Chapter 54 – Carina
Fifty-Four
CARINA
None of this is real. Maybe if I repeat it enough, it’ll come true.
There is no underground cell within Twilight Grove that I’ve been locked inside after meeting a Seer, of all people, and witnessing the future he possesses. Ryder is definitely not here, with some of his pack—all of whom I ensured were safe and free of this.
And Ryder is definitely not claiming I’m his fated mate.
It’s impossible.
Isn’t it?
Sloane’s clap of her hands ends my brain’s absence, but even returning to focus doesn’t drown out Ryder’s intense stare. The truth drills into my heart, pulling open anything I may have begun feeling for him, and begs me to hand the scraps over.
“Well,” she drawls in her smooth and yet grating voice, “seems like you two need to talk before. I’ll leave you be.”
For once, I’d prefer she stay.
Sloane’s vines transfer the four shifters, three of whom growl, into the empty cage to my right.
It’s like I’m watching through a void—or glasses that distort images—as she swings the door shut, leaving me in mine and the pack in another.
Three begin patting themselves down and completing the pointless ritual of attempting to escape.
One heads for the bars.
Ryder’s arm stretches as far as they allow, stopping a mere inch from my chest. Heat radiates, urging me to step into his touch. Merely a slow rock on my feet would put me in his vicinity. Instead, I lean away.
Dark eyes crumple in despair. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t planned.”
The bite mark on my neck claims otherwise. A person doesn’t accidentally bite another.
“I completed the bond so I could find you and save you, like I promised.”
So it was planned. It’s a pointless argument at this rate.
I look away, keep my voice flat. “You shouldn’t have come. This isn’t your fight.”
“You’re my fight.” Ryder smacks the bars. In another life, one where he didn’t lie, those words might affect me. “You’ll get out of here. I swear it.”
Maybe. Maybe not. Do I want to be Dark, even after what Sloane revealed? Hecate, no. But he doesn’t know that.
“I’ve seen what’s coming, and I understand why she’s doing this.
You heard her! My future is either beside her or in this cell, but both involve remaining here.
You all need to leave and go home. You’ll live your life, and lead your pack, and whenever the Celestial war hits, I promise to do what I can for you. ”
“Carina, I’m not leaving you. Ever.”
“Ever is a long time to remain in these cells.” I force my tone cold, hiding the way his presence has me wanting to let him hold me. But it might not even be him making me feel this way—maybe it’s the mystical reason for my strange connection to him.
The reason behind my intrigue, and why I stalked him by his pond.
The easy way I believed he’d never truly harm me, and the comfort felt when he held me in his cabin.
The quick way I not only grew to trust, but to like him.
Probably even the reason his entire pack feels more like home than my own home, and why, the instant he was led down here, my headache ceased.
“I don’t want to hear any of it. Not your theories or your explanations or even your reasons.
There’s no way out for me, but let me save you.
Run and never return. Don’t ever look for me.
You’re freed from your matehood, or whatever.
” My heart skips a beat at the thought. “You once begged me to run. When your dad was dying, and then afterwards, you begged me to go home and stay alive. You said if I didn’t live my life, you’d kill me yourself.
So I’m making the same vow to you now. Go home, find someone else, and live…
or I’ll return with all the Darkness of this coven and kill you. ”
And then, finally, I lift my eyes to his. Silver and endless, a promise of so much—and a reminder of what won’t be.
“Carina,” he pleads. “Carina, I can’t. The bond won’t allow me to leave you in danger.”
Right. That. A reminder of everything between us being a lie. That Ryder completed it out of some instinctual need to keep me safe—yet look how well that went.
As he reaches for me again, I lean away.
Then turn away.
I give him my back and whisper, “I don’t care about that. You should rest before your long trip back home.”
When I reach what I’ve deemed as “my corner”—where I was curled up before Adalyn and Archer came in and the alarm sounded—I reclaim my position.
Hair down to block my face and legs up to my chest, I bow my head and wait for Sloane’s return, for once with anticipation.
The sooner she comes, the sooner the inevitable will happen.
Within the mist of despair, Ryder’s deep voice breaks through. “Let me talk.”
“Let me save you,” I counter, lifting my head so my voice carries.
“Carina—”
“Stop, Ryder. I’m sorry this hurts you but think about how all of this is hurting me. ’Kay, just…stop.”
He doesn’t speak again.
My eyes shut and I hold my stomach—my hands settling over the place I imagine the bond being centred.
If such a thing even exists.
When steps approach the room, I lift my head, thrilled to have her back.
With Sloane, I’ll do whatever the fuck needed in order to send the pack on their way.
She enters with Adalyn and Archer, each taking sentry by the door.
Adalyn’s staring wide-eyed at the shifters, but it’s Archer who looks at me.
Same as Ryder, who hasn’t glanced away since we were alone.
There’s no life for him here, so ignoring him is the easiest thing for us all. Dark or Light, I’m a witch caught in a much bigger problem, and he’s an Alpha shifter whose entire objective is to keep his pack safe.
I’m helping him accomplish that.
Sloane approaches the cells, looking between them. “Hope you two worked everything out.”
“Release them.” Unfolding my legs to stand, all without a glance towards the pack, I cross to her.
In Sloane’s absence, the three shifters have taken to chatting—planning an escape that won’t work—napping, and observing their Alpha. The Alpha in question did nothing but sit as close as he could to the bars and watch me.
“I’ll help you save the covens, Sloane. I’m ready to forsake what I know and learn black magick.”
“Good. But before releasing them, there’s something I need to test. It’d be a shame to let an opportunity pass. You see, for years, there was a little rumour going around that I’d be remiss to ignore.”
A choking sound comes from the cell beside me right as vines whip through the space, moving the shifters around. Holly, Conan, and Xander are slammed against the wall, a band of thick ivy strapping them in place.
In the centre, Ryder’s down on his knees, a vine constricting his throat. His fingers claw at it—shifted with wolf nails to tear through—but Sloane’s magick is too powerful.
“No!” I throw myself at the bars, cursing—raging—at the magick-suppressing cuffs on my wrists, trying to rip them off, to free my magick, to first break the hold on the vines and then strangle Sloane with black magick’s tendrils. “No, this isn’t what we agreed to!”
His face flushes red with the seconds of his life ticking down. His pack growls and shouts.
“Stop!” I push at the bars again. Throw my body at it, even though they’re reinforced and I’m doing nothing but bruising my arms.
But Ryder wouldn’t stop for anything if the roles were reversed.
Archer straightens from the wall, casting an uneasy glance at Adalyn, who continues cleaning her nails as though nothing is amiss. In her world, maybe nothing is.
In mine, everything is.
“Stop!” I hit the bars so hard, the thud of my skin against the wood not only stings my palms but echoes through my head. My mouth aches, having been clenching my jaw so hard—specifically my gums. “Sloane, you fucking bitch!”
“Make me.”
“Remove the cuffs,” I demand with a growl worthy of Ryder. “Then gladly.”
Protect him.
Save him.
I need to. More than anything.
More than air and life and breath.
More than magick.
He falls forward, weak from fighting for breath.
His hands keep working pointlessly at the vines, the movements getting sluggish as the seconds continue ticking down like a cruel countdown in my mind.
The fact that he’s choking and I’m powerless to help scratches at my brain, like every overstimulation stimuli possible.
My gums ache—pressure from clenching?
My hands itch—trying to call on magick?
My breathing quickens; I’m trying to send some of it to Ryder, to keep him alive. To make this supposed bond useful for something, because if it won’t save his life, what’s the point?
“Sloane!”
Her name comes out wrong to my ears. It’s not spoken but growled…around four brand new fangs that burst through my gums.
Instead of at, I push away from the bars, clawing at my mouth to make them go away. I’m clearly imagining the fangs inside my mouth. But as I do so, my nails hook on my cheek…
Not my nails.
Claws.
Like Ryder’s.
Someone whispers, “What the fuck?” and I’m right there with them, asking myself the same as my mind rolls over any and all possibility to answer how.
What did Ryder’s bite do?
Between my fingers, my eyes meet Ryder’s, whose attention isn’t on the vine any longer—the vine lies loose around his body. He’s panting, staring at me like I’m the moon and his every rotation around the planet. His eyes flash silver, and his mouth forms a word.
Mate.
Deep inside my core, behind shock, is the whisper of another’s surprise. A hint, a slight twisting of him.
Sloane’s sharp laugh breaks through the silence.
“It is true! All those rumours… You wanted to know why your birth mother was running from her coven. It had nothing to do with us, but all about you. In fact, believing they abandoned her is a failure of Morgan’s training.
Covens stand with their own, something you should be well-versed in.
They never kicked your mother out, but they weren’t sure whether to consider you coven or pack.
They feared you taking after your father. ”
“M-my father?”
Fangs. Claws. The growls.
Oh my Goddess.
“It was rumoured she got impregnated by a certain wolf shifter.” She twists until the pack, still chained to the wall, is in view. “The Hightooth Pack beside Vancouver, or so the stories go. By all accounts, Carina, you’re half-shifter.”
Ryder’s eyes glow, his wolf responding to me.
And…I felt that. Deep in my gut, like a brush of fur I don’t have, a paw against the claws embedded from my fingertips. The slightest touch that makes me ache for his hold more than anything.
“But I…I never—I…I didn’t know…I didn’t…”
“If I had to guess, she likely bound your shifter side. That’s what I would do in her place.” There’s no hint of disdain in her tone, only pity. “Bonding with him presumably unlocked that side of you and having him in danger brought it to life.”
Mate.
Ryder. My…my…
My nothing.
My fangs slide into my gums and a chase of my tongue around my mouth suggests they were never there to begin with. Claws turn back into normal nails. Within seconds, I’m a witch again.
“This changes things. An emerging wolf, a mated one at that, a witch needing to be Dark…” She waves her hands, and the bars blocking me from Ryder dissipate, forming a much larger cell. “Consider me more than intrigued.”
He lunges to his feet only for the vines on the ground to slide up his body, wrap his middle, and shove him against the far wall beside his packmates. I still don’t move—not to him or away as Sloane glides into the cell to stands beside me. Her hand rests lightly on my shoulder.
“Embracing Darkness isn’t merely about killing another.
It’s about the person the life belongs to.
Killing takes a life, often to save another—usually ourselves.
This is what you must think about when you murder.
By killing, you’re saving yourself. Then you’re saving thousands of witches.
So…” Her nails bite into my shoulder. “To save three wolves’ lives, one must die, and you will pick the one. ”