29. Ava
Ava
Come to me.
The voice whispered in my head like a siren song, willing me forward despite my worry about Poe.
My wolf growled and bucked against the foreign presence, but I had to comply.
Magic wrapped around my muscles and tightened until I did what it wanted, until I crossed the boundary into the circle and stood in front of Evelyn.
“There she is,” she muttered, brushing a long finger down my cheek.
Up close, she looked terrible. Her pale skin had gone nearly translucent, the dark lines under her flesh moving and pulsing with the chants echoing around us. Her teeth were black, and her crimson eyes were now the color of old blood, rotten and decayed.
“I can see why they love you,” Evelyn said. “You are quite beautiful.”
I struggled against the compulsion, screaming inside my soul, wrenching the energy until it coiled tighter. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
“Fight it,” my wolf snarled. “Come back. Get up. Move.”
“Ava!” Poe’s distant voice slammed against my mind like a shout through water. I vaguely remembered him being important. That what we were doing was imperative, but the supernatural essence overwhelmed that sensation. “Ava, snap out of it!”
“For the record, I am sorry for what I have to do,” Evelyn said. “But if you don’t struggle, it shouldn’t be painful.”
Stay still, the voice hissed. Be still. Be strong. Be still. Be strong.
It repeated the mantra, and after the last few weeks and everything I’d endured, I wanted to listen. I wanted to lie down and rest, to find some peace at the edge of this hellscape. Didn’t I deserve that? Hadn’t I paid my dues?
Yes, rest, the voice said again.
“Ava! Stay with me. Don’t you dare go under.
Fight it off. You’re so much stronger than this.
Fight them!” Poe’s voice came again, but the mystical chanting and the voice’s slow seduction drowned it out.
Everything grew hazy. My head was light and buzzy.
It would be so easy to give over, to let them have me, to do what they wanted for the sake of ease and relaxation.
“Ava, my darling girl,” a different voice this time, not the slithering magic or the desperate call of my mate. No, this was someone I hadn’t heard in two decades. “You’re strong. You’re going to survive. Whatever happens, remember I love you.”
Memories flooded my imagination, forced into overdrive by the recognition.
Bright ginger hair and kind emerald eyes.
A big smile and the smell of roses in the summer.
The feel of wind in my hair while the ginger-haired woman helped me onto my first horse.
Peering over a cradle at a tiny baby with dark hair and bright blue eyes.
“His name is Galahad,” the voice had said.
Fingers pressed against my sides as she tucked me in and kissed my forehead with that far-away, desperate look in her kind gaze.
“Ava, my darling girl. You’re strong. You’re going to survive. Whatever happens, remember I love you.”
I love you.
The words looped, and somewhere under them, I understood it was the last thing she’d ever said to me. Perhaps it was those words that cast the bond between us, whatever strange magic that caused me to see her memories in my dreams.
She sacrificed herself for me…for us. She protected us with her defiance, her willpower. She did it all so I could live.
My wolf shoved forward, all righteous rage and hackled fury for the injustice.
That my mother had to die so I could live.
That it didn’t end there. That this vampire bitch had chased me across half of Europe and set this trap so she could use me for her own means.
My body wasn’t hers. My mind wasn’t hers. I wasn’t hers.
I belonged to me.
I clenched my muscles and gritted my teeth, screaming internally, willing all of my power to break through. I glanced to my right and focused on Lycan—bound, bleeding, storm-gray eyes clouded, his complexion deathly and harrowing.
Love.
Something cracked in my mind, in my soul, and my reasoning came back like a computer rebooting. I had seconds, maybe less, to decide. I couldn’t fight my way out of this, not alone. Lycan was knocking on death’s door, and Poe was still being held mentally captive by that witch.
I wanted both of them more than I wanted my next breath, and Lycan was dying. If we went down, we went down together. Mated. Our magic irrevocably intertwined in the afterlife.
Evelyn bared her teeth, and just as she was about to sink them into my throat, I shoved her away with every ounce of force I could muster.
She sailed across the circle and hit an invisible barrier, slumping to the ground.
My feet moved before my mind registered it, and I launched myself at Lycan, taking him to the ground.
I didn’t care about the what-ifs or the could-have-beens. I needed this. Lycan needed this. I sank my teeth into Lycan’s shoulder, right at his neck, and punctured his scent glands.
Silver-laced blood filled my mouth, and I greedily swallowed his magic and his essence, soaking it up, letting it feed my frenzy. Hands grabbed at my shoulders and arms, trying to yank me away, but the connection I was forging was too strong, too powerful.
Distant cries of “No” and “Don’t let her mark him” circled me, but the thrall of finally mating Lycan hushed them to a whisper.
His teeth found the meat of my shoulder.
Bound, half dead, mouth still bloody from biting through the gag—he bit me anyway.
For a heartbeat, I feared it was vampires trying to suck the life out of me, but then Lycan’s magic soared through my veins.
It punched through the agony of near death and the threat of sacrifice.
His throaty laugh and the twinkle in his eye when he teased.
His energy twisted around mine, dancing with Poe’s. It was euphoric, just shy of heavenly.
I pulled back and met Lycan’s unguarded, glowing stare, and the rest of the room faded away.
“Don’t you dare die on me,” I murmured.
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Promise.” He managed a faint grin before reality slammed back into focus. A piece of the puzzle was missing, not yet in place.
Magic arced off this new bond and surged into me, through me, hitting Poe like a live wire. I sensed him through Lycan’s bond, through the partial bond in place. And it was the leverage he needed, the extra oomph to keep fighting, to know it wasn’t over yet.
In that previous moment of distraction, the witch holding Poe loosened her telepathic grip. He sprang up, grabbed his machete, and hacked at his captors. The strength from my bond with Lycan propelled him forward, running to us with blurring speed, faster than he’d ever moved before.
They chased him, but they couldn’t keep up.
He collided into us and sank his teeth into Lycan on the other side of his neck.
The final bond, now secured—fate and magic and unyielding adoration.
Poe’s dark mystery combined with Lycan’s ice and steel and dominance.
Our wolves brushed against each other in recognition, a bright, beautiful connection crashing through our mental barriers.
The magical shock wave came next, exploding out of me…
out of us…with nuclear force. Whatever spell the witches had been trying to perform burst at the seams, rebounding off the walls with a deafening boom before fluttering to the ground like ash.
It went back down the path it had come in on, along the supernatural energy the witches had been pouring into me, into the void they’d sensed between Lycan, Poe, and me. Except there wasn’t a void anymore.
“It has to land somewhere. Otherwise, it will go back to where it came from.”
Bridge’s words from the safehouse came rushing back to me.
I didn’t fully understand them at the time, not until now.
They’d needed a crack in the bond, and I’d sealed it.
The witches screamed, dropping where they stood, with smoke curling out of their palms. The barrier around the circle crashed to the ground.
The candles went out, cloaking the room in darkness.
I clung to my mates, desperate to keep them safe. We had to survive. We would survive.
We’d only fought half the battle. Now, we had to get out.
I pushed to my feet and stared at the writhing bodies.
The witches had crumpled to the ground, dazed and knocked out.
Most of the vampires were shocked, their eyes wide, their expressions unsure.
But Evelyn stood at the edge of the room with her hands clutched to her chest, the black veins under her skin moving fast, climbing her throat, sprawling over her jaw.
She locked gazes with me, horror mixing with defeat behind her eyes, and I took a step toward her, lockstep with Poe, our wolves unified on the need to kill her despite Orion’s order.
Then, she ran.
I almost went after her. My rage nearly overwhelmed my senses. Poe moved toward the door. But Lycan collapsed on the floor next to me, and a million tiny knives stabbed my soul through the bond. Poe felt it at the same time I did.
Lycan thrashed against the hardwood, his head slamming repeatedly on the floorboards, his hands clenched, his legs bouncing.
“No, no, no,” I said, slumping down next to him. The agony amplified, and I shoved all the energy I had left into the bond. I forced it into him, willing it to keep him alive.
“You promised. You said you’d stay alive. You better keep that promise, you Bastard,” I told him.
Footsteps echoed around me, and I threw myself on him, rounding on the intruders with a snarl, my fangs extended.
“Whoa, easy there,” Guin said, holding up her hands. The others poured through the doors behind her, their clothes bearing the signs of the battle. Bloody. Beat up. Disheveled. I registered none of it.
“He’s seizing,” Poe said. “Don’t hold him down. Get him on his side.”
“Let me see him,” Aquila said.
The human in me recognized them as my friends, my family. But the animal, the one who had just lived through a ritual and fought off countless vampires only for her mate to keel over, didn’t want anyone touching him.
“Baby, let them help,” Poe said, brushing his fingers down my cheek. “Come on.”
Growling, I slowly backed away. Aquila took my place, resting a hand on Lycan’s chest. Maeve and Sol went to help Moose while Mill and Bow took care of Locust. It was only then that I realized the pack had wiped out any remaining vampires in the room.
Body parts and rotten blood lined the ancient tapestries.
My focus returned to Lycan. Poe wrapped his arms around me and helped me to my feet, holding me tight. Together, we hurled our magic into our mating bond, wrapping it around Lycan’s, forcing him to accept it, to receive it, to use it.
“We need to get out of here and burn the place,” Orion said. “Get him up.”
I gripped Lycan’s hand as the others carried him out while he thrashed and convulsed. And that nascent tie between us, the one I’d spent so long wishing for, praying for, faded into a tiny sliver.