Chapter 45 #2
Zephira’s eyes sweep over me again before she adds, “And Tanith doesn’t care if that prick McNamara laid claim already. She wants this one brought to her as soon as possible.”
It doesn’t strike me as strange that they would refer to their mother by her name.
Not Mother. Not something warming. Just Tanith.
I don’t know much about the witch. Don’t know her face.
Don’t know her voice. Don’t know the extent of her power.
I only know enough to be certain she was never the nurturing sort.
She continues. “And she wants the Alpha, but he’s still on the other side of the ward.”
I don’t need clarification. She means my alpha. Rennick.
Evara’s mouth twists into a pout, like her sister has just taken away her favorite toy. She drifts closer to Siggy, invading her space, and then tilts her head as she studies the blankness in my Nightingale’s eyes.
“You’re going to do as you’re told,” she murmurs, her tone almost gentle.
“You’re going to walk with us to the car.
” The magic woven within her command stirs in the air, rubbing uncomfortably against my skin.
“You’re going to go calmly and quietly, and your crossborn friend here is going to do the same.
If she doesn’t, you’re going to take your claws to your neck and use them to rip out your own throat. ”
Siggy’s hand lifts.
Claws take the place of her trimmed fingernails, and they rise to her neck. With deliberate pressure, the sharp points press into the side of her jugular. They don’t break skin. They don’t need to. The threat is very clear.
My heart flip-flops violently in my chest cavity and I go still, my body locking up as if the compulsion has reached me too.
Evara finally looks away from Siggy and I breathe easier instantly, even if I’m the one in her sights now. “Do you understand what will happen if you try anything stupid?”
“Yes.”
Her face brightens instantly, as if my dread has given her the dopamine boost she’s been craving. She claps once, pleased. “Good!” Then, spins away on her toes and by the time she steps back into place beside her sister, she already looks bored. “Come along, puppies. We’ve got a plane to catch.”
Siggy lurches forward at once, following without hesitation.
I stay rooted for half a second longer, boots suddenly pieces of stone shackled to my feet, until something nudges hard between my shoulders.
One of the traitorous Fallamhain wolves presses his pointed snout into my back, urging me forward.
I glare over my shoulder, accomplishing absolutely nothing except making myself feel marginally better, then move. I catch up to Siggy and match her pace.
The next part blurs together.
We’re marched through the trees to the nearest road where several familiar vehicles sit lined up like some kind of diplomatic motorcade. The lead car waits with its doors open. The others already look full, their windows too dark to make out who’s inside.
The pack’s SUVs. Black Escalades.
Tanith’s coven and Cathal’s wolves have commandeered them as if they’ve always belonged to them.
My mind snags on the question of how they even knew where we keep them, where the keys are stored, but the answer follows close behind.
There are too many people in this pack who could have told them—the ones they liberated from holding cells are an obvious start.
And I believe there’s more. Ones who’ve stayed quiet, who’ve flown beneath suspicion.
Siggy and I are pushed into the back of the empty vehicle. I sit stiffly beside her, shoulder to shoulder, her claws still poised at her throat. Her gaze has gone unfocused, her breathing too shallow. It isn’t calm. It’s the kind of stillness that means she’s trapped behind her own eyes.
I reach for her with my gift and find nothing but static. Not resistance, just a complete absence. Evara’s compulsion has sealed her away somewhere I can’t reach her.
Come on, Siggy. Give me a sign that you can hear me.
I get nothing in return.
Panic presses hard against my ribs and I force it back down.
I try Rennick next.
His mind is shut down tight, barricaded in a way that feels deliberate, but he’s still here.
I catch the rush of his vivid and very alive fury through the bond and I cling to that truth because it’s the only thing that matters right now.
He’s still fighting. He’s still out there somewhere on the other side of this nightmare.
I reach again, just in case, and the same unyielding barrier doesn’t weaken.
It strengthens. But there’s a steady rush of reassurance sent down the bond before it seals again.
This isn’t rejection. It’s protection, like he’s shielding me from what he’s doing, or shielding himself from being distracted and pulled under by my presence. I can live with that for now.
I switch targets again.
Seren.
Nothing. She’s too far away for my gift to latch on to, which should terrify me. Instead, it gives me hope. Rennick’s house sits more than a mile from where we were taken. If I can’t reach Seren, maybe it’s because she’s where she should be—hidden with Ivey behind a reinforced steel door.
I go for Rhosyn next.
For a split second, I swear she’s nearby. My mind grazes the edge of hers, just enough of a flicker to make my chest tighten, and then it’s gone, leaving me wondering if I imagined it.
Trying to reach them all makes the drive pass in a blink.
The road bumps beneath the tires, the car rocks, the green light growing brighter as it flashes through the trees and into the windows. Then we stop. Doors open, cold air rushes in, and hands grab for us.
Siggy and I are hauled out by the waiting McNamara wolves. My boots hit mud and half-frozen dirt, and I anxiously take in the narrow dirt road that leads to the runway clearing.
It’s cut off by the green wall of flames that used to be Amara’s ward, rising high from the dirt and thrumming with dark corruption. It’s blocking the last stretch to the clearing. A locked gate they can’t pass until the magic holding it falls. Which means everyone is being held here until it does.
And the road is already full.
Dark coven members move through the shadows of the road, some watching, others stalking between the lines of kneeling people.
McNamara wolves, some shifted and some not, do the same, helping guard the omegas dragged here from across the territory.
The ones they plan to load onto a plane like everyday cargo.
The omegas are on their knees in snow and mud, mouths taped, hands bound in front of them with heavy-duty zip ties.
They can only breathe through their noses, each exhale puffing white into the cold.
Some cry without sound, shoulders trembling.
Others stare straight ahead, eyes fixed and glassy, like turning their heads or letting themselves really see what’s happening would be the thing that breaks them.
I count as I’m dragged closer, eyes scanning faces.
Hattie’s familiar features catch my eye and my heart sinks.
She’s kneeling with a few other omegas I know well.
They were part of Lowri’s pack and came here because we thought it would be safer.
Now they’re huddled together, their eyes wide.
When Hattie’s find mine, I force my mouth into the smallest smile I can manage and aim it at her.
It’s reassurance that feels far too thin, almost dishonest, but it’s all I have to give right now.
Noting the remaining faces, relief on my shoulders when I confirm Seren isn’t among them. Elio neither. Not yet, anyway. For all I know, they’re already in a car headed this way.
As if I summoned it, a car pulls in behind us, and I turn just as traitorous Fallamhain wolves begin to yank two more omegas out of the back seat.
I recognize one immediately. A friend of Fiona’s.
I remember her from the heat kit making party at the healer’s cabin, a moment that already feels like it happened a lifetime ago.
Now she’s being hauled along by the ex-pack council member and saying something I can’t make out. Then she’s spitting in the middle-aged woman’s face.
The council member doesn’t hesitate. She rears back and strikes Fiona’s friend, the crack of it harsh and final as the omega’s head whips sideways and her mouth splits at the corner.
She loses her footing and goes down hard, bound hands and knees slamming on the muddy road.
She’s still trying to blink her vision clear when the councilwoman lifts her foot and starts kicking. Once. Twice. Again.
I’m moving before I remember why I shouldn’t.
Yelling, I wrench against the McNamara wolf’s grip, trying to get to her.
He changes his hold, slips his arms under mine, and drags me backward until my feet scrape uselessly through the dirt, my thrashing and shouting doing nothing against his brute strength. I twist and kick, fighting the pull, until my resistance becomes more trouble than it’s worth.
For a sick, weightless second my feet leave the ground. I come down on my side, the road slamming into me hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. Pain flares through my ribs and shoulder as mud and half-frozen dirt soak into my clothes and rocks bite through the fabric.
Disoriented, I’m still fighting for my next breath, but I force myself up anyway. Palm sliding through the cold muck, I only make it to my knees before a shadow falls over me.
A cold blade touches my throat.
Curved. Serrated. Shaped like a claw.
I know this weapon. It’s the same one that ended Lowri. The one that tore viciously through her throat without remorse. Whatever flashes across my face is enough for Zephira to bend down until we’re nearly eye level, her expression unchanged.
“We each have one. A gift from Tanith when we turned ten. Handmade.” She pauses. “Do you want to know what the handle is made of?” Everything in me tells me I don’t. “The femur of a crossborn abomination like yourself.”
My stomach roils.
I remember thinking Malvina’s bloodstained blade looked like something forged in the pits of hell the first time I saw it.
Learning about its origin now only proves how right I was about the kind of wickedness it carries.
I remember the way she’d waved it carelessly, deliberately too close to Ivey’s innocent skin, as if daring me to give her the reaction she craved.
Seren was stuck across the room with the other girls, forced to watch, helpless and unable to move as Malvina took her time taunting us.
That memory snaps me back into the now, straight into a spike of fear.
Siggy. The compulsion was tied to my behavior, and I didn’t behave.
I moved. I fought. I look away from the witch and find my Nightingale with the other omegas, knees pressed into the cold earth, hands bound in front of her. Her claws no longer at her throat.
Good. Evara didn’t keep up the compulsion past the drive.
Relief settles just enough for me to turn back to Zephira and hold her lifeless stare without flinching.
“I told Tanith we should be the ones allowed to skin you,” Zephira continues, voice calm as the blade presses in and my skin gives enough to form a shallow cut.
“Told her we should be able to turn your bones into something useful like this knife, because it was our triplet who died because of you. We were born together, bound from the first breath, and now she’s gone while you and your alpha are still here.
But Tanith wouldn’t allow it. Said that you’re to be brought to her to deal with herself. ”
The knife shifts again, deeper this time, and warm blood slips down my neck where the blade has opened me.
The words sink into my chest and stay there.
“Tanith isn’t coming here, then?” I hear myself ask. Even though it doesn’t matter. Not really. I still want to know whether I’ll finally come face to face with the woman whose influence has threaded through so much of my life without me ever knowing.
A soft, childlike giggle answers before Zephira can.
Evara appears over her sister’s shoulder, shaking her head, her messy pixie cut sticking up in every direction. “Our High Priestess would never degrade herself by stepping foot into wolf territory,” she chimes in before taking off, skipping toward the line of cars.
She moves to talk to the councilwoman who’s finally stopped kicking the shit of Fiona’s friend.
The blade at my throat flexes, drawing my focus sharply back to Zephira.
“She sent us to collect you and the rest of the omegas,” Zephira says cooly, head cocking to the side like a bird studying something new.
“The fact that we share a few drops of blood won’t save you.
It only means she’ll take her time. She’ll do things to your weak crossborn body that will make you wish I’d ended it here…
There’s still time, you know? Maybe I should risk her wrath. For Malvina, it might be worth—”
Zephira doesn’t get to finish the thought. Something explodes from the tree line to my left, a blur of dark fur, teeth, and speed that slams into her with enough force to send her reeling. The blade tears away from my throat as she falls, the pressure gone in an instant.
The wolf that takes her down is small, almost fragile at first glance, all ribs and sharp lines, but there’s nothing fragile in the way she fights. She hits Zephira, pins her, and sinks her teeth in without hesitation.
Juno.