The latch on the door creaks, as if someone is trying to unsuccessfully ease it open. The Cataclysm moves so quickly that I catch the devastation he levels in his wake first — chair thrown back, table shoved to the side and upended, food and red wine splattered across the floor and sideboard.
I pivot in my chair, untouched by the Cataclysm’s tantrum, to watch him viciously yank open the door and snarl at the three figures clad in motorcycle club leathers in the corridor.
For the briefest of moments, I think — no, I hope — that it’s my three soul-bound mates standing there, ready to rescue me. That somehow sneaking them in was the promise hidden in Jewels’s message on the mirror.
It’s not.
“How dare you interrupt me?” The Cataclysm grabs the tallest and broadest of the three by the neck and actually lifts him off his feet, shaking him, then throwing him against the far wall.
A slightly shorter, blond-haired shifter on the right stutters as he speaks, keeping his gaze low. But surprisingly, he doesn’t stumble back from his MC president’s vitriol. “You said … if it was … an emergency … Jewels —”
“Jewels what?”
“She’s … sick?”
The half-strangled shifter holding himself up against the far wall coughs and chokes out, “And three of our border outposts didn’t report in, like they’re —”
“You think that an issue with stalled communication is more important than the health of my unborn child?”
“No, no,” the blond shifter says in a rush. “Just, we waited until there was more than one reason —”
“You waited!?”
All three shifters stumble back until they’re practically flattened against the far wall.
The Cataclysm gets himself under control, at least enough to seethe, “Where is Jewels?”
“On her way to the hospital?”
“The hospital?” the Cataclysm echoes, like his enforcers are utter idiots.
“She … she thinks it’s just food poisoning, but she … she smells like …”
“Like what?” the Cataclysm roars.
The half-strangled shifter croaks out, “Wolfsbane …”
Most of the aconite flowering plant species are extremely poisonous. But poisoning shifters with pure wolfsbane, sometimes to the point of actually killing them, is more myth than reality. Unless an uber-powerful mage is involved — or the shifter’s health is already compromised.
Such as being badly wounded or … pregnant.
No. No. No.
Jewels wouldn’t … she wouldn’t …
The Cataclysm whirls around to look at me with narrowed eyes. Again, as if he can read my thoughts. Or at least pick up enough of my emotions to make a guess at my thoughts. Maybe from shifts in my scent? Changes in my heart rate?
The blond shifter chances a look in my direction. I can’t feel his essence, not even through the open door, but I don’t think he’s a berserker.
If Jewels made this sacrifice to pull the Cataclysm away so I can — somehow — get through the door while knowing he isn’t on the premises, I won’t get far if I have berserkers guarding me. The last one I faced managed to kill me, though not before dying himself.
Granted, I hadn’t bonded to Rought and claimed the intersection point then.
“The hospital …” the Cataclysm repeats, keeping his gaze on me.
“The … the Diné healer is gone,” the blond shifter says.
The Cataclysm slowly pulls his attention from me, fixing it to the incompetent enforcers in the hall. All three of them rear back from whatever they see etched across his face.
