Bellamy mutters under her breath. But the dire awry is gathering her own power, seemingly ignoring us, not offering an opinion.
Reck’s eyes widen, flicking to the portal, then across the berserkers lined up to guard it, then back to me. He blinks, taking in my features.
I watch as understanding, then terror fills his expression.
“Zaya … no …” he whispers.
The energy of the portal abruptly condenses, then snaps out into the parking lot.
A figure steps through that shadowed maw of churning energy. Despite the size of the portal, and even with the berserkers stepping through unhindered, the newcomer is so tall he’s forced to bend forward to make the passage.
A massive booted foot hits the pavement. Energy crackles outward from the footfall.
Regret aches through me as I turn away from the shifter who was supposed to be mine. Our souls tied together by the universe itself, then sundered by some yet-unknown means. “In the next life,” I murmur. “Maybe.”
Reck curls his hand around my bicep as if he has any ability to hold me back. Or even shield me.
He doesn’t.
The newcomer clears the portal with a second step, straightening. He’s easily over seven and a half feet tall, dressed in the leathers of the Cataclysm MC — his motorcycle club, his pack. I can see traces of the genetics he’s bequeathed to his children in his features. Dark-olive skin, dark-brown hair graying at the temples, similar striking facial features.
But his energy is … wrong … as wrong as the portal whirling wide behind him.
A weird tension shifts through the berserker ranks.
Fear.
That realization reverberates through me, my own disconcertion pumping through my system. This feeling is … this feeling is somehow, impossibly so, the antithesis of a knowing. The opposite of fate. The opposition of life but without the clarity and finality of death.
I blink, and the Cataclysm’s visage morphs, as if I’m glimpsing his real face for a moment.
He’s not human.
He’s not wholly a shifter either.
Perhaps he’s more. Because he was once bonded to my aunt, the Conduit? But the Outcast didn’t feel this way …
I’ve also seen him before.
I never would have recognized him. Not in any photograph, at least. I hadn’t, in fact, in the three-decade-old photo of my aunt with her three soul-bound mates.
But I know. Face-to-face.
I know who he is. To me.
He smiles, sharp and utterly vicious, locking his red-rimmed eyes on me — no white at all visible around his almost-black irises.
“Little Zaya,” he croons with deadly intent. The soft southern tint to his accent is at complete odds with his malevolent energy. “I’ve missed you, darling girl.”
Remembered terror skitters up my spine, locking my limbs in place. Muta rears up on my shoulder, restricting my already shallow breathing in a chokehold.
Because the aspect of a death god trapped in the body of a bushmaster knows this adversary as well. Has almost died when faced with this creature, when trying to protect me from this creature.
Reck’s hand tightens on my arm bruisingly. “This wasn’t the deal,” he snarls at his utter terror of a father.
The Cataclysm’s attention flicks to his eldest son, sneering at him, then takes in Bellamy and the teens in the SUV with that same derision. He eyes Shaw’s and Wilson’s bodies with disinterest.
He shrugs, grinning as if it’s charm he wields rather than a power that’s … it’s …
