Chapter 54 Aiden
I felt the power gathering around the abbey just seconds before a terrible sound blasted through Katarina’s bedroom. Yanking the covers over top of her and Dorian, I threw myself on them both in a feeble attempt to protect us from whatever it was that had just happened.
Glass from the wall of windows across from the foot of the bed shattered.
Shards of thick, ancient crystal covered my back.
A few pieces sliced through the skin on my naked body, but nothing too deep.
Beneath me, Katarina screamed, and Dorian roared at me to get off him.
But I didn’t move. Not until I sensed the magic had subsided, and we had a moment to regroup.
The second I jumped off the bed, Dorian tossed the comforter and immediately shifted into his white wolf.
He stood on top of the mattress and shook, flicking away the remnants of his shift.
He yipped once at me and then jumped the ten feet it took to reach the windows.
If the glass cut into his paws, he didn’t show any signs.
Propping up onto his hind legs, he stuck his muzzle into the night air and sniffed.
There was an orange haze covering the smoky sky now, and a few seconds after Dorian oriented himself to the danger, he let out a guttural howl.
Katarina, peacefully sleeping between me and Dorian a few moments ago, looked stunned and confused. Her frantic eyes met mine when Dorian sang his mournful song. Something bad had happened, and that made my heart drop into the pit of my stomach.
Where was Roman and Blaise?
“What’s happening, Aiden?” Katarina asked. She’d slipped off the bed, unconcerned with her nudeness and quickly started looking for her clothes. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” I answered as Dorian howled again.
The giant wolf whimpered and pushed off the window. Trotting over to Katarina, he picked up her leggings and shoved them toward her. She muttered her thanks as Dorian and I made eye contact—the unspoken words clear.
“Right,” I nodded at him, slipping into my jeans. “You two stay here and let me find them.”
“Wait!” Katarina shouted at me. “Is it the coven?”
Dorian chuffed while I winced. “That would be my guess.”
Fear raced across her face, skin paling and mouth dropping open in shock. “But we had a plan.”
I rushed to her side and wrapped her up against my naked body, hating the way she trembled beneath me. “It doesn’t matter now. We’re ready.”
She shook her head. “I’m not ready.”
Dorian growled at her and she pulled away in surprise.
But when he nudged her hand and forced her to focus on him, she breathed.
I saw the moment my Kitty Cat became a fighter just like one of us.
Her shoulders squared, her color came back, and she confidently stepped into her sneakers.
“Okay. All right,” she kept saying to herself.
I was so fucking proud of her right now.
“We need to let Antione know,” I reminded them. Originally, we were only going to call in the favor if the battle started to go wrong. He’d been alerted to the date picked by Murielle, but now that she’d ambushed us a day early, it was probably best to have all backup plans in play.
“Right,” Katarina said, patting her hips like she had pockets. “Um, Dorian? Where’s your phone?”
He barked toward the pair of jeans lying near the bathroom entrance.
We’d gotten a little carried away again last night after sharing power and our clothes had flown all over the place.
As Katarina bent down to find his phone, I watched her with so much love in my heart it hurt.
We couldn’t let Murielle take her or Blaise.
Our crew had never been stronger, but if we lost just one of us…
I feared it would break us all. Dorian yipped at me when he saw me watching. He knew that, too.
Finally finding his phone, Katarina stood and punched at the screen. Realizing we couldn’t use Dorian’s wolf face to unlock the screen, she asked, “Code?”
“It’s one-two-three-four,” I told her, and she scoffed at Dorian.
“Seriously? You all need better passwords.”
The wolf somehow looked embarrassed when he hung his head.
As Katarina searched through his phone for Antione’s number, another explosion rang out from the far side of the abbey.
We all crouched and covered our heads, Dorian and I shielding our Kitty Cat the best we could while plaster fell from the ceiling.
She’d dropped the phone but quickly picked it back up and sent an emergency text to the Voodoo Pack leader.
“I need to go find Roman and Blaise,” I said when the shaking stopped.
Dorian yipped in agreement, but Katarina shook her head. “Shouldn’t we stay together?”
I kissed her quickly on the lips and relished in the sweet taste of her. “I won’t be gone long. And I’m the only one who can teleport.”
“But what about—”
I’d already disappeared from her room as she tried to stop me.
I needed to do that or I’d never leave. Transporting to Roman’s wing, I did a quick search of his room before dropping down a floor into Blaise’s space.
His door was closed, but when I pushed my way inside, it was obvious he hadn’t slept in there for a while.
None of us had, as we’d all been spending as much time in Katarina’s room as we could.
Where else?
The abbey groaned under the magic pressing down on it. Whether that was the cause of the explosion or not, I couldn’t tell from here. But something big was attacking us, and Katarina was correct in saying we should be facing it together.
Maybe Roman and Blaise were already fighting the coven. Without another thought, I teleported to the main front doors and took in my surroundings. No one was here right now, but to my right, down the east wing, flames erupted into the night sky.
“Fuck,” I muttered, focusing on the courtyard outside of that wing so I could transport there.
A split second later, I was standing on a pile of rubble and crying out for my friends.
I could feel them, buried beneath the pile of bricks and stone and wood.
The thick dust clung to the back of my throat as I tried to figure out a way to move the rubble.
And that’s when I felt it. A sharp, searing pain in my chest. I looked down and swore. There, protruding from my ribs, was the back end of an arrow. An arrow that looked suspiciously like those the fae hunters liked to use.
“What the fuck?” I muttered when another arrow dug into my thigh. I snapped my head up to see who the hell was shooting at me, but it was hard to see through all the smoke. This part of the abbey was on fire, the thick, black swirls floating up into the sky.
I heard a shout behind me and spun on my heels so fast, the next arrow narrowly missed my neck.
I saw the archer then. Standing in front of a line of chanting witches focused on containing the battle to just our property.
How kind of them, I thought snidely. Caring for our neighbors but not giving one shit about destroying our home.
Well, I wasn’t going to let that stand. I focused on the man readying another arrow in his bow and willed myself to break through the barrier of time and space and teleport right to him.
Which was exactly what the witches wanted me to do.
I ran right into their trap and felt like the biggest asshole for doing it.
Murielle had been building her army. And she must have hired another fae, for the wards holding me in one place could only be spun by someone who knew how to blink like me. It was very hard to trap the fae folk. Unless you were raised to know how to tease the facts away from the legends.
I slammed my palms against the invisible barrier keeping me in place. Shouting like a banshee, I roared my anger to anyone who would listen. This was the second time they’d been able to subdue me on my own fucking territory.
The second time.
Son of a bitch, I was no longer the warrior I once was if I could let this happen again.
Someone laughed behind me and I froze, my skin erupting in chills.
I knew that voice. A petite woman with long, silver hair that contradicted her youthful face slid out of the shadows like a wraith.
She curled her lips up, exposing pointed teeth, and tilted her head to the side as she watched me.
“áedán bohn Cúirt Foraoise,” she hissed through the spaces between her teeth.
“Elwain?” I hadn’t seen my younger sister since, well since I’d killed our father and fled the faerie realm. “What are you doing here?”
She circled my invisible tomb and snickered. “When one demands a bounty as high as yours, one doesn’t refuse.”
“A bounty?” I whispered, dread filling my soul. We’d seriously underestimated Murielle’s planning and strategizing capabilities.
“Do you forget what I am, brother?” The darkness swarmed around her as she taunted me like a rat trapped in a cage.
She was an assassin. Just like me, only she’d been killing the hard-to-kill fae. How the hell had Murielle managed to convince Elwain to leave her home?
“It’s simple,” she said, reading my mind. “She promised me your head.”
I wanted to scream. I wanted to talk to her.
I wanted her to see that she was making a mistake.
But none of those words came out of my mouth because Elwain lifted her hand into the night and started to twist her fingers into a fist. And as she did that, all the air inside my bubble started to disappear.