We can be those monsters, the creatures lurking just beneath the surface.
As they drown in their suffering, we shall be waiting in the shadows, counting down the days until they either destroy themselves, or accept that having us in their lives isn’t a curse. We were created to be either their salvation or ruin, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate and agree with Acheron Wilder on this one no matter how much I despise the man.
No one should exist simply for the sake of someone else.
“Lia!” Stone’s shout has me whipping my attention his way as another quake rocks the earth, beyond relieved to see him still in one piece.
A flood of agony surges into me like a dam bursting and my back smashes into a tree, sending me to my knees as I attempt to release the pendant, but it’s burned right through my flesh to fuse to the bone. I can’t even scream, my breath seizing in my lungs as yet another wave of people are sent into the abyss below. Some are fleeing the mountain, thundering through the forest in their desperate bid to escape, and others have returned to fighting, accepting their death will come in one form or another.
As I look up, I lock eyes with Acheron, and my chest tightens as I see the dawning awareness on his face as his gaze flits down to the skin on my arms splitting further, spreading like the cracks in the earth around us. He takes a step forward, mouth parting, but never gets a word out. The sound of the stone in my palm cracking is swiftly followed by a torrent of energy exploding around us like a lightning storm, my remaining breath following it with an agonized scream as my body is ripped apart.
And I watch in horror as the first shock wave passes through Acheron and Stone. Though their bodies crumble, a dark haze is carried on the pulse and slams into the body of the nearest human, and I realize just how epically I fucked up before my body completely splinters apart and all the pain I had no business carrying disappears in a blink.
Chapter 6
Sabrina
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“Ididn’t factor inthe Elementals’ power being so different from my own and it sort of... got away from me.”
That might be the biggest understatement of the millennium.
“The best of intentions can go awry, especially when emotions are running high,”she defends.“It's why you're my perfect balance, Sabrina. You take the time to think things through, can set aside your feelings to make the hard choices, yet are so similar at your core that we may as well be the same person. We wear our hearts on our sleevessothey can be broken. Only then can we find people that are willing to go through the pain of putting it back together.”
Her voice wavers slightly.“It’s why I focused so hard on making sure that even though you were determined to keep your mates at arm’s length, as stubborn as I was in the beginning, they’d still be able to share the burden of power so you wouldn’t repeat my mistakes. They’ll always be able to carry a portion of the burden, including those that aren’t alphas, even if it’s a little more of a struggle for them to do so, since you’re constantly siphoning from shifters around you. You’ll be okay so long as you don’t try to take on everything yourself or keep things pent up until they build up beyond what you can endure like I did.”
During my long-winded regaling of Aurelia’s story to bring the others up to speed, Damian sets everything up around me at the dining room table of the Slaughters’ cabin so we can start the blood draws that are going to become a routine part of the foreseeable future. Breaking through the awkward silence that stems from Aurelia going out with a bang and their minds no doubt turning to panic that I’m going to spontaneously combust at some point, I shift things back on track to where our thoughts really need to be focused; Ash.
“Wouldn’t it have been a better move for him to keep me here so he could brainwash me? Have me under his thumb so he could control what I thought, planted the seed to make me want to free the demons like he wanted?” I hiss in a sharp breath as the needle pierces my inner arm.
“Sorry, love,” Damian murmurs, taping it in place and setting things up to fill one of the empty blood bags Sebastian sent us home with. “Maybe freeing the demons is a lie; he admitted that you can’t trust anything he says. Maybe that’s a smokescreen so he can steal your power or some shit. That’s what psychotic, power-hungry villains do, right? Eliminate potential threats, surround themselves with power and minions under their command, and try to take over the world. He fits the stereotype.”
Cin is hanging upside down from the couch, the ends of his auburn hair brushing the floor as he tosses a balled-up pair of socks in the air and catches it on repeat for something to do before we all go crazy sitting around waiting for things to come to a head. “That may be the most obvious move, but not necessarily the smartest. If it wasn’t for Damian’s dad putting the block on her abilities and suppressing her wolf -er, demon- then she’d have grown stronger faster than he could control. Could you imagine a four-year-old with the ability to drain people dry when she didn’t get her way? Or could incinerate someone in the middle of a temper-tantrum? Ash might be strong, but Aurelia managed to imprison an entirerace;and not every demon in the world was on the mountain at the time either.”
Beside him, Kaige is lost in thought, fiery gaze glazed over as he converses with his demon. “He needed her away from here so she’d be weak until he was prepared. Otherwise, he’d have conned her into it while she was young and impressionable and less likely to question him. So hecouldn’thave her around because he wasn’t ready yet.”
