Chapter 13 Grey
GREY
Two Days Later
Ashlyn sits at the table, her eyes wide as magic hums in the air.
It seems she was right about adopting some of my magic via our bond. If only the power went both ways. And I’m still trying to determine why I can’t hear her at all.
She said she can sense some of my thoughts, but it’s not always clear.
And neither of us can communicate mentally.
It’s… strange.
I watch as she draws a protective rune on herself, just like the one I dismantled an hour ago so she could practice.
Her brow pinches when it doesn’t glow properly at the end and I wait to see if she figures out why.
I sip my coffee—something I made from an old coffeemaker I found in the dusty cabinet—and watch her start over again.
She’ll ask me if she wants to know what she’s missing.
While she busies herself with that, I mentally check all the wards around the property. I put them up when we first arrived—almost immediately after tucking her into a bed beneath a mountain of blankets—and have been mentally recharging them several times a day since.
So far, there hasn’t been any signs of life anywhere near here.
Yet I still can’t seem to shadow Ashlyn out of here. And any time I try to do so on my own, it feels wrong. Wobbly, even. So I always stop before the shadow takes hold. It’s never happened to me before, and the issue is clearly linked to Ashlyn somehow.
I’ve sent Cael a few messages about it, but he hasn’t replied yet. Which is making me question if the watch was damaged somehow during our escape from the cave. Or maybe from all the snow we plowed through to reach this cabin.
“Ugh,” Ashlyn growls. “What am I doing wrong?”
I glance at her arm. “You’re missing a dash. Want me to show you where?” I learned yesterday that she prefers to learn by doing, so I’m trying to respect that process.
“Yes.”
I nod and step forward to draw a line for her near the corner. The rune instantly lights up with golden flares and she basically snarls at it.
I help her remove it and say, “Try again while I call Cael.” Because I really don’t like that he’s been radio silent since I left his office five days ago. I should have called him earlier after he didn’t respond to my messages, but Ashlyn distracted me with her needs.
And what sweet needs those were, I muse, running my gaze over her before stepping outside to bring up Cael’s number.
It rings once before flashing an error that reads “No Signal.”
I stare at it, then look at the satellite connection. The strength isn’t great, but the status is still green. Which means I definitely have a signal.
Frowning, I try again and the same thing happens.
I bring up my messages to see if they’ve gone through and they all have a delivered status.
To test it, I try Dixon’s direct line.
And the same thing happens.
“Right.” I remove the watch and carry it back inside to where Ashlyn is almost done drawing the rune again. I toss the broken tech onto the counter and watch her concentrate.
But then she stills, her expression going blank.
“Ashlyn?” I prompt after she doesn’t move for more than ten seconds. She doesn’t even appear to be breathing.
I walk over and wave my hand in front of her face.
Nothing.
A vision? I wonder, not sure if I should interrupt or… I don’t know.
I can’t hear anything, which is infuriating. She’s supposed to be mine. I bit her. I claimed her. So why can’t I fucking—
Ashlyn comes alive with a gasp, her eyes wide as she looks at me. “Cael,” she breathes. “Did you… did you talk to Cael?”
My brow furrows. “No. The watch is broken.”
She shakes her head. “You have to go to him, Grey. You need to go.”
“What did you see?” I ask her, needing to understand.
“There isn’t time,” she tells me, sounding frantic. “Forget about me and go.”
Is she mad? “Forget—”
“Now!” she demands, her eyes filling with tears. “Please, Grey. Please listen to me.”
“Okay,” I tell her. “But I’m coming right back.”
Her blue irises look glassy from the unshed tears. “Go, Grey.”
My gaze narrows.“I will never forget you, mate,” I growl at her, needing that to be said between us. “I’ll be right back.”
My shadowing ability ignites with ease, which is strange since it was still giving me trouble only an hour ago. But I accept it and take myself to Lunar Sector.
Only Ashlyn’s final words—which she must have voiced as I engaged my shadow—seem to chase after me into the darkness. “Goodbye, Grey.”
I frown, not liking those words. Particularly as they seem to be echoing through my head with a finality that leaves me feeling unsteady.
The moment I finish here…
My thought trails off as my surroundings begin to appear, the rocky wall not at all like the elegant office I was aiming for with my shadowing.
What the fuck?
I spin around, noting the large cavern overhead and the abundance of candles.
No views of the former Russian Archipelago that Lunar Sector now owns.
No water.
No ice.
Just rocks and candles.
I attempt to shadow again, only to find my power nonexistent.
My eyes widen, my fingers automatically attempting to draw a rune. But I seem to possess no magic at all.
Just like when I was collared by my father.
Goose bumps erupt down my arms—which I now realize are bare.
Because I shadowed in my fucking sweatpants.
I’m not even wearing shoes.
I was so quick to do what Ashlyn requested, her urgency making me act without thinking it through.
And now…
Where the fuck am I?
“Hello, brother,” a ghost from my past says, the deep voice unmistakable as it echoes around the cave. “Welcome home.”
Home? I think, looking around again, my eyes widening. Kodiak Sector…
I shadowed to Lunar Sector and somehow ended up in Kodiak Sector instead.
Only it’s nothing like the images my father showed me as a child.
All the ice. The snow. The igloos.
This is a fucking tunnel system. A cave with a lot of candles, I think, recalling what Ashlyn said about my sister.
“How many candles?” I asked her.
“Thousands upon thousands,” she whispered.
I see them all now, the candles flickering throughout every inch of this cavern, illuminating it from within.
We must be in a carved out mountain, I think. Fuck.
“You’re wondering how you ended up here, I assume,” Spruce says as he steps into view. “Or perhaps wondering how I rose from the dead?”
I clench my jaw, not sure I like where this is heading at all. Particularly as I’m still magically collared somehow. “What am I doing here, brother?” I ask him.
“Well, you shadowed here,” he explains, his voice taking on a taunting edge. “Though, I don’t think this is where you meant to go, is it? Maybe back to Lunar Sector, perhaps?”
Ice drizzles down my spine. “What did you do?” I demand, trying to find him in the cave.
But he appears to be masked in shadows—a bit of irony considering how I ended up here.
“I didn’t do anything. Our sister, however…” He finally steps into the light, his blond hair illuminated by the candles around him.
But it’s the glass of liquid that catches my eye more.
It’s full of blood.
I can smell it from here.
Blood bolsters a V-Clan wolf’s magic, making it a necessary drink for our kind. Though, I find I can go months without it and not feel any different, maybe because of my Z-Clan genetics.
Though, my brother never imbibed while growing up. Mostly because our father forbade it, said it too vampiric and he wasn’t going to raise vampires as children.
Interesting that my twin is drinking it now.
Also interesting that I can’t sense or feel him at all.
That’s why I thought he was dead—our twin bond severed and I felt his life disappear.
It seems that was a bad assumption on my part.
“Would you like to see her?” he asks, causing me to arch a brow. “Our sister, I mean. She’s quite the attraction around here.”
My stomach clenches, my heart suddenly in my throat. Nikiski is here.
This is part of the visions that Ashlyn saw—the cave, my sister, the candles.
But not my brother.
What the fuck is going on? I want to demand, but I refuse to play into whatever game Spruce is trying to initiate.
Instead, I calmly ask, “Do you want me to see her?” I infuse my words with boredom, the skill one I mastered with Cael as a best friend.
He’s the stronger political player in the field.
But there’s a reason he assigned me the title of Second-in-Command.
“What I want is my new toy,” Spruce says, then takes a drink from his glass, his russet brown eyes—the same as our father’s—closing in momentary bliss. “But you left her to the outlaws, I see.”
My calm mask nearly slips.
Because I really don’t like what he’s saying or what I think he’s implying.
“Which is fine, I guess,” he goes on. “They’ll break her in for me. Make it easier to tame her once she’s mine.”
Ashlyn, I think. No. He can’t be talking about her. How would he even know about her?
“Nikiski has struggled with that little brat for eons,” he continues.
“Having to implant images, then change things around once thwarted.” He swirls his drink, then takes another sip.
“The pretty seer has been so fucking elusive. I honestly can’t wait to choke her with my knot down her throat, make her pay for all the effort. ”
I swallow, my beast growling inside.
I don’t understand what he means about implanting images, but pretty seer sounds too much like Ashlyn. My little riddler.
“Anyway,” he says, taking a step back. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you to Nikiski. Let you say hi for old time’s sake. Just know that she can’t say much back.”
My heart skips a beat. I want to ask what he means. I want to ask how he forced me to shadow here. I want to ask how he’s disconnected his soul from our twin-bond. I want to ask what really happened to our sister that night.
Because everything I’ve researched, everything I thought I knew, is clearly wrong.
Nikiski isn’t in the Omega slave-trade at all. She’s here. In this cavern. In Kodiak Sector.
Fuck.
He’s waiting for me to walk with him, so I slide my hands into my pockets and feign a confidence I don’t feel.
I have no weapons.
Barely any clothes.
And my powers have been thwarted by some magical barrier that I can’t see.
What I do have is my mind. My fists. And motivation.
But I can’t exactly use any of those items until I know what I’m up against.
So I do the only thing I can do—I obey my brother’s request and follow him… into hell.