Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
ABBY
‘ Q uinn!’ Only silence answers, and I know he’s blocked me out. My lungs burn and I can barely bring in enough air to keep me going, but I have to keep going. Through the blur of exertion, I see two wolves engaged in a vicious scuffle.
And I don’t need to feel it to know one of them is Quinn.
‘Why aren’t you helping?!’ I shout to the other wolves through my connections to them.
Ellis’s answer is the only one that comes. ‘ You know why.’
And I do. Because even though that looks like Quinn, that’s not him. Not entirely.
This is the version of himself he keeps buried. The one he’s terrified to show because he’s convinced he’ll lose himself to it again. This is what he calls the monster. The creature that killed half a kingdom and cursed whoever remained. The creature that devoured countless others since and would have kept killing had I not reached him.
A siren raises a blade, and I force my legs to move faster. “Don’t!” Six heads turn my way and Erwyn’s eyes widen. “You have to get away from them!”
I don’t hear what Erwyn says to the others, but the group retreats to the water. Only he remains on the sand, though he’s far enough away that I’m not worried one of the wolves will suddenly decide he’s part of this.
No one else can be a part of this. Quinn said this was his fight, and now that I’m close enough to see flashes of crimson eyes rather than the molten amber I love so much, I understand. He’s truly given himself over and he’ll kill indiscriminately if given the chance.
“The silver wolf is Quinn?” Erwyn asks when I reach him.
“Yes. And the other is—”
“The Guardian we should have killed.”
There’s no time to argue about that now. We have to stop this. Quinn told me to trust him and I do, but I don’t know how long I can watch them try to kill each other. The sand around them is already speckled with blood as fangs and claws slice deep into fur and flesh.
A wolf yelps, and I can’t tell which made the sound as there isn’t so much as a heartbeat of hesitation from either of them as they take turns charging and biting, lunging and tearing.
I feel for the bond and it’s there. Even now, when the man I love is almost entirely gone, I feel him. ‘I trust you,’ I tell him again, even though I know he can’t hear me.
Quinn lunges for Ty again, but this time is different. Ty slips, and when they connect, Quinn pins him on his side. His gaping mouth drips with blood-reddened saliva as he leans in to make the kill.
“Stop!” I shout at him and rush forward.
Quinn’s head snaps in my direction and red eyes settle on me.
‘Abby, don’t!’ Fern shouts in my mind, but I block her out. I block them all out and leave myself wide open to Quinn, forcing the love I have for him down what remains of our bond. He’ll feel me. I know he will.
“We don’t need to kill him. You don’t want this.”
His jaws snap, but the crimson in his stare dampens. My heart sinks when he shakes his head and the mangled flesh on his chest shakes with it. He blinks, and just for a moment, I see the gold in his gaze.
‘Make him shift.’ Quinn’s voice flashes through my mind and I feel the urgency in that request. He’s fighting the dark version of himself and winning, but he can’t make the shift while Ty is still lost in the darkness.
I focus all my energy on the wolf still pinned in the sand. He snaps at Quinn’s foot, but just barely misses. Quinn might kill him if he loses himself again, but I trust that he won’t. I know that he won’t. Because he’s Quinn. Just Quinn. Not the thing he calls a monster. Not the beast that once prowled the forest. He may have borrowed its strength to subdue Ty, but he’s still every bit the man I’ve fallen in love with over and over again.
“Come on, Ty,” I mutter through clenched teeth as I force my way through his mental walls. He’s a wolf, just like the rest of them, and that means I’m in control. “Let. Me. In.”
He whines and Quinn jumps back just in time for him to shift. Panicked eyes stare up at the wolf before him as he throws himself backwards. Despite the fight I just watched, Ty seems relatively unharmed, and I don’t think it has anything to do with his strength as a wolf. I think, even in that state, Quinn knew to hold back.
Quinn shifts on his own, and fuck the wound on his chest is worse than I thought. Four jagged lines slice deep, one of them cutting through the bottom of the golden rose that mirrors mine. “That’s better,” he says to Ty before he drops to a knee. Either too hurt or too tired to stay upright.
“What the fuck is happening to me?!” Ty screams.
I rush to Quinn’s side and drop down on the beach beside him. Rivers of red run down his abdomen, coating the skin in what I wish was paint, and I can’t decide if it’s better to press my hands against it or leave it alone until we can get to a healer.
“Get help!” I shout and hope Erwyn can hear me. Even if he can, who knows if he’ll care enough? He’s made it pretty obvious that he doesn’t like us.
Quinn touches a hand to mine, and then he stands. He’s unsteady, but not nearly as bad as he was a moment ago. “It’s just the shift. I’m fine.”
He’s literally covered in blood. Nothing about this is fine.
He takes a somewhat unbalanced step towards Ty and offers a hand. Thankfully Ty doesn’t take it because I’m not convinced Quinn can stay upright, never mind pull a grown man to his feet.
Ty tries to stand on his own, but his legs wobble more than Quinn’s. He doesn’t even come close to making it off the ground before stumbling back down into the sand.
“You’ll get used to that,” Quinn says, taking a step closer and offering his hand again. “Coming out of it like this is the hardest. When you’re not you .”
Ty takes the hand this time, and Quinn somehow manages to pull him up. “I don’t understand what happened.” His eyes glaze over when he looks down at Quinn’s chest. “Did I do that?”
“You don’t remember?” I ask him. Not in reference to the fight, but everything that happened before. We talked about this. What he’d become—and he still agreed to let Quinn bite him.
“The last thing I remember…is him twisting a knife in my gut!” Ty points somewhere behind me and I don’t need to look to know that Erwyn is standing there.
“Perhaps I should have gone for the throat.”
“Enough!” I say to both of them. “No more knives. No more tearing each other apart. It’s over!”
“Calm down.” For a moment, I think Quinn is talking to me but his attention is entirely on Ty. “The memories will come back to you. It’s normal for things to be fuzzy right after a shift. Just breathe.”
There’s a moment of tension and then Ty’s vision seems to clear as he stares up at Quinn in shock. “You bit me.”
“Yes.”
“And… This is what happens.”
Quinn shakes his head. “You’ll learn to control yourself. I shouldn’t have left you alone. This is my fault.”
The man who is still very much a boy looks to me, and his eyes well with tears. “I don’t want to do this again. I don’t want to be that creature.”
Erwyn steps forward. “Then we kill you now.”
Erwyn’s blade is pointed down, but Quinn steps between him and Ty all the same. “I can’t let you do that.”
“He is no use to us!” Erwyn doesn’t have time to raise his sword before the other wolves take a protective formation around not just Quinn, but Ty as well.
“He’s one of us now. Even if you get through me, do you think they’ll let you live?” Quinn gestures to the wolves on either side of him.
“I’ll do it,” Ty says, and I almost miss it over the snarling all around us. “I’ll go back to Lunae. I’ll help you take down Imelda and stop Void.”
“Thank you,” I breathe, relieved that maybe now we can put all of this behind us long enough to get Quinn back to Tess.
Tess.
I turn to the wolf I recognize as Ellis, panic filling my heart at the thought of losing Tess. “Who was hurt?”
‘Jade.’