.
Had Sinestrus killed Jonen? Had he come into their tent and…no. He couldn’t have. Sinestrus was still stuck in the mountain. Close as he was to breaking free, it was obvious he couldn’t leave. Not yet. That’s why he’d pulled Corric in. So, he could tell him—
So he could use him.
Trembling, Corric looked down at his hands.
Really looked. Past the congealed blood, he could see tiny knicks in the creases of his fingers.
He’d seen them before. Jonen had cut his hand like that the first time he slaughtered a deer, the blood making the handle of his blade greasy.
His hand had slipped onto the blade, and Osmond had chastised him for not being careful.
Corric handled the blade.
Horror clawed its way up his throat. He stared down at his shaking hands.
You’re still weak.
Pain.
Hate.
Despair.
Throwing himself back, Corric scrambled away from his alpha as if he could somehow undo what he’d done with distance.
His back hit the tent wall. He whimpered, refusing to look anywhere but at his hands.
No, no, he couldn’t have done this. He shook his head, shoving his hands into his hair to pull at the strands until the pain woke him.
Jerked him from this nightmare. When that didn’t work, he shoved himself to his feet, running from the tent.
Help. He needed help.
Ridan. He needed to find Ridan. He would know what to do. He always did.
Hitting the tent flap so hard it slapped him in the face, he stumbled into the wet predawn only to be met by the roaring of flames and the stench of burnt skin. His bare feet skid in the sand as he winced against the searing heat.
Several tents were on fire. Others were nothing but charred remains, their poles smoldering. The flames licked up into the sky, bathing the area in light.
Then he saw the bodies.
Strewn across the ground, the bodies of his clan almost looked as if they were moving. Shadows dancing across their faces gave them false life. Corric recognized Osmond first. He was on his stomach, half his face burned. His knives were knocked from his mangled hands, blackened in the dirt.
Niklas was across the way, bow snapped in half. His head was bent at an awful angle, staring lifelessly at what was to be his mate.
Corric stumbled away from their bodies, his throat dry as he inhaled lungfuls of thick smoke. Farther away from the tent, he could smell the rancid scent of burning hair and skin—something he’d only smelled at Chief Restrina’s funeral pyre.
This was so much worse.
Everywhere he looked, he saw familiar faces. Dead, familiar faces—burnt, smashed, twisted, and bloody. Henroen with his axe embedded in his back. Gustall with his throat slashed so deeply he was nearly decapitated.
Corric couldn’t escape it. He couldn’t breathe. His lungs wouldn’t expand. Uselessly, he swiped at his eyes, trying to rub the grit from them. Surely, he was imagining things. This couldn’t be real.
Stumbling backward, Corric tripped over something solid. It sent him sprawling into the dirt, palms searing in pain as he caught himself. Hyperventilating, he pushed himself up to glance back at what he’d tripped over.
A jagged line cut through the Maladon’s Aegis where it had been ripped in half. Scales scattered across the ground like a blood trail leading straight to Brune’s body. He was so mangled Corric could barely recognize him. He was reaching out, broken fingers stretched as far as they could.
Corric knew. Without looking, he knew.
Brune was reaching for Ridan. His blonde hair was singed, his face black where the flames had roasted the skin from the bones. Bruises and wounds marred Ridan’s body, but none so much as the sword sticking out from his chest. His father’s sword. Teeth glinting in the roaring flames.
Crawling towards him, Corric cradled his packmate's head. Ridan didn’t stir.
His eyes were closed, lashes twisted from the heat.
His lips were parted, but no breath stirred in his chest. He’d never been so still.
Ridan didn’t do still. He was always moving.
It was wrong. Corric clung to him, screaming between ragged breaths as he begged him to just move.
Boots scuffed against dirt and Corric jerked up, blinking away the tears to see grey eyes staring him down.
Schok was standing between the ruins of two tents. Unnatural flames licked up his arms as he surveyed the damage he wrought, face impassive. At his feet, Buzzard lay dead. His wings torn off so violently, Corric could see parts of his ribs.
“S-Schok,” Corric rasped.
His brother didn’t move, didn’t blink. He just stood frozen with vacant eyes.
Thrall. Had Sinestrus gotten to him?
“Schok, please!” he cried, clutching Ridan closer to him. “Break free! You have to get them out of your head! Please!” his lip wobbled, soot clinging to the tears on his cheek.
“You’re all I have left.”
There was no response. His brother was gone. Dropping his head, he sobbed against Ridan’s bloody hair. He smelled like death. Corric waited for Schok to kill him too, waited for the flames to take him. He wanted the pain to come, to take him away. To let him join his clan under Artrax’s wings.
When the searing heat didn’t come, he looked up to see that he was no longer in camp.
Corric was kneeling on the floor of the tunnel on Artrax’s Mountain, looking up at the cracks in the wall.
Ridan was no longer in his arms. The only evidence he had been was the blood and dirt smeared across Corric’s bare chest.
A pitiful cry ripped from Corric’s abused throat. Had any of it been real? Was he still in the mountain or was that all a dream, too? His hands slammed into the ground, the slap echoing around the tunnel.
Sinestrus laughed in his ear, his disembodied voice not echoing in the space. Corric lifted his chin to bare his teeth, screaming as he looked around desperately for the black void.
It was shifting along the ground beside a still Schok. The flames in his palms grew hotter, rising until they were flickering against the damp walls and ceiling of the tunnel. Schok’s skin blackened under the heat. Schok didn’t make a sound as he immolated himself.
Corric stared in horror, his chest squeezing as he watched his brother stagger, knees buckling as he crashed to the ground. The flames grew hotter and bigger until there was nothing that resembled his brother left, just a burnt husk lying on the ground.
“I told you I needed your hate,” Sinestrus said as the void began shifting along the walls, undulating its way towards where Corric was kneeling. The shadow consumed him, sucking him into the black cold.
“But your pain is just as powerful.”
Shadow fingers dug into his chin, jerking his mouth open as the void slipped inside.
Corric collapsed as the cold took him over.
Ice crept up his skin, shooting out in every direction until the tunnel was covered in frost. Corric tried to scream, but his lungs were frozen.
Flailing, he reached up only to see ice growing between his fingers.
Pain lanced through his head like a sword.
Closing his eyes, he tried to will his skull to stay together as the pain ramped up, throbbing through his body.
Memories flashed across his scrunched eyelids.
Corric as a child holding up a hand, giggling as he showed his mother a little snowflake spinning in the center of his palm.
His mother helping him craft little castles out of ice, clapping in delight when he could make them bigger and bigger.
Schok forced to apologize to him by their mother after he melted Corric’s favorite ice sculpture.
Then his mother, tearfully apologizing to him as she used her magic to seal his away.
Locked a part of him, a part of his soul, into a deep dark corner of his mind where he would never remember.
It hurt. More than anything he’d ever experienced—like his skin was being flayed from his bones.
He cried, but his mother held strong as she locked away all knowledge of his magical ability.
Magic. Corric had magic.
Heels digging into the ground, Corric clawed at his head with frozen fingers as the ice filled his throat. He couldn’t scream as the magic flooded back into him, stronger now after years of growing. Untouched. Pure.
New visions fluttered past his eyes. Things he didn’t recognize, memories that are not his.
Veins filling with shards of ice. The returning magic should have been like an old friend coming home, but it was too big, too much.
A square peg forced into a round hole. Corric didn’t want it.
His body rejected it, but the magic was stronger.
With a final chilly gasp, the magic took over. It crystalized across his skin, sealing itself in.
Frost clinging to his eyelashes, Corric desperately tried to find something to hold on to. Anything. He thought of twisted warm fingers and big brown eyes under a tangle of curls. Heart shattering in his frozen chest, Corric exhaled an icy plume.
Somewhere in the distance, Sinestrus laughed.