Relief washed over me with sudden reprieve, and I panted inside of the dark hole.
“Get the hell out of here, Carson. You’re such a pussy!”
I heard the sound of a fist smacking against bone and then someone—Carson?—scampered away. Looking up, I noted three faces looming over me. Julian looked at Xavier, the boy with dark hair, and said, “I’m going to drown her.”
The moment he said that, panic fully seized me.
He sucked in a sharp breath and glanced away as something crossed his face like maybe he realized this was going too far, but then he gritted his teeth and held out his hands.
‘Honor!’I called out in my head. As my shields, I knew the boys had to be feeling this because the glass cuts on my skin were already healed. Did Donovan go home or to the portal in the library? If he went home, was Sariah already gone on her shift? Where the frick was Reyna?
I clawed at the dirt, trying to climb up, but the earth was soft, and it crumbled, giving way before I was more than a foot off the ground. I fell back, splashing into a puddle of water that dripped from Julian’s hands.
“Don’t do this!” I called out to the three people looking down on me.
The girl crouched down and glared at me. The silence stretched as we continued in an epic staredown until the water reached my knees.
“If you deny your right to the house of spirit and banish yourself from this realm forever, then we’ll stop,” she offered. “By your own free will, if you sign this”—she produced a piece of paper and a pen—“and renounce your house and lineage, we’ll let you leavealive.”
Wait a minute, was this … had this entire thing been to get me to agree to leave? They were trying to scare me into signing my rights to spirit away?
Anger filled my entire being. I didn’t like blackmail or torture, and there was no way in hell I was letting her family get one ounce of my grandfather’s magic—my magic.
‘I’m coming!’Rage’s voice suddenly boomed in my mind.
Hope filled my chest, and I grinned up at the girl. “Go to hell,Jane.”
Donovan must’ve opened the portal door to the library on Alpha Island and let Rage through.
Thank you, cousin.
The water reached my stomach, and my grin turned feral. “Fair warning, my mate is coming. He’ll kill you all if I’m not out of here in three seconds.”
The girl’s expression of confidence faltered, and her gaze darted to Julian. The papers clutched in her hand shook a little.
“Sign the papers, or you can join your mom in the Realm of the Dead!” Julian growled in response.
“Wrong answer,” Rage said, his voice coming from behind Julian, and then Kian’s son was yanked backward. Jane took off running with a screech of terror, and then a familiar face loomed overhead.
Justice crouched on the edge of the pit and reached out to me. “Why does trouble always find you, sis?”
Then he pulled me up and out of the muddy hole like I weighed ten pounds.
When my feet hit the ground, I took in the scene before me.
Honor’s jaws were latched onto Jane’s ankle. She screamed in pain when he jerked his head to the side and tore through her ligaments.
Ouch.
Noble, sweet Noble, stood over Xavier, pummeling his face with blow after blow.
Donovan hid in the bushes, watching it all in wide-eyed terror.
My gaze flicked to Rage, who was pounding on Julian’s head with enough force to kill him, and Justice left me with a wink to go to the king’s side.
Holy freaking battle zone.
“Stop!” I raised both my hands as if to do magic and promptly rolled my eyes … at myself. Nevertheless, Rage, Justice, Noble, and Honor all ceased their beatdown of the high mage heirs and looked at me.
