Chapter 22 #2
My mother stared wide eyed at my father, face crumpling as she howled in agony. In grief.
Lucas turned on her, blood coating his muzzle. My father’s blood.
Rage so dark and cold that it numbed me swept through me.
“Saphira!” Kaeleron bellowed and I sensed him closing in on me, heard the cries of the wolves he cut down as he created a path to me, but I couldn’t slow.
Lucas would kill her too.
My mother turned as he lunged at her, rallying in time to evade his strike and stumbling backwards.
Her foot snagged on the female Lucas had killed and she fell, landing on her bare backside, her hands hitting the dirt on either side of her hips.
She stared at my fallen father and my heart screamed at her to keep her focus on the wolf before her as he licked his muzzle and stalked her.
Something cold pressed into my palm.
Something weighty.
“Go,” Kaeleron barked as he spun away from me to face the wolves closing in on him.
I gripped my dagger and it felt like victory.
“You son of a bitch!” I yelled and put all my remaining strength into one last effort to reach Lucas, sending a prayer to my ancestors to let me save her and to keep Kaeleron safe.
Air whooshed against my back.
Several new scents hit me, a few of them familiar to me.
Malachi.
The Shadow Court had come.
Relief almost stripped my strength from me, but rage made me cling to it, together with a near feral need for revenge.
On a battle howl, I kicked off, using all my speed and agility to leap the distance between me and my mother as Lucas lunged for her and she raised her hands before her in a desperate attempt to protect herself.
I brought my dagger down hard.
Relishing Lucas’s howl of pain as I plunged it deep into his back.
He scrabbled away from me as I pulled it free, the darkness brewing within me whispering at me to strike him again, to plunge this blade right through his heart.
“Run,” I yelled as I turned to my mother.
She shook her head, her blue eyes wild as they remained fixed on my father, tears cutting through the dirt and splatters of blood on her cheeks.
I gripped her arms and shook her until she looked at me.
“Run. Get to our wolves. Now!” I pushed her.
She nodded and stumbled as she twisted away from me, barely remaining upright, and I didn’t wait to see her running for the Harper wolves—for safety.
I turned to face Lucas.
No.
A growl tore from my lips as he ran for the pitch-black forest, several of his wolves following him.
I kicked off and sprinted after him, leaping over the fallen, my grip on my dagger tightening as I narrowed the distance between us. One hundred feet. Fifty feet. Thirty. I could taste my victory and it tasted like blood on my tongue.
Lucas reached the treeline.
And disappeared.
Not into the woods.
Literally fucking vanished.
Together with his wolves.
I skidded to a halt, breathing hard as my mind reeled and struggled to comprehend what had just happened. “What the fuck?”
Lucas wasn’t the only thing that had done a vanishing act.
That oppressive sensation I had been feeling disappeared too.
I turned towards the battle. “Kael—”
I grunted as Braxton barrelled into me in his human form, knocking me down, and shook off the blow as he bolted past me, moving at speed towards that spot where Lucas had disappeared.
“Hell, no,” I growled and launched to my feet.
If Braxton escaped, all hope of finding Everlee and Danica, and my bastard mate, disappeared with him.
I flipped the dagger in my hand, holding it by the blade, and hurled it at his back with all my strength.
The hilt rather than the blade hit him, striking the back of his dark head with enough force to send him sprawling across the dirt. He shook off the blow and pushed to his feet again, more sluggish this time, and staggered forwards.
I kicked off on another fierce cry as I felt that oppressive ward building again, damned if I was going to let this male escape too.
I channelled all my anger, all my pain, every moment of that night Lucas had rejected me into strength that fuelled me as I closed in on Braxton, as I slammed my fist into his spine and sent him down into the dirt again.
Every cutting remark Braxton had ever hurled at me flooded my mind.
Every time Lucas hadn’t put him in his place and let him belittle me, because Braxton had known I would never be his mate.
He had known what Lucas had planned to do to me.
He had played a role in it.
I yelled with each blow I landed, tears blinding me, rage burning through me, losing myself in my pain, letting it control me.
I flipped Braxton onto his back and punched him in the throat. Blood burst from his lips and I savoured the sight of it as he choked, as his eyes that had been so full of arrogant pride and certainty just an hour ago now held a wild and desperate edge.
I punched him again, striking him hard on the jaw, and then again, knocking his head back the other way.
I saw him slicing up my father’s chest, grinning at me as he cut him.
My wolf instincts howled within me, a tempest I couldn’t control.
The shift swept over me as my wolf shoved to the fore, as my human instincts were buried in the pain of what he had done.
A feral need to make him suffer as I had was all I knew as the scent of his blood filled my lungs and I could taste it on my tongue.
Fangs dripping with saliva, I lunged at his throat.
A killing blow.
His wild eyes met mine.
His wheezed words stopping me in my tracks.
“Kill me and they’re as good as dead.”