Chapter 15 Lucan
Let’s run away together,” I say, slumping down against the pine needles littering the ground.
Saskia nestles against my chest, both of us trying to catch our breath. She closes her eyes, and even without our connection, I know she’s imagining it: the unknown.
The color has returned to her cheeks. She looks healthier than I’ve seen her since she fell into my arms, and her sweet scent is magnified, like all of Arad’s venom has completely dissipated, leaving nothing but her behind.
And the truth swells in my chest, so hard and fast I can barely breathe. She’s not turning to stone. She has more than ten years to live. Centuries.
“We could explore the world,” I add. “Find a new home. A better one.”
She sighs as she opens her eyes and lets reality back in. “Xantera is the only world I’ve ever known. The only world that all of us have ever had. And I need to face your pack.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to go anywhere near them right now,” I tell her, a growl vibrating in my chest at the very thought.
In truth, I’m not sure I ever want Saskia to be anywhere near my pack.
In the last three hours alone, my entire world has split in half, where I’m the alpha of the last werewolves on one side and eternally tied to a vampire on the other.
I don’t know how those two halves could ever join. But I know if I have to pick one…
Holding up her hand to inspect it, Saskia bends her fingers, flexes, like she’s gained a sixth sense. Technically, maybe she has.
“If any of them wanted to attack me, I don’t think they’d be able to catch me right now,” she says, grinning. Then she drops her hand and peers up at me playfully. “But if you need time to recover from that, I understand. You must be wiped out.”
Something about her new vampiric self inflates even more of a sense of competition in me than ever before. “Don’t underestimate my stamina, Saskia. We’ll see who the superior species is. Ready for round two?”
She pinches me under my arm, making me squirm, and rolls over on top of me until she’s straddling me with her thighs. When she presses her lips to mine, a zing lights up my nerves.
“Maybe just give me a second,” I concede with a low growl. “Venom. My blood. Antibodies. Mixing. All that.”
She pulls back and blinks, mouthing words I can’t make out. A gasp shoots from her lungs, and before I can register what’s happening, she’s throwing her dress back on and running off.
“Saskia!” I yell. In the blink of an eye, she’s fifty yards down the mountain.
“That’s it! Lucan, you’re a genius!” Her voice carries back, high-pitched, excited, and I know she isn’t going to stop.
Shifting, I bound after her. My body screams in protest, still stiff and aching. How the fuck am I a genius? What did I say?
Saskia’s reply is only a giddy, Yes, yes, yes, like she’s not even aware of me at the present moment.
Care to fill me in?
I thought you could read my mind, she teases.
It’s going a mile a minute, I complain, just like the speed of your legs.
And maybe the venom is going to my head, making me a little rusty. I can make out blood and needles. Some term I’ve never heard that must be healthcare related. She’s thinking about being a healer—or thinking like a healer. There’s nothing I can grasp onto.
I need to talk to Taika, Saskia says hurriedly before she’s back to chanting, Yes—yes—yes, with every enthusiastic footstep all the way back to the ghost town.
Taika’s there when we turn onto the dirt road—along with the entire pack, their anger pressing like lead against my mental block. Most of them stand as werewolves, a few rows deep, like a wall of resistance. As if they were preparing for an attack.
Saskia skids to a halt, her thrill quickly replaced with uneasiness.
Maybe I didn’t think this through, she tells me, and I hate the way her excitement—whatever the hell caused it—is so easily stifled.
I stalk around her until I’m standing in front of her, shielding her from the fury of the pack. Only Taika, Vivian, Soren, and Merrick, in the back, remain in their human forms. The rest are poised, lips curled, canines bared.
No. One. Will. Touch. You, I assure Saskia, lowering my mental block long enough for each of my words to land heavily into the minds of every single werewolf facing us.
It’s not a suggestion. It’s an order from their alpha, which means they’ll have to fight me to try to overpower me before they lay a single paw on her.
Reluctantly, they shift one by one until I can’t hear the cacophony of their angry thoughts anymore.
Fucking Gabriel elbows his way to the front. I glance at Taika, who gives me a sorrowful grimace and raises his palms. “I didn’t tell them. The children saw you carrying Saskia into my clinic, and when the rest of the pack came to me for answers, they smelled the change.”
“Is it true then?” Gabriel’s chest heaves as he sets his sights on Saskia. “She’s really a vampire?”
I cross my arms. “She is, but it isn’t what you think.”
“She’s a traitor,” Gabriel snarls. “I knew it!”
Merrick and Soren grab him by the arms as soon as he takes a step forward. He thrashes to no avail, but his outburst gives others the courage to speak.
“Lucan trusts her, so we should too,” Ashe says from the back.
“If Lucan’s trusting monsters,” Kyra argues, shooting a glare at me, “then maybe he shouldn’t be our alpha anymore.”
My anger spikes when she shifts that glare to Saskia. I step forward, my muscles aching with restraint, and roll up my sleeves. “Go ahead and fight me for the position, then, Kyra. When you’re defeated, I’ll just remind you who the real enemy is.”
I point toward the Wall, and a few eyes flicker in that direction, warring expressions on all their faces. I get it. I really do. If I wasn’t so head over fucking heels for the woman behind me, I’d probably have reservations, too.
But no one hates the Guardians more than I do—no one’s tried harder to break down that Wall than me—so they should know I don’t take her presence lightly.
In fact, I take her presence heavily. Like it’s the entirety of the world.
But Gabriel won’t let up. “Look at her,” he snarls, still fighting to break free. “She’s their spawn.”
“And she’s our salvation!” I roar, so loudly that a flock of birds takes flight from the tree beside us.
Gabriel stops struggling and snorts. “You’re right, Kyra. He’s lost his touch as alpha.” He glances at Merrick and Soren, still holding him back. “If you value the rules of our pack, you’ll let me fucking challenge him. Right now.”
“Peace,” a warm, familiar voice floats out from behind everyone, and a sense of calm washes over me. The pack parts down the middle, allowing my mother to walk through.
“You’ve challenged my son dozens of times before now, Gabriel,” she says, not even deigning to glance in his direction as she wafts past him, “and you’ve always lost. Your chances of winning this time are even slimmer now that he’s fueled by something else entirely.”
My mother’s eyes shift to Saskia, and soft wrinkles sprout around them as she smiles. “Hello, dear.”
“Hello,” Saskia whispers beside me, although I feel her body relax ever so slightly, and my own heartbeat steadies as Gabriel pulls his face into a literal pout.
“I believe you had something you wanted to tell us,” my mother tells Saskia encouragingly, “before all these puppies started squabbling.”
Merrick and Soren smirk. Gabriel and Kyra look ashamed. Taika’s mouth twitches.
“Y-yes.” Saskia clears her throat. “I just…” she starts, louder this time. “I might know of a way to try to bring down the Wall.” At that, she has their full attention—and mine. “Would that prove my loyalty?”
No one dares make a sound… until Gabriel pipes up with a sarcastic quip. “Go on, then. How do you suggest accomplishing what we’ve been trying to do for centuries?”
“You all make special antibodies,” Saskia says before I can decide whether to rip his head off or not, “when you’re bitten because you’re immune—unlike humans.
And Lucan has been trying to climb the Wall for decades, coming into contact with it again and again, but not in high enough doses. And then today…”
Taika’s eyes widen. “An antivenom,” he whispers. “That’s genius, Saskia.”
“An antivenom?” I ask, looking between the two of them.
They’re on the same page, but a chapter ahead of everyone else. A chapter ahead of me.
Saskia nods, smiling. “If we can use the antibodies in your blood to make an antidote, then it should counteract the venom laced in the Wall.”
“And turn it back into wood?” I breathe, shocked that even such a thing is possible. If the Wall became wood again, I’d be able to splinter through it in a heartbeat.
“Yes. That might actually work,” Taika confirms. But his eyes go from a blazing yellow to a dull burn, his shoulders falling. “Though, I don’t have a centrifuge, Saskia, among other things we would need.”
“A centri-what?” I ask immediately.
“A centrifuge,” Saskia repeats, her eyes trained on Taika as she worries at her lip with her new fangs.
“It’s a little machine that separates substances based on their density.
We’d need one to filter out the plasma.” There’s a short pause where Saskia’s shoulders tense.
“I know exactly where we can get one, though.”
For a moment, the pack and I glance between Saskia and Taika as they exchange a significant look…
And then understanding punches me in the throat.
“Fuck no. Don’t even think about it, little nightmare.”
Saskia still refuses to look at me. “There’s a centrifuge in the Healing Center in Xantera.
I know exactly where it is, and now that I’m a vampire with all this strength, I’d be able to climb back over the Wall to retrieve it.
” Finally, she turns and lowers her voice.
“It’s the only way to prove I’m on your side. ”
Fury bubbles in my chest at the pleading expression on her face. “You don’t need to prove shit.”
She shakes her head. “Not to you, but to them.”
The pack doesn’t dare speak. All of their eyes are trained on the two of us, not wanting to miss a millisecond of how this plays out. My mother observes the both of us with sharp understanding brewing in her eyes.
I change tactics. “Can’t I just… stir the potion really fast?”
Saskia folds her lips in, trying so hard not to laugh in my face. “It’s not a potion, Lucan. It’s an antivenom. And no.”
“I thought it was a valid question,” Soren pipes up.
Taika shakes his head. “We’re fast, but not plasma-separating machine fast.”
Saskia nods, her now serious stare darkening. “Lucan, it’s the only way.”
I sway on my feet. Saskia wants to go back into her cage to unlock it for everyone else, but how can I ever be okay with that? She might be our salvation, but who’s going to save her?
Like a true Monster, I would rather watch everyone else perish than find a single scratch on her.
But when she places a gentle hand on my shoulder, and I stare into the new shade of her eyes—eyes she hasn’t even seen in the mirror yet—I’m reminded that I can’t keep her locked away from the rest of the world, or I’d be just like Arad.
“Promise me one thing,” I croak.
“More promises?” she asks, though her beautiful lips quirk in a smile.
I nod and kiss her on those lips. Right in front of everyone. “You go in prepared this time.”