“Are you still with us?” he asked, turning to me.
“You don’t need to keep asking.” I gave him a weak smile, but he must have known that I couldn’t hold out for much longer without them.
“I’ll be back, I promise,” he said, rubbing his cheek against mine before he kissed me. “I love you,” he whispered again, shooting off before I could reply.
There was another bang, another roar, another snarl, and I whimpered.
Sin jerked, his hand still pressed against the reinforced door of the refrigerator, sending his aura through it to calm Caspian down.
“Come here, Melanie,” Sin said, holding out his other hand.
I wasn’t even sure if I could make it five paces across the room to him. But I needed my alphas. Even if Sin hadn’t bitten me yet, he was mine as well.
Summoning the strength Kai was so sure I had, I pushed myself off of the counter, running towards him before the pain became too much. Even with everything happening with Caspian, my stomach stabbed mercilessly.
I fell into his arms, and he sighed in relief as he tugged me closer. “How are you doing? Has the pain become manageable?”
“I don’t know if manageable is the right word here,” I murmured to him, pressing my face to his shoulder.
It was constant. There were no spikes or pulses. Just this endless wavelength where everything was untamed and out of control, and Caspian’s entire body screamed with it. But the closer I got to him, the easier it was to breathe, like my heart was being built up again.
I looked at the thick steel door of the fridge, hoping that Caspian was still safe inside. Apart from aching fists and toes, it didn’t feel like he was wounded anywhere.
It had to be cold in there, but I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. It could be that he was so pent up with the fire of his rogue state that cool air helped keep him calm.
“Well, isn’t this sweet?” The one voice I didn’t want to hear bounced around the kitchen, and Sin and I instantly froze.
She didn’t hear my gasp, but I heard her smirk before Zania strode towards us, along with the click of her heels that echoed on the tiled floor. “I thought you would have run away in shame after your performance in the restaurant.”
My lips instantly pulled back over my teeth, and a growl rumbled from me as I turned to face her.
“I was hoping you’d be so embarrassed that you’d run away as well,” she said.
Zania paused just two steps away from us, folding her arms, posing in her black dress with a haughty look on her face.
Her hyacinth scent swept out over us, and nausea instantly hit me, followed by a roar from the other side of the door. I cried out, shuddering, panting, bursting as the door suddenly rattled. Caspian threw his right fist into it, the pain flooding up to my shoulder.
My jaw grit and I hissed as my left foot crumpled, and the door shook again as Caspian kicked it.
“This is rather pathetic to watch,” she said as her sneer deepened. “This must besodifficult for you, especially considering that you stole a bite from my son. But if you cleave now, you can save yourself,” Zania said with an easy shrug.
“W-what?” I gasped, my hand pressing hard against my stomach like that would somehow ease the pain from her mate’s kick. I didn’t know if Kai really killed them, but she must have felt it in some way. She couldn’t act so confident when she’d just lost her pack.
“Oh, didn’t you know? They must have kept that little nugget from you as they dragged you down the hall while you were screaming in pain.” She smirked at Sin, but I wouldn’t take my eyes off of her. It could all be a trick just to make me doubt them.
“If you cleave and break the bond while the bite is still fresh, then you won’t have to suffer anymore. Doesn’t that sound nice? To be free from all the pain that’s shattering your mind?”
“It’s not—”
“Don’t talk back to me! Don’t pretend you don’t know what’s happening to you,” her shrill voice showed a crack in her mask. “I can even see it on your face. If you don’t cleave, you’re going to be left with a broken aura and trapped in your body, unable to move for the rest of your life. And it will all be their fault.”
Like my mum, and the way she was stuck in that room in Greensprings, all because of one stroke. I had the chance to stop it, to change the outcome.
But as soon as I found the bond that tied me to Caspian and tugged on it, he yelled out from the other side of the door, and a whimper pulled from me.
Zania was the one who locked her son in there; she was the one causing us all this pain.
I didn’t get the full story because there was only so much information I could find about them, but it wasn’t the first time Caspian had gone rogue. So, she should have known that he was prone to it, and that the way he had been since he showed up to the restaurant should have been enough to tell her he had been close.
