Filed to story: My Kidnapper Is the Wolf King
“You know why.” His mouth is close to my ear, and I’m not sure what he means. “Shh. It’s okay. We’re almost there.”
The corridor I was brought through looms ahead. I let myself dare to hope, to water that small flower that raises its head in the darkness. We’re going to escape. We’re going to be free.
I grit my teeth. I grip Blake tighter and straighten my spine. He quickens his step.
The muscles in his shoulders tense beneath my fingers. The torches around the circle flicker, then die, and the amphitheater plunges into darkness. We turn our heads toward the trapdoor. Alexander has crawled to it, his black shirt slick with blood. He pulls a key out of the lock, and meets Blake’s eyes, as Arran-blood spilling from his nose-charges toward him.
“You fool, Alex,” Blake hisses.
Alexander grins and flings open the door. Dots dance before my eyes, and I squeeze them shut. I can’t afford to lose consciousness. Not here. Not now.
I dig my fingers into Blake’s shoulders and make myself look.
An unnatural quiet fills the amphitheater. Chains groan, then scrape along the floor, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. A low hiss vibrates over the walls, and even the men in cloaks shrink from it. A sour scent, like decaying meat, floods my nostrils as a slithering sound fills the gloom.
“Moonlight and darkness. Freedom and chains. Power and destruction.
“
An unnatural rasp seems to come from everywhere at once, and it reminds me of the voice that came from Kai when he first awoke. “Does he know, do you think?
“
Blake hurls me back, and I withhold my scream as a tide of shadow spills out of the trapdoor and rears up, contained only by the ceiling. It winds around the circle, blocking the exits. The darkness moves like mist around a serpentine face and body.
It blinks down at us with eyes of onyx.
“You’ve been so naughty.
“
Something rattles in the cage inside me and floods my body with ice. Sweat beads on my skin, and my vision begins to fade.
“Oh, I am so hungry. So very hungry.
“
The darkness crashes down into the amphitheater like a stormy obsidian wave. Shouts fill the air as men and Wolves scatter, and two males are plucked up as if they’re weightless. A horrible crunch is followed by a squelch as they disappear, screaming, into the maw of the beast. Black blood spatters the ground.
My pulse is racing so quickly, I think I’m going to pass out. The fever is coming for me, and I can’t keep it at bay. I fight it with everything I have, even though darkness would be a relief. I can’t give up. I can’t expect someone else to save me.
There’s a flicker of darkness to my side, and Blake pulls me out of the way of the thing’s tail. We land hard on the ground, Blake’s arms curling around me, and I bite down hard to stop myself from screaming as the welts in my back are exposed to the air. It strikes again, scooping up cloaked men and Wolves, dead and alive, and swallowing them whole.
“Pick up your weapons!” James roars. “Next time it strikes, go for its eyes and mouth! Kill any southerners that get in your way.”
I try to push myself up, and Blake helps me to my knees. He kneels before me and clasps my face in his hands. “Aurora, listen to me. You need to stop suppressing your power. You’re the only one who can save us. If you don’t, we will all die.”
I shake my head. “I’m not a wolf.”
Out of the corner of my eye, Alexander staggers forward, eyes set on me as the shadows writhe around him. Ryan is on the floor, bleeding. Philip is standing by James, the two of them barking frantic orders and getting the Wolves into formation, only for another three men to be plucked into the maw of the beast. Claire plunges a sword into a hooded male that lurches for her before turning to face the shadows-her eyes bright and feral, even though the blade trembles in her hand. Ian lies dead on the floor.
“Not your wolf, Aurora.” Blood and gore splatter the ground beside us. Warm droplets drip down my cheek and onto his hand. “Your power. There’s a reason why you didn’t shift on the night of the full moon. A reason why
Ghealach shone for you on the night of the battle with Sebastian. A reason why the Àithne doesn’t work on you, why Callum has struggled with his wolf-gods, why I have-since you have been around.” He grips me tighter, sliding his hands into my hair. “I think you’ve started to suspect it too. You feel it. It’s not your wolf that you keep suppressing when the fever comes for you. It’s a different power. The Wolves thought it was literal. A heart turned to rock, fossilized by time. What if it was not?”
What he’s saying, it can’t be true. I shake my head. “Even if you’re right, it’s deep within me, and I’ve been holding onto it for so long that I cannot let it go.”
“Darling, people like you and me, we do not let go.” He bumps his forehead against mine, and the wolf blazes in his eyes. “We unleash.”
He breaks away from me and draws his sword. He meets Alexander’s blade. There’s a ring of steel as he throws the Borderlands lord back before advancing upon him. A growl reverberates in his chest.
The serpentine beast rears up above us all, and I stagger back onto my palms as it turns its obsidian eyes on me. I no longer feel pain, nor my blood, nor heat. I’m numb. It’s like looking into an endless abyss. Its scent ambushes me, ancient and primordial, and my clothes stick to my skin. It laughs, a raspy sound that vibrates through me and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“He will be so angry with me, when he finds out what I have done to you,
“
it hisses. “It will be our little secret.
“
The darkness crashes down upon me, and something in my body rises up to meet it. A scream builds in my chest. My skin is clammy and everything is far away. The fever, it’s coming for me, as deadly as the serpentine creature that hurtles ever near, its mouth opening, its fangs dripping with blood. Every instinct in my body braces itself.
Blake is right. I have started to suspect something. I have read through his books filled with experiments on Wolves, and not one of them could stop the shift, nor fight the effects of silver and wolfsbane. I have wondered why I’ve found myself in Night’s prison and what it is he wants from me. I cast my thoughts back to the family tree I found in Blake’s bedchambers, and who the two scrubbed names at the top may belong to. Lochlan thought my mother brought the Heart of the Moon to the Northlands. Blake and Callum thought Sebastian had it.
I have thought of my mother, of the reason she might have withheld the truth from me. She loved me more than anything. I was her heart, she told me, her love.
When the fever hurtles through my body, I don’t fight it. I don’t suppress it.
I close my eyes.
I release a breath.
For once, I let go.
Chapter Sixty
I
‘m falling, hurtling, crashing through darkness.
It rises to meet me.
I jolt into my body. My skin is stone. The taste of crypts and mildew is thick on my tongue. I cannot move. I cannot breathe. I’m a statue in the palace gardens and moss coats my skin like wet velvet. A scream builds in my chest, but my mouth is sealed shut.
The moon hides behind the clouds, and candles light the way through the hedge maze. Courtiers wander, long silk skirts trailing over the cobblestones. Some pause.
“Perfect stonework,” says one.
“She almost looks alive,”
says another.
And I have had enough. I’m not a statue-with no thoughts, no feelings, no desires of my own. I’m not made of stone. I don’t exist as decoration, for people to look upon, comment upon, as if I cannot hear them.
My smile crumbles. The ground quakes. The stone that encases me cracks and I shed it. It turns to dust, coating my naked skin, as I stand on a podium. I raise my chin, and a glimmer of moonlight touches my face. The courtiers around me start to scream.
Enough.
Then I’m falling once more.
My feet slam onto cold checkered tiles, and they crack beneath my feet. I’m in the Church of Light and Sun, only the wilderness has taken it. The stone altar ahead is coated with lichen, and a crescent moon shines through the domed roof. It’s pale light puddles on the mosaic of the sun.
Vines burst though the ground and curl around my ankles. They snap from the walls and hold my arms outstretched. More of them snap down on my back, and I’m jolted forward. I bite down my scream and taste the copper tang of blood in my mouth.
But I didn’t sin.