Chapter 9 #2
Mom!
Liz’s breath catches beside me. “Rowan…”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
Because I see it.
Her hand—one finger missing. Not bloody. Not freshly torn. Just…gone. Clean and healed enough that it’s almost worse than gore would be.
And when my gaze drops lower, I see her foot.
Missing a toe. Maybe two.
Savage, clinical.
Like Malrik stole pieces of her, however he saw fit.
I swallow hard, pain flooding so fast it turns everything sharp at the edges.
For one brutal second, I understand his words from NightShade more clearly than I ever wanted to.
Well, most of her anyway.
My vision blurs.
Wolf growls, low and violent.
Save her.
I lurch forward.
Liz catches my wrist instantly. “Rowan, wait.”
I jerk, nearly ripping free. “I can get her out.”
“Can you?” Liz’s voice stays steady, but her eyes are urgent. “Look at the runes. That magic might not just be restraining her. It could be preserving her.”
My lungs stutter.
“Or it could be torturing her,” I hiss back. “He doesn’t get to keep her hanging here like a damn decoration.”
Liz tightens her grip. “I’m not saying he does. I’m saying if that spell is the only thing keeping her organs working—”
“Then I’ll replace it,” I snap, because I have to believe I can. I have to. Otherwise, I’m standing in front of my mother’s body with no way to help, and I can’t…
I reach without another thought, my palm out as I pull on the energy.
Power surges through my veins like lightning, overflowing from my core into my arms, my fingers, toward the lattice of magic wrapped around her.
My siphon hits it, but it doesn’t bend.
Malrik’s spell doesn’t crack. It doesn’t even flicker.
It pushes back.
Hard.
The force slams into my chest like a fist, driving the air out of my lungs. Heat burns up my throat, sharp enough that I gag. My eyes water violently. My ribs ache like something just tried to cave them inward from within.
I stagger, coughing, choking on my own breath.
Liz hauls me back before I can fall into the runes. “Rowan!”
I shake my head, trying to inhale, but the air feels too thick, and my lungs refuse to cooperate like they’re offended I dared to try.
Gods, that hurt.
This shield isn’t a wall I can punch through.
This is a locked door built to withstand me.
My hands tremble as I lift my head, fury igniting through the pain.
“That bastard,” I rasp. “He did this on purpose.”
Liz’s mouth tightens. “We’ll find another way.”
A scream echoes from the training hall behind us, and as my focus shifts, the rest of the noise comes in loud and clear.
A crash, more snarls of pain, my mate’s roar.
“Cade,” I breathe.
“This guts me to say.” Liz’s eyes flick toward the doorway. “But we need to go back. Now.”
I take one more look at my mother.
Her chest rises. Barely. But it still does.
My throat squeezes so hard it hurts.
“I’m coming back,” I whisper, like she can hear me. Like The Keep can hear me. Like Malrik can hear me through stone and shadow.
Only then do we run.
Liz and I burst back through the caved wall into the training hall, and my stomach drops.
The fight has escalated.
There are bodies on the floor—vampires, mostly—some already collapsing into ash and rot, stinking up the air like burned metal and curdled blood.
Cade and Marius are in wolf form now, moving like coordinated violence—Cade’s russet mass a blur of teeth and muscle, Marius darker, heavier, his wolf carves through vampires with the desperation of a man who has waited too long to lose now.
Stephanie’s crouched beneath a broken pillar, hands pressed to Caleb’s side.
He’s in his human form, and he looks like he’s trying not to scream.
His face is gray with pain. His eyes are glassy. One arm shakes as he attempts to hold pressure to a set of claw marks across his ribs—too deep with black veins extending beneath his skin.
Elias stumbles nearby, dropping to one knee like his body suddenly forgot the concept of standing. His hand clamps over his left thigh.
Blood slips through his fingers.
His breathing is ragged.
“Rowan,” Stephanie snaps, voice tight. “We need anti-venom. Like…now.”
Caleb’s eyes lock onto mine, panic and stubbornness tangled together. “It’s fine—” he tries, then winces so hard his words shatter.
“It’s not fine,” Stephanie says flatly. “You’re dying, dumbass.”
Elias coughs, then lifts his head with a grimace that could almost be a smirk if he weren’t actively dying. “Hate to be needy, but I’m going to need some too.”
My mind blanks for half a second.
Not because I don’t understand.
Because I understand too fast.
Caleb.
Elias.
Venom.
Anti-venom.
No more time.
My mother, suspended behind a wall like a trophy I can’t pry free.
Wolf rises inside me, not frantic—focused.
Pack first.
My throat tightens.
“No,” I whisper, not to anyone other than this bitch of a reality. To the idea that I’m standing here close enough to smell my mother’s blood in the air and still being asked to choose.
But I don’t have time to argue with the universe.
I force my lungs to behave, ignoring the lingering burn from the failed siphon. I shove the ache aside, along with my emotions, followed by the screaming grief until it’s all been buried far beneath the surface.
Because choosing between family is the worst decision I might ever be faced with.
Especially when I see my dad take a hit across his front flank, knocking him down.
I can’t lose them.
My gaze snaps to Cade—still in wolf form—blood splattered across his chest and muzzle as he tears through another vampire with brutal efficiency. For a heartbeat, our eyes meet—his wolf gaze bright and feral.
He leaps and protects Marius’s back, taking out the final vampire present.
For a moment, we’re safe, but we’re still out of time.
And I know what I have to do next.
“We need to go.” The crack in my voice can’t be hidden.
It might be the right choice, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
Dad is back on two feet, heaving with effort. “Where is she?”
“I’m sorry.” Tears track down my cheeks. “I couldn’t…”
He doesn’t wait for me to finish. He sprints toward the chamber where my mom, the love of his life, waits.
“Dad, no!” I want to chase after him, but Cade stops me.
Though not before I hear Marius’s next words. Ones that cut me to my core.
“I won’t lose her. Not again.”
Cade holds my trembling form. “You’re not big enough to knock him down.”
And I instantly hear what he’s not saying.
I could stop Marius, but not without hurting him with my power.
Cade, on the other hand, is alpha.
He stands a chance.
“Get our pack out of here,” he tells me. “I’ll meet you back at the SUV.”
He steps away from me and shifts before I can argue.
More hisses echo from above.
“We have to go.” Liz tugs on me, and I do the only thing I can.
I grab onto Elias while Liz helps Stephanie with Caleb, and Archie leads us back the way we came.
But not before I get one last word in.
I lift my head and glare at The Keep, at the stone and shadow and humming magic.
“I don’t know if you’re on my side,” I spit, voice low and lethal. “But if you let them get hurt,” I continue, eyes burning, “I will find a way to make you feel agony unlike anything else before I unmake you. Piece by painful piece.”
And then we run.
Toward the way out.
Toward the gates.
Toward the forest.
Toward survival.