“Why Jason? I thought you were helping Alex overthrow the Fireborn clan. Shouldn’t you be after Silas? He’s the alpha.”
“Woman to woman?” Nickelova paced toward her, all fire and shadows. “Alex turned out to be a disappointment. See for yourself.” She turned her body and pointed at the far wall of the cavern. Alex Ravien Bloodright was suspended like a specimen in a jar, embedded in the rocky wall. His eyes were closed, his hair and limbs floating in the reddish fluid. “He’s healing,” Nickelova said, “but slowly. He would have died weeks ago if not for my near-constant presence and the fire lily juice I stole from the fae hospital.”
In her studies as an acolyte, Selene had read that dragons were once hunted almost to extinction for the power of their hearts. There was a reason Nickelova had stayed close to Alex in this cave, why she’d relied on her curse on Jason for information instead of the direct approach. The proximity of her heart was healing Alex, perhaps keeping him alive. Dragon heart could be used in the most dangerous of spells, even to raise the dead, according to certain holy texts. Nickelova was keeping Alex alive, but at what cost? If Alex was conscious at all, his state of being was horrific.
“Alex is too weak to do much more than sleep just now. When I wake him, he’ll need someone strong to help us achieve our goals. We’ll never take down Silas and rule the Lycanthropic Society without help.”
“You don’t want to kill Jason—you want him to join you.” Selene shook her head. “You can’t truly believe that will ever happen. He will never help you overthrow the council. He’d die before he’d betray the pack.”
Turning toward the fire, Nickelova hugged herself, rubbing her outer arms. “He will… now that I have you. He’s already on his way. I’ll have him tamed in the amount of time it takes me to show him his dear, sweet Selene, dirty and shivering in my prison.”
“You’re wrong.”
“The wolf in him won’t be able to stand it, little mouse. The more enthusiastically he bows to me, the better your living conditions will get.”
“No.” Selene tucked her chin, her eyes burning. Why had she been so stupid? If she’d stayed away from Jason and maintained her vows as she should have, none of this would have ever happened.
“Don’t fret. You both have the opportunity to be on the right side of history. When Alex and I rule the supernatural world, you’ll be free to finally be your true self. For too long we’ve been forced into an existence based on balance and harmony.”
“That is the law of the goddess,” Selene said. “We must maintain balance or the world will fall into darkness and chaos.”
“Some of us could do with a little darkness,” she snapped. “Do you know that dragon fae are not a creation of the goddess?”
Selene furrowed her brow. Saying Nickelova was crazy was an understatement. “The goddess, Hecate, created all supernatural beings.”
Nickelova scoffed. “No. Dragons, demons, and vampires were birthed from the underworld, created by the horned god, Panaal. Hecate and Panaal collaborated to design the reality we currently live in, rules and regulations based on a balance between the masculine and feminine. But Hecate is a wicked goddess. There is no balance. Dragons are almost extinct and demons and vampires live in the shadows. But when a dragon and a wolf rule the supernatural world, we’ll change everything.”
Selene shuddered to think how the world might change under the rule of Nickelova and Alex. Humans would likely be hunted to extinction. Or farmed by vampires. Werewolf children, human until their first shift, might become vampire targets, setting the two species at odds. Witches would likely be hunted by dragons who feared them due to their use of dragon parts in their spells. The most powerful witches, the demigoddesses known as Hecates, would be overwhelmed with their charge of maintaining balance and the management of their Hellmouth prisons. What Nickelova wanted would completely change life as they knew it. She had to be stopped. “You’re mad. If what you’re saying is true, you’d unleash the underworld.”
Nickelova sighed. “That, little mouse, is the idea. Now, you’d better get some rest. Jason is on his way. You want to be strong enough to watch me break him, don’t you?”
22
As the sun began to sink over the dense woods, Jason calculated he’d traveled about fifteen miles in the direction of the nonexistent mountains. He hadn’t found a portal or any directions from Nickelova on how to reach her. Still, he was confident the dragon fae knew he was coming. Her spidey sense was powerful enough to detect when a fly entered her web.
Jason was no fool. He didn’t labor under the delusion that he could sneak up on Nickelova’s lair. On the contrary, he assumed he’d be invited in. That was the point, wasn’t it? Once inside, he’d lie, cheat, beg, or steal to get Selene out alive. Then Nickelova could do with him what she would.
When he came upon a stream, he made camp, thankful for the fresh water and a safe, stony bank to start a fire. He pulled the chains and locks from his backpack. He wouldn’t need a tent. In less than an hour he’d shift into wolf form and grow his own fur coat. All he had to do was keep the wolf contained until morning.
As the fire blazed to life, and he put a kettle of water on to prepare his freeze-dried meal, he undressed and crisscrossed the chains around his neck and chest. When he was confident the wolf would not be able to free itself, he padlocked himself to the nearest tree. No need to hide the key. Paws weren’t good at using one.
He huddled inside his bedroll and ate four human helpings of the food he brought. As the sun dipped below the horizon and a full round moon came into view, he wondered what Nickelova was doing to Selene. Was she cold? In a place she could safely shift? Had she been fed? Clothed? The thought of her being tortured because of him made his stomach turn.
“Don’t you hurt her,” he yelled toward the place where the mountains should be. “Don’t you hurt her, Nickelova!”
When his skin began to tingle and his bones to stretch, he used his last human strength to douse the flames of his campsite. No sense risking a forest fire. Once he sprouted fur he wouldn’t need the extra warmth.
His groan turned into a growl as the pull of the moon took over. And the person who was Jason gave way to the wolf within.
The first thingJason noticed when he woke the next morning was the temperature. It was considerably colder than before he’d shifted. The second thing was the snowstorm. It swirled around him, stinging his skin and catching in his eyelashes as he blinked toward the risen sun. He trembled, naked, in a wolf-sized dent of packed snow.
Fuck!The chains were goneand so was his campsite. He stood and turned in a circle but could barely see through the wild white blizzard around him. What he could make out, as he hugged his naked chest, was that he’d awakened on the side of a mountain, and several miles above him was the mouth of a cave.
He cursed again as he realized all of his gear, the silver cylinder Ryker had lent him, his phone, his clothes, everything he’d brought with him was back at the campsite, wherever that was. It seemed his wolf had escaped the chains and found the portal without him. Or else had been freed intentionally. He was betting the second. Nickelova wanted him weak. It was possible she wanted him dead.
Shivering, Jason began the painful climb toward the cave, teeth chattering in the storm. If he was lucky enough to make it there before freezing to death, he prayed the goddess would send him some ideas, because he had nothing to fight Nickelova with, aside from a lovesick heart and his two bare hands.
Reaching for a stone, he pulled himself up the ever-steepening side of the rock. His fingers and toes were bright red and hurt like a bitch. The pain in his extremities told him he was in trouble. Frostbite, for sure.
