Chapter 39
As Malakai led the woman away, she looked back once.
Fear filled her eyes, accompanied by something that did not belong beside it. Her gaze searched Rhen’s face as though she recognized something she could not remember.
The expression twisted sharply inside him.
He despised witches. Every instinct demanded that he distrust her kind, and nothing about her impossible arrival suggested innocence.
Yet the look in her eyes had not been cunning or calculated.
She appeared to have been thrown into the center of a nightmare without knowing who had sent her.
The uncertainty made Rhen’s fury burn hotter.
When she disappeared into the back corridor, Dax moved toward him. His attention shifted between Cole and the passage through which Malakai had taken the stranger.
Rhen turned to him.
“Stand the strike team down.”
Dax’s attention snapped back to him.
“The assault?”
“Postponed. Those rogues weren’t feeding.
They were waiting.” Rhen looked toward Cole, whose body continued to jerk beneath the storm trapped inside him.
“Whether they knew our target or not, they pulled three of us into a prepared kill zone before midnight and nearly took one of us out. We do not walk the rest of the clan into whatever they arranged next.”
Dax studied him for a moment before nodding.
“I’ll maintain the lockdown and keep the inner guard around Norse.”
“Nobody leaves the stronghold until we know how much the enemy anticipated.”
“And X?” Dax asked.
Rhen’s expression hardened.
“If the heretic was telling the truth, X is no longer missing. He is compromised.”
Dax reached for his phone, transmitting the order before his attention shifted toward the passage through which Malakai had taken the stranger.
“And her?”
“I don’t know.”
The scent of her magic remained in the hall, clean, intoxicating, and vile.
“But I will find out.”
“And when you do?”
Rhen did not blink.
“There will be no mercy.”
Cole’s breathing became harsher behind them. Each inhale sounded sharp and strained, and his body jerked as though the storm remained trapped beneath his skin and was attempting to tear its way free.
Dax immediately crouched beside him and steadied his shoulders.
“He is getting worse. We need something, or he is not going to survive this.”
Rhen’s jaw tightened.
Cole appeared to be consuming himself from within.
“Do you not have a female to occupy you?” Rhen asked.
Dax’s head snapped up.
“Give it a rest. This is not the time.”
Every use of Cole’s power took something from him. He did not simply control weather; he opened himself to it and allowed the elements to move through his body.
The debt had come due.
Standing over him would accomplish nothing.
The witch might.
Rhen turned and left the room without another word.
He moved through the corridor with his rage packed tightly beneath his skin. He wanted violence, but violence without purpose would not keep Cole alive.
The witch had appeared with impossible timing, wrapped in old magic and claiming ignorance.
Rhen did not believe in coincidence.
He opened the back-room door hard enough to shake the hinges.
The woman jerked in the chair, her eyes snapping toward him.
Wet hair remained plastered to her face and shoulders, and her dress still clung to her body. Another male might have seen temptation.
Rhen saw a threat.
Her breath caught beneath the weight of his stare. Fear moved visibly through her, but she did not look away.
“You are going to start talking,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know how I got here. I swear.”
“Bullshit.”
Rhen crossed the room and stopped directly before her.
“Witches do not appear inside protected territory by accident. Tell me what you know, or I will make you regret surviving the journey.”
She trembled, but remained seated.
Beneath the terror, something else flickered through her expression.
Familiarity.
It was not recognition in any form she appeared able to understand, but the pull of it existed regardless.
“I don’t know how I came here,” she repeated. “But I can help.”
Rhen’s eyes narrowed.
“The male you carried inside—Cole. His power is making him sick.”
“How do you know his name?”
“I heard the others say it.”
“And how do you know what is happening to him?”
“I am an elemental witch.” Her words emerged rapidly now. “I can feel the energy around him. It is out of control, and it is destroying him from inside.”
She was correct.
That fact only increased Rhen’s suspicion.
“What are you proposing? That I allow you to put more witchcraft inside him?”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“Your intentions are irrelevant.”
“If you do not let me try, he will die.”
The fear remained in her voice, but something firmer had begun to emerge beneath it.
“His power is not only passing through him anymore. He is becoming part of it, and his body cannot release what remains. I may be able to draw it out.”
Rhen watched her.
Her hands shook. Her breathing came too quickly. Every visible response suggested real fear, although he trusted appearances less than words.
“If this is a trick,” he said, “I will tear out your throat before you complete it.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Move.”
The witch rose upon unsteady legs.
Rhen led her back to the main hall, keeping close enough to kill her before she could direct a spell elsewhere.
Cole remained where they had placed him. His face had become gray, while dark veins stood beneath his skin like trapped lightning. The remaining storm energy continued moving through him in uncontrolled aftershocks.
Malakai had returned and stood near the couch. Dax remained at Cole’s side.
The witch did not hesitate.
She lowered herself beside Cole and placed both hands lightly at the center of his chest.
Her fingers trembled.
Rhen positioned himself directly behind her.
“I need space,” she said.
“You do not make demands here. Do whatever you intend to do.”
Fear flashed across her face.
Then she focused upon Cole.
Her lips moved around words none of the brothers understood.
Elementa terra, succede venenum. Tolle dolorem… capta ab eo.
The air shifted.
There was no burst of light or dramatic eruption. Pressure changed inside the room as though something had sealed every door and window at once.
Energy gathered between the witch’s hands and Cole’s chest.
The storm inside him resisted.
His body arched, and the power bucked beneath his skin before beginning to move toward her hands.
The moment it entered her, she convulsed.
A strangled cry tore from her throat as pain struck through her body. Her shoulders jerked, and every muscle tightened as though a live current had entered her veins.
She was not a vampire. Her body lacked their capacity to regenerate through extensive damage, yet she held the connection open.
Her voice broke but continued.
Elementa… capta venenum… vinci ab eo…
Dax looked toward Rhen.
“What is she doing?”
Rhen gave no answer.
He watched every movement of her hands and every change in Cole’s condition, prepared to kill her the moment the spell turned against his brother.
The woman cried out when the storm surged again. Tears moved down her face, but her palms remained pressed against Cole’s chest.
Malakai stepped into Dax’s line of sight and signed.
She is drawing all of it into herself.
The brothers exchanged a look.
Witches did not sacrifice themselves for vampires. Not for strangers and not while trapped inside a hostile stronghold.
The woman’s cries echoed through the hall.
Her arms shook violently, and her face had become pale beneath the sweat. She was approaching the limit of what her body could contain.
Cole’s tremors began to ease.
His breathing became more even as the trapped energy withdrew from him.
Every trace leaving Cole entered her.
The witch whimpered as the pain overwhelmed whatever composure she had left. Her entire body shook, but she refused to break the connection.
Dax stared at her.
“She is going to tear herself apart.”
Her mouth trembled as she forced out the final words.
Capta ab eo… vinci ab eo…
The air cracked.
The sound was not lightning but something deeper, like the final hook of the storm tearing free from Cole’s bones.
The power slammed into her.
She screamed as her body convulsed beneath the surge. Her muscles locked, and the glyphwork beneath her skin flashed silver through the glamour.
Rhen stepped forward.
If her control failed now, he would end her before whatever she had taken could return to Cole.
Before he could determine whether intervention was necessary, the final current left his brother.
The witch collapsed.
She folded to the floor as though every bone inside her had turned to ash and lay trembling in paralyzing agony, barely conscious.
Cole became still upon the couch.
The room fell silent.