Chapter 31 Ambrose
Ambrose
Time ticks by, and we all sit in silence.
All lost in our own thoughts that are useless to share with each other at this point.
The manacles and chains prove that. Even if we had some brilliant plan, we are still chained.
Still caged. And I’d bet my life on magic reinforcing both the chains and the cage walls, so even if we had the strength to break them both, the magic would ensure we can’t escape.
We are truly trapped.
I’ve always belonged to the Moonfire witches since the day I took their deal. I thought I was saving myself and my pack, but it turned out to be the worst decision of my life.
The metal already digs into my wrists and ankles. I want to ask Lumi how she’s holding up, but I know that she wouldn’t want me to. So I keep my mouth closed.
I do catch her trembling every once in a while from the cold. I wish I could offer her my shirt, pants, or anything to keep her warm. But I’ve already tried my magic, and it doesn’t work here. There is nothing I can do to help her.
Despite my own magic being unusable, I still study Lumi for signs that she has magic. Most likely, the entire cage has a rune preventing magic from being used inside, but if Isolde didn’t know that Lumi had magic, she might have just cast a rune to prevent me from using magic.
Lumi could have magic.
She could be part witch.
The words still shock me even as I think them. But I know that Nyx is right. It’s possible. But if true, it makes me the biggest idiot on the planet for not noticing it about my own mate.
“Stop looking at Lumi like that,” I growl into Nyx’s head.
“I’m just looking at her. Studying her for signs of magic or anything else. It’s not like there is much to look at,” he snaps back.
“She’s naked. Keep your eyes on her eyes.”
Nyx rolls his eyes in a huff. “Really? We’re all about to die, and you’re worried that I’m looking at nipples and thinking about how I want to suck them?”
“She’s mine, Nyx. I saw that kiss. I smelt the lust and desire rolling off your body. You promised.”
“I had lost my mind. She was trying to help me regain control. She thought I was about to die! Don’t hold it against her.”
“I hold it against you!”
“No, you’re mad at her. Mad that I still have a hold on her. Mad that she still loves me.”
“I don’t care if she loves you—”
“As long as she loves you more. I know. I’ve lived in your mind enough to know how you think.
Just like you’ve been in mine enough to know I’ve given her up.
She’s yours. Completely yours. But what we do to survive until the marking ceremony is for her.
We do anything to keep her alive. To keep her from suffering. Anything.”
I don’t answer him. But I know he knows that I agree with him. So that’s enough.
“Feel anything yet?” I ask him.
“No. You’ll know when I do. I won’t have to tell you.”
I frown. “Maybe, but maybe it will start slow.”
“No, it won’t. That would be too kind. I’ll start how I ended.
I’ll want to kill everything. I’ll want to rip out both your throats for your blood.
I’ll forget who you are, what your name is, what our mission is.
I’ll remember nothing of who I am. And then the pain will come, and I’ll want to die. ” He pauses. “Protect her.”
“Always.”
I still study him closely for any signs of changes coming. It has to be close to two hours now since he took the cure. I alternate it with looking and listening for any signs that Isolde or the other witches are returning.
“You okay?” I ask Lumi.
Her head pops up, looking at me for the first time in the last hour. She doesn’t respond with words, just nods, and then goes back to studying her hands like they hold some sort of clue.
Time continues to tick, anticipation builds, and nothing happens.
Did Isolde lie? Has the cure already worn off, and is it going to take longer for Nyx’s symptoms to start again? Or is my sense of time here so wrong that I can’t tell how long we’ve been here? That even though I think it’s been longer than two hours, maybe it’s only been twenty minutes.
Time settles again. Slowly. Unyielding. Ticking like every beat takes a half second longer than usual.
And then, Nyx screams.
It pierces the room—agony unrestrained, being torn from his body.
One that leaves no doubt as to what’s happening with him.
Pain explodes out of him in every direction, violent and consuming.
He scrambles to his feet—chains clashing as he thrashes against them, every movement wild and uncontrollable.
Lumi starts trying to talk to him in a calm voice.
Trying to break through the animalistic chaos that’s going on in his head.
But right now, there is no reasoning with him.
There is no part of him left. The curse has completely taken over his body.
In a second, he’s lost to the curse, right back where he was before he took the cure.
I had hoped that it would build slowly, giving us more time, but that hope is gone.
Lumi doesn’t give up on him, though, even though it would be so much easier for all of us if she did. That this is going to be our life over and over and over again until we either break a curse in the marking ceremony or die. That fighting to get him back each time is pointless.
I wait for Isolde, but instead of appearing, the gate flings open and a warm body is thrust through the door before it slams shut again.
Not just a warm body—a human—alive.
My heart stops as I look from the person to Lumi, knowing exactly what’s going to happen next.
The female human begins to stumble around as if she’s been drugged. Her clothes barely cling to her frail body. She’s probably been caged and starved until this point. I don’t know who she is, and I never will.
After this moment, my mind will wipe itself clean of this moment.
I won’t allow myself to carry this memory with me.
I won’t suffer from it. I won’t replay it in my head.
It’s just another moment of torture. One that I won’t blame Nyx for, despite all his shortcomings.
I’ll blame Isolde. I won’t think about this life that is about to be lost.
I look at Lumi—at my mate. At the woman I love more than anything, while she’s looking at him.
Desperation fills her eyes, and she starts to pull against her chains to try and get to Nyx, like she’s going to be able to stop the inevitable.
She can’t. But I can do something to help her not make this another permanent scar on her memory.
I wait, watching the woman stumble around in the darkness so that she can’t see the predators she’s trapped with. I watch Nyx, who has suddenly gone very quiet, laser-focused on his target.
“Take one step to your left,” Lumi shouts to the woman in a desperate and futile attempt to save her.
She doesn’t realize that even if she keeps the woman from Nyx, the woman will still die. Possibly a much more horrible death than what Nyx is going to do to her. Isolde will never allow this woman to live. It might be kinder to just let Nyx finish her quickly.
The woman stumbles, not heeding Lumi’s advice. She either can’t hear her or doesn’t believe she’s telling the truth.
One more second. One more inch and she’s Nyx’s.
I hold my breath, waiting for the moment—for the timing to be perfect.
She moves, and I scream into her mind, “Lumi, help!”
I crumble to the floor, acting out my incredible pain.
“Ambrose!” Lumi screams out loud, running to my side as quickly as she can. The chains prevent her from reaching me, but still she reaches out her hand, trying to touch me.
“What’s going on?” Her voice is desperate and full of fear.
I writhe on the floor, pretending I can’t answer her because of the pain. I grab my chest, tugging at my shirt to the point of almost ripping it.
“Ambrose!” she screams again. I hear the chains she’s pulling against rattle as she struggles to get to me.
The woman Nyx is drinking from lets out a muffled cry. I cry out louder, blocking the sound before Lumi hears it.
I thrash against my own chains so hard that they bite into my wrists until blood begins to drip from my raw skin. I don’t care. I’d do anything to protect Lumi, even suffer a little bit of pain for her.
“Over.” I hear his voice in my head, unexpectedly.
I slow my breathing, pretending the pain is slowly subsiding so as not to let Lumi know that I was faking the pain to distract her.
“I’m okay. I don’t know what Isolde did, but I’m okay now,” I say breathlessly.
Lumi lets out a rough exhale as her eyes scan every inch of my body, looking for any signs of damage.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m just glad it wasn’t you she decided to torture.”
She shakes her head. “She did torture me. Every time either of you is in pain, it’s torture to me.”
Finally, she glances over her shoulder at Nyx. I follow her gaze, and shock rolls through me.
Nyx looks stoic, like he has complete control. But I can see the truth beneath his stance. I can see how he fists his hands. How the veins are popping in his body, sharp and strained beneath his muscled skin. The breath he’s holding. He’s fighting like hell to keep his control.
He’s somehow managed to wipe all of the woman’s blood from his mouth. There is no sign that he just devoured her except for her lifeless body hidden in the shadows.
Lumi looks from him to me and then back to him again, like she’s slowly piecing what just happened together.
But the fact that he tried to hide it from her.
That he’s trying to keep control tells me that he isn’t as lost as he thought he’d be.
The curse doesn’t have complete control. He’s fighting back.
He gives me a look that thanks me, and I nod back, thanking him for fighting. But before any other words can be spoken, Isolde and the other witches appear.
Isolde looks at Nyx with a smirk on her face. “Well, done.”
Nyx doesn’t move, like if he moves, he’ll lose the control he has. I can feel how hard he’s grasping onto that control in his mind, like a vice grip, clenching down so hard that I know if he lets up at all, I’m afraid he’ll try to strike out at the closest source of blood—Lumi.
“But it’s not going to be good enough,” Isolde says.
She lifts her hand in Lumi’s direction.
“No!” I scream, and I can feel Nyx flinch in my mind, losing an inch of that control he has.
Click, click.
My eyes snap to Lumi in time to see the manacles sliding off her wrists and ankles as the chains fall to the floor with a loud thud.
“Why so concerned? I thought you wanted me to free her?” Isolde says with a smile I don’t trust.
I tug against my own chains until they rattle. Anger surges through me—too intense, too overwhelming to be entirely mine. Dark, cold shadows creep into my mind, twisting with my own rage.
I don’t trust the reason that Lumi is no longer in chains.
“What do you want, Isolde? How do we get the next cure for Nyx?” I ask matter-of-factly.
She studies her nails like she has all the time in the world, not like Nyx is about to break his own chains and kill the only person capable of breaking her curse. Finally, she answers, but not with words. With a wave of her hand, Lumi is caught in her magic.
Lumi’s entire body goes rigid as she fights the invisible force that has encased her. Her muscles barely twitch, though. She can’t move unless Isolde allows it. She’s trapped—more trapped than she was with the chains.
“The question is not what I want,” Isolde’s voice snaps on the last word. “The question is, who does Lumi want and who is her true mate?”
“I’m her mate. All of the seers have said so. Every. Single. One. She broke her connection with Nyx. Rejected his bond with her. She’s mine.”
“Yes…that’s what the seers say. It’s what you say, but I wonder why the bond was there in the first place.
The gods are known teasers that like to play games.
” Isolde grips her teeth. “I don’t care what happens to the girl, if she chooses wrong and dies, but I do care that the curse is broken for the witches this month.
” She grinds her teeth. “I can’t—” there’s a flash of pain that streaks across her face, and it almost seems like she’s struggling to hold onto her magic.
Hope surges like never before. We can defeat her. She’s losing her power. Maybe we can find a way to exploit that and kill her, then we can freely choose who we break the curse for and how.
“I want to see for myself who Lumi’s mate is. When the time comes, I’ll be the one choosing for her,” Isolde says.
“You don’t have the kind of power to force me to complete the marking ceremony. You can barely hold me in this spot. You’re not strong enough,” Lumi says with fire in her voice.
“Careful, my queen,” I say to Lumi in her mind, but if she receives my message, she does nothing to dampen her emotions. She’s just as fierce and determined as ever before.
Isolde’s eyes turn wicked, and her smile creeps up her face. She looks from me to Nyx. “I have plenty of leverage, my dear. Two men whose lives you care about deeply will ensure you do what I say, in addition to the lives of two women that you care about.
“But if, for some reason, that alone isn’t enough, I have the strength to force you to do each step against your will.
I will join you with the male of my choosing, force you both to shift, and entice him to sink his teeth into your flesh and mark you.
I will force you to say the words to ensure that you break the curse for the witches.
And only then will I release you from this world in a death that you will be begging for by the time I’m done with you. ”
Lumi just smirks like she’s already won.
“What are you doing?” I send to her.
“Trust me, Ambrose. Just trust me.”