45. Isolde
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
ISOLDE
I solde fought.
The moment the initial burst of shock wore off, she clawed at Selene and thrashed against her hold and fought with everything she had.
But Selene was older than her and much, much stronger. By then, the nightsbane had stolen her vision away. She couldn’t see. The world spun around her. And the betrayal of it all, of Selene doing this to her… it nearly brought her to her knees.
She didn’t see it coming when the hilt of Selene’s dagger struck her in the temple, but she heard the resounding thunk of metal against bone.
After that, she knew nothing at all.
Isolde woke to the bite of frigid stone against her skin. Something sticky and damp pooled beneath her, tickling down from her temple and into her hair. The back of her neck throbbed with a dull, stinging pain.
She tried to lift a hand to her neck to discover the source of that pain, and found she couldn’t move.
Isolde jerked, the last dregs of unconsciousness melting away as it all came back to her.
Bastian shifting. The blood moon. Everett. The kiss of Selene’s blade across the nape of her neck. The nightsbane. The panic. Then nothing.
Her vision was still hazy when she pried her sticky eyes open.
She could see the faint outline of the moon—barely more than a sliver of yellowish-gold now, the rest of it eclipsed by shadow.
All around her glowed tall, white structures—pillars, she realized—and a dark, tangled mass of tree limbs.
She turned her head to the side, blinking furiously as if that might clear the nightsbane from her system faster.
She’d been here before, weeks ago, on the night when the Wolf killed the goats, and she’d argued with Bastian, and Selene had told her to leave it alone . She’d seen the altars and the old, faded blood stains and the hole in the center of the space, to which those trails of blood led.
She’d seen footprints: a woman’s tracks, and a barefooted man’s, and a Wolf’s.
Isolde lay on one of the altars now. Her ankles and wrists were bound to it, the rope cinched so tightly, she could barely feel her fingers. And on the other altar…
A brown Wolf.
Isolde could just distinguish his outline. His golden eyes were locked on her face. He lay unmoving on the stone, still. Too still.
And yet he obviously lived. Those luminous eyes—the same shade of gold as the ring around his pupils when he was in his human form—blinked sorrowfully.
Isolde yanked at her bindings, desperate, needing to get to him.
Whatever this was, it was much bigger than just Everett attacking Bloodhaven, than some petty vendetta.
She knew, suddenly, with great certainty, that Bastian had been telling her the truth.
He might have suspected Everett, but he hadn’t believed it. He hadn’t known.
“You’re awake.”
Isolde startled at the sound of Selene’s voice. She tried to scramble backward, away, but the bindings held firm.
“Selene,” she breathed, staring at her Sire as she appeared at the foot of the altar. “You poisoned me.”
“Yes.” Selene’s tone was impassive. “It was the only way. I couldn’t risk hurting you if you put up too much of a fight.”
“Why?” Isolde shook her head, horror churning in her gut. “Selene, why ?”
“Because, Isolde, your blood, and Bastian’s… it’s the only thing that can keep him from death.”
“Keep who from death?”
Movement in her periphery caught Isolde’s attention. She turned her head to the side?—
And met the dark, familiar eyes of a white Wolf.
Isolde stared and stared, her mind tumbling over itself to make sense of everything.
She blinked hard, wondering if the nightsbane was making her see things that weren’t there.
If the Wolf was real, surely Selene would draw her dagger and strike Everett down.
This had to be some elaborate ruse, Selene’s plan to lure him in and kill him.
Everett had lunged for Isolde earlier, when Bastian was waiting to shift, and now she was the bait.
But—no. Selene didn’t so much as lift a finger when the Wolf padded over and sat down at her side. He nuzzled her hand with his snout, peering up at her out of those dark eyes.
Dark eyes. Not green—not the same eyes that had narrowed on her as she stood over Bastian in that clearing, or the night of that first full moon, when the beast drug the human woman out of her bed.
These weren’t Everett’s eyes. These were the same black eyes she’d stared into in the alleyway on the Night of the Burning Moon.
As the realization struck Isolde, a second white Wolf prowled into view. Blood stained his muzzle from a half-healed knife wound that stretched diagonally across his face. Green eyes shone in the moonlight.
“Anselm,” Selene said, gesturing to the dark-eyed Wolf at her hip. Then she nodded to the bloody, green-eyed one. “That one’s Everett, but you already knew that.”
Anselm.
Anselm?
“You’re with them?” Isolde demanded, her gaze darting from Everett to Selene to Anselm. “Selene, what is this? ”
Selene tilted her head to the side, regarding Isolde with flat, unfeeling eyes. Like she was a stranger. Like she hadn’t spent the last ten years filling the void where Isolde’s mother had once been.
“You always did need to know everything. Never could leave a single stone unturned,” Selene scoffed.
“It would have made things much easier for us these last months if you’d been capable of leaving well enough alone.
” Now she tilted her head back, squinting up at the moon.
That shadow still crept along, eating away at the remaining crescent of light.
“There’s time, I suppose. I’ll satisfy your curiosity once more. ”
Isolde could only stare, struggling to breathe past the ache that grew in her chest with every flippant word out of Selene’s mouth, until she was sure her heart was shattering.
“Did you know,” Selene began, “that years and years and years ago, centuries before even my human life began, Vampires and Werewolves lived among each other? They coexisted, living in the same villages. They didn’t despise one another the way we do now.
In fact, the relationship between species was…
interdependent. Everyone remembers that Wolf blood is especially potent for Vampires.
It makes us stronger, heightens our senses, speeds up our healing.
What time has forgotten, however, is that those benefits were not one sided.
You see, when a Wolf drinks the blood of a Vampire, they gain the ability to control the shift. Even on the full moon.”
Isolde’s gaze shot to Bastian. She’d noticed the effects his blood had on her—the way colors seemed brighter when his blood was in her system, scents sharper, every little touch like sparks against her skin.
As magnificent as that was, though, and if Selene was telling the truth, it paled in comparison to what her blood might offer him .
To be able to give him a way to control the shift?
A way to escape those excruciating parts of the life he never wanted?
Bastian blinked back at her, his Wolf’s eyes wide.
“As you know, of course, the sharing of blood is a very intimate thing,” Selene went on. “And so, naturally, it was fairly common for Vampires and Wolves to fall in love.”
At those words, Anselm rubbed his head against Selene’s hip. A cold certainty began to crawl its way up Isolde’s spine.
“Those pairings made the exchange of blood quite convenient. But there’s one terrible obstacle to a relationship between a Vampire and a Wolf.” Selene lifted a hand and stroked it down Anselm’s neck. “One of us is immortal, and the other is not.”
“You and him,” Isolde breathed, her eyes tracking the slow caress of Selene’s hand. “You’re in love.”
So many things made sudden sense in Isolde’s mind.
Selene’s odd civility in Wolf territory.
The way Anselm had taken her hand and held her arm, and how neither one of them had bitten the other’s head off at the contact.
Their simmering stares at one another over the dining tale, which Isolde had taken for ire when really they held a different sort of passion.
That was why Anselm had obeyed Selene’s command and gone after her instead of killing Isolde on the Night of the Bleeding Moon.
All along, they’d been in love with one another.
Pretending not to know each other well, to hate each other.
And every vile thing Selene had said about Wolves in the last ten years, all her anger and vitriol… it had been a complete fucking farce.
“Yes,” Selene confirmed. “Since the day we first tasted one another’s blood. I’d read the stories about Wolf blood and wanted to know if they were true. Anselm wanted a way to circumvent the change, so we came to an agreement.”
“How long?” Isolde’s voice trembled. “How long have you been with him?”
“Seventeen years.”
Seventeen years. Isolde had been with her for ten, and the whole time she’d known Selene, she’d been nothing but vitriolic about the Wolves. She’d ranted and railed about how hateful they were, how savage and barbaric, how they’d nearly wiped out the Vampire coven during the Bleeding War.
And it had been nothing but lies.
Isolde forced herself to take a breath. To bite back her tears.
“And what does all this have to do with me and Bastian?” she made herself ask.
Selene straightened, pushing away from the foot of the altar to pace toward the center of the courtyard.
“Faced with the inevitable loss of the Wolves they loved, those ancient Vampires sought a solution.
A way to make their lovers immortal, too.
Much of the history on how they made their discoveries is lost, but the ritual itself survived.
The original journal where the ritual was recorded is in the library of the university in Aaldenburg.