Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
ABBY
I t’s late when Quinn comes into view down the beach. He’s not running, but his pace picks up when he sees me. There’s an urgency to his step and when I reach for the bond, I feel the unease he isn’t trying to hide.
I wait until he sits in the sand beside me before I ask. ‘Did something happen?’
He tells me of a rift, seeing his brother again, and a woman who could very well be his mother. I feel his story as much as I hear it as waves of anxiety and heartbreak roll off him in time, with the ocean lapping at the sand at our backs.
When he finishes, I press myself up against his soft fur. ‘Do you really think it was her?’
‘Who else could it be?’
I don’t have an answer, only more concerns. Quinn seeing Evan in the veil was a death sentence, so what does it mean if he sees two people in the veil?
‘Thank you.’
His head tilts slightly to one side. ‘For what?’
‘For not doing something stupid like going in there after her.’
He laughs, but there’s a sadness to it. ‘Is it that obvious?’
‘I wouldn’t have blamed you. If it were me and I saw my mom… I don’t know. Aside from what the wraith showed me, I’ve only ever seen one picture of her.’ He already knows the details of her death and how there isn’t even a grave marker for her in Lunae. At least, not anywhere I’ve seen. ‘All I know is that I can’t do this without you.’
‘Is that what you’re worried about?’ I lose myself in his amber eyes and see the concern there. If he were human right now, I know he’d be cupping my cheek with his hand and pulling me closer. ‘ I’m not going anywhere.’
That’s only part of my anxieties tonight. ‘I haven’t heard from Ty. Are you sure he made it?’
A ripple runs through Quinn’s body and I can’t tell if he’s cold or if it has something to do with whatever happened when they were out there. There’s a breeze tonight, but I can’t imagine he can feel much of it with the thick fur coating his body. Even with just him pressed up against me, I’m more than comfortable.
‘Yes,’ he says after a brief moment of deliberation. ‘I may not have witnessed it, but I have every confidence that he did.’
‘But what if they—’
He cuts me off quickly before I can even give the thought life. ‘He’s alive. All this means is that he can’t shift. We knew hearing from him right away would be unlikely, so let’s not worry about it now.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ I mutter.
He rests his massive head in my lap and sighs when I run my fingers through the thick hairs on his head and neck. ‘Nothing about this is easy. We have enough to worry about without borrowing from tomorrow’s maybes. For now, the best thing we can do is sleep.’
I laugh once, short and sharp. A bird startles and takes to the sky from the palm tree above us. ‘You think I’ll be able to sleep tonight? If Ty shifts—’
‘He won’t shift tonight.’ There’s a certainty to his words that weren’t there before, and then I realize why. He’d only said it was unlikely for my benefit. So that I wouldn’t think too hard about what tonight really means for that boy we sent back to Lunae. He won’t be able to shift tonight because he’s probably being interrogated by Imelda as we speak. She’ll want all the details of the attack, and until her Guardians return to confirm that the other two men were in fact killed by something in the forest, she won’t trust a word out of his mouth.
Now I’m the one shivering, so Quinn moves so that more of his body is against mine. ‘He’ll be fine,’ he tells me because he knows I need to hear it.
‘What if we sent him to his death?’
‘He was dead the moment he got here. At least this gives him a chance.’
The moment Jade brought him here. Jade, who has since gone missing again. That’s another thing I don’t want to think about. Instead, I make myself as comfortable as possible and let my eyes fall closed. I focus on the soothing sounds of the ocean and the softness of Quinn’s breathing. Because of what we did together, we’re one step closer to ending this.
Tomorrow, the real work begins.
Quinn was right. As far as I can tell, Ty didn’t shift last night and I send a silent prayer to the Gods that Imelda didn’t just kill him on sight. It’s almost a good thing that we know Void is planning to massacre his people. If anything, they’ll likely just put Ty in line for the slaughter.
I have to force that thought way back down where it belongs. There’s no telling how long we have, but the Void that’s been haunting my dreams still sounds young. Surely he’ll want to be at full strength before he unleashes an army of wraiths and throws the world into darkness.
But, then again, I’ve seen how powerful he is—and that was when he was a child. He’s aged years in a matter of months. For all we know, that boy has already become a man.
I busy myself by preparing for the best case scenario. Since sun up, I’ve erected twenty-five new shelters and increased the size of my garden threefold. With the help of some of Rosewood’s farmers—and Terranous’ magic—we’re well on our way to producing enough food to feed not only our people, but everyone.
The wolves have been hunting, too. Some of the sirens are still a bit put off by meat and plants that weren’t gathered from the sea, but the promise of a full belly is an easy motivator.
While I’ve been focused on preparing for Lunae’s people, Quinn has been focused on ours. He’s anxious too, even if he won’t admit it, and his first action this morning after shifting was to reach for his sword. I’ve been trying not to watch because nothing twists my stomach more than seeing him spar with two people at once, but from the glimpses I have caught, he might very well have been going easy on them before this.
With the high afternoon sun streaming down on him, he all but glistens from the layer of sweat coating his upper body. Even more so than the swords he holds in each hand. He’s magnificent, and if he wasn’t busy preparing for a possible war, I might just have to send my vines after him and drag him back to our tower for an entirely different kind of workout.
If anything’s going to take my mind off things, it’s that .
I almost consider suggesting it when a sudden flash through eyes that aren’t mine briefly overtakes my vision. It was too quick for me to get a clear image, but I know instantly that it was Ty. He shouldn’t be shifting in the day, so my heart sinks like a stone.
Quinn must have felt something through the bond because he’s at my side in moments. “Is it him?”
“Yes,” I gasp, and for some reason, it’s hard to breathe.
Quinn helps me kneel in the sand and rubs warm circles around my lower back with his hand. “Try to focus. The distance might be hard, but you’re connected to him. You can do it.”
I force myself to breathe and focus on my link to Ty. It’s not as clear as it should be, so Quinn is probably right about the distance. I can almost make out the image, almost hear his voice, but I need help. “Lara. The siren who projects thoughts. I need her to—”
Quinn doesn’t argue or question me. He’s on his feet before I can even finish telling him what I need, and back at my side not thirty seconds later with the influencer at his side. She kneels beside me, seemingly understanding exactly what I need from her.
An image appears in front of us, and it’s the same image in my head, only much clearer now that I can see it physically in front of me. Wherever Ty is, it’s dark. His thoughts are chaotic and the words he sends through the connection I share with all wolves are jumbled.
‘Ty, I need you to slow down. Show me where you are.’
The image moves as if he’s doing just that, so at least he can hear me. He turns his gaze to the left and I immediately recognize this place. He’s not just in the dungeon hidden within Lunae’s tunnels, I’m pretty sure he’s in the exact same cell where Imelda kept Kaylee. Quinn stiffens beside me, and I know he’s thinking the same thing.
‘I know where you are. Are you hurt? Think the words slowly and clearly. I can’t understand if you’re panicking.’
Even with him slowing down, it’s still nearly impossible to work out what he’s saying. Maybe if we’d had more time to strengthen our connection it would be easier, but for now, it seems we’re going to have to rely mainly on pictures.
‘I need you to show me. You can show me thoughts just as much as what’s right in front of you. Just think about what it is that you need me to see.’
There’s a tense moment where nothing happens, but then the image shifts. It’s not as defined, as if we’re looking through a reflection on water or a distorted piece of glass, but the image is clear enough.
A Guardian stands in front of me—no, in front of Ty . We’re seeing this memory through his eyes, but I still flinch when his fist connects where my face would be. And then again, this time to the ribs.
“That’s enough,” a familiar female voice says, and Imelda steps into view. Her long, red hair swirls like blood around her shoulders and I’m not entirely convinced there’s not a splotch of blood on her cheek as if Ty’s blood splattered and she tried to wipe it away. “Tell me again what happened.”
I hear Ty’s voice, but it’s muffled. Either he’s speaking through a gag or that first punch did a lot more damage than it seemed. If that even was the first punch. He’s likely not showing us the start of this. “A wolf. It came out of the trees. By the time we saw it, Will was already gone. It tore him to pieces right in front of us.” He pauses, as if the trauma of the incident I know never happened is too much for him. “It came for me next, but Jax… He tried to fight it off. It turned on him and I ran.”
Imelda purses her lips and I know she’s trying to decide if she believes him. She knows of the wolves and what they can do and she already knows we’ve been around the borders. Those sirens that Erwyn sent to the western mountains are proof enough of that. “We’ll see if your story lines up.”
The memory fades and the image of the dank cell returns, but his fear lingers. I feel it as if it were my own, and perhaps on some level it is. I’m terrified for this man because his blood is on my hands. It may not be my fists breaking his body, but I allowed this.
Quinn kneels at my side. “Let me speak to him through you.”
“Can we do that?”
He shrugs. “Only one way to find out.”
I open my connection to Quinn wide and do the same with Ty. A moment later, Quinn’s voice fills my head.
‘Ty, if you can hear me, nod.’
The image moves.
‘Good. Now listen to me. Your story will line up. I’ve made sure of that. Imelda will have no reason to hold you once her Guardians return. Just try to stay calm until then and keep your head down. Don’t shift again until you have to.’
He nods again.
‘I can feel through Abby that at least one of your ribs is broken.’ I flinch at his words and suddenly the trouble I’m having breathing makes sense. ‘Bones have a way of reforging with the shift. It will heal when you shift again, but that damage was intentional. You’ll have to put on a show. Imelda isn’t stupid. Don’t give her any reason to test you again.’
The image changes into a memory. Once again, seeing through Ty’s eyes, I find myself looking directly at Quinn. But not the Quinn I have in front of me. It’s Quinn in his wolf form, deep in the forest. A single word flickers through my mind, but I know Quinn isn’t saying it now. This has to have been when he took Ty back to the place where Jade found him.
‘Survive.’
‘That’s right,’ Quinn says, this time speaking for real. ‘Whatever it takes.’