Chapter 31 – Ryder
Thirty-One
RYDER
When I return to camp after a long morning of patrols, only one thing—one person—is on my mind. And although it’s a risky, stupid fact, she is.
Holding her in my arms all last night wasn’t like in my cabin. It was more intimate. She was on me—infecting me with a curse I’m growing hesitant to be cured of.
My eyes sweep the camp, spotting Leah but not Carina. Scents of her, old and new, linger, make it difficult to distinguish where she’s gone. As I’m crossing to Leah to see what she knows, Marissa streaks across the camp.
Panic quells any desire previously felt. Her expression tells me everything, so without an explanation, I take off for Dad’s cabin.
Be okay, be okay, be okay. It’s what I recite, shoving through the door.
Dad is laying in bed, his breathing laboured like before but now for all the wrong reasons. He stretches a hand towards me with less effort than he’s needed all week. It draws my attention to where his skin is loose on his hand, his body thinning before my very eyes.
But what’s the most striking is the absence of black magick wrapped around his body; the suffocation the cabin was being dealt with.
“What happened?” I demand to no one in particular while crossing the room to his side.
“I’m dying. I feel it, Ryder.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I have been for a while. You know it. I know it.” He gazes up at me, sad, like I’m the one laying in a bed claiming death is close.
Grief is slowly lodging into my heart with his every—and numbered—breath. I do know it because he said as much the morning after the attack. “I don’t understand. The magick?”
“Is gone. Carina…”
My teeth snap together at her name and preferring not to yell at Dad, I whirl on Marissa who hovers by the door. “Explain.”
“I don’t know what she did, Ryder.” Marissa worries her hands, brows drawn in with a grim look. “It was sudden. She just took it. It transferred from him to her.”
Morgan said the only thing any of them could do was the one thing they’d refuse to: accept the magick for themselves—willingly turn Dark.
“No,” I growl at the reminder. She didn’t take it. She wouldn’t be that stupid. She wouldn’t accept Darkness, only hours after admitting how terrified she is of what it’ll do to her.
But she would. It’s a hard fact. Carina, as I’ve come to learn, is that person. Just like Dad’s impending death. It’s a fact I don’t want to believe but can’t stop either.
“No.” She didn’t do this to herself because I won’t let her be lost to magick unknown.
“She’s a good person, Ryder. Take care of her, no matter what you choose to do with the bond.”
If she keeps being reckless, there won’t be a bond to accept or deny.
Dad coughs again, and it brings me back to the immediate problem. “If the magick is gone, your body will heal. You’ll be fine.”
He lightly squeezes my hand. “Like I said, I feel it. The magick not only weakened me but aged me. Made me tired of living without your mother. Without my mate.” He catches my eye. “It’s a lonely road without one, but it’s difficult to ignoring an earth-chosen bond.”
“No.” Apparently, it’s the only word in my vocabulary.
“I’m ready,” he says, shoving the knife of grief deeper into my gut.
“The pack will thrive under your leadership…Alpha.” He squeezes his eyes shut and turns his head slightly, displaying as much submission as he can.
“Your mother is waiting for me in the Otherworld. I need her, Ryder, like the pack now needs you. Carina needs you. And you need her.”
I won’t accept this. This isn’t how his life is supposed to end.
Marissa wanders closer, resting her hand on my shoulder, but I surge to my feet, denying the knowledge of the facts my stomach twists with; what he’s so clearly telling me.
“No, you’re not dying. You’ll make it. I’ll make sure you fucking survive.”
“Ryder…”
Ignoring him, I command, “Let the others say goodbye.”
Then I take off, with the intent to unleash the monster clawing at my insides to roam free.
But not before unleashing him on the woman who’s making a monster of me.