Chapter 37 #2
Amara inclines her head and then my two friends move off together.
I watch their backs before turning to the High Priestess, dryly asking, “Should I bother asking what other traps you’ve set on my land?”
The corner of her mouth twitches. “And ruin the surprise?” she says mildly. “I don’t think so, Fallamhain. When that coven comes back for our people, and we both know they will, I want you just as horrified as they are when they trigger our spells.”
There’s bloodlust in her voice. Grief too. I don’t fault her for either.
If Noa had been taken from me the way Amara’s love was taken from her, I wouldn’t stop at retaliation.
I’d raze everything in my path. I’d spill enough blood to drown in it, and I’d keep going until either my body gave out or the blade of grief finally cut deep enough to end it and finally bring me peace.
I’m about to tell her this, when a pressure ignites behind my eyes, sudden and familiar.
It’s a feeling that tells me I’m no longer alone in my head.
Her presence unfurls through my mind, filling all the shadowy corners with her light. Just as before, there’s no sense of invasion or a disruption. Having my mate link with me in this way is akin to warmth pressing to a bruise you didn’t know still ached.
Sweet one? I think to Noa, picturing her at home, pacing holes into the floor while she waits for an update from me.
Inky dread starts to spread through my limbs when she doesn’t answer me.
Despite the silence, I can still sense her there. Fumbling with the connection, still not fully understanding how this thing between us works, I nudge at it instinctively, trying to force my way deeper into the bond connecting us—trying to find her. Feel her.
Whatever I do shoves the door wide open.
And then it hits me—terror and pain flooding my system so violently I almost mistake it for my own. Except it isn’t. These emotions don’t belong to me, and that realization is somehow worse. The weight of it drives me nearly to my knees, fear crashing through my body like ice water.
I stagger, bare feet slipping on the packed snow as I gasp her name aloud. “Noa!” I’m too overcome and overwhelmed by these sensations to remember to reach for her the right way.
At my sudden outburst, the weight of attention snaps toward me. Concern, confusion, alarm from the witches and pack hovering close, but I don’t look at them. I can’t. Everything in me is locked on one thing and one thing only. Noa.
I reach for her again, panic threading into my thoughts. Noa? Baby, what’s happening? I can feel that something is wrong.
The connection flickers, weak and crackling, and then her voice comes through—thin and broken—and her words nearly rob me of my ability to breathe.
Help…need help. It’s here. My heat—
Her presence in my mind disappears, leaving a chill behind in her wake.
I don’t hesitate. I don’t explain. I don’t spare a thought for the trespassers or the danger still lingering behind me. The territory could be burning to the fucking ground around me, and I still wouldn’t stop or slow down. My only priority and focus is getting to my mate.
Shifting mid-stride, my wolf rising easily and the change seamless, I launch into a sprint.
Hold on, baby, I’m coming for you.
The forest blurs into streaks of shadow and snow as I tear through it, breath burning, muscles eating the distance that stands between me and my girl.
Fear gnaws at my bones in a way I recognize too well.
It’s the same hollowed-out panic that nearly consumed me whole during my run to Ashvale, when the town was burning and every mile I crossed carried the question of whether I’d get to her in time.
The same terrible certainty that something precious is actively fracturing while I’m still racing toward it.
Her life is on the line now, just as it was before.
But there’s no enemy standing over her with a blade at her throat.
The enemy is her own body and the way it’s failing her.
And it’ll only unravel faster with the full force of this super heat slamming into her while I’m not there to act as her strength and shield.
The sick truth of this beats in time with my thundering heart.
I curse myself with every stride for letting distance exist between us at all. Forty minutes. Less. It doesn’t matter. Time became irrelevant the moment instinct screamed that I’ve made the wrong call, and am now paying the price for it.
I knew better.
I felt it in my gut the moment she said she’d be safe at home alone.
Felt the lie wrapped into reassurance, the same way I felt it when she insisted she could delay my claim.
She told me she wanted time so we could discover who we were together before the bond factored into everything, before it locked us into permanence.
It was a reasonable truth. One I reluctantly accepted.
But I’ve always known there was more beneath it.
Under the careful explanation she gave aloud lived the part she kept close to her chest. That she still needed time to finish healing the damage I’d carved into her psyche with my rejection.
Time to make sure those old wounds wouldn’t bleed into a bond that would irrevocably braid her heart lines to mine.
I believe her when she says she’s forgiven me, I do. But forgiveness doesn’t easily loosen the binds of fear. And it doesn’t soften the whiplash of going from surviving my dismissal to surrendering herself completely to me and my bite.
As I said, I knew better. Knew waiting would be no better than gambling with her life.
Foolish.
I’m roughly a hundred yards from where I left the others when something moves at my right, too fast, too sudden to brace. There’s only a blur and then impact.
A brutal force slams into my side and sends us both crashing to the forest floor. Snow mixed with mud explode around us as I hit hard, oxygen ripping out of my lungs.
There’s no time to think. No time to question how I didn’t sense him, why there was no warning, no sound, no scent.
I rip my attention away from Noa only because I have to, because keeping my focus locked on her will get me killed.
I roll hard and surge upright, barely avoiding the snapping jaws of the beige-and-gray wolf lunging for me.
We circle, heads low, hackles raised. I draw in a deep breath, and it takes effort to catch his scent. It’s faint and distorted, buried under something sharp and wrong. Magic is my guess. But up close, there’s just enough remaining beneath it to smell the truth.
Recognition hits like a punch between the ribs.
Councilman Randolph.
The older alpha male appointed to his position during my father’s reign, rewarded for his devout faith in Merritt’s ways.
The same bastard who told me at the party that my father would be ashamed of me for choosing a girl over my pack.
For choosing my mate. And then he’d followed Darran over the proverbial line to join McNamara.
The desperation rolling off him now is thick and he all but vibrates with reckless and unchecked urgency. He lunges first, teeth snapping, but I don’t retreat. I meet him head-on. We slam together, bodies colliding with a bone-jarring force.
I’m stronger. I know it. He knows it too. But desperation and stupidity make men dangerous, and it buys him an opening.
Pain blooms white-hot and searing at my right side as his canines sink in, tearing flesh. Not a kill wound, but it’s enough to have me faltering. I twist, ripping free before he can do real damage. Blood soaks my fur there, warm against the frigid air, but I barely register it.
Somewhere in the distance I hear shouting. Feet pounding through the half-melted now. Amara and her coven. My pack. Closing fast.
I don’t need them to win this.
We slam into each other again, rolling, snarling, the fight devolving into a fury of pure violence.
The old wolf’s strength falters. I sense the moment he fully comprehends the magnitude of his mistake in attacking me. Alone. Fear overtakes whatever conviction he has left to fuel him.
There’s a faraway voice of reason telling me I should keep him alive to question. It’s too late for that. I’ve slipped past restraint and into something darker, and my wolf is in control. He won’t allow someone who attacked him unprovoked—and delayed him from reaching his mate—to keep breathing.
I strike.
My jaw closes around his jugular, the metallic taste of his blood sprays across my tongue, and I give one last violent twist.
The finality of the sound of his neck snapping is one I’ll carry for a while. His body goes slack beneath mine as his heart stutters and stops.
I release him and stand to my full height, as my chest heaves, each inhale causing the wound at my side to protest. I’m still looming over my kill when Amara and the others burst through the trees.
Everyone but the High Priestess stares on with wide eyes.
Hers turn calculating. Assessing.
She wasn’t certain if two or three had slipped through her wards, a doubt that shouldn’t exist for someone like her with her magical skillset.
It’s something that’s been bothering her since the breach happened.
I don’t need words to understand the question turning behind her dark eyes.
She’s already wondering how Randolf managed to confuse her magic.
Her gaze snaps to mine. I jerk my head in the direction of Noa, where she’s still suffering without me, more so now since this attack has delayed my return further.
She nods once. “Go.”
I’m already moving before the word finishes leaving her mouth.