Three months later.
Sleep was for the weak.I was like a new mother functioning on four hours a night—except I didn’t have a baby; I had a psycho trainer who I’d nicknamed Maddy the Madwoman who pushed me nightly to be able to control my powers. At first it was two to three a.m., then two to four a.m., and finally one to five a.m. of training. When we made too much noise and Silas ran in, we played off the whole nightmares and sleepwalking thing. And it all worked. I could now tease apart the various powers within me and use them at will. Granted I only had ten percent of my power but it was enough to change the game. If I could pull my power from Silas when he was awake, then we could break out of here, something I hadn’t yet tried but I planned to tomorrow. The fight was in a month, and if Maddy and I could get away he couldn’t use me against Brayden.
“Let’s go for a run!” Silas called into the kitchen from the hallway of the apartment.
Our daily run was the only thing that kept us sane. We’d be shut off from the outside world if not for these Central Park runs. Lately, he’d let us stop off at a nearby café and have a coffee so long as we were all together and spoke to no one.
Silas, I had learned, was a narcissistic, territorial, psychopath alpha. If another man so much as looked at Maddy or I, Silas moved closer to us, sometimes even putting an arm around one of us or glaring the guy down.
If Brayden had done that, I might have thought it sexy that he got jealous, but Silas took it too far. He ordered meals for us, making us eat whathewanted us to eat; we drank what coffeehewanted us to drink. He never asked what we wanted; he didn’t care. We existed to please him, and I was getting so sick of his crap that I fantasized about pulling power from the cuffs in the daytime and torturing him with my now well-honed gifts.
But I’d have to refrain, lest that stupid killing curse take me out.
Maddy and I quickly changed into our running shoes and yoga pants and threw on a hoodie. It was still surprisingly cool in the city for April. Silas had to drop the prison wards, as Maddy and I referred to them, and then we all headed out onto the street.
Even in full winter when snow was falling, it had never stopped our run. I think Silas craved the running as much as we did, especially during the full moon when our wolves were so close to the surface. During that time, we would run late at night and shift into our wolf form, darting through the shadows of Central Park like a tiny little wolf pack without a territory. I think Silas missed Idaho and his land there, but he cared more about sticking it to Brayden and so he stayed in the city. A city of eight million people, where we could be well hidden.
It was depressing, but in less than one month it would be fight night, and I wasn’t the only one training for that either. Silas trained withmypower in the daytime. I felt him pull on it as he prepared to use it on Brayden, and it made me sick.
As we ran, I relished the feel of my feet pounding the pavement, cool spring air crisp on my face. I was never the running type before our move to New York. I hated running unless someone was chasing me, but now it was my freedom. It was the one time I got to get out of that damn apartment and be back in the world.
Maddy and I looked at each other and grinned before we both took off in a mad dash sprint. Maddy was competitive, and so was I, so we often raced each other through the park while Silas trailed behind at a more composed jog. We knew the path we were allowed to stay on and how far from him we were allowed to stray. Like trained dogs, we didn’t go too far from our master.
The first time Silas had taken us out for a run, I’d thought about screaming for help and then telling the cops Silas had kidnapped us, but Silas had made me a promise on our first night here: that if I ever tried to run away or contact Brayden, he would kill my mother. For Maddy, he promised to kill Nora, her little sister. He was a cruel man who was a master of manipulation, which was why I often referred to him as Satan in my head.
My legs burned and my chest heaved as I pounded the pavement just a hair behind Maddy. The trees, the moon, the fresh air, it was all so lovely to be outside. We broke through the clearing and Maddy tapped the giant oak tree before I did, beating me. I slowed, sucking in huge lungfuls of air as Maddy whooped in jubilation at her win and Silas slowly jogged toward us at the end of the path.
I chuckled, about to open my mouth to tell her I would beat her next time, when a familiar figure popped into view behind a bush, out of sight of the main trail.
Artemis?
I was so taken back by the sudden appearance of the Elder Fae that all I could do was gasp.
“I’ve been looking for you for nearly a year!” he snapped, almost like a parent who had lost their child in the mall and finally found them in the candy store.
“Artemis,” I whimpered, rushing forward to hug him when he froze, eyes going wide.
“Run,” he breathed, and then disappeared again.
What the…? Had I just imagined that?
I spun, to make sure Maddy saw him too and that I wasn’t crazy, when I saw what had scared Artemis so much. Standing just ten feet from Maddy, who was oblivious to him, was Novus.
The leader of the Wild Hunt had found us.
I had never seen him before, but the sickly-sweet syrup smell that permeated the air along with the pack of spirit-like wolves in a V-formation behind him gave him away.
He was more human than I imagined he would be. Tall and lithe, with glowing black veins and translucent skin, a large rack of antlers protruded from his forehead, the tips dripping a cloyingly sweet substance. There were a few passersby who didn’t even look his way, and I wondered if they could even see him and his pack of transparent ghost wolves at all.
“Maddy,” I croaked. “Run!”
She’d been facing me, mouth agape at having just seen Artemis, but now she noticed that I was staring at something behind her. She slowly turned to look over her shoulder, just as one of the wolves lunged for her, and I snapped into action.
On a level of one to ten, my protective instincts were a twelve. Maddy was family and there was no way in hell I was letting that bastard carve out her intestines like he had the old Elder Fae.
I lunged forward, throwing my hand out and pulling power from the bracelet cuffs. Silas roared just off to the right, down the jogging path and so I knew he was close and that he felt what I was doing. An invisible shockwave left my hands and slammed into the lunging wolf, knocking it back so hard that it slammed into Novus.
Maddy took off like a bullet, running deeper into the park. I didn’t wait to find out what would happen next. I just turned on my heel and booked it after Maddy, farther down the path. Silas very rarely used the alpha gift of mentally speaking into our minds, which surprised me coming from such a control freak, but he used it now.
