I picture the source of my magic and how it feels to me. I’ve always pictured it to be this endless cavern I could always pull from. I don’t know if other Sentinels experience the same thing, but as I look at Vaughn and the empty look in his eyes, I can see where Adriel went wrong.
“You weren’t powerful enough,” I blurt, my voice hollow. Adriel glares at me, but fuck him, he tried to turn my father. He didn’t have enough fucking magic, and this is the result.
“Or maybe Sentinels just can’t be turned.” Adriel shrugs. “Now, where were we?” he asks absentmindedly. “That’s right, your beautiful daughter was needing proof that she belonged to me,” he declares with a chuckle and pats Vaughn’s cheek.
And I completely fucking lose it.
Maybe it’s the fact that my comatose father was just paraded out in front of me like it’s no big deal, or the betrayal of Lachlan by not telling me the truth. Maybe it’s Adriel’s arm around Vaughn’s shoulders and knowing how many years he’s been tortured by this sick piece of shit, but I go right past pissed and straight into feral, psychotic bitch mode.
I scream through the pain as I call on my Sentinel speed and flash as fast as any lamia. I spin at Vaughn’s back and bring a short sword down on Adriel’s shoulder. My blade sinks about half way through before Adriel flashes away from me with a pained bellow. I scream again as he escapes and fall to my knees, where I breathe through the searing pain and demand that my body stays alert and doesn’t give into everything that’s hurting inside of me right now.
Chaos breaks out across the room. Sets of the huge black doors that surround the room break open, and lamia, mid-battle with a shit ton of wolf shifters, all pour in. In a matter of seconds, the massive, shiny black room is teaming with bodies. I force myself to my feet, and pain-filled screams and battle cries assault my senses. The smell of blood and ash fills my nose, and I’m bumped and jostled around. I search frantically for Adriel, panic rising inside of me at the thought that he might escape.
A screech filled with promises of pain sounds to my right, and I turn just in time to see a female lamia charging at me. Her eyes glow red, and her claws are fully extended, poised and ready to do as much damage as she can. I gauge her speed and our differences in size in a split second, and I ready myself to take her on. She’s three strides away from me when she leaps at me, and then mid-air, a giant gray wolf slams into her, his jaws closing soundly around her neck and shoulders. The female lamia is in pieces before Torrez’s wolf paws so much as touch the ground. He lands gracefully and pivots around to face me.
I tackle-hug him, throwing my arms around his big wolf neck and bury my face in his fur. I’ve never experienced the kind of relief I’m feeling right now, having him here in my arms, and I’m suddenly desperate to wrap myself around each and every one of my Chosen. I’m tempted to look around the chaos in hopes I can spot them, but I can’t lose the focus of why I’m here. I won’t let what happened to Lachlan, my father, my mother, or any of the others be in vain because I let my emotions get the better of me.
Torrez makes a chuffing sound like he just heard everything that flew through my head and is in complete agreement, and I rub my face against his neck for one more second before I pull away. I keep a hand buried in Torrez’s fur, and I methodically start to scan past the fighting, looking for Adriel’s distinct red-brown hair. I don’t spot him anywhere among the madness, but I do catch glimpses of a group of his guards. They’re fighting shoulder to shoulder, their backs encircling something I can’t see. Each of them is holding a katana-like sword, and I watch as one guard stabs a wolf in the shoulder and then pulls the blade out, all in the blink of an eye.
Blood splatters the wolf’s coat as well as the lamia wielding the katana. The shifter yelps in pain and is quickly shoved out of the way by another wolf, who immediately begins to snap and lunge at the guard. I can’t see who they have in the middle, but my gut is telling me it’s Adriel. The guards take another step closer to a set of doors before more attacking shifters cut off their path, and I know if they make it out of this room, the hunt for Adriel will start all over again.
I begin to shoulder my way in the direction of the group of guards, body checking wolves and lamia out of my way indiscriminately. Torrez’s big ass body helps with my efforts, and I’m only ten feet away from my target when lamia start attacking Torrez and me in force. Torrez’s jaws snap around the head of a charging male, and he shakes the lamia like a rag doll until the body turns to ash. I dodge blows and avoid claws as much as possible, knowing if I try to use any magic now, I will be wiped by the time I reach Adriel and have nothing in me to fight him with. I shove a lamia back into the jaws of another shifter, but I don’t turn in time to avoid another set of claws coming right for my neck.
It’s like I can see it in slow motion, the arc of his claws as they move closer to shred the skin and muscle not protected by this fucking collar that’s rendered me useless. I don’t close my eyes. I stare death in the motherfucking face and let it know exactly what I fucking think of it. It stings when the lamia’s sharp-tipped fingers start to slash through the skin of my right shoulder, but just when I’m expecting to feel hot blood pouring out of a wound in my neck and chest, the lamia is yanked back in a flash like it’s been harpooned.
A blue sword explodes out of the lamia’s chest, and it turns to ash immediately. Dust and ash drift slowly to the ground, and the sword wielding figure steps through the mess and bellows out a challenge. My heart leaps at the sight of Valen. His hazel eyes are filled with fire and fury, and I know that look well. I wear it anytime I’m fucking pissed that something or someone tried to mess with what’s mine. Bastien materializes next to his twin, and I’m in awe of their presence. They’re covered in ash and move like they’re extensions of the same body.
Lamia charge them, and they both twist and turn around each other, taking out attackers. Their swords arc and slice through lamia almost in perfect synchronicity, and I’m so stunned by how beautiful and magnificent it is that I almost miss a lamia coming at me from the side. I ball up my fists and ready myself to knock the fucker out when Knox steps in front of me and, with a swipe of his short sword, removes the lamia’s head.
“I was wondering if you were going to stop drooling long enough to realize we’re in the middle of a battle here, Killer,” he teases, and then he grabs the back of my head and slams his mouth to mine.
The kiss is hard and fast, and when he pulls away, his eyes sparkle in that naughty way that’s entirely Knox. He turns around and starts hacking away at anything that’s threatening us, and I smile at his back and then shove a lamia that’s running at me into the jaws of a waiting Torrez. He rips him apart, and we all press even closer toward the group of guards. I spot Aydin’s giant body holding off any more lamia from getting into the room through a set of doors, and I’m surprised to see Silva and Evrin doing the same thing at a different entrance.
A silver blade slices out at me, and I just barely jump back and avoid getting stabbed. The guard arcs his katana back up toward me, but a blue-bladed short sword comes down on his arm, severing the lamia’s limb from his body. Ryker follows through with the blade in his other hand, and the guard screams as his body crumbles into nothing.
“You good, Squeaks?” Ryker asks, his sky-blue eyes jumping from me to the battle around us, on guard.
“I am now,” I tell him, and we exchange smiles before Ryker spins and ashes a lamia sneaking up behind him.
I quickly snatch up the katana from the ground and brush the ash off from the handle. I spend a couple seconds getting a feel for the weapon, and I’m stoked when it has good balance and feels like a natural extension of my hand. It’s lighter than my short swords, but after a clean swipe through the neck of a lamia that’s trying to join a three on one fight against Sabin, I decide this katana is the shit.
Sword in hand, I start doing my part to cut our way to Adriel. I hoot with excitement after a few fancy twirls get me a clean two-for-one beheading, and I’m reveling in the fact that I’m not as useless in this fight as I feared I would be. I hear the wordsshow offbeing shouted at me, and I look over to see a smiling Enoch. I cringe and then chuckle when a wolf shifter accidentally slams into him, almost taking Enoch to the ground before the wolf scrambles to get his footing. The shifter turns around and gives Enoch a slobbery lick and bounds away to join another fight.
Red-gold eyes peek out at me between a row of guards, and when my eyes fix on Adriel’s, all the lightness and levity I was feeling at once again being with my Chosen and dominating in a fight, bleeds out of me. I see fucking red, and all I can focus on is getting to him. I want him to hurt, feel a fraction of the pain his actions have caused others. I want to wipe that fucking smirk he’s always wearing right off his fucking face when I remove his head. And I want this fucking collar off.
I fix my gaze on Adriel’s exact location and move straight for him. I veer to the left to avoid claws and bring my katana up to block a guard’s sword aimed at my chest. I get separated from Torrez and the others as each of us battle our own sets of guards. I focus on the three katana wielding guards all doing their best to separate my head from my shoulders. It seems that Adriel is no longer interested in trying to keep me alive. He’s apparently abandoned all hopes of being marked and just wants to get the fuck out of his throne room alive.
All the doors are covered by supes here to kill him, and he’s managed to get himself boxed into a corner at some point during the fighting. I want to scream at the lamia still locked in battle not to lay down their lives for this asshole—it’s not like he would do the same for them—but there’s no point. They all seem hellbent on protecting the psycho at all costs. One of the guards attacking me turns to ash as I slice through his neck, and I press the two guards still left fighting, closer to Adriel.
I grunt with the exertion it’s taking me to fight off their blows. The metal of all of our swords clang and screech as they meet each other and slide apart. I lean back as far as I can go to avoid a team effort by the guards to scissor their blades at me, and I take the opportunity to cut the backs of one of the guard’s knees. He cries out in pain and collapses, and I attack the last guard ruthlessly. His blade sneaks out and kisses mine ever so softly, and quick as lightning, it moves, searching for skin to sink into instead of metal to be denied by. There was a time where I would have appreciated this guard’s skill, his technique and finesse, but as I spin and dodge and strike, I don’t care how good he is, I need him to die and get the fuck out of my way.
I’m lucky that the fighting has compressed everyone together, because it forces the lamia to move somewhat slower than I’ve experienced in previous fights. There’s not enough space to be flashing around, and it’s something that’s absolutely saving my ass as I go head-to-head with the last of the guards standing in my way. I aim low, but my slash is blocked. I twist and cut up with my blade and just manage to nick under the guard’s arm as he raises his katana to slash down at me. The feel of my blade meeting its mark energizes me, and I start driving even harder against him, raining blows down and focusing them on the side I just injured.
A wolf trying to gain the upper hand in a different fight skids into us. The guard moves to slash at the shifter, clearly not realizing that he just made a fatal mistake taking his focus off of me. I have his head off three seconds later and a clear path to Adriel.
25
My name rings out behind me, but it’s not panicked, and there’s no hint of warning in it. I don’t know who it is, but they can wait. I refuse to let Adriel out of my sight again. He has a sword in his hands, and he lashes out against a wolf who is attacking another one of his guards. The wolf yelps in pain, but it’s quickly silenced when Adriel delivers a killing blow.
