Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
KAEL
One Week Later
The ride back to Raven’s Ridge feels different. Quieter. The world hasn’t settled. It may never. But something in me has.
Eliza leans into me, her warmth steady against my back. The bond between us isn’t fragile. It doesn’t fade.
“Mine,” I whisper, and a contented whimper escapes her lips.
The word settles in my bones without resistance now. I no longer fear or fight it. I accept it to the bottom of my soul.
By the time we reach the ridge, they’re already gathering.
Wildbloods.
More than I’ve seen in one place in years.
Men and women stepping out of the trees, out of cabins, out of the edges of the land like they’ve been waiting for something to call them forward.
Or someone.
They gather at the Grange, where the council usually meets. That’s where we ride, too.
I slide off Tempest, reaching up to help Eliza down. “You ready for this?” I ask.
“More ready than I was for the glowing guys,” she chuckles, an edge beneath the joke. “Besides, I know many of these folks… better than you, I imagine.”
She has a point.
Inside, I’ve never seen so many chairs and still folks stand, faces caught between curiosity and unease. They whisper as Eliza and I pass—skepticism, judgment, and profound interest lacing their words.
“First generation.”
“Wakefield. Can you imagine?”
“Bonded.”
Ash sits at the table up front with Josephine. Mags is beside them. Her eyes find mine first. Then Eliza and the faint echo of my marks beneath her skin.
Mags’s expression shifts. Surprise mixes with something deeper—understanding.
Eliza and I close the distance to the table, moving like one thing. There’s no denying the union we formed in the wilderness. Nothing could make me do that.
“You quit fighting it,” Ash says, standing to shake my hand.
I nod once.
Josephine reaches across the table to hug Eliza. “Are you okay?” she whispers, empathy and joy etched in her features.
“Yes,” Eliza beams. “I have so much to tell you.”
Jo nods, eyeing me confusedly.
“They’re awake,” I say to Ash, nodding toward the mass of dark clouds hovering over the Starborn Range.
A murmur ripples through the group, others straining to hear our conversation, probing with their minds. But I push them back.
It’s none of their goddamned business.
Their faces harden, threatened all over again by my psychic abilities. Strong but undisciplined—potentially dangerous in their eyes.
“They were always awake,” Mags counters quietly. “Just not looking at us.”
I step forward. Feel it again. That pressure. Not the hum. Something else. “That you could tell,” I say drily.
Those gathered exchange sullen glances, as if they don’t know what to make of my words or the meaning behind them.
“They came in daylight,” I say. “Didn’t hide. Didn’t wait.”
“And you survived?” someone asks from the crowd behind us, voice incredulous.
The question’s reasonable.
But I don’t look at him because I don’t have answers anymore than he does.
“Never happens like that,” another voice rises from the table. My eyes meet Clay, a member of the council and third-generation Wildblood.
I glare at him. “You a sudden expert on the Ancients? When’s the last time you or anybody else here saw one?”
The crowd shifts, murmuring among themselves.
Mags looks away with a flash of guilt. My mind presses against hers. Can’t help it.
Her mouth works, but she doesn’t speak. She knows more than she’s saying.
Clay’s gaze narrows. “Don’t have to see one to know they’re killers. Just ask Ash and Josephine.”
I fix my gaze on the blond cowboy. Eliza’s eyes dart to Jo, wide and questioning.
“Couldn’t tell you more before,” Jo says, an apology in her voice. “Because you would never have believed me.”
Eliza’s eyes cloud, then she nods, admitting softly, “No, I wouldn’t have. But now we have to talk.”
Ash’s bride nods once, black bob shifting with the movement.
He removes his hat, shoving fingers through his hair. “We’ll discuss this later, too,” he says to me.
But Clay isn’t done. “Two altercations. Two fated bonds in weeks. Mere weeks… after countless decades? And the Sentinels are what now? Suddenly okay with things? Next thing you know, they’ll be inviting themselves to the nuptials.” He lets out a snort, face reddening.
Others shout from the crowd, seconding him. Once, they could’ve persuaded me.
Now I know better.
“If they’d wanted us dead, we wouldn’t be breathing,” I say. “That wasn’t the point.”
Ash shifts beside me, wrapping a possessive arm around Josephine. She looks up at him, green eyes pensive and reading his expression. “Then what the hell did they want?”
“Dunno.” My jaw tightens. “To see what we’d become?” But I have more to say to Ash and Jo once this meeting ends. Mags, too.
Eliza tangles her fingers with mine, staring up at me for one long moment. Her face is a question. I send the answer through the bond, and she smiles, saying to Jo, “You and Ash should come over for dinner this week.”
Josephine and Ash exchange glances. The corners of her mouth tip up. “Yes.”
But the crowd isn’t satisfied. Silence settles. Heavy.
“They’re watching now,” I continue. “Waiting to see what we do next.”
“And what are we doing?” another voice asks.
This is it. The moment I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding. The thing I walked away from. Again and again.
My gaze finds Eliza. She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t need to.
I turn back to the others. “We don’t go looking for them,” I say.
The words settle, deliberate. Controlled.
“But we don’t stay scattered either.” I take a step forward, pressed down by the weight of them watching, listening. “And we quit bending to their will.”
People talk at the same time, voices low, faces suspicious. Eyes scrutinize Eliza, then me.
“We gather,” I add more firmly. “We watch the land. We learn their patterns.” My voice drops. Harder. “We don’t get caught off guard again. And we quit hiding who we are and how we bond.”
The crowd becomes a sudden roar, faces turning sharp, animated.
I tighten my jaw, refusing to give an inch. “Time to stop letting them rob our future.”
“But the consequences—”
“Fuck their consequences. Time to mete out our own.”
No one speaks now. A few people even nod. Determination threads through the consciousness in the room.
Ash exhales slowly, both arms cradling his wife now. “About damn time,” he mutters.
My eyes lock on his. I lean forward, saying quietly, “They targeted me more than Eliza. Tried to pry into my head. Looking for something… a shield.”
Ash’s face darkens. “And how’d you fight back?”
I pull the artifact and bracelet from my duster, setting them on the table.
The blond cowboy recoils. “You got it working again?” he asks, face darkening.
“It worked when we needed it,” I say, squeezing Eliza. “Not to stop the bond… to protect it.”
Ash’s face is a revelation. “Like the mountains protected us that night,” he says to Jo. She nods, eyes so filled with love for her man, it takes my breath away.
Until I look down at Eliza and see the same thing, amplified a hundredfold for me.
“Mine,” I whisper through the bond.
Her cheeks flush. She doesn’t get the word but the feeling. That there’s nothing on this damn planet that could keep me from her.
“And jewelry?” Ash adds, skepticism in his voice.
Of course, he wouldn’t know. They’ve got a lot left to learn. “Ancient alloy… from my father.”
He nods once, face unreadable.
The meeting breaks gradually, Wildbloods dispersing into smaller groups, voices low, movements purposeful.
Mags approaches once the others thin out. Her gaze flicks between me and Eliza again, her expression thoughtful.
“Been keeping an eye on your ranch,” she says.
Eliza looks up. “The cows? The horses? Are they okay?” What she doesn’t say, the unspoken sits heavy between us.
“Chickens, too,” Mags continues with a reassuring smile. “No new deaths. Animals are calm again.”
“And the crop circle?” Eliza asks. “Any other… activity?”
Mags hesitates, then nods toward the valley. “No repeats there either. That’s something to be grateful for.”
Eliza’s hand squeezes mine. “We saw something… with the glowing men. Insect-like creatures. But they moved in unison. Too perfect to be natural. I think they had something to do with the dead bull, though I can’t say why.”
I nod once. “Their tech went quiet,” I say. “When we broke it. Then the Sentinels vanished.”
“You broke it?” Jo chimes in, breathlessly. “With these?” She eyes the objects on the table.
“Seemed that way,” I say, though I’m still forming thoughts around what happened.
“Ash didn’t break them,” she whispers. “But he found the tether with his mind… how they communicate. He severed it.”
Mags’s face lights up. “Maybe that explains it. Without the tether to guide their movements, they transformed into an unthinking, uncontrollable swarm.”
A shiver travels down Eliza’s spine like cold ice, echoing in my body. “To think of Baylor going out that way…” Her voice throbs with horror. She shakes her head. “Raised that bull from a bottle-fed calf.”
I pull her close, kissing the top of her head. Reaching out to her with comfort and reassurance.
“We should explore this further,” Mags says. “And we shouldn’t discount the role the government men might play in this… or assume all the Ancients think the same.”
Her last words slam into me. Ash, too.
“All Sentinels can go back to hell where they belong,” he says too quickly.
My words are more measured. “Don’t like that…
complication.” My father and mother’s fate flash in my mind.
Cold-blooded deaths without hesitation by all accounts.
Calculated. Efficient. It’s why I can’t deny my next words.
“They didn’t move like hunters. More like something learning how to be something else.
They weren’t like the stories. Not yet at least.”
Mags’s gaze drifts—not to me, not to Eliza—but somewhere past us. Like she’s remembering something she never put into words.
“Magdalena Redfern, what aren’t you telling me?”