Ella
“Oh, my Goddess!”
I don’t care that I’m screaming for the entire world to hear. My voice echoes off the walls as I barrel down the stairs, practically blind, tears springing from my lashes and rolling down my cheeks. I trip over my own feet and fall to my knees on the tile just as Ryatt reaches my side and hauls me upright.
He doesn’t let me go. I squirm in his arms, panting, reaching a hand toward the bloodied man staining the ivory tiles crimson.
Westfall’s glacier blue eyes meet mine, but his expression is strained as the wolves hold him down. Several of the wolves have him by their teeth, blood pooling around the wounds they’ve inflicted by getting him on the ground.
“Isaac, please!” I shout.
Isaac looks from me to Westfall, confusion blurring his features.
“Alpha King!” Ryatt shouts, a touch panicked as he holds me back. “Let him go.”
Cassian rushes into the room, cursing audibly as he skids to a stop. Hannah is hot on his heels but he swings his arm out to stop her. She gasps.
“Isaac, what the hell is going on?” Cassian hisses.
“Who is this?” Isaac asks the room, his voice stern and lined with shock. “Do you all know him?”
Voices lift all around me. Ryatt and Isaac are arguing, Cassian cutting in and trying to explain, but my eyes are locked on Westfall as he pants under the strain of the weight still pinning him to the ground. His eyes remain on mine, and when his mouth lifts into a ghost of a smile, I feel myself coming completely undone.
The room around me spins. My vision begins to go dark at the edges.
“I’m going to pass out,” I whisper, unsure if Ryatt, who is the only thing keeping me upright, can ever hear the words as I slump forward.
The voices get sharper, louder, and then I’m on the ground and my vision blurs to the darkest kind of night.
“Ella, Ella…”
“Wake up, Princess, come on…”
“What happened? Isaac, why is she…”
“Luna.”
I open my eyes, blinking into blinding sunlight. Shadows pass over me, hovering above me, and then faces come into view.
I blink up at my mom, who smiles softly down at me. “Hi, there.”
“What happened?”
“You fainted.”
I look up at the owner of the voice, none other than my mate, who looks pale and concerned as he brushes his thumb over my tear stained cheek.
My eyes ache as Isaac and Cassian come into view.
“She’s fine, really,” Mom says to Ryatt, placing a hand on his back. “You didn’t eat breakfast, did you?”
“What–I–” I try to sit up, but my body feels heavy and tingly. My heart begins to race again as a sudden realization strikes me, and I shoot into an upright position so quickly I nearly crack my head against Ryatt’s chin.
I whirl, my palms braced on the tiles as I look at the man sitting across the room, six wolves scattered behind him.
“How?” I ask. “How are you alive? How are you here?”
“We have a lot of training to do when we get home,” Westfall breathes, his shoulders uncharacteristically slumped.
***
If history books are ever written about my family, this moment would be something people would read and probably not believe.
The formal dining table is full to the brim but silent save for the scraping of forks and knives. The heads of two kingdoms sit and stare at glasses of fine wine and plates full of seafood and steak.
No one says a word. No one mentions the elephant in the room. No one, in fact, has said a Goddess-damned thing all day.
Westfall had been ushered to the infirmary once Isaac deemed he hadn’t stormed the isles to kill all of us, and Ryatt had promptly tucked me into bed and told me to stay there or else.
Hours later, I woke up to my mom shaking me by the shoulder and telling me I needed to get up and get dressed for family dinner.
She explained, with heartbreaking calm despite the heaviness in her voice, that she wanted one normal night with the family together before we returned to Eastonia.
This wouldn’t be a normal night, however.
Two kings sit at one table. Two enemies, up until a few days ago.
I glance down to the far end of the table where Isaac is seated at the head flanked by Maddy, who is glowing and doting on Sid, the only named prince. Hannah rocks the sleeping unnamed prince in her arms, her cheeks rosy and eyes creased with happiness as she watches the baby snooze in her arms.
Cassian, seated beside her, meets my gaze as my focus sweeps down the table again. He gives me a look that says it all–what the actual fuck is going on?
Ryatt clears his throat and reaches for his glass of wine. His thigh brushes against mine under the table.
My dad, seated at the opposite end, glances at us before looking at the stranger seated beside him.
Westfall eats in silence, his face swollen and beaten to a pulp.
“We should do this more often,” Mom jokes, and I choke on the iced tea I’d just taken a huge gulp of.
“I should explain,” Westfall says, wincing a bit as he moves the ice pack he’s been pressing to his left eye to his right cheek.
“Yes, you should,” Ryatt agrees, his voice low and full of suspicion.
This is not how I thought this would go. In fact, I never once thought Westfall somehow coming back from the dead to be a possibility.
“No, this is family dinner,” Mom says, shaking her head. “We have a strict rule in this family about not discussing business over dinner. Right, Maddox?”
Dad purses his lips. “That’s correct.” He doesn’t sound that convinced right now.
“If you’re alive, then King Kane could very well be too,” Ryatt says sharply, ignoring my parents completely.
That puts a damper on things. Isaac immediately rises and throws his napkin on the table, snapping his fingers as he points to the door. “Meeting, now, in my office.”
Most of the men rise, looking relieved, but Westfall winces as he tries to stand.
“King Kane is dead!” I shout, sensing the rising tension. “I killed him. I watched him turn to dust.” I turn my gaze to Westfall. “I watched you die. What happened?”
Ryatt’s hand curls around the back of my neck in a gentle embrace, settling me, but I’m still trembling as I hold Westfall’s gaze.
“I woke up on a beach,” Westfall says, his voice full of gravel. “I was taken back to what I believe was a healer of some kind, and over the past few days, I’ve been regaining my strength.”
“What beach?” Dad asks calmly.
Westfall’s eyes meet his as if for the first time. He sizes my dad up, taking in the man, the wolf, and the king he used to be. “It didn’t have a name. I was on a very small island roughly sixty miles from here, to the south.”
“The Andrion Archipelago?” Mom whispers, looking around the table. “How did you end up there?”
Westfall looks at me then. He really looks at me, taking in my face and the way Ryatt’s hand is still resting against the back of my neck as he stands behind me.
“You used the mask, didn’t you?”
“I had to.”
“You shouldn’t have,” he scolds.
“You will watch how you speak to my daughter,” Dad growls, losing that yoke he normally has on his emotions.
“Your daughter,” Westfall seethes, “is the most powerful being to have ever walked not only your lands, but ours. What she can do… it rivals the powers of gods. Do you all understand that?”
Every fine hair on my body stands on end. I’ve never seen Westfall so raw before. He scans the room, his eyes landing on me once again. “You don’t know how to spirit yet, not effectively. You could have brought an entire army through the veil by accident, Ella. You could have torn it down completely.”
Ryatt goes still behind me. My parents exchange glances.
“Isaac can do that too,” Maddy says from the end of the table.
“Maddy,” Isaac whispers, shaking his head.
“Then he can help us get back through the veil,” Westfall replies without skipping a beat. “Ella, you can’t control these powers yet. Your fire, yes, but this magic is something else entirely. I should have trained you better.”
“I saw you die.” I don’t care about the rest. I’m powerful, so what? That’s been drilled into my mind over and over again. I could ruin the world, kill everyone, and will always, always, have a target on my back.
I don’t care.
Westfall’s eyes undergo a great change. He inhales sharply, leaning back in his seat and placing his swollen, bruised hands on the table. “I don’t know what happened in that regard, but what I do know is that you left Eastonia in shambles, Ella. If Kane is truly dead, there will be war. His allies, which are plenty, will rise to try to claim his throne, especially if they believe Ryatt to be dead. We need to return. You need to return.”
“Why?” I ask. My mouth is so painfully dry.
“You’re the queen our people have been waiting for. There will be no peace in Eastonia until you’re on the throne.”
“I don’t want the throne,” I say for the first time. The truth rings through the room.
I know everyone is looking at me.
“You don’t have a choice,” Westfall says with effort. He looks at Ryatt, his son, and says, “You knew she never had a choice.”
Isaac and my dad exchange looks. I can tell they’re talking over the mind-link, because dad nods and spins on his heel, leaving the room. Isaac turns to us, his expression grave. “We need to leave for Maatua as soon as possible if the plan is still to breach the veil from the falls.”
I swallow hard past the lump in my throat as I look down at the table at my mom, Maddy, Hannah and the twins.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. For what, I’m not even sure. But it feels like the right thing to say.
“We’ll be able to do this again,” Mom says, but her throat strains around the words. She sets her fork down and rises.
She leaves the room without looking back at any of us.
Maddy holds my gaze for a long, long time. “I love you, Ella.”
“I love you, too.”
She rises, followed by Hannah, the two of them juggling the twins. Maddy starts to walk out of the room, but stops, turning to face us, to face Ryatt.
“Do you want to know the name I decided on for my son?” she asks him. She motions to the sleeping prince in Hannah’s arms. “This is Ryan. I named him after you, for everything you’ve done to keep my sister-in-law safe, and everything you did to keep me safe during the war. Isaac refused to name him Ryatt outright, of course. But, he’s your namesake. Remember him, and your family on this side of the veil, when things are dark in Eastonia. We will always be here for you.”
My heart threatens to crack as I watch the Luna of Crescent Falls walk out of sight.
Behind me, Ryatt is still as stone but lets out an audible breath.