Chapter 8
Nyx
“We’re being attacked. Help,” her voice ricochets through my head, bouncing off every wall as it rings out loudly.
Talonis has been rattling off about something about the vampires for the last half hour while I’ve been trying to coach Ambrose on how to get Lumi to fall in love with her. I don’t know if my coaching sucks or if Ambrose is just that much of a halfwit, but so far it hasn’t been working.
But then I hear her voice in my head. A voice I’ve been desperate to hear since she cut off our connection. Fear, pain, and panic ring out faster than her words hit me. I don’t have time to process how I’m hearing her, if it’s a hallucination, or a trap.
I run.
I only know where she is because of Ambrose, because of my connection with him.
As I run, I can’t decide if I should stay in my vampire form or wolf form.
My vampire is faster, but my wolf, I feel more in control of.
If I fight in my vampire form, I might kill someone who doesn’t deserve to die.
Or I might kill someone who needs to be questioned before they are killed.
It might push me over the edge of my control again until there is nothing left of myself.
Wolf, definitely wolf.
I start to shift, but my body has other ideas. Claws form, bones bend, fur sprouts, but I’m still running on two legs, not four. Still seeing out of my vampire eyes, with my vampire fangs.
What the hell?
Shift.
I’ve never had trouble shifting. Not since the first time I learned to shift. It’s as instinctual as breathing for me. So why is my body resisting now?
I keep running. It’s the only thing I know to do. But I have to shift. All my instincts are screaming at me that I need to be in my wolf form.
“Shift!” I command myself with my vampire mind control.
I shift.
My enormous midnight colored wolf takes shape fully, and I run.
“What’s happening?” I send to Ambrose.
I get nothing in return.
Fuck, I may hate the bastard, but if he’s dead, we’re all fucked.
I connect our minds, letting myself feel what he’s feeling. And an incredible wave of fear washes through me, making me want to run faster and faster.
I don’t know what has them both so scared, but the fear is like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
I run faster, trying to sense what I’m about to face—witches, vampires, wolf shifters. Something else entirely.
Whatever creature attacked them managed to do so in complete silence. I don’t hear their footsteps as I approach. I don’t scent their fur, blood, or heartbeat.
Witches—it has to be. They must be using their magic to hide themselves and attack under the cover of darkness.
The sky is dark now, but the woods are completely shrouded in darkness, so not even the light from the stars or the moon shines through the trees.
It’s the kind of darkness that neither my wolf shifter nor vampire eyesight can penetrate. The kind that’s created by magic.
I consider my options, then howl as loudly as I can. My signal to the rest of my pack that I need them. Howls echo through the woods, Sylara’s being particularly close, telling me help is on the way. But I can’t wait for help.
I run through the darkness on hyper alert, trying to find her.
I howl again, hoping to hear her voice. Hoping to hear anything, really. The cold silence is all that greets me.
I can’t hear them. I can’t find them. But I know I’m in the right place.
I huff out a breath, hoping that maybe they can smell me, hear me. Maybe she’ll realize I’m here and find a way to speak to give me some clue as to where she is in this endless blackness.
“Lumi,” I call out in Ambrose’s mind. But I can barely find the snowflaked trail. It’s flickering so softly. And Ambrose must be unconscious because I can’t find him anywhere, even though I’m speaking in his mind.
“You came,” I hear her soft voice back in my head.
I turn in circles, trying to make out where she is. “Where are you?”
“I’m right here,” she says as if I know where the hell she is.
My legs start moving as if on instinct. Maybe I actually do know where she is. I let my instincts take over. Turning off my brain, I move.
And then I hear him.
Danger, my instincts scream at me.
But he’s not the current threat. Just the love of my life’s mate. And right now he’s lying on the ground in a puddle of his own blood.
Fucking hell.
I can’t leave him. I need him to break the curse to keep Lumi alive. But where is she?
“Lumi!” I scream in Ambrose’s head. “Come to Ambrose!”
I know she can sense him if she can’t sense me.
I know the moment she’s near.
“On my back!” I shout at her.
She’s on my back a second later. I can take a breath knowing that whatever injuries she has, it’s not bad enough that she couldn’t climb on my back on her own accord. And then I grab the back of Ambrose’s shirt, and I drag him as fast as my legs can carry me.
Before I get to the edge of the darkness, Sylara finds me. She’s the fastest and most cunning of my pack members. Her instincts are incredible.
She huffs, and I know she’s got Ambrose. I pull him onto her back, and then we both run. Neither of us knows what is chasing us, just that we have to get out of here before they attack us like they did Ambrose and Lumi.
Suddenly, the darkness vanishes. As if being sucked into a vacuum. Night returns with my vision.
I suck in a steadying breath. Lumi does the same. And it’s like all of a sudden I can sense her again. Her heartbeat. Her scent. Her pain. It floods me in a way I haven’t felt since our connection was severed.
Our connection hasn’t been restored, just my senses, but right now that’s more than enough.
“I don’t know who attacked us. But I’m okay. Just scratches, really,” she says as if she knows what I’m going to ask without having to ask it.
Her voice is reassuring, but I know her. She’s downplaying how bad she’s hurt. But when I glance over at Ambrose on Sylara’s back, just behind us, I’m just thankful that Lumi is upright and talking.
Sylara stays just behind me. Just far enough that Lumi would have to purposefully look in his direction to see him.
“Ambrose isn’t okay, is he?” she finally asks me. And I know she senses him in her mind.
I shake my head gently.
And then she does it. She looks back at him. Her fingers dig deeper into my fur, like it’s the only thing grounding her.
“Where’s Riven?” she asks.
I don’t have to answer her. My entire pack greets us. And then we are all running together. The link we all share is enough. I don’t want them searching for whoever attacked us. I want them by my side, protecting Lumi at all costs. And that’s exactly what they do.
Together, we run into the house. Moonlight pack members circle outside.
Lumi climbs off my back, running to Ambrose’s side.
Shift, I think.
But just like before, I don’t shift. Not instantly. I look around at the others. Sylara shifts the second that Ambrose is off her back. Talonis follows. But Brax and Riven seem to be struggling.
“Shift,” I give my alpha command to them. And they shift, relief flooding their faces.
I funnel the same energy into myself until the pain almost explodes out of me, before I finally shift.
I want to collapse from the pain and energy I just exerted shifting. But there isn’t time for that. I run to Lumi, who is bent over Ambrose.
Blood covers both of them now as she checks him. Then she looks up, searching for someone to help him.
Riven is there in a heartbeat. Emeric follows, bringing with him his own pack’s healer. And then Emeric collapses on the floor from the pain.
Fucking curses.
Riven almost goes to him before Lumi stops him. “Healing Ambrose will heal Emeric. His pain is linked to Ambrose’s.”
We all hold our breath as Riven works. Until Ambrose’s breath gets louder and louder. His heartbeat steadier.
“Lumi’s turn,” I say as soon as Ambrose is good enough to be tended to by his pack’s healer alone.
“I’m fine, Ambrose—”
But Riven takes one look at her and says, “Sit down. Ambrose is fine. I need to look at your neck.”
Lumi touches her neck, and for the first time, notices the gash that I’ve been doing my best to ignore while Riven made sure that Ambrose was still with the living.
Before Lumi can even complain about the pain, Riven has her skin pulling back together. Her neck, her cheek, her wrist.
“Was it witches or vampires?” I ask her.
She stares at me wide-eyed. “I have no clue. It was the strangest thing. One minute we were having a conversation, the next, darkness. Then the pain started. Like a knife being sliced across me. Thankfully, I had my knife, so I was able to defend myself.”
For the first time, I notice the blade in her hand, drenched in blood.
“I couldn’t tell you who it was either. I have no idea who attacked us. I’ve never been attacked like that,” Ambrose says.
“Ambrose,” Lumi says, her voice full of relief.
My heart stutters at how warm and full of joy her voice sounds when she says his name. And I know in that moment, she truly could fall in love with him again. I’m the thing getting in her way.
He smiles at her.
She smiles back.
There’s a second of silence. Of unspoken words between them. They’re communicating mind to mind. Bond to bond. I could slip inside. I could hear what they are saying.
But I don’t.
“It had to be the curse,” Riven says, looking at both of them.
“What do you mean?” Lumi asks him.
“Ambrose’s curse. There is no evidence of witches or vampires. That means one of us tried to kill her. We blacked out. Have no memory of it. We tried to kill her to fulfill her curse. It could have been any one of us.”
Everyone looks at me. But there are no black spots in my memory.
“Nyx saved us. He wasn’t trying to kill us,” Lumi says.
But some of the people in the room aren’t convinced from the looks on their faces.
“Brax and Talonis were with me the entire time. Others might have tried to get you, but when the curse comes for me, I’ll succeed. I’m a killer. I’m made for this. No one will be here to save you from me,” I say.
Lumi looks at me, seeing the truth in my words.
But she doesn’t cower away from me. Doesn’t fear me.
Doesn’t beg Ambrose to use his magic to lock me up.
And that’s exactly what scares me. It’s almost like if she has to die, she’d rather it be at my hand.
Because she knows I’ll be following right after her in death.
And in death, might be the only time we can truly be together.
“There’s another problem,” Sylara says, interrupting.
Everyone’s eyes but Lumi’s turn in her direction.
“The wolf shifter curse is getting worse. It took everything in me to shift, when usually I can shift as easily as I breathe. I watched all of you. It’s happening to everyone.
We have to figure out how to break all three of the curses or…
” Sylara doesn’t finish her sentence. She doesn’t have to.
We all know the stakes have been raised.
If we don’t find a way to break the curse for the wolf shifters as well, we could be stuck as humans or wolves.
Both thoughts are terrifying. We’d rather die than have no control over shifting.
And Lumi, who is staring at me with concern in her eyes, knows that better than anyone.