My eyebrows pull together when I see the trees are shaking in the distance, and soon I see why. Water. Too much of it. The wave is higher than the cabin, and time slows as I back away from the window, as I try to make it to the bed to grab Tannith. I can’t warn the heirs or Elizabeth, or even Ayan. The tidal wave crashes straight into the cabin like a rock smashing into a glass wall, and everything shatters. I gasp, sucking in the cold seawater, and I’m pulled into the darkness of the violent sea.
I didn’t even get a second to scream. I wish I could when the first beam of wood slams into my body, and it hurts. I cry in pain, but the sea swallows any noise I could make, and I know Reed won’t be able to save me in this. No one can. I’m thrown about like a doll, and my stomach hurts as I hit dozens of pieces of debris. My clothes are ripped through, my blood pours into the sea, and I spin in the water, in the darkness, reaching for anything to save me. The current’s so fast, and it’s worse than the river. I can’t see anything, and my ears are ringing.
I gasp as something slams hard into my stomach, my eyes popping open for a second to see those strings. Hundreds of them smother me in the water, highlighting every branch, every bit of rubble from the house around me. The dark string vibratesin the air, almost like it has a heartbeat, like it’s desperately wanting me to touch it. The sea drags me away and knocks me out before I can even try.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Prince Orion, Heir of the Mother Pack.
I fucking hate the sea. I hate the fucked-up goddesses and, most of all, I hate that my first thought when I wake up is of her. Meredith Crone. Where the fuck is she? I yank seaweed off my shoulder and storm down the white sand beach, inhaling the air and coughing up more water. I glare at the bright sun shining down on me and around the desert island that stands in the middle of a green sea. In the middle of nowhere. Meredith. Reed. Blackfire. Where the fuck are they all?
Something is making my wolf lose it. My wolf thrashes in my mind, and I can sense his thoughts in a haze of green.Find her. Now. Ours. Find her. Search. Mine. The jumbled-up feelings and words are chaos, and I’ve never felt my wolf like this. It’s her fault, like everything has been since I met the human.
In the sea, gold hair reflects the sunlight, and there is only one person with hair like hers. Her body is floating in the water, face down, and she isn’t moving. My wolf howls in pain, and a single sentence overrides everything, swarming in my mind like a beehive.
The human is dying.
I’m running towards her before I even think, pushing past the waves until I get into the sea, and I swim the final bit to get to her body. She is still and cold, unmoving as I grab her and pull her back, swimming us both back to the shore before I can stand, holding her small weight to my chest. She looks tiny in my arms, and I don’t like it. I want her smart mouth shouting at me, her eyes of gold filled with fury, and I need her breathing. Her hair spills down my waist and thighs as I run us into the treeline and lie her down on the warm sand and grass. I shake her shoulder. “Wake up!”
I snarl at her lack of movement. This can’t happen. My enemy can’t die. I’ve barely begun to make her pay for saving my sister and ruining every single day of my life since we met. Fuck it. I climb on top of her, and I push hair out of her face, and I hold her face in my hands. Seeing the strings of earth, I pull them towards me and activate my powers. I reach for the earth, for the deepest part of my magic, and I send it all into her body. The ground shakes, spitting sand up in the air, and my head snaps back as I test the barrier of my magic and how far I can go.
There is a limit to all magic, a barrier that cannot be crossed, and I’m pushing the boundaries for Meredith Crone. Earth magic is far more than vines and trees. It’s a feeling for every living thing in the world. I can control them all, and she is no different. Waves of her cinnamon scent keep me grounded as I sense her energy, her heartbeat, the very core of her soul…and she doesn’t feel human.
What the fuck?
There is something like darkness woven into the very core of her soul, and the longer I feel her, the colder I begin to feel. Almost like her soul is attacking mine…and that isimpossible. I need to end this. I push my magic into her, just enough to wake her up and keep her alive, but not enough to kill her like it would do most humans. She is strong, so she can survive this.
She has to.
Her body spasms once, twice, before she coughs and throws up water. Relief floods me as I fall on my ass next to her, panting as my magic leaves my system in a rush. Even when every inch of my body stings from the drawback of power, I reach over and I pull her hair out of her face while she throws up. She throws up everything into the sand, and when she’s done, she collapses back, passing out again right next to me. She will live. Thank fuck. With a wave of my hand, the sand makes her sick disappear, and I stand up. “Blackfire! Reed!”
Silence.
My eyes drift back to Meredith, and I pause when I really look at her. My legs go weak, and I fall to them at her feet. Mother above…what the actual fuck? Her clothes are ripped all over her chest, over her stomach, barely hanging in tatters around her bra. Old burns cover her stomach and arms, her sides, and I bet her back too. Her stomach is so burnt that she doesn’t have a belly button anymore, just tattered skin.
It’s my turn to throw up, and I do, barely able to look back at her and not see every time I called her weak, every time I teased her about the fire. The reason she wears long sleeves and never shows off her skin. This human is not weak; she is strong and drop-dead beautiful…and I swear to the Mother I will kill whoever did this to her. Slowly. I will drag out their death for weeks. I look at her again. Months. Whoever did this will know suffering and pain, and maybe when I’m done, I will let Meredithend them. She deserves revenge for this. The burns go up her shoulders and down her arms.
Someone burned her so badly it’s a wonder she is alive. How did she survive this? The burns look old, so it couldn’t have been after the goddesses marked her in the Crone Pack.
I remember seeing her shivering, cold, choosing not to sleep by the fire. I thought she was being stubborn and stupid, her pride overriding any common sense. I remember calling her weak, thinking she’d survived nothing. But her scars, I lock them into my mind because, when the time is right, I’m going to ask her who the fuck did that to her, and I’m going to make sure they pay in blood.
No one deserves to survive doing this to Meredith. Mother above, she is devastatingly lovely, with the body of someone who has weathered unimaginable storms.
Shame that she is my enemy. She’s mine to figure out what to do with. When this all ends, she’s coming back to my pack where I can keep an eye on her. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with her yet, but I am making sure Blackfire and Reed don’t have her to themselves. They will have their cocks in her before the first night is over, and I don’t want her touched. I don’t want her for myself, not when she is a betrayer, but no one else can have her.
I pull my shirt off and lift her gently, placing it over her head and pulling it down her arms until it pools around her hands and down her waist. With a sigh, I pick her up in my arms, carrying her into the small bend of the trees where it’s going to be warmer than the breeze coming off the sea. Cinnamon and maple syrup smell delicious together, and I clench my teeth, wondering why the fuck I’m even thinking about that. My life is set in the Mother Pack, and there is no room for Meredith as anything but my captured enemy.
I lay her down in the grass, reach my hand up towards the top of the trees, and pull every leaf off with a yank of power. Using my magic, I weave them together, creating a thick blanket of leaves, and lie it over her so she isn’t cold.
When I’m done, I sit back against the tree stump and glance out at the sea for an answer. Where the fuck is my bloodkin sister? The sea hasn’t killed her; I’d know it, because I felt the moment my brothers died. I felt the moment my father did too. I was fucking a random female in the corridor outside my room, and I felt the pain in my chest, felt the moment his soul left our pack and went to join our family in the skies with the goddesses.
Once, before Elizabeth killed him, she was the only one I really considered my real family. The only sibling who was ever half-decent to me. My brothers, all three of them, I loved them, but they treated me like the spare heir I was. My mother didn’t want a fourth child, and she made sure I knew it growing up, and my brothers made sure I was made to understand I would never overpower them, never be stronger or become alpha. Elizabeth just wanted a brother.
The minute I think of her, I think of what I found and the day I stopped caring about my half-sister. I think of my mother on her knees, screaming as I ran into the bloodstained room. I think of Elizabeth standing there, covered head to toe in our father’s blood. His head was next to her foot, the rest of his body ripped to pieces across the room. I remember looking into her eyes, shock freezing me to my core as my mother screamed for the guards. I remember her saying one single sentence like it mattered. She said that it had to happen.
No, it didn’t.
My father wasn’t a monster. My mother’s the tough one, the one that never showed compassion and was not kind, especially not to Elizabeth. There were several times I found Elizabeth near death thanks to my mother because of her jealousy, but myfather was always decent. Even though he didn’t care much for his children, he didn’t hurt us. He just liked women a little bit too much, and that got him into a lot of trouble. Elizabeth was a product of that trouble.
