Chapter 19
Kiara
I walked in a haze for the rest of the journey back to Everett’s house.
Clouds moved across the sky, blocking out the sun and turning the air cold. Even with the leggings and t-shirt I wore, there was a chill in my blood that I couldn’t seem to shake. I knew what it was from. The last image I’d had of my mother was lodged in my mind, that vision of her staring sadly at me as I left her—again. Tears rolling down her cheeks. Only this time, we both knew that I wouldn’t be able to save her. It would be the last time I’d ever see her, and the weight of her permanent absence dragged me down to the depths of my inner ocean, sapping all the heat and strength from my body. I’d failed.
The small reassurances offered by my companions meant nothing to me. Aislin and Billie apologized softly for having to leave my mother behind, but it wasn’t their fault—it was mine. I was the one stupid enough to endanger the infant and force my mother to stay behind and help her. Maybe if I had handed her to Lothair, he would have let us slip past him to freedom. Or maybe if I had been stronger, if I had been able to force my mother to her feet, we could have brought her with us. I could have healed her with my own magic. My mind was rife with hypotheticals, but no matter how desperately I conjured alternative solutions, nothing would override the truth of what had happened. She was gone, and there was nothing I could do to bring her back. My jaw trembled as I tried to keep myself from breaking down.
We arrived at Everett’s house on the mountainside in silence, the aftermath of the night at the mine bearing down on us. Mythguard had lost five operatives, while Eastpeak had lost one pack member, all for a seemingly pointless rescue mission. It would have been worth something had we recovered my mother. But all we had that we didn’t have before was Colt Hexen lumbering behind us. The Alphas believed they could use his insights to defend ourselves against David and Lothair, but I didn’t think we could trust him worth a damn. Not after everything they’d told me about him, and not after what he’d done to me. His apologies were just words. He had handed me that baby knowing it would endanger me—for all I knew, it had all been part of his plan to get the infant injured and make my mother stay behind. I couldn’t help but blame him. As we walked into Everett’s living room and everyone else finally sat down, I hovered, refusing to look at anyone, unsure if I even wanted to be here.
Gavin ran his hand through his hair. “Okay. The full moon is in less than a week. We need to come up with a game plan.”
Everybody stayed silent. Turning my back to the group, I clasped my hand over my mouth, fighting an unwelcome surge of emotions.
“Hello? Guys?” probed Gavin.
“Give us a moment,” said Everett, his voice rough with agitation. “We just lost six people this morning.”
Gavin sighed. “Right. Sorry.” I heard his footsteps leading back to Billie and imagined his hands on her arms as they exchanged quiet comforts.
“Kiara…” Everett continued.
I didn’t face him.
The Eastpeak Alpha stepped closer. “What are the chances your mother will survive the next few days? Do you think it’s worth raiding the mine again before the full moon?”
My heart clenched with pain. I wanted to yell at him for the insensitivity of his question, but rationality told me he was only trying to prepare, to come up with a plan like Gavin had just urged us to do. Still, my head was spinning, and my mouth was too dry to say anything useful. “I don’t know.”
“Your mother was in bad shape when we left her. All that blood she was exposed to could kill her,” Everett pointed out.
“I know.”
“So, do you think she’ll survive until the full moon?”
“I don’t know, Everett.”
“We can go back if you believe she’ll still be alive.”
My voice died in my throat. I was unsure of what I wanted to believe versus what I already knew.
“We can try to save her, Kiara.”
She was still in human form when we left her. If she died in human form, David and Lothair would need another unicorn horn: mine. I was sure they would try to keep her alive long enough for her to shift into her beast form. But the instant she transformed, they’d kill her, and she was already so weak…
“Kiara?”
“There’s no point,” I croaked finally. “She’s as good as dead.”
“We can still save her,” Everett insisted.
“They’ll kill her as soon as they can get her to transform. She won’t survive the next few days.”
Both of the women pushed toward me. I felt a hand on my shoulder and tensed, even if it was only the gentle consolation of Billie’s touch, an expression of her understanding—I didn’t want that from anybody. I whipped away from them, facing everyone with tears in the corners of my eyes. I focused on Colt, who had never stopped looking at me. My frown deepened with hatred and anger, but I could no longer tell if he deserved it.
“I saw her dying,” I said venomously to everyone in the room. “She used too much of her magic trying to heal people who took her for granted, who were too weak and scared to try to save her until I took the risk first. My mother is as good as dead. You’re better off waiting until you have Lycans rampaging through town. They’ll be an easier target than cowards hiding behind their minions in that mine.”
I resisted the urge to storm off before they could react, my feet remaining anchored to the floor. But nobody said anything. Just giving up didn’t feel like something I would do, but what other option did I have? Going back meant certain death, and chances were my mother would already be dead. If she wasn’t, then chances were her body would fail before long. I felt pathetic and weak and didn’t want to stand before the others any longer.
“Ais, why don’t you show Kiara to one of the guest bedrooms,” Everett suggested softly.
I was about to rush outside, but a warm bedroom sounded much nicer, so I begrudgingly allowed Aislin to lead me upstairs, down the hallway, and into one of the Eastpeak Alpha’s spare bedrooms. Once inside, I lingered, looking at the bed and breathing in the amalgam of scents belonging to all the room’s previous inhabitants, none of them my mother.
“Kiara, I’m sorry,” the redhead offered.
“Leave.”
Aislin sighed and shut the door behind her on her way out.
I crawled onto the bed, wrapped myself up in the comforter, and retreated into the silence of solitude. The past few days had given me no respite, and even this was barely a reprieve from the harshness I had endured—but at least it was a warm, safe place, so I closed my eyes and quickly drifted off to sleep.
The moss-covered boulders towered over me. Long fronds of bright green grass tickled my ears as my eyes opened to golden sunshine. Dandelion fluffs drifted overhead on the gentle breeze. Lying on my back, I watched clouds amble across the sky, a sense of peace coaxing me into awareness of my surroundings. I was back in the sacred place I had been taken away from.
A buzzing sound flew past my ear, jarring me off my back and onto my stomach.
Wide-eyed, I searched the glade for the source of the noise. The light breeze was all that moved. I stood, looking around, and was met with a sweet, familiar smell that reminded me of home: my mother. I parted my lips to call for her, but in my hybrid beast form, I uttered nothing but a whine.
Something moved between the trees. A dash of pearlescent white, silky strands raised by the wind like a banner. I moved after the illusion, lured by the sunlight glinting off her horn. I had to be with her! I needed to embrace her, to feel her in my arms again.
Insects whirred past me, distracting and loud. They kept diverting me from my path, pulling my eyes off the unicorn ahead of me until I feared too long a distraction would cause her to vanish. I tried to focus on her, but the glass-winged insects began to swarm. The dragonflies were back. A dense cloud of them gathered between me and the unicorn. This feeling of desperation and fear was familiar; I was scared that my mother would be taken from me again. I ran faster, calling out for her, but my words were distorted and surreal.
The dragonflies swarmed me again. So many of them landed on my shoulders that I felt too heavy to run. They bit my legs and crawled into my ears, dragging me down to the grass. My calls turned into cries as I became incapacitated by them.
Then, there was a hard wind blowing the dragonflies away from me. The wind didn’t stop. It ruffled my fur and howled in my ears. With all my strength, I raised my head and looked between the trees, and there was the unicorn with her horn raised skyward—her magic rescuing me from the dragonflies. Her eyes were a dulcet blue. It wasn’t the face of my mother.
Welkin, I realized.
The Sky Goddess drifted closer as hurricane gales wrapped around me. With each step, the wind blew even stronger until it was nearly enough to sweep me off my feet. I could barely look up at her. Welkin stared down at me, unbothered by the wind, her command unspoken.
She would not stand for the affront that had been committed against her.
My mother’s death could not go unpunished.
I woke from the dream with a gasp. Seconds later, someone knocked on my door.
“Kiara, are you awake?” Billie asked gently.
Hesitating in silence, I gauged whether or not I wanted to speak with anyone. The dream burned vividly in my mind’s eye—the feeling of the dragonflies gnawing on my skin, the sheer winds evocative of the Sky Goddess’s grief. I cleared my throat and sat up. “What is it?”
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah.”
The door slowly cracked open, and Billie stepped into the room. Then, behind her, gingerly hunched with his wrists still bound, was Colt, his eyebrows drawn together over his dark blue eyes. A blue that struck me with the same grief as Welkin’s.
“Colt wanted to talk to you,” said Billie. “I understand if you don’t want to see him right now. We’ll leave if you tell us to. Otherwise, I thought if you wanted to feel safer, I could stay while he says whatever he has to say to you.” She glanced sidelong at Colt, her face hardened and unforgiving of him, warning him that neither she nor I were to be trifled with.
I bristled when I met Colt’s gaze. However, burdened as we both were by all the pain we’d each suffered, our mate bond left us aching for union. We remained drawn to one another in spite of it all. I didn’t feel strong enough to resist our bond, especially when the dream had impressed those blue eyes into my thoughts. “I’ll speak with him alone,” I decided.
“It’s fine. I can stay, really,” Billie insisted.
“That won’t be necessary.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood, staring with a warning of my own at my fated mate. “He’s not going to take anything else from me.”
Billie glanced at Colt, who nodded. He mustered a small smile for his adoptive sister, but she had yet to move past everything he had done and gave him little more than a cold look before heading for the door. “Call for us if you need anything,” Billie advised.
I understood. Call for them if Colt tried anything.
When the door closed, it was just Colt and me in the bedroom. We stood before each other, once more at a stalemate, as we grappled with the urges of our fated bond.
I dared him to make the first move.