Chapter 23 #2
I wasn’t sure what to say either. Some part of me still hadn’t quite grasped what had happened, but it hit me now as my cousin looked down at me, an apology in his eyes, as if this was somehow his fault.
Or he knew what was about to happen. Tears filled my eyes as I stared up at him, all the rage I had felt when dealing with Braxton, and the coldness that had followed it, drowned by the tidal wave of hurt that crashed over me.
My lower lip wobbled.
My wolf side bayed.
Chase sank to his knees, pulled me out of Kaeleron’s arms and held me tightly, pinning me to his bare chest.
I wrapped him in my arms, holding him just as tightly, squeezing him so hard that I feared I would hurt him.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But… I’m so glad you’re okay,” he whispered against my hair. “I didn’t believe Morden when he said you were here. Saphi…”
He pushed me back and looked at me, concern crinkling his brow, oblivious to how tense Kaeleron was as he glared at my cousin.
Streaks of dirt ringed his neck, the clear band between them making my blood boil as I realised he had been collared. I lifted my hand and went to touch one of the rings and he flinched back, and caught my hand, his smile tight as he lowered it.
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” He didn’t release my hand though, and I swore his was trembling. “Will you?”
I somehow nodded and shrugged at the same time, the stronger side of me clearly clinging to the thought I would be okay while the softer part of me continued to howl in grief, in rage that only burned hotter as I stared at the marks on my cousin’s neck.
“What happened here?” Chase looked around us, and his gaze landed on Kaeleron and stuck as he stared at my fae king like he had only just noticed him and his eyes grew wary.
“Chase,” I cut in before he could say anything and looked from him to Kael. “This is King Kaeleron of the Shadow Court.”
Chase reared back, eyes flashing as he levelled a black look on Kael. “The guy who bought you.”
“The male who saved me,” I corrected, not wanting another Morden on my hands. Just one of them accepting Kaeleron would be nice. “If it wasn’t for him—”
I looked over my shoulder at the green. Instantly regretting it as my tears returned.
We had lost so many, but others had survived. Including a few of the Hunt Pack, who now sat on the green, guarded by members of my pack but talking to them.
I wasn’t sure it had been worth it. So many lives lost. The guilt I had expected to feel when I had taken Braxton’s life hit me now, as I looked at the bodies laid out in uniform lines. People I had called friend had breathed their last tonight.
Together with one I called family.
“There was no way out of this without bloodshed, Saphira.” Kaeleron’s gentle tone soothed me and I nodded, trying to believe him as one of the guards came over to us and spoke to my cousin.
“Most of the surviving Hunt Pack fled. A few stayed. I don’t think they’ll be much trouble though. They didn’t agree with the path Lucas was taking them down and were looking for a way out. Some of them even helped us in the fight.”
Chase looked in their direction and nodded. “Noted. Have them help with the cleanup and any family they lost can be given the proper rites.”
My heart ached as his gaze met mine again and the sombre, worried edge to it made something hit home.
The reason he was in charge was because our pack had lost its alpha tonight.
Hot tears blurred my vision and I gritted my teeth, fighting to hold back a sob.
My lower lip trembled and Chase looked from me to Kaeleron as Kaeleron gathered me back into his arms and held me close, tucking me against his chest. I twisted away from my cousin, burying my face in Kael’s neck as I lost my fight against the tears.
They burst from me in great heaving sobs that wracked me, hurting my lungs and tearing my heart apart.
Kaeleron gently scooped me up into his arms, keeping me sheltered in his embrace as I cried until I was hoarse, drowning in my pain and the sorrow that felt as if it might destroy me, even as it forged something dark and dangerous within me, honing my desire for vengeance into a blade I would use to cut my fated mate down.
“Take him to the royal necromancers,” Kaeleron said, his voice quiet and low, and then added, “She will be well.”
I knew he was talking to Malachi, and I hated that he had seen me like this too, that everyone was seeing me like this.
Weak.
I wasn’t weak.
I sniffed back my tears, scrubbed my face to rid them of the evidence of my grief, and pushed it all down inside me, locking it away so I could do what needed to be done.
I lifted my face towards Kaeleron.
“I want to be there when you question him.”
Silver eyes slid to me, concern shining in them, and I hated him for looking at me like that, as if I was fragile and liable to break, even as I loved him for it, for caring about me so deeply that he wanted to protect me from this.
And for knowing me so well that he nodded.
I needed this.
I needed to be there.
I had to find Everlee and Danica, and Lucas, even if it meant facing what I had done tonight and whatever wrath Braxton might aim at me for killing him. He had hated me in life. I doubted that was going to change in death.
“You are still the same, Saphira.” Kaeleron lowered his head and pressed his lips to my brow, and then a kiss to my mouth. He whispered against it, “The male got what he deserved.”
I nodded.
“Morden is at the barn. I said I’d head back there and help him. Lucas was holding females there, shut away in cages. He’s trying to break them out.” Chase lingered, that worry in his eyes not going anywhere, a little like he wasn’t as he looked at me. “You’ll be okay?”
I nodded as Kaeleron lowered me to my feet.
“Kaeleron is here, and I want to find my mother.” I hadn’t seen her since I had told her to run to members of our pack and had chased Lucas towards the woods. The few times I had braved looking at my father, she hadn’t been there.
Chase remained a moment longer, long enough for Kaeleron to hand me a pair of leathers and a loose navy blouse, and took his leave the second I began dressing.
Kaeleron gripped the blanket as I went to shed it.
He stretched it out like a wall between me and the wolves behind him, blocking their view.
As if any of them were looking.
A small smile curved my lips at this moment of almost normalcy that lightened something heavy inside me. “You know we’re naked when we shift, right? No one here cares that they’re naked. They don’t care that I’m naked. It’s… nothing to us.”
“It is something to me.” He glowered down at me, black eyebrows knitting hard above bright silver eyes as his lips flattened.
Before I could even think to tease him over this latest bout of jealousy, he added, “Enough blood has been spilled tonight and I was so very careful not to kill any of your wolves. It would be a shame to change that.”
Point taken.
I shimmied into the buttery-soft leathers and tugged the blouse on, Kaeleron’s gaze hot on me the entire time. Apparently, it wasn’t okay for other males to see me naked, but it was perfectly fine for him.
When I was done, I held my hands out at my sides. “Better?”
“Much.” He let the blanket fall to the ground.
Revealing the green.
I tried not to look at my father’s body, laid out with the others now. I needed to be strong, and if I looked there, I would end up crying again. My pack needed me. Later, when I was alone with Kaeleron, when my pack were safe and everything had been taken care of, I could cry. I could mourn.
I drew down a deep breath, pulling together the last fragments of my strength, clinging to that sense I needed to be strong for my pack to keep the cold darkness encroaching at the corners of my soul away for just a moment longer.
Kaeleron sheathed my dagger at his hip and came to stand beside me as I faced the green—the battleground—and his head angled towards me, his gaze landing on my profile.
He waited, a silent sentinel, as I gathered my courage, and when I took that first step towards my pack—towards the dead—the aftermath of what I had wrought here—he was with me.
My gaze darted around the fallen and those moving between them, some of them carrying bodies while others tended to the wounded.
I charted the faces of those who had survived, the pain and sorrow etched on them beating within me too, my wolf side baying mournfully just as theirs was.
That connection between us ran deep, forged like an unbreakable link as our eyes met, as I exchanged nods with some and words with others.
But I still couldn’t find the face I was looking for.
“She’s here somewhere,” I said to no one in particular as something dark within me whispered, tormenting me with the fact I couldn’t find my mother. “She’s a healer. She’s probably helping others.”
I looked at Kaeleron as I said that and his tight expression as he nodded only worsened that feeling within me.
“I’m sure she’s fine.” My pace quickened anyway, my gaze scanning more frantically, and when I spied a familiar face, I hurried over to her.
Mabel had been trained by my mother in the healing arts, just as I had been.
While I had been a poor student, taking time to pick things up, Mabel had excelled at it.
The petite brunette glanced up from her work bandaging one of the males of our pack as I approached, the grim look on it not helping me vanquish my fears. “Have you seen my mother?”
She shook her head.
I looked at the warrior.
He gritted his teeth as Mabel tightened the crepe bandage around his arm and shook his head too.
“She’s here somewhere,” I said to myself, to that part of me that began to worry in earnest and made my breath catch in my throat.
Kaeleron moved a step away from him and I glanced at him. He stood with his back to me, his eyebrows pitched low over narrowed silver eyes as he scanned the battlefield.