Chapter 26 #2
“My… my father?” Isla’s voice was tight, her fingers trembling.
Any softness and sensitivity in his tone were gone.
Now, Eli had become the commander who addressed warriors.
Who addressed leaders. “He won’t listen to me.
I tried to tell him yesterday at the gala, and he brushed me aside.
I finally got to him tonight, and he didn’t care.
Told me that if I know what’s good for me, I’ll drop it. ”
Isla wasn’t sure if she was still breathing. “He threatened you?”
“As civilly as he could. He’s the calm to the Imperial Alpha’s storm.
” The words were acrid. “But I can’t let it go.
I swore an oath to the Goddess, whose mark I bear on my spine.
I proclaimed a creed. To protect the people of this continent and my men—and women.
” He looked pointedly at her. “I don’t work for Imperial Alpha Cassius.
I’m not an accomplice in his cover-ups. And I know you no longer serve with us,” his tone eased, “but you still bear that mark, too. You swore the same oath I did. You’re still a warrior. ”
The back of Isla’s eyes stung, and her jaw set. “I am,” she whispered into the room that suddenly felt so silent. Her ragged, recovering breaths rattled in her skull.
Eli seemed to buckle in relief. “Then help me find him. Dead or alive, wherever he is. He has a mate, a family who are going to want answers.”
Isla’s lip trembled, remembering his family who’d doted on her when they’d been together, and she bit down on the flesh hard. Nausea stirred her insides as she beheld Eli, the bloodied shirt, and the dirty truths laid bare before her.
It didn’t stop. It wouldn’t stop. The witch. Cassius.
Her mother and Lukas had been lost in this mess. Alpha Kyran and Jaden. Sandrine and Dante. So many lives.
And her father knew… her father probably knew so much.
The calm to the Imperial Alpha’s storm.
Isla braced her hand back against the wooden counter. She couldn’t breathe.
And now, they had the dark moon. Now, they had to stop Deimos from being destroyed as Phobos was.
Maybe. Maybe.
“Isla?”
Blinking away the blur of tears, Isla met Eli’s pleading gaze. He was still alive. Still here. He hadn’t been fully swept away by the current of this madness.
“Help me,” he repeated, so soft now it was as if he were speaking to a wounded animal. He stepped towards her. How long ago had it been that she approached him at the feast?
Isla’s tongue felt like sandpaper as her vision shifted to Callan’s bloodied uniform, then her mind flashed to her mother’s face, bruised and beaten, teeth and nails broken, fingers twisted.
Captured. Tortured. Lukas desperately clawing for his own memories, lost, scared, and confused, bleeding beneath her hands—imprisoned, in Cassius’s clutches right now because he’d—he’d…
“Let it go, General.” Her voice was steady and more assured than she’d ever thought possible. A queen commander.
Eli nearly stumbled in his shock. “What?”
Isla felt like she swallowed glass. “My father’s right. Don’t go down this road; it won’t go well for you.”
One would’ve thought she’d stabbed him in the heart. Eli took a few breaths to recover before he said with a bit of disgust, “Luna of Deimos, and you’re siding with them.”
“No.” The word ripped from her so viciously she swore the room trembled.
Even the lantern in the room’s corner seemed to sputter, sending its shadows writhing.
Isla felt something twist inside her, right where her wolf had tugged before, but this time, it wasn’t an outward force but something entirely her.
“I’m protecting you. No one else is getting hurt because of this. ”
His bitter laugh chilled her bones. Or maybe it was that cold that always lingered now. “I’m dead in the water anyway, Isla. I’ve said too much, questioned too much. And you don’t test the Hierarchy. After you send the warriors back home, I doubt you’ll ever hear from me again.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth,” he said with the finality of a man who’d come to terms with his own demise.
“We’ve had our time of peace, but the continent is tearing apart.
The divide between the packs is getting deeper.
Mimas, Tethys, half of Iapetus—my own home is split about the power Io holds.
” His voice lowered further, but his tone remained firm.
“You are a warrior. Top of your class and one of the smartest fighters I know. I always respected you for that, and I know that you know war is coming. And Deimos…” he gestured around them, beside her, as if Kai were there, “is led by the alpha who made history in the Hunt, who practically spat in the Imperial Alpha’s face, and his destined queen followed him.
His queen is a daughter of Imperial blood—a warrior—Fate couldn’t have made it clearer.
You found each other now for a reason. It’s time for change, and you two will be called upon to lead it. ”
Isla remained rigid, staring.
She didn’t want to hear more of this but knew… knew she needed to. But first, she needed to think, breathe.
Could she even truly trust Eli? Was this some kind of setup?
“Mimas, Tethys—how do you know any of this?”
“Missions to the southern territories to break up rebel groups.”
Rebel groups?
No, that shouldn’t have been surprising. The Imperial Alpha had always had his opponents. It came with the territory, the power.
“I was in Tethys a few years ago,” he continued.
“This has been brewing for a very long time. To the point that rebels were trained from childhood for the sole purpose of entering the warrior program as a front for easier passage to the north. To infiltrate Ganymede, then Io. It’s why the Imperial Alpha so rarely approves trainees from the southern territories. Cassius knows what’s been happening.”
Magnus. The light-haired guard had tried to enter the Hunt for years, denied again and again until he’d given up. Isla had told him there were no other motives behind it—she’d been a prick about it—but maybe he’d been right.
A vicious pull at her wolf hit with such intensity that Isla keeled over.
Her cry was lost in the thunder that boomed so fiercely that the antiques rattled, the lantern nearly sputtering out entirely.
“Isla!” Eli rushed forward to brace her as the thunder rumbled again and again.
Then came the wind strong enough to slam shutters and toss rocks and debris into the store’s glass windows.
The onslaught of rain sounded like the breaking of a dam.
“What the hell?” Eli muttered.
But Isla paid no mind to the storm, to him, to the guards who apologized as they entered the store for refuge along with some of the festival-goers outside, drenched like they’d been dunked into a lake.
Because the bond was taut. Pulling, straining.
“Kai,” she murmured under her breath. Something was wrong—very, very wrong.
“Isla!”
Eli called, but she was already moving, weaving through the frantic crowd until she reached the door they were struggling to close against the wind, and slipped past the guards and into the night.
Everyone in the city had fled for shelter.
The streets were barren except for the carcasses of vendors’ stalls, their wares sacrificed to the monumental storm that tore through the city.
Barren but for Isla, who cut through rain so vehement it seemed like the sky was shedding its stars, her legs nearly as useless as the branches snapping from nearby trees as she battled through the downpour to find her mate.
She dug for that flickering essence of Kai within her, using that piece of their bond like a rope to pull herself to him.
Too thin. Too small. Too distant. Too fucking distant.
“Kai!” she shouted into the abyss of sound, battling the howls, the crashing, the rush. She lifted her hand above her eyes, hoping to protect them from the speeding droplets that serrated her arms, legs, and face like shards of ice cutting her skin.
Further and further away he drew.
This couldn’t be happening.
Where the fuck are you?
Her chest hurt. Goddess, her chest hurt, a pit yawning open within her heart.
She found herself beyond the lower city’s limits, evading the debris of the dismantling forest, dodging small rocks, leaves, and twigs until she crossed the threshold into the sodden brush, a little relief from the pounding rain.
Still, here, the gale pushed and pulled her, and thunder blasted across the darkened skies, that beating hammer relentless against the fabric of the world.
Isla swore as the earth shook with it, nearly bringing her to her knees.
“What the—” Her breath wrenched from her when she came across shreds of fabric. A gray shirt soaked to the point it was near-black, and equally dark pants.
Kai’s.
The bond went taut and loose with every inhale, exhale, inhale, and near sob. What the hell happened?
He couldn’t be dying. He couldn’t. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t.
Keep moving.
She battled to her feet, trekking across mud.
“Kai!” she screamed again, her throat raw.
A strike of pain shot up her ankle from where it caught and twisted in the muck.
She finally went down with a small cry, mud splattering over her face, hands, clothes, and neck.
Darkness crept in, the cold of night seeping into her bones.
Deeper, deeper. Threatening to swallow her in its hopelessness, grief, and growing emptiness.
Keep. Moving.
Isla fought to her knees, then got to her feet, not bothering to nurse her ankle.
Then she froze.
Red eyes stared at her from within the crypt of gnarled trees ahead, and it slammed into her as certain as death itself what a fool she was. She hadn’t brought a weapon.
But… she knew those eyes. That red, though menacing, was not the bright hue of a ferocious monster but the chilling shade of blood.
She didn’t know if it was rain or tears rolling down her cheeks. “Kai?” Isla’s breath was a sawing, painful sound—her whisper lost in the storm’s raucousness.
In response, a wolf emerged from the brush, the height of two towering men, a snarl across its maw, its dark, red-streaked fur nearly blending into the night. Its large paws tread the earth as if it were lord over all things. And in answer, all things bowed.
“K—Kai?”
Despite the fact that he stood before her, Isla could barely feel him, like he had drawn away and been replaced by something else entirely.
An unconscious, instinctual terror gripped her heart, flowering from somewhere deep inside. Fear… of him.
She shoved it away, locking it in a prison inside herself, because never. She would never be afraid of him, even as that power, his power, slithered along her body and dug beneath her skin. Asking… deciding.
A physical pinch. Only slight, but enough of a burn to make her wince.
At her recoil, Kai’s wolf halted, its growl creating a puff of white before its snout. Even the rain flecking off his fur seemed to be chased away, escaping him. Whimpering, the wolf dropped onto its haunches, hackles raised as it pawed at its face.
Gradually, Isla sensed a new flood of pain, but it wasn’t hers.
Just as she steadied herself to run to him, Kai was human again. On his knees, his head hung as droplets sluiced down his bare body, his muscles and markings seeming to pulse with power and energy.
Isla bound forward, dropping to her knees in the mud. “What’s wrong?” She reached to take his face in her hands, but he flinched away. “Kai?”
“You have to get away from me.” He panted hard through gritted teeth.
“I—I can’t…” His body locked up as if fighting against something she couldn’t see.
He shook his head, water wicking off his curls.
Isla risked another reach forward, her touch ghosting over his thigh, and she was grateful when some of his tenseness eased. “Isla, please.” Agony rasped his voice.
Despite the iciness of his skin, his lumerosi burned, and Isla could still feel it—something emanating from him, pushing against her.
“No,” she told him, making sure her next words made it through the intensifying storm, “I’m not leaving you. I will never leave you.”
Kai met her eyes, and the look in them broke her heart.
It was grateful, terrified even. “I don’t know what this is,” he choked out.
“I almost hurt Rhydian. I could barely stop it.” His eyes drifted upwards, trailing the sky, searching for something, before the rain became too much, and he dropped his head.
The wind became impossible to bear, the storm reaching a new crescendo, so ferocious that Kai hugged her to him, shielding her head, trying to protect her body as who knew what pelted against her skin. Isla held herself closer, breathing hard, doing all she could to shelter him, too.
Lightning scored the sky, cleaving the darkness like the claw of a mighty beast, whipping so brightly she could still see behind her closed lids, even tucked into Kai like this.
She could still hear it echoing long after it had finished.
And deep within that echo, blended into this surging symphony, was the low cry of a violin.
The cacophonous sounds hollowed out, and Isla’s breathing slowed as she held onto Kai and endured that tap, tap, tapping again. Again. Again, until finally, something cracked.
The violin’s cry became a melody that spoke to her soul in a way nothing else had, but the man clutching her. A music that held the answers to all things, and like a serpent, an essence slithered its way into her consciousness.
“Warrior Heart.”
That voice and a phantom touch to her back felt like icy, dagger-like claws trailing down her spine.
The melody exploded into an orchestra as the storm gave one last strike with all its might, and Kai gripped her tighter as the world shuddered, groaned, pushed, pulled, teetered, bent, and broke.
And then, everything stopped.