Chapter 131 Maddy
MADDY
Ascream burst from my throat and died in an instant when Nico, Sinthy, and the young man from the forest appeared before us.
He looked almost as terrified as I felt.
There was a faint pop as they flashed into existence in front of my eyes.
Everyone else seemed equally surprised. I’d assumed it would be at least another hour before they returned—if they returned at all.
The young man, Maxwell, slowly lowered himself to his knees.
He had a wretched look of sadness on his face.
Sinthy stood over him and waved her hands across his hands.
I blinked in surprise as I watched her. Out of thin air, a coil of smoke manifested, curling and spinning before descending down to Maxwell’s hands.
The smoke encircled his wrists, and then a flash of light made me wince and look away.
When I glanced back, the circles of smoke had turned into thick and heavy bracelets.
They had the shine and color of gold, and polished silver twisted together.
“What are those for?” I asked.
Sinthy pushed her hair back out of her face. “They’ll prevent him from using any of his stolen magic. It works as a block. He won’t be able to get them off.” She looked at Maxwell with a sideways glance. “I’ll be surprised if he even tries.”
Maxwell held his manacled hands up to Sinthy pleadingly.
“I never wanted this damned magic. Can’t you take it?
Rip it out of me. All I ever wanted was to keep my siblings safe.
It was all to get them away from my mother.
I went along with her experiments, hoping I could steal them away and hide all of us where she could never get to us.
Please,” he begged. “Please get it out of me. Take it.”
Sinthy’s face softened, and she knelt down close to him. “Maxwell, I can’t take it from you.”
The look on his face was one of complete despair. He let his hands flop to his thighs. “Why? I want you to. Take all of it.” His voice was so full of weary sadness, I felt a twinge of empathy for him.
Sinthy put a hand on his knee. “The ones who did this to you must have never explained how magic works. Natural or stolen, magic is a life force. Your ancestry is a magical bloodline. That’s the only way you’d be compatible enough to harness magic, to begin with.
It’s inside you now, bound to your very soul.
There is no removing it. Without magic, you’ll die. ”
I didn’t think it was possible, but after hearing that, Maxwell’s face looked even more miserable.
I looked across the room at Nico and Donatello.
They were as mesmerized by the discussion taking place as I was.
The fact that all this had been going on for years, that her own son was suffering so terribly, made me loathe Viola even more.
She was a goddamned monster. All she did was rail on and on about how shifters were disgusting abominations that shouldn’t exist…
Well, the woman needed to take a look in the fucking mirror.
Maybe she was projecting her own black soul onto shifters.
Maxwell paled as he drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, hugging himself.
Sinthy let out a sigh and stood, joining me by the door.
She wrapped her arms around me and laid her head on my shoulder.
I put my arms around her shoulders, again feeling like I was a surrogate mother to her.
It had to be hard for her, knowing that the man sitting on the floor had her own birth mother’s magic coursing through his body.
She couldn’t even be angry at him for it since it had been forced on him without his consent or desire.
As he sat there, clutching his legs, his gaze darted around the room, bouncing from Nico and Donatello to Abi and Diego, then over to Luis and Felipe.
So many people, and all of them, complicit in his kidnapping.
He had to be assuming the worst. What else could he think after the life he’d lived?
Had anyone ever cared for him? Probably his siblings, perhaps his father before he died.
“We aren’t going to hurt you,” I said.
Maxwell turned his head toward me, his eyes fixed on mine.
I gently pulled away from Sinthy and stepped closer to the man.
He was a man. Though I knew he was twenty-one, he had the qualities of a child who’d been abused and made to think he was worthless his entire life.
Of all the travesties Viola had perpetrated, what she had inflicted on this young man might be the most depraved.
He looked at me like a scared puppy waiting to be kicked.
“I promise, no one will hurt you here. You’re here because we need some leverage over your mother. We need to show her that she isn’t the only one who can go to extremes. We’re trying to get her to end this—all of it.”
Maxwell looked at me like I’d just told him two and two made five.
He chuckled humorlessly and shook his head.
“She’ll never quit. Never. You don’t know her as I do.
If it meant she could get you or the vial, she’d skin me alive and make a coat out of my hide.
She’d even laugh while she did it.” He shook his head again.
“No. You won’t stop her. If anything, taking me will only piss her off more, and she was really pissed, to begin with.
She hates you and despises you. Viola is used to getting what she wants at the snap of a finger.
The fact that you guys have drawn this out for a year has her frothing at the mouth.
She’s doing anything and everything. She’s burned bridges left and right. ”
Nico stepped forward. “Can you tell us why you didn’t tell your mother about the tracker Sinthy placed on you?”
Maxwell’s eyes darted to Nico, and he swallowed hard. “I guess… I hoped you guys would use it to find her. To… end this mess. I never thought you’d kidnap me. I’m worthless. I don’t matter. You’d have been better off leaving me for dead.”
“You aren’t worthless,” I said soothingly.
My heart shattered. This young man had been so broken and twisted by Viola that he truly didn’t think he was worth a damn.
She’d made him believe he was nothing but a tool.
A reviled and disgusting tool, no less. He was stronger than I was.
If Viola had been my mother, I’d have killed myself long ago.
Maxwell ignored my words; he was still looking at Nico imploringly. “What about my siblings? They aren’t Viola’s children. They were born to my dad’s second wife. She has no attachment to them. She’ll hurt them. She might think I planned this with you all and kill them for retribution.”
“Where are they, Maxwell?” I asked. “If you know where they’re being held, we can try to get them out. You saw what Sinthy is capable of.”
He looked at me, and before he even spoke, a cold, heavy lump formed in my stomach. Tears shone in his eyes as he shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s never told me.”
“Damn it,” Nico hissed. “That bitch might actually do it. We’ve got to hope she doesn’t hurt them until she can prove Maxwell did or didn’t have something to do with us taking him.”
“What do we do with our young friend for now?” Donatello asked.
Nico’s eyes darted up and locked on mine. He was thinking the same thing I was. We didn’t want to imprison him, but what other choice did we have?
“Sinthy?” I asked. “There’s not, like, a reverse tracker on him, is there? Viola didn’t manage to do to him what you did?”
She shook her head. “No, I already checked him. He’s clean. She won’t find us through him.”
I looked at Donatello. “I think we should put him in one of your free rooms. House arrest, you know? At least for now, just for a little while,” I added, turning back to Maxwell.
He nodded as he wiped tears from his eyes. “I understand. It’s probably smart. I’d do the same thing in your position.”
I gave him a weak smile. “Diego? Luis? Can you find him a spot?”
The two men stepped forward. Donatello got out of his chair and joined them.
“I have a suite outside by the pool that should work for him,” Donatello said as he placed a hand on Maxwell’s shoulder. “We call it the pool house for obvious reasons. How do you feel about hot tubs, young man?”
Maxwell frowned. “Uh… I don’t think I’ve ever used one.”
Donatello chuckled as the group walked out the door. “You’re gonna love it. You can wash away your worries.”
Nico shrugged. “Now we wait.”
“Wait for what, Nico?” I asked.
“We wait for Viola to make contact. Now that we have her son, she’ll have to make contact. I’m sure of it.”
“Oh my God, Nico,” I hissed. “Do you really think that? There’s no way this is going to get us the outcome we’re looking for. All that’s happened is that we’ve turned into kidnappers. We’re locking up a poor kid, for God’s sake.”
“What do you want, Maddy? We had no other option. This was the best plan we had, and the best chance we were going to get, so we had to take it.” Nico looked angrier than he should have. It was probably the stress, but it still irked me.
“Because, Nico, I told you this wouldn’t work. Donatello and I both said it. Now we’ve done this, and it might get that kid’s brothers and sisters killed.”
Nico looked down at the floor, gritting his teeth. “I made the call. We all voted. It was what we needed to do. What the hell were we supposed to do, Maddy?”
My anger was growing with each passing second, and his refusal to see what a bad idea this was only spurred it on.
“You know what, Nico? I can tell you one thing that would be better. Maybe not having a goddamned prisoner of war locked up by the pool. How about that?”
Nico held a hand up and shook his head. “I get that. It’s not moral, but our backs were pushed to the wall. I didn’t hear you offering any other suggestions before we left.”
“So, this is my fault?” I was nearly shouting now, but I couldn’t rein in my voice.
“Yo!” Felipe called out. “Enough, you two. Jesus Christ, don’t we have enough to worry about without you two biting each other’s heads off? Damn.”
I didn’t like being told what I could and couldn’t say. I whirled on Felipe and jabbed a finger toward him.
“We are having a conversation, Felipe. I don’t think we need extra input,” I growled.
He simply cocked an eyebrow at me. “Tensions are high. I get that. But you guys shouting back and forth can’t be good for the baby, right?”
My jaws locked shut. I hadn’t thought of that, but my anger wasn’t going to go away that easily. No one seemed to be listening to me, and I needed some alone time.
“I’m going for a run. Call me if anything changes,” I said and stomped toward the door.
“Maddy— ” Nico called out, but I slammed the door behind me, cutting off whatever he had been about to say next.
The island was a tropical paradise—the entire perimeter was beachfront except for the back of the island, which had a cliff face that dropped down to the sea from forty feet up.
Thankfully, there was a large grove of pine and palm trees near the center of the island.
I shifted and sprinted toward that. My wolf took over, and I was able to take a step back and really look at things.
I was scared, frustrated, and hormonal as all hell.
That discussion should have never infuriated me so much.
It pissed me off, and I was angry that it had made me look like the stereotypical, overexcited female.
All these months, and we were still dealing with this.
As I raced through the trees, my paws digging into the sandy soil, I wondered when it would end.
We had to be nearing the end. I didn’t think I could survive much more of this.
My baby deserved all my attention, and I couldn’t even do that.
Everything seemed to revolve around Viola and what she was going to do next.
My paws ascended the rocky hill at the back of the island.
I padded to the edge of the cliff and sat on my haunches, breath panting in and out past my lolling tongue as I stared out at the turquoise water.
What kind of world was I bringing my baby into?
How could I make sure they would always be safe?
There was a moment, the barest flicker of thought, where I wondered if I could end all this. What if I let my wolf run free and wild—a raging werewolf beast running on bloodlust and rage, tearing Viola apart—all with a simple sip from the vial?
Shaking that thought from my head, I shifted back to my human form and sat, legs hanging off the edge of the cliff, enjoying the view. That wasn’t a road I needed to worry about going down—not yet, anyway.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d sat there, but it must have been a while. I caught Nico’s scent as he hiked up the hill to meet me. My mouth stayed shut as he walked up and took a seat right next to me. We sat in silence, staring out at the vastness of the sea.
Finally, Nico said, “I came to apologize. I was a dick. I’m sorry.”
“Mmhmm,” I grunted.
“Is… uh, is that female for ‘you’re forgiven’?”
“What do you think?”
Nico’s breath heaved out of him. “I really am sorry, Maddy. I know things are really messed up right now. I’m so worried about everything and everyone, but that doesn’t give me the right to snap at you.
All I want in life is for you and the baby to be safe.
I want to end this so we can move on with our lives and build a family.
I love you so much, and I already love the baby more than life itself, and I haven’t even met them yet. Does any of that make sense?”
The cold ball of anger that had been coiled in my stomach suddenly unfurled itself and began to dissipate. As much as I wanted to keep giving him the cold shoulder, I couldn’t. I loved him too much to be petty for the sake of being petty.
Reaching over, I pulled him into a hug.
“I’m sorry. I was being an asshole,” I whispered.
“Nope. Not an asshole. A pain in the ass? Yeah, but not an actual asshole.”
I laughed despite myself and swatted his chest. “Don’t be a jerk. You were so sweet a minute ago.”
Nico chuckled and rested his hand on my knee as we stared out toward the horizon.
Sitting like that, with the man I loved, I only had a few simple wishes—that my baby would be safe, that we would both live to raise them, and for the world to go back to normal.
I began to genuinely hope that Nico’s plan would work.
This had to end soon. We couldn’t keep going on like this.