Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Anne
The man stands up.
Even after the force of Kain’s impact had him flying several feet away and landing on the hard ground, he is able to get up. He moves slowly, bruised and bleeding, his eyes on Kain.
“To think, you really had the balls to be a traitor.” The man shakes his head, seeming disappointed. “I thought I trained you better than this. It appears I have more work to do.”
Realization dawns on me. This must be Rick. Kain’s handler. The man who took ten years of his life.
My wolf snarls at him. Rick glances my way, then he shifts.
His wolf is lean and scarred, with gray and black fur. Larger than his human form in the dense way of an animal that has fought and survived and fought again until violence became instinct.
Kain is already moving before the change is complete. The two wolves collide mid-air.
My attention is drawn away as Darius arrives. His eyes find Violet, and he’s by her side in an instant. He shifts to human form and cradles her body in his arms.
“What’s wrong with her?” he demands, but then he sees the dart in her neck. Darius’s face contorts, and he barks an order at the soldier behind him. “Get me a healer!” To Ethan, he says, “Stay with them both.”
Then, he’s on his feet. The mansion’s grounds are filling with pack warriors and a growing number of the enemy. Darius throws himself into the fight while Ethan stands guard over Violet and me. I’ve never seen a battle like this; if I were in better shape, I would be fascinated.
But as I crawl over to Violet and sink down next to her, my eyes search anxiously for Kain. My Kain.
He’s facing off against his captor. Rick is older, clearly has more experience, and he fights with the patience that comes from it—not matching Kain’s fury but redirecting it, using it against him.
Rick absorbs the first charge and turns with it, claws raking across Kain’s shoulder.
Kain snaps at his throat; Rick manages to avoid his fangs.
They circle each other, and Rick feints left. He tries to go for my mate’s stomach, his most vulnerable area, but Kain is prepared. He rears back and slams both paws into Rick’s chest hard enough to drive him to the ground. Rick rolls over and comes up bleeding from his muzzle.
He circles Kain, reading him. Looking for the pattern, the habit, the place where ten years of conditioning may have left a groove.
He finds it.
I see the moment—the slight shift in his posture, a new intention in his eyes—but I cannot warn Kain, cannot speak, can only watch.
Rick darts in low, targeting a back leg.
Kain pivots to cut him off, but Rick uses the pivot, comes up inside his guard, and drives his shoulder into Kain’s chest. They go down together, and Rick lands on top.
His jaws go for the throat, but Kain twists, and Rick gets shoulder instead of neck. The howl of pain Kain lets out causes my wolf to whimper.
Rick looks around while Kain is still struggling to his feet, the shoulder wound bleeding profusely. I follow his gaze and see that most of his operatives have been killed. It’s clear that they’ve lost.
Rick shifts back.
In human form he has hands, and the silver blade is still lying on the grass where it fell when Kain first slammed into him. He picks it up. For a moment, I worry that he’s going to charge at Kain while he is still unsteady. But then, Rick looks past Kain.
Toward me.
It’s only for a split second, but I understand his intention.
He moves faster than someone bleeding that much should be able to. Kain realizes what he’s doing and spins to cut him off, but Rick is smaller in human form and slips past him too easily, aiming for Violet. I jump in front of my friend, plant my feet, and lower my head, bracing for—
But the impact never comes. At the last moment, Rick stops and turns around to face Kain, who is hot on his heels, and drives the blade into his chest.
No!
Silver. Wolfsbane. Straight to the heart. At the exact same time, Kain’s jaws come down on Rick’s head with a sickening crunch.
Blood pours down onto me from the decapitated handler, but all I can do is watch in horror as Kain drops Rick’s body and stagger to the side.
His wolf whimpers, and then he shifts back. Kain stands very still, naked from the shift, hands at his sides. He is covered in wounds and staring blankly. His legs buckle, and he falls to his knees.
The reverse shift tears through me, and I land on my hands and feet, every wound screaming without the wolf’s buffer. Using my last bit of strength, I rush over to him.
“Kain!” My voice is breathless, shaking with molten fear.
He looks up at me. His eyes are clear—that is the first thing I check, some instinct taking over—but when I look at the rest of him, my heart drops into my stomach.
The blade is still buried in his chest. Silver, wolfsbane-coated, buried to the hilt, just left of center mass.
His wolf healing cannot close a wound with the blade still inside it, but I can’t pull it out—that deep, I’m sure it would kill him even faster I were to.
Even his breathing is wrong, shallow and wet in a way that must mean the lung is compromised, that the wolfsbane is already in his blood.
“Lie down,” I say, and my voice comes out too high, too fast. I correct it. “Kain. Lie down. Now.”
He does, and the fact that he does without arguing tells me more than anything else could.
I kneel next to him and press my hands to his shoulder wound. Looking up, I shout, “I need a healer!”
My voice is hoarse, my own injuries draining me, but I’m so scared. I hear myself call out again, hear the words leave my mouth with clarity and volume I did not know I could still muster. Ethan is with Violet, yelling for a healer for her, as well.
I look back down at Kain. He is watching my face as if it is the only thing he wants to see.
“Hey,” he says, his voice rough. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you already know how this ends.”
“That’s exactly the problem. I don’t know how it ends.” My voice cracks on the last word, and I let it.
His mouth changes shape, not quite a smile. “Healer—”
“The healers are coming. But you are not—” I stop. Start again. “You are not dying, Kain. I am not going to sit here and watch that happen.”
“Anne…”
“No.” I’m already crying. I didn’t realize it until I heard my own voice, but tears are flowing, and I don’t try to stop them. “No. Do you know how many times I’ve lost you already? Twice. I refuse—I refuse to do it a third time. Do you understand me?”
He is looking at me with something in his eyes that I have no name for. All I know is that I want to hold him close and never let him go. I want to protect him from this world that has been so cruel to him.
My mind is running a mile a minute, and the words leave my lips faster than my brain can process.
“Mark me.”
His hand reaches up and finds my wrist, his grip weaker than it should be. “Anne. Don’t.”
“Don’t argue with me.”
“I’m not—Listen to me.” His fingers tighten slightly. “I didn’t take that blade so you’d feel obligated. I don’t want to force you to forgive me.”
Tears spill down my cheeks freely. “I’ve already forgiven you, Kain.”
Kain’s eyes widen, and I nod.
“You are my mate, and I am not losing you. You are going to let me do this, and you are going to live, and then, we are going to have all the time in the world to be complicated and honest and work out everything we still have to work out. Do you understand me?”
His eyes are wet. He nods once and lets go of my wrist.
I lean down and present my neck to him. With what feels like the last of his strength, Kain marks me.
The pain is sharp and immediate, a bright flare that I feel just before the magic hits.
Light and warmth flood through all the space that grief carved out, and through the new fullness of the bond, I feel him, beyond anything words can convey or eyes can see.
I feel him. His exhaustion. His pain. His relief so profound and so long held back that experiencing it on my end of the bond nearly steals my breath.
And underneath all of that, I feel his love, steady and unchanged and as much a fact as gravity.
The love of the boy who held on to a bent, gold ring in a dark prison cell because he needed one thing that was his.
Kain makes a sound beneath me. I feel the bond complete, the sacred click of what was always meant to be finally becoming so.
And I feel his wolf surge in response to it, the way a sleeping beast wakes when it finally has reason to.
Our mate bond is a wellspring, and it floods him with everything it has.
I sit back and watch. His shoulder wound starts to close.
Slowly. Imperfectly. But the bleeding around the blade is stemming, too, as the tissue begins to fight back.
His breathing still sounds wrong, but less so.
His animal is alert and working, throwing everything it has at the silver and the wolfsbane, holding the line.
Kain and his wolf have something to fight for now, something that is sealed and permanent and cannot be taken away.
“Anne,” Kain says. His voice is wrecked.
“Don’t talk,” I say. My own voice is steadier than before. “Save your strength.”
“I have to—”
“Kain.” I take his hand in both of mine. “I know. I know everything you want to say. You can say it when you’re not bleeding on the ground, okay?”
The healers arrive seconds later at a dead run, and I am forced to step back and let them work. They put Kain on a stretcher and take off running again. I see that Violet is in a similar situation, with Darius hovering over the people carrying her.
Standing now, I wrap my arms around myself and feel that my own body is beginning to heal. Ethan appears beside me and puts a coat around my shoulders to cover my nakedness.
“You fought like hell today.”
I look up at him. Suddenly, all the adrenaline leaves my body, and the reality of what I went through finally hits me. My legs go weak, but Ethan catches me by the elbow.
“Let’s get you to the medical center, too.”
I nod, and I feel the tightness in my chest start to loosen.
We made it.
We’re all still here.