Sienna Rossi: Beyond Shattered Trust (The Rossi Legacies #9)

The Siberian Wastelands

Jayce

The frozen temperature isn’t the kind we can adapt to; it’s harsh even on us werewolves, settling deep in our bones.

The only thing untouched by the heavy snowfall is the dome that stands behind us, which covers miles of land. It pulses with a constant vibration, ominous and unsettling. It doesn’t belong here; even the land knows it. Everything about it feels wrong.

We don’t fully know exactly what else is inside the dome. All we know is that there are many beings within it, watching us the same way we watch the dome. Biding their time, but for what, we have no idea.

We’re spread around the entire circumference of the dome, guarding it from all angles. Not to protect what’s inside, but to make sure nothing gets in or out. It isn’t a prison for the monsters; it’s a gate to our world, and one thing we can all agree on is that it is deadly.

If that were the only threat, maybe we could rest between shifts, but in front of us, just beyond our line of sight, is the base of the Indomitable.

They circle us relentlessly, and almost every day we clash.

Each one brutal, each one carving more names into memory, and still they come, because they know the truth; we all do. At some point, we will tire.

And we are stuck in the middle, knowing we can’t let them get to it.

To turn our backs on the dome is madness.

But to turn our backs on the Indomitable is death.

And so, sleep is a luxury we can’t afford.

Vigilance is survival, and we must survive.

I’ve been here for almost five weeks, but it feels much longer. I glance at my patrol partners; two of them don’t speak English, and a lot of people around here don’t. We’re from all corners of the world, but a universal code for orders is taught to everyone when they arrive.

The air is currently thick with unease, woven into every glance shared between us.

We’re close to the dome tonight, and it puts a person on edge, knowing that one of those monsters could suddenly burst from the force field.

The silence coils around us, and the tension radiating off my partners is barely restrained.

This place does not feel like the edge of a battlefield; it feels like the pause before one.

I signal for them to go left, and I go right. The area per patrol spreads to half a mile. I trudge along in the snow, trying not to let my mind return to the pain that’s buried deep in my chest. A pain that hasn’t eased since the day she died.

Mom…

It’s been eleven weeks, four days and seventeen hours… and yet it replays in my mind repeatedly like a fresh blow. I foresaw it; even if it wasn’t crystal clear, I knew what it meant, and yet I wasn’t able to prevent it.

She was supposed to be safe. I warned her to remain with the others in the shelter. She promised me she would go straight there. She meant it, too… So, why did she come out? I know she was the Luna, but there were so many of us; we should have been enough.

The ache in my chest only grows. Dad’s scream still haunts me, the crippling anguish threatening to consume me.

Theo left that very night, too; it fucking hurt us all. But despite it, I’m unable to shake his words away, the urgency in them. Does he really think one of us is capable of murder, let alone murdering our own mother? But the more I think about it, the more something feels off.

But to wrap my head around that, it’s impossible.

I scan the darkness, my senses on alert, listening for the slightest thing out of place. The sounds from within the dome are ever-present, but that’s the norm around here.

Snow falls heavily as I continue walking, my mind wandering to a woman it never should.

I’m fucking worried, even if I’m not ever going to admit it.

She’s most likely been in heat at least twice, if not three times, by now, and I know she won’t let anyone else satiate it.

The very thought makes my eyes blaze with anger.

I don’t want her in my life, don’t want the ache she left behind or the way her absence claws at me in the quiet moments, and yet, desire coils low and vicious every time her face slips uninvited into my thoughts.

I want to forget her, want to bury her memory beneath training and duty, but she lingers there all the same, haunting me almost as relentlessly as the memory of my mother’s death, woven into my grief and rage in a way I never asked for and can’t seem to escape from.

I scoff internally, bitter and hollow at the realisation that I can love someone with everything I have and still hate them just as fiercely for the way they broke me, for the way she chose betrayal when I would have burned the world to keep her safe.

Love is pain, and I’ve been thoroughly burned.

I stiffen when I hear the quiet crunch of ice beneath boots; I’ve come to recognise the person by his footsteps, probably the quietest on the ice of any of us.

His power is reined in, but even then you can sense his presence. Crown Prince Mikhail Petrov.

He moves like the cold is nothing more than a nuisance, his dark hair stark against the snow, his red eyes burning like coals in the darkness. His long coat is untouched by snow. He’s come from the camp.

“Why are you out here?” I ask quietly. He’s in charge, although I wonder why he’s even out here in the Wastelands at all, considering he is the heir to the vampire throne.

“Unlike you wolves, I do not need as much sleep,” he says, his thick Russian accent dragging out each syllable strongly, making the words heavier.

“Meaning you couldn’t sleep,” I state, glancing at the pulsating wall several metres away.

A faint, humourless smile curves his lips, sharp and controlled. “Nyet, I could not,” he says. A violent gust scatters snow in sheets, and I feel the pulse of the dome respond beneath my boots. “Stay alert; there has been a lot of activity from the dome today.”

I nod. “Let’s hope so.” If I’m able to identify one myself, I can see if it’s one that is mentioned in the Book of Beasts.

He cocks a brow. “Well, it will depend on whether we can keep it alive long enough for you to get a look at it,” he says, the faintest hint of a challenge in his eyes.

“Yeah.”

He nods before he walks away, vanishing into the fog.

The Wastelands are silent again, save for the pulsating. But beneath the snow, beneath the ice, beneath the night itself, they are moving, they are waiting, and each passing moment is bringing us closer to the moment they are ready.