Chapter 28
ISLA
Isla’s chest heaved as she sunk further into Kai’s embrace, her hard breathing hollow in her ears along with his. She wasn’t sure how long she remained like that, tucked into him, inhaling his scent, assuring herself that he was in fact real—but it was enough to cement over the fissure in her mind.
Not enough to silence the echo of that music and voice. Not enough to no longer feel the ghost of nails on her back.
It was when Kai’s body stirred and he sucked in an astonished breath that she finally moved.
The world was quiet around them, the wind no longer whipping through the trees and the rain nothing but a gentle, residual patter. As though lightning had indeed cut through the world, an aurora rippled across the sky like spilled paint.
“Goddess above.” Isla braced a hand on Kai’s chest. Beneath her fingertips, she could feel his heart beating fast. His breathing ratcheted up, a rapid rhythm that his pulse barely kept up with. Panic.
“Hey.” Gently, she took his face in her hands, thankful he didn’t turn away this time. He simply stared at her, lips parted as he panted. Choked. “Breathe.” He inhaled and exhaled raggedly. “Good. Again.”
In and out.
Isla smiled softly. “You’re okay. It’s over.
” She wasn’t sure that was true, but he seemed relaxed enough, and their bond had come back into clearer focus.
Still not where it had been before she’d lost her wolf, but it was where it had been hours ago.
Isla chanced leaning forward, brushing her nose against his. “You’re okay.”
They separated on the wet forest floor, knee-to-knee, mud squishing beneath them as they faced each other.
Kai hung his head, his curls nothing but gentle waves capped by water droplets.
“What am I?” His voice broke. He was a man who had been hit by life again and again and now stood on the edge of breaking.
What am I—not what’s wrong with me. They were clearly beyond that. They’d figured out he had additional abilities, but he was not a typical wolf. Not even close. Even just saying he had magic felt wholly insufficient.
“I don’t know,” Isla answered truthfully, bracing, always ready to catch him if he fell apart.
“If I hurt you—”
“You. Won’t.” She took his chin firmly in her grip, and he looked at her with eyes clouded in desperation.
In exhaustion. “You won’t. If we’re going with this ‘being here for a reason and being together for a reason’ thing, I am me because I am yours.
I’m made to take you, all of you, as you are, whether you’re entirely wolf or not at all.
My heart is yours. My soul is yours. And you are mine.
” She leaned in closer, growling slightly, “So I don’t want to hear this hurting me nonsense ever again. ”
The tactic, blessedly, had worked. The corner of Kai’s lips ticked up at her demand, at the fire she ensured shone in her eyes.
Still, his body slumped, entirely drained. “If I’m some kind of… monster—”
“Monsters are made,” Isla fought, dropping her hand. “That is my belief, and you are not one. You’re powerful, clearly. Different. That doesn’t make you a monster.”
“I killed—”
“I’ve killed.” She cut him off. “By sword, by claw, by mind-breaking power, killing is killing. It’s what we do to protect the people we love. It’s a sacrifice of ourselves that we must make.”
She had a feeling he already knew that, but she felt like he needed to hear it.
“What am I supposed to do?” Kai asked as the forest gradually came back to life around them. Wildlife warbling, cooing. “I don’t know how to stop this. I don’t know how to train this. I don’t know what this is. There are no answers. No other alphas. No ancestry. No traceable history.”
She swallowed. This may make things worse, but…
“I’d bet Cassius knows,” she said, and Kai blinked. “If it somehow made you a bigger problem for him, knowing what you are, then that could be why he didn’t elaborate with Adrien. He couldn’t risk you finding out.”
Kai scoffed. “That’s not as comforting as I thought it would be.”
Not even a little.
He added, “And not only him, but the witch knows, too. You said she needs me because I can break something, and the whole point of the challenge was to see what I was capable of, if something was true about me, if I’d stop holding back. And I did. I gave in.”
“Completely?”
Her question earned furrowed brows, but before Isla could elaborate, a scream tore through the air.
“There’s a body in the river!”
Isla’s legs were like lead, her lungs burning by the time she and Kai finally reached the crowded riverbank amongst the city’s rubble.
The moment she heard the words, her heart stumbled.
Sobs and gasps fell from the mouths of everyone around them, and something about all of this struck her as too familiar.
But there was no Wall here. No bak. No trainees.
“Ameera!”
Isla hadn’t realized Kai was behind her again, and she hadn’t noticed Ameera amidst the milling crowd. She remained rooted while Kai bound up to his friend, now wearing clothes he’d found somewhere.
The general turned, and the blanched look on her face made Isla’s breath catch.
Oh, no. Isla spun, frantically searching for every other member of their family—Adrien, Sebastian, and her father. Rhydian, Jonah, and Davina.
Nowhere.
“Who is it?” Kai had his hands on Ameera’s shoulders, trying to get her out of her trance-like state. “Meera, who is it?”
Ameera blinked, bewildered. “E—Eli.”
The name clanged through Isla with all the power of the storm they’d just witnessed.
“Someone,” Ameera gulped. “Someone murdered Eli.”
Murdered.
“Isla!”
Isla hadn’t known she was moving, running, sprinting down the riverbank to where a burlap canvas covered the body until Kai called after her. But she didn’t stop. Couldn’t, wouldn’t stop, even as the guards looked ready to intervene, not realizing who she was.
But they stepped back, either recognition sparking or at Kai’s instruction, because she knew he was behind her.
Her next movements blurred together. Nearly slipping on the muddy ledge into the water, pausing at the edge of the corpse, the way she bent and pulled at the burlap, and all air vanished from the world.
Eyes closed and skin sallow, his chest and innards exposed as though he’d been clawed to high hell, lay Eli.
Isla stumbled back into a solid force, a body, her hand going to her mouth. It was only the unconscious remembrance that she was a queen that allowed her to hold down her bile.
“You don’t need to see this,” Kai whispered, his words caressing the shell of her ear. He tried to turn her into his chest, but she was stone.
She did need to see this. He’d told her that he wasn’t safe, that he was in danger because of the Hierarchy and Cassius, and those claws that had sliced through him were not from a bak. The lines were too thin, too numerous. No—these slash marks were from another wolf.
“I’m dead in the water anyway.”
How horribly fucking ironic.
A coldness like Isla had never known slid over her bones, became her breath, became her blood, became everything she was.
Darkness clouded her vision. Her fingers twitched at her sides, ready to draw claws, and her gums ached as canines threatened to punch through.
But there was no shift, just that cold, that dark, as she felt something within her rising. Pulling up, up.
“Isla.”
Whoever did this, she’d kill them. Make it last. Make it hurt.
“Isla!”
Kai was in front of her now, his hands gone from her shoulders, now on her face, his eyes, those dark storm clouds bearing into hers. She noticed the tears that had escaped were now streaming down her cheeks. “Who did this?” Her voice was so broken.
Kai’s thumbs stroked her skin, whisking the wetness away. “We’ll find out, I promise, and they’ll pay for it.”
It wasn’t enough.
Her mother. Lukas. Callan. Sandrine. Dante. Eli…
Isla turned away from the river and looked up at the bank, finding their family united. On one end of the shore stood Ameera, Rhydian, Jonah, and Davina, and on the other, her father, Adrien, and Sebastian.
Her stare fixed on her father, and she hated that it narrowed. Hated that it drifted over his clothes, his hands, searching for blood.
Let it go, General.
Isla was moving, trudging up the mud of the river’s edges, the muscles of her legs bleating in protest, but all thought had eddied away. “Where were you?” she snapped at her father.
Malakai jerked back, clearly ambushed by the question, by her demeanor. “What?”
“Where were you?” Isla pressed, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “I haven’t seen you all night.”
Malakai blinked.
“Isla.” She whipped around to her brother, whose brows buckled, assessing her disposition. “He was with us.”
There was enough hesitance and question in his words that she pressed, “All night?”
Sebastian didn’t respond, and that was answer enough. Even Adrien was stonily silent, his features paling. She knew that look. He knew something. All it took was a flare of her nostrils and a pointed squint for him to understand her question. He shook his head.
Not with them all night, then.
She needed to hear it from her father’s lips. Malakai’s eyes had drifted behind her to Kai.
“Did you talk to Eli tonight?” Isla asked, regaining his attention.
Malakai’s throat bobbed as he absorbed the attention on him, the eavesdropping crowd around them. He let out a heavy breath. “Yes, I did.”
That shouldn’t have relieved her, but if he wouldn’t hide that fact, it was a good sign…
in her eyes. But it seemed he understood precisely what she was alluding to, and hurt, genuine, deep, gutting hurt, lashed across his face.
She placed that final brick on the wall between them.
Now, all she was missing was the mortar to set it.
Kai stepped forward and braced his hand on Isla’s shoulder. “I think it would be best if you left tomorrow, Beta.”
Malakai’s nostrils flared. “I agree. Cassius will want to know about this.”