Twenty
My heart damn near explodes when I hear her screaming another man’s name.
It means she’s there. She’s just right there.
Another few feet, and I will be able to see her, just like Dayne can.
I’ll be able to save her.
Hold her close to me and never let her go.
My heart slamming around my throat, I pass Stefaan in the hall and streak into the gym a second after Dayne does.
Antonio scowls at me from the middle of the room. Black smoke-like magic swirls around him and his gang, but I don’t give a shit about where they’re going. All I care about is that my wife isn’t with them. I only get a second to check, but I’d know her from any glimpse in my peripheral. From any brief sight of her beautiful, strong face. I know the way she stands, the way she moves.
She isn’t with him.
He isn’t taking her.
Which means she’s here.
Thank gods, she’s here.
I’m not too late.
The group vanishes in a split second, but I have already turned away from them. I will hunt Antonio and his men down later. Right now, I just want to find my wife.
“Micha!”
I scream as I run around the room, searching through the sea of bodies, blood, and severed parts, between the wolves and monsters still fighting. I try to feel my wife through our bond, pinpoint her before she bleeds out, but my heart is racing too fast. My own emotions are drowning hers out.
So I force my feet to root, for me to take a deep breath so I can –
“Varius…”
Mother says as she drags her way over to me. She’s bleeding from her eyes and ears, her mouth and nose. Her hands are shaky, her body on the verge of collapse, but I ignore her.
When I stopped for Leno, Micha ended up screaming another man’s name. I don’t give a shit if Dayne’s the one who saves her; I just want her saved. I just don’t want her to think that I don’t care as much as he does, that I haven’t been doing everything I can to get to her.
I –
My breath stops.
My stomach fills with a poisonous weight that almost brings me to my knees as my brain finally catches up with what I’ve already seen.
Dayne is running to where Antonio was just standing.
He’s streaking across the gym, scrambling over bodies, not stopping for anything.
His name rings in my ears, shrieked by my wife because she didn’t see me. Because I was a second too late.
Because I stopped to comfort a dying brother.
But Dayne saw her.
He knows where she was…
And he’s running to the spot where the transportation spell just activated.
No!
I take off after him, my eyes on the circle of nothing on the floor ahead.
No!
No!
No!
She has to be here.
No!
I can’t be too late.
Noooo!
I can’t have lost her because I stopped to try to save my brother!
My heart feels like it’s ripping its way out of my chest, dragging its bleeding, broken form up through my throat and down to my stomach at the same time. Like it’s lost, like it doesn’t know which way to go, doesn’t even know if it’ll make it, if it’ll survive the agony shredding it apart.
“Micha!”
I scream even though I know she can’t hear me.
That she isn’t here.
That the spot on the floor is merely a memento to her absence.
To my failure.
It doesn’t shine with the brightness of my wife, of her fire.
Still, I tear across the room to it, as if being where she was a moment ago will bring her back. Will make me feel connected to her. Like it’ll absolve me of the guilt crushing my shoulders because I stopped to try to save Leno.
I should’ve gone straight to her.
I shouldn’t have run to him when I saw him getting torn apart in the first place.
If I hadn’t, I would have my wife.
I would’ve lost Khalid too, more of my brothers perhaps.
But I would’ve had my wife.
Dropping to my knees, I scream an unholy noise that is matched only by Dayne’s echoing agony.
He slams into me a second later, his hands crackling with electricity, his fingers wrapped around my head. I’m on my back, and he kneels on top of me, his eyes like a summer’s storm.
“She’s gone because of you!”
he yells, his voice cracking.
Broken.
A shell of who he is.
A mirror of me.
“She could have saved herself if she had her magic,” he cries.
Pain lances through me. “I know.”
“Oh, fuck off. No, she couldn’t have,”
Maddox cuts in as he walks over to us, completely naked and covered in blood but without a scratch on him. He must have shapeshifted recently to heal himself. “Antonio would’ve just cut off her hands.”
Dayne looks like he wants to argue, to attack the man he believes tortured her, but I can see the knowledge in his eyes. As much as he wants to blame the two of us, as much as I am still blaming myself and always will, we know my brother speaks the truth.
Antonio isn’t stupid. Everyone knows a witch without their hands and tongue is helpless.
He would’ve just maimed her as soon as he took her.
“She only has her hands still because she doesn’t have magic,”
Maddox continues. “That’s given her a better chance to survive, so stop with this blame and pity party shit and help me find Rudy. He took her into his shadows before they could take her.” His brow furrows. “But I had to shift right then so I didn’t die, and I didn’t catch where he was…”
Dayne and I are already on our feet, streaking around the room, trying to find Rudy. I throw wolves aside left and right in case he’s under one of them, not giving a damn that I’m supposed to be hiding the fact that I’m a hybrid from Dayne and Stefaan
“He’s gone!”
Mother calls out, her voice strong enough to cut through my desperation. I stop, facing away from her, my chest heaving, my brow sweating. The werewolf I just tossed into the air crashes down on another pile of bodies, and like it’s the starting gun, I spin on my feet and race back to my mother.
“Who?”
I rasp, my heart beating fast, yet feeling like it’s not moving at all. I know who she’s talking about, in my heart of hearts I know.
But I’m not ready to accept it.
I’m looking for any reason, any smallest sign that she doesn’t mean him.
The boy I raised like my own son.
“Antonio… took… Rudy,”
Mother says, knocking the final strength from my knees.
I drop down in front of her with a broken cry.
Her voice is weak once more. It seems she used all her energy to yell, so I reach for a potion, for one of the ones I couldn’t use to save Leno. As soon as I uncork it, that pop sounding between us, though, she shakes her head. “It… won’t… heal me,”
she says. “The damage… is from… my… own… magic.”
“Father’s curse,”
I growl just as Dayne and Stefaan reach me, all of us desperate to hear what she has to say about the woman we love.
“I’m… sorr...”
She trails off, and Dayne’s hands are on her immediately, glowing white. He isn’t an innate healer like she is, isn’t as strong, but he’s the best one we have left now that Mother’s out, and Leno’s…
“Where’s Leno?”
Maddox asks as the rest of my brothers enter the gym, followed by Stormie, who makes a beeline for me.
“In my shadows,”
the reaper says quietly. He looks at me. Maddox stops dead still.
“So bring him out,”
he says. “He doesn’t like that place. Bring him out now.”
“Maddox –”
“Bring him out!”
He shoves Khalid with both hands, his eyes wild, his chest heaving. “Bring him out! You’re killing all of our brothers! Just bring him out!”
“Maddox!”
Ezriel shouts, but Khalid just grabs our baby brother by the wrist and spins him around so his back is to his chest. Khalid’s arms wrap around him. Magic crackles in Maddox’s fingers, but then it just snuffs out, dies as he sags forward and cries.
Khalid holds him up, his face stoic, unreadable. “He’s in a bubble of Stormie’s,”
he murmurs. “We’re bringing him back so Krypto… So he can understand he’s gone.”
“He can’t be gone….”
Maddox cries. “I talked to him just last night. He was telling me all the plans he had for the yard… He can’t be gone. He can’t...”
I turn away from them, the grief hitting me hard.
The guilt over wishing that I didn’t even stay with Leno as he died now.
That I left him to run to my wife.
Even though by the looks of this place, I know I would have just died. There are over twenty dead werewolves here, two monsters, and way too many spiders to count. I would have been torn apart in seconds.
But I would’ve been here.
She would’ve seen me at least trying to get her back…
“Come on,”
Khalid says as Maddox shudders in his arms. “Let’s finish here so we can go home.”
Home…
Home is where Micha is.
And she is not at the Shadow house.