*Maddy*
“Maddy!” The voice comes again, louder than the first time. I rise to my feet, my legs tingling from lack of use. The fire in the cave shudders out on a phantom wind.
I bristle against the sudden chill, my hands trembling as I feel along the cave wall toward the entrance. It’s nearly pitch black. I’ve never been anywhere so dark and empty, especially with no moonlight illuminating the outside world, let alone the cave entrance.
I take a moment to feel over my clothes. They’re not mine, and I’m wearing something thin and rough. A man’s shirt, I realize, that brushes just over my knees. My legs prickle from the cold–and the knowledge that someone had to undress and then redress me.
I make it to the cave’s entrance and stand, my bare toes curling over cold stone. I glance behind me into the inky darkness and shiver, deciding maybe I’m better off outside than I am trying to maneuver around the cave again with Mystica’s magic fire and her ghostly company.
Had I imagined everything?
Part of me believes that yes, I clearly hit my head hard enough to cause me to black out and hallucinate that I hadn’t been abandoned to die alone in that cave. But I could be very wrong, too. I could have really seen Mystica’s ghost, and her explanation of what the hell is happening to us right now could be the truth.
And if so, I desperately need to not only find my mate, but his sister as well.
“Goddess guide me,” I breathe, the words echoing against the stone mouth of the jagged entrance of what might have been my final resting place had I hit my head any harder. My head pounds, a deep ache radiating through my temples, but I ignore the ache and the sharp pull of the wound across my forehead and step out into the endless night, my bare toes scrunching in dead grass and dirt.
Where do I go? I’m alone, so I hadn’t heard Isaac’s voice like I thought, the thought that spurred me into movement in the first place. Oh, what I’d give for a hot shower and my bed right now. Being out in the elements, barely dressed, and wholly exposed, makes me think about my days as a slave to my stepmother–and my days as a slave to Reginald.
I wonder what happened to him? Was he ever hanged, like Isaac wanted? Or had the war put that off for now, and he sits in a cell and rots while we’re here, trying to survive?
If it’s the latter, he has it better off than me right now, that’s for sure.
I creep forward, groping in the dark as my eyes struggle to adjust to the quiet forest all around me. Why would Mystica leave me now? What kind of game is she and the Goddess playing?
I huff a breath as my toes snag on a tree root, and I nearly fall forward. I steady myself against a tree, my free hand pressed against my belly. I feel a deep, instinctive sensation that I must protect something, something sacred, something I carry within myself that only I could sense.
The feeling catches me suddenly off guard as the fractured memory of Kane tending to me in his cave comes rushing back. Mystica had been there briefly, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she lain her hand over my forehead and said something about “my condition?” before her face faded into the man who my mate believes he has to kill to end this war?
“When…” I whisper, a sudden realization striking me like lightning, everything becoming clear. I count the days since my last cycle.
And I’m late. Quite late, in fact.
“Oh, Goddess,” I breathe, sinking against the tree and pressing my weight against its rough bark. “Pregnant. I’m pregnant.”
As if in answer, a breeze flows through the trees, their branches whistling in confirmation. I look up into the canopy, where the branches are just streaks of dark blue and purple against an obsidian sky. What terrible timing, I tell myself, and the baby for that matter, uttering a brief apology to the child in question. What am I going to do now? How the hell am I going to get home?
One thing is clear, however. I must find Isaac. I’m not doing this without him. I don’t care that he has a deathwish and is hell bent on throwing himself into danger to save his kingdom. I am not raising this child by myself, end of discussion. Over my dead body!
Another gust of wind rips through the trees hard enough to cause my shirt–or dress, depending on who asks–to lift and whirl around my waist. I let go of the tree to smooth the fabric back down just as a second gust replaces the first, pushing me away from the tree and deeper into the forest. It’s like I’m being ushered in a specific direction, like the air around me can sense where I need to go, and is driving me there.
Whispers coast by on the breeze, growling and snarling echoing through the woods.
I suck in a breath, the wet, earthy scent in the forest giving way to something richer, more metallic as I walk for several more minutes in total darkness.
Can I shift while pregnant? I probably can, but is it recommended that I wait? I can’t remember anything from the books I once read, long ago, that detailed shifter conception and pregnancy. I hadn’t needed to know, honestly, not when the only life I had to look forward to was a short one full of misery.
But now?
I walk with a hand laid over my stomach, my eyes wide and alert. It’s not just me I have to worry about now, if I’m right about being pregnant. I could just be late, but something does feel different, like I’m outside of my own body and everything about me feels foreign and new.
A pang of guilt ripples over me as I think about shifting with Ella, and then hitting my head and knocking myself out. I decide, despite how warm and strong I’d be in my wolf form, that I can’t risk it, not until I’m healed.
A quiet calm settles around me, the only noise my own footsteps.
But then my scar–Isaac’s mark–burns to sudden life, and I nearly pitch forward, bending at the waist against the searing pain flickering over my skin.
I call to him through the mind-link but it’s quiet, my words echoing into nothing.
Somethings wrong, I can feel it, and then my feet are moving before my mind can catch up, and I’m sprinting forward through the dark, dodging trees and roots in my haste to get to him, to find him, and to stop him from doing whatever he feels he must do to end this.
Because we were wrong.
Ella is the second beast, and Kane, the man he believes is behind this war, is innocent. If history must repeat itself like I believe, Ella must make an impossible choice to leave her family and her kingdom behind, and go to him.
To a kingdom of darkness and eternal night, to restore the balance and order to the Moon Goddess’s world.
A flash of blue light erupts in the distance, and wind rushes toward me from the source of the light. The entire area blurs into shades of bright blue and silver, and a rush of whispers meet me in a clearing.
I can see everything now. It’s like day has finally come. Several yards away, a figure stands in the woods, golden blonde hair rolling down her back as she raises her hands and light pours from her fingertips.
Wolves like shadows disappear into specks of silver, their howls of surprise cut short and turned to the whispers I’d been hearing.
“Isla?” I say, panting.
She turns to me, her eyes glowing in the magic light she’s creating. Her face looks suddenly relieved, then switches to something of panic.
“Duck!” she screams, and I immediately fall to my knees and cover my head with my arms. Light flashes in the clearing, and all around me wolves disappear into dust. “Get up! Run!”
“Run where!?” I call out, struggling to get to my feet. How is she here? Oh, Goddess, how long was I knocked out?
“Come to me! Hurry!” she bellows, waving her arm wildly before grunting with effort and sending a burst of light in another direction.
I run to her, my arms outstretched, and she catches me in an embrace, her fingers digging into my skin as she clutches me tightly.
But then she shoves me behind her and yells in frustration as more wolves silently enter the clearing at great speed. Their eyes glow red in the darkness, and a strange collar lines each of the broad necks, but one wave of Isla’s magic light turns them to ash and dust, their collars rolling to a stop at our feet.
“There’s so many,” she pants, and we stand in silence for over a minute, waiting.
“Are they gone? I’ve been walking for so long through the woods and didn’t see any of them before coming here.”
“I don’t know, Maddy,” she exhales. “All I know is that we need to get out of here and get you to Isaac.”
“Where is he?”
“With Maddox and Cassian. We caught up with them yesterday.” She turns to me, her hands placed on either side of my face. “What happened to you? You’re hurt!”
“I’m fine. How much time has passed? What day is it?”
Her eyes search mine for any hint of what I’ve been through. “You and Ella disappeared over a week ago.” Her expression turns pleading. “Is she with you?”
“No,” I manage to say, but the word echoes and bounces off every tree. I hate the way Isla’s face falls. “She… Isla, there’s so much we need to talk about. Ella left me behind. I think she–”
A snarl rips through the clearing, and we both turn to find a wolf bounding toward us. Isla screams, raising her hands, her fingers prickling with light.
But the wolf stops short of us; his neck has no collar.
Twice as large as the wolves Isla has been decimating since I came to the clearing, the wolf watches us with large, greenish-gray eyes that glow in the darkness. His thick, tawny blond fur rustles as he backs away a step, his eyes narrowing on Isla before flicking over to me.
He sizes me up, tilting his massive head from side to side before snorting out a breath, and bowing his head.
Isla lowers her hands, her eyes wide with shock.
The wolf lifts his head, sniffing the air, then howls so loud I instinctively cover my ears.
And then he’s gone, bounding toward the west, and disappears into the darkness.
Isla turns to me in shock. “He was one of ours. There are more survivors.”
“No,” I cut in, shaking my head. The memory of the second male voice in the cave when I briefly woke from my stupor to find Kane and his men tending to me, and arguing about what to do with me, comes rushing back. “He’s one of Kane’s men.”
Isla looks at me like I’m speaking a different language. “How would you know that?”
“Kane isn’t who you think he is,” I say, but suddenly a scream echoes through the woods and cuts me off. A twisting, sinking feeling settles deep in my belly as we slowly turn to the sound. “Ella?”
“Come, now,” Isla says hurriedly. “We need to shift.”
“Isla, I can’t.”
“Still?”
I open my mouth but can’t form the words. She must see the pain in my expression, the doubt and worry, because her eyes widen briefly before her own expression softens. “Oh, Maddy.” She pulls me into a hug so warm and loving that my eyes begin to water. “It’s fine. We’re not far from Isaac and Maddox. Are you all right? Do you feel all right?”
“I’m so scared,” I croak, tears rushing from my eyes as I grip her coat, scrunching the fabric between my fingers. “I don’t want to do this alone.”
“You won’t be alone,” she whispers over a second scream. “But we have to go.”
She shifts, and I get on her back. Then we’re sprinting through the woods. The trees spread out, becoming less dense, and then we’re blanketed by the tall, waving grasses on the edge of the plains.
I can feel the magic in the air. Thick, and suffocating. I can taste it on my tongue like the night Isaac showed me his beast form in the valley below the castle. I can feel it dusting over my skin as Isla comes to an abrupt stop, and I nearly launch myself off her back.
‘Stay here!’ she commands through the mind-link, and then she disappears like a flash.
My scar burns so deep it takes my breath away.
A light so bright it rivals the sun illuminates the space, turning night to day.
I know it wasn’t Isla’s magic. I know with every fiber of my being that the moment I’ve been dreading has come.
And I will not stay here and watch Isaac die.