Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
With rebirth came power, and I was something wholly different and utterly unpredictable.
Ineeded rest, a moment to process, and an hour to plan our next steps. Underestimating Eloise Roberts would result in our demise, but utilizing her narcissistic tendencies was not only clever, but essential.
She would never fall for a ploy where I suddenly forgave her for being the worst grandparent on the planet, both alive or dead.
So we needed something to piss her off enough where she made her own decision to come.
My wedding was one, but I needed something ready to go now, not in several weeks’ time.
My fingers drummed on the kitchen counter as I watched the nightlife come alive through the window.
A flash of lightning made me blink, and when the spots stopped dancing in my vision, I spied a new house sitting on the lawn.
Dayna’s home had returned. It regularly appeared and disappeared off my lawn.
Who knows where it went when it was gone?
Maybe it attended meetings for sentient houses.
Whatever the reason, the ability to pick your house up and move was a handy skill to have.
No need to worry about hotel bills. But that house had an attitude, and if it didn’t like you, you could expect to be spat out on your ass.
“I can hear you thinking from across the house,” Sebastian drawled.
I glanced over my shoulder, taking in my best friend dressed in dark skinny jeans and a snug black T-shirt.
“Dressing down or to impress?” I wondered, my tone cordial but cold.
He flinched. We had, like most friends, had disagreements over the years, but this level of deception was new territory I wished we’d never traversed.
“Neither. I’m dressing like I’m neither the crown prince nor the most sought after bachelor in the country.”
My gaze swept down him. “I'm not sure you achieved that goal. Certain people are all over the tortured bad boy with a dark soul needing just the right person to make his world bright once more look.”
“My world hasn’t been bright in a very long time, Cora.”
He came to stand next to me and folded his arms with a nod at my aunt’s house. “We are running out of room. It’s a good thing the house is here.”
I scoffed. “If supernatural strays stopped moving in on a long-term basis, I’d have plenty of room.”
“You want me to leave?” He sounded as broken as I felt.
I squeezed my eyes closed and dragged in a breath. Did I? No, I didn’t think so. “No,” I settled on.
“I am sorry.”
“As you’ve said.”
“How can I make it up to you?”
The thought had been niggling at me all day. “Did you delete it yet?”
“Yes.”
My jaw clenched. The universe had already decided this for me. For reasons I couldn’t work out, that made me angry. “Okay.”
“But it is retrievable from the trash folder for 30 days.” Fuck. “I put a password on the file, so I can give you access.”
“Do it.”
His fingers curled around my wrist, and he spun me to face him. “It’s not an easy watch. You should have someone with you.”
I hadn’t even decided if I would watch it yet. It might be cleansing, or it might fuel my nightmares. But if I watched it, I could at least decide if I wanted the rest of the memories returned. Like peeking into my soul and checking the color.
I nodded once. “Okay.”
“You want me to come?”
I gazed into his eyes and tried to focus on the friendship that had bound us tighter than most. Sebastian hadn’t just seen me at my worst; he’d witnessed my pain, my humiliation, the trauma which stalked my nightmares.
He was, as they say, my ride or die. Except if you crossed him, the die part became a reality.
With a sigh, I nodded and led the way out of the kitchen and traipsed up the stairs. “We’re doing this now?” he checked from behind me.
“You have something more important to do?”
“No, but maybe you need to think about this.”
“All I do is think about this and imagine the what-ifs. It’s time to face these demons, and that starts with me stopping avoiding the hard things.”
I threw open the door to my rooms and welcomed him inside. “Drink?”
Sebastian frowned and glanced around as if he were looking for an out. “No, I don’t need refreshments. I might lose them.”
“That’s encouraging,” I muttered as I sat on the sofa. I patted the seat next to me. “Let’s do this.”
He slid his phone from his pocket and dropped down next to me with a sigh. “My phone or yours?”
“Yours. I plan on watching this once, then I want you to delete it forever.”
“Got it.”
He fiddled around on his screen before handing me the phone with a video cued up. The still was shadowy, but I could make out a bed and a small body lying on it.
“If it gets too much,” he whispered.
“It’s already too much, but I can’t move forward without strengthening the past. Shaky ground is not how we lay foundations for the future.”
Sebastian rolled his shoulders and nodded. I pressed play.
A bloodcurdling, heartbreaking scream tore from the speaker, the sound one of complete and utter destruction of a life, a soul, of happiness. That one scream informed me that everything they’d said was true. I’d broken.
The people I loved rushed around the bed, each trying in vain to get to me. Claws swiped through the air, and Rebecca’s beautiful face spun to the side, red welts blooming on her cheek. Hudson launched onto the bed as I growled and fought with Indigo for control.
“Cora, you are safe. It’s over. Look at me,” Hudson pleaded.
My back arched, and my wings tore free, blood splattering into the air.
I’d long since learned how to avoid shredding my back to release them, but I couldn’t deny the phantom ache coursing down my spine.
A growl tore free, and the room rumbled. “She’s losing control again,” Aunt Liz snapped. “We can’t keep doing this.”
“It’s time to decide, Hudson,” Aunt Sophia said.
I squinted at the pale white glowing bands around my wrists. Runes meant to hold me and to keep them safe.
“She won’t forgive us,” he snarled as he wrestled me to the mattress.
The runes weren’t working.
“It burns,” I cried out. “Let me die.”
My hand clamped around my throat, and a sob tore free.
“Cora, we can stop,” Sebastian murmured.
I shook my head. “I’ll watch this once, and only once. Then it needs to burn, like the people who did this to me. To us.”
Dayna, Liz, Anita, and Sophia clasped hands and formed a circle around my bed.
The elements united and became a force as they chanted.
The runes around the restraints glowed brighter, and I squirmed when their power crawled over my flesh.
Indigo pushed forward and snarled at them, but they held strong, never breaking their words as they fought to keep me sane.
“Let us free, and I shall carve his heart from his chest. That is all the healing I need,” she snapped. They ignored her. She glared at Hudson. “You call yourself a mate? You sit here when vengeance is needed to prove you are worthy of us?”
He tensed but didn’t back off as she intended.
The house groaned, and the wall cracked.
Holy shit. I was about to reduce my home to rubble.
“Knock her out,” Dave advised. He sounded more disturbed than normal but was still the voice of calm in a crisis.
“We can’t keep doing that,” Rebecca snarled. “It’s adding to her injuries.”
“It’s that, or we take her memories,” Sophia muttered, breaking the chanting.
The room went silent before Hudson shook his head. “She will hate us. I still think no.”
“At least she will be alive to hate us,” Sebastian pointed out.
He stiffened at my side.
“I need an answer, Principal,” Sophia demanded.
Hudson tipped his head back. “Forgive me, Cora. I can’t live in a world without you. I promise we will make this right, but for now, I need you sane.”
“Stop,” I whispered.
“But you—”
“I know, but I need a minute.”
Sebastian hit pause. My hands raked through my hair, and I tugged on the strands to feel the sting.
Tears slid down my cheeks as the memories pushed against my mind, blocked by a wall that thinned every day.
I wanted them out. I needed to experience and process them so I could finally put the nightmares to bed.
I dragged in a breath, then another, forcing the oxygen into my system and clamping down on the rising panic. “Continue,” I mumbled.
Sebastian hit play.
Hudson crawled up my body and held my face in his hands, staring into my eyes while I fought the bonds.
My claws split his skin, and I roared as my aunts moved closer.
The tone of their collective voices changed.
I snapped my head around to glare at everyone before focusing on Hudson. “I will never forgive you.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take. Do it.”
My aunts wove a complex spell over my mind, replacing horror with healing and pain with peace. But it was fake, a Band-Aid at best and a botched therapy solution at worst.
My body relaxed inch by inch. The feral look bled from my eyes, becoming distant and glassy.
“It’s done,” Aunt Liz said before leaning to the side and passing out in Dave’s waiting arms.
Sebastian looked over his shoulder at the camera.
“If you watch this back, Cora, it’s not to prove our actions, but to explain our reasoning.
I know it’s an invasion. I know you will balk at the idea, but you have to know what you are facing when you let these memories in. Just know we’ve got you. All of us.”
The screen went dark, and I shot to my feet, stalking a path across my sitting room and back.
I shook my head. I was a danger to everyone I loved.
Their actions cost them as much as they cost me, but the betrayal still cut deep.
You couldn’t just turn that feeling off because you accepted their logic.
“Cora?” Sebastian said.
I shook my head and held out my hand to ward him off. I needed space to think, to feel, to decide when I got the rest of these memories back. They’d taken not just the aftermath of my torture, but elements of it too. I thought the blacked-out points were my mind protecting me.
“I need you to leave.”
His shoulders dropped, and he nodded before standing. “I love you.”
A sob tore free from my tight throat. I spun to give him my back and wrapped my arms around myself. “And I love you, but right now, I need you to leave.” There was a whisper of movement. “And Sebastian?”
“Yeah?”
“Burn that video.”
The gentle clicking of the door signaled his exit.
I sank to my knees and broke once more. I would allow this, just one more time.
Then I would pick my ass up and burn Eloise Roberts to the fucking ground, with or without the help of a god.
Because there was something stronger than any ancient power—a woman’s wrath.
And my wrath was no longer bound by mortality.
I’d accepted the angelic part of my soul.
My grandmother warded against Cora Roberts, the carefully presented elemental she’d helped shape from a girl to a woman.
Now it was time for her to meet the new Cora Roberts, the no fucks left to give daughter of death who had the heart of a shifter and the soul of the devil at her mercy.