Tears stream down my face and drip onto her as she gasps for air and chokes on her own blood.
“I’m sorry. Oh fuck, I’m so sorry,” I tell her over and over again, my soul slowly being pulverized with each empty gasp she takes.
I go to heal her wound, not caring if she tries to kill me again. I can’t just sit and watch her die. I can’t kill her. She’s my Little Laik. I reach up to her throat, but in a blink, I’m suddenly staring at a man.
What the fuck?
Terror floods me, and I push him out of my lap and scramble back away from the still gasping body. My body lights up with pain, and I call on Siah’s runes and fix myself. I search the room for Laiken, trying to understand what the fuck just happened. Then it dawns on me. It was never her.
A gasping sob tears out of me with the realization. And I cover my mouth to trap another one trying to escape. It’s chaos and mayhem all around me, but all I can do is try to hold the pieces of me together and watch the man I stabbed in the throat take his last breath. I look up and see Talon across the room, fighting Sorik. I don’t spot Suryn or any of my Shields, but my blood runs cold when Bastien screams, “Vinna, no, it’s me!”
The anguish and betrayal that rings out in his voice hit me like a truck. I’m on my feet in seconds, running for him as he drops his sword and shakes his head. He’s fighting a woman who looks nothing like me, and if I hadn’t just had my heart shredded by what just happened with Laiken, I wouldn’t understand anything that’s going on right now.
I scream in rage as I bring my sword down and cut the bitch fighting Bastien in two. Bastien roars out a lament and reaches for imposter me as he looks up with vengeance in his gaze. His pain and anger tear at me, but when his agonized and enraged hazel stare meets mine, shock and disbelief are suddenly all I see. He reaches for me and pulls me to him.
“What just happened?” he begs me as he runs his hands and eyes all over my body to make sure I’m actually there and okay.
“They’re illusions. Very, very fucking good illusions,” I pant at him as he wraps his arm around me. “Bastien, if you see me again, ask me what the code word is, and if I don’t say pineapple, kill me. Okay?” I tell him, but he looks so fucking haunted, I don’t think anything is sinking in.
“Bastien!”I yell in his head, and he blinks out of his horrified stupor.“Use the runes. We need to talk in each other’s heads. There’s no way to know what’s really going on otherwise.”
I light up all my runes and shout into my Chosen’s heads. It goes against every instinct not to distract them, but how else are we going to be able to tell what’s happening?
“If any of you are fighting me right now, kill her. Someone here is creating very powerful illusions, and what’s in front of you is not what you think!”I tell them.
“You mean Bastien is not trying to kill me?”Valen asks, his mental tone filled with heartache and confusion.
“Never, Val! I would never!”Bastien confirms, and then he runs off in the direction of where Valen is and cuts off the head of the Sentinel he’s fighting.
“Vinna, go wolf mode!”Torrez yells in my head.“You can smell whether it’s us or not if we try to approach you.”
“Got it,”I confirm as I activate Torrez’s marks on my shoulder, tapping into the extra smell and deactivating the change in sight it usually causes. Wolf vision is not going to help me in this cluster fuck of a battle.
I wrinkle my nose as the sour stench of fear and the metallic tang of anger flood my senses. I stab through the back of Talon, telling myself over and over again it’s not him. I invite fury and wrath to take over everything inside of me. Sorik holds up his short swords threateningly as I approach him.
“Sorik, it’s me, Vinna. I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell him as I drop my weapon.
“Yeah, not buying that since that’s what the last you told me,” he growls, and my heart hurts for him.
“You are my mom’s Chosen. I first saw you in a club. I thought you looked like an ancient Viking. You helped save me when Faron kidnapped me. You crossed into Silas pack territory where you showed me your runes and told me who you were. That was the first time I saw Siah.”
“Thank fuck,” Sorik declares as he steps in to give me a tight desperate hug. “They can’t answer personal things. They look like other people and sound like other people, but they don’t know details,” he tells me, and I immediately relay that back to my Chosen.
Someone charges me from behind, and I spin and slam my sword through the chest of the Colossal Douche I fought and beat the night I met Lachlan and his coven.Whoever is doing this can’t differentiate between people we care about and just people in our past.There’s a flaw in however their ability works. Ryker moves toward me, his face haunted. I breathe in deeply and get a nose full of fear and disbelief. Under that though is a clean scent of sun-dried cotton, santolina, and amber.
“Ryker!”I shout into his mind and release the magic to any weapons in my hands.“It’s me,”I reassure him, and he crashes into me, burying his head in my neck and squeezing me so hard my bones are protesting. Shouts and the clang of weapons all around us keep me centered in the battle raging all around us and keep me from getting lost in his hold the way I want to.
“I’ve killed you three times,” he confesses, his bright blue eyes haunted. “I knew it wasn’t you, you would never attack us, but I don’t think I’m ever going to get the image of you dying out of my head.”
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I tell him, squeezing him tighter. “I’m here, I’m in your arms. I’m safe. We need to make sure everyone else is too though,” I explain, pushing out of his hold.
Ryker nods and sticks with me as we cut our way through the fighting. Sabin comes running for us. I breathe him in, but the scent is all wrong. I throw a dagger, and Sabin’s feet go out from under him as it hits him so hard in the throat he flies back. Ryker’s words and tormented gaze resonate through me as I watch Sabin die. I know it’s not him, but it doesn’t make the visual any less fucking traumatizing.
“Vinna, Enoch and his coven are cornered in the back bedroom on your left,”Siah tells me.“I’m trying to get through to them, but I have to kill off my whole family…”he trails off, and white hot rage surges through me.
When I find whoever the fuck is responsible for this repeating nightmare, I’m going to strangle them with their own guts. I run in the direction where Siah must be. I don’t know what’s going to be more fucked up to him, having to kill people that look like his long lost, dead family or watching your mate cut them down. I don’t see what Siah sees, thank fuck, but I know his siblings were kids when some of them died, and I don’t want to think of the scar it will leave on him to watch them cut down, even when he knows it’s not actually them.
“Siah, close your eyes,”I mentally shout at him as I break through the ring of Sentinels that are surrounding him.
