Sydney
Kenna’s anguished screams slows time to a halt the moment my powers finally break through the manacles on my ankles and wrists.
It’s too late.
I’m too late.
Evander falls face first, unable to save himself from hitting the floor.
I feel like everyone is moving in slow motion. Kenna sprints forward, her shadows billowing out around her as her face twists with despair. Guards move in, blades drawn in her direction.
And Gabriel is grinning like a madman as he turns back to Brie.
Fuck, no.
My body screams in pain as I lurch forward, shouting in rage, agony, and desperation as I collide with the nearest guard. The man falls to the ground with a crunch. I leap off his body, his ribs cracking beneath my feet as I jump, begging the Goddess to help me gather enough power to shift.
We’re all so weak right now. Gabriel knew exactly how to enact this sick, twisted plan. He knew Kenna and Evander would come for Brie. Maybe, somehow, he knew I’d show up, too.
He knew Evander and I would either fight until we were on death's door or surrender, using our defeat as a means to get us here.
I can’t let it end this way. Not after what our families went through to restore some kind of peace and order so we could grow up safe, grow up ignorant of the dangers of this world.
I blame myself as I run toward Gabriel, my wolf powers a single hum of energy, not nearly enough to shift. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kenna falling to her knees beside Evander. Tears stream down her cheeks, glowing faintly, as she gathers his limp, lifeless body in her arms.
“No!” I shout, sending my fist flying, colliding with a second guard. He falls, hitting his head on the edge of the altar with a cracking, wet sound that echoes off the walls around us.
Shadows weave through the fray, taking out enemy after enemy as I fight my way to Gabriel, who snatches Brie in his hands so roughly she shrieks in fear and discomfort. The sound causes Kenna to scream, and I feel the full force of her powers cascade through the room.
I take down another guard with my bare hands; the last guard in my way. I briefly meet Kenna’s eyes from where she kneels with Evander in her lap, her hands coated in his blood as she cradles his head.
She looks like something out of a nightmare. I can’t describe the pain behind her eyes. She just lost her mate. She used her already weak powers to take out Gabriel’s guards to allow me time to get to Brie, to stop Gabriel from taking her daughter.
She doesn’t have enough power left to heal Evander.
That's what I see in her gaze. Anguished resolution. Evander died so Brie can live and I can’t–I can’t let her down.
Powerless, weaponless, and hazy from the wolfsbane surging through my veins, I throw my body at Gabriel as he starts to disappear, his body turning to stardust.
But I grab his arm, surprising him, and yank him back before he can jump to Goddess knows where with Brie.
I send my free hand flying, punching him square in the center of his face, crushing his nose. He cries out, and I only have a split second to catch Brie as he lets go.
Brie is frantic, bright purple from crying, but whole.
“KENNA!” I scream, then launch my newborn second-cousin into the air like a football.
Kenna leaps, eyes wide, and catches Brie.
But a hand closes around my neck, squeezing so hard my vision fills with black spots.
Gabriel shoves me to my knees with strength I don’t think is possible for any man to possess.
“Fucking inbred scum,” I snarl, clawing his forearm.
“You had so much potential,” he clucks, his fingers bruising my neck. “You and your father, both. It was such a shame he never used his powers at their full strength. All of that Goddess given power. A prophecy born, and he only ever shifted into his beast to show off his powers to your mother.”
I’m starting to black out. I can hear Kenna screaming my name somewhere nearby. I can feel her shadow powers at work, cutting through guards. Somewhere, in the distance, I sense a faint, trembling whirl of power coming our way, slicing through the earth like a derailed freight train.
I choke on a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” he sneers, squeezing tighter.
My head spins as I try to catch a breath. “You–you’re just a man with stolen powers. I was born with mine.”
He leans in, “I know what you are and who belongs to you, wolf. You’ll never be able to protect them. I will hunt them for the rest of my life, until my dying breath, and when I catch them, I’ll make you watch me take them apart, piece by piece, as I drain their powers to ashes.”
I might be dying, because his words don’t make any sense, and Gabriel’s face twists as a blinding light sears through my skull.
When my vision clears, I don’t feel any pain. I’m… I’m not under this Goddess forsaken mountain in a temple deep underground. I’m in Crescent Falls.
I’m in Ryan’s house.
I bump into the kitchen counter, and she catches me around the waist, giggling. Neither of us have been able to get a word out since we left the ball. Drunk and deliriously happy, we’ve done nothing but laugh. Laugh at each other, and the people we passed on the way here, at Ryan’s poor excuse for a gate to his territory that I was able to open with a flick of my wrist.
“Can I–can I kiss you?”
She swats my chest, “I’ve been waiting for you to make a move–”
My lips crash into hers. Sloppy, unsteady. Our teeth clash, and she laughs against my lips and I…
I feel it.
Like a light just erupted in my chest. Like fine threads are weaving through my heart and I…
I clutch something cold and hard in my hand as the memory fades. I’m still with Gabriel. I’m not with the beautiful woman I met at the ball. I can barely remember her. Her face is a blank slate in my mind but I feel her, as if she’s calling out to me.
“Give up, princeling,” Gabriel grunts, trying to crane my neck to the side. My spine strains.
But I move my shoulder–a hard, deliberate motion–and send the blade I just pulled from his belt into his side.
Gabriel lets go of my neck. I gasp for breath, my throat swollen and sore.
He screams in pain, yanking the blade free at the same moment a rush of air blasts the doors to the altar room open wide and fills it with black mist.
I meet Gabriel’s eyes. He holds my gaze.
“You better find her before I do.” He pants, then smiles, and disappears.
“SYDNEY!” Kenna screeches.
I try to rise, but I can’t breathe. I clutch my neck where his fingers left welts and bruises and double over, choking.
Kenna screams my name again, but then hands are on my shoulders, and suddenly the room swirls into darkness. I feel like I’m being pulled apart, then roughly put back together again, and then I’m flat on my back looking up into a dense canopy of trees.
Uncle Ryatt’s voice sounds out nearby. Commander Artyom briefly comes into my line of sight, but he’s quickly replaced by Connor, one of the Ghosts close with Evander.
“You’re all right, man,” he tells me, pressing something cold against my neck. “You’re healing up just fine on your own.”
“My p-powers–”
“They’ll come back. Stay here, okay?”
Connor’s gone, and my vision remains hazy.
People are walking by, crouching to check on me. Their faces are a blur, and all around, the air is full of noise. I can’t separate the voices and conversation. I feel like I’m spinning.
“Kenna?” I say to the void, wondering if her name even left my tongue.
Slowly, I start to regain feeling in my arms and legs. I grip grass between my fingers. I flex my toes. The gashes and welts on my body start to burn, reaching a peak, then feel like nothing at all.
I sit straight up, blinking into hazy evening sunlight.
Warriors wearing Eastonia’s royal emblem dart through a wide open clearing. Several rough looking men kneel in cuffs, their heads bent against the sun. I turn around, squinting into the trees, and see the cragged mountain where the temple rests in the distance.
A moan cuts through the air to my left.
My heart sinks as reality settles heavy on my shoulders.
I slowly rise and turn.
A group is gathered several yards away. A sheet of coppery blonde hair glints in the sunshine as Lady Amanda bends, resting her cheek against Evander’s chest. Granger kneels beside her, his hand pressed against her back. He’s so still, so incredibly still as he looks down at his son’s–his son's body.
Another trembling moan cuts through my soul as Ryatt kneels on the other side of Evander. I can’t see who he’s talking to, who he’s trying to pull away from Evander.
But I know it’s Kenna.
“I can’t!” she sobs. “Please, I can’t leave him like this. I can–I’m trying to save him. I have to try!”
“You’ve been trying,” Ryatt says, his voice incredibly strained. “Kenna, I am so sorry. He’s gone.”
“Noooooo!”
I fight to stay upright as Kenna’s desperation clouds the air. My heart hammers in my chest as I edge forward toward the group–toward the family and friends gathered around Evander.
My friend.
My oldest friend.
Kenna has his head in her lap. Her tears fall into his hair as she cries, her chest shaking with sobs.
Before I kneel beside her, I look up to find Aunt Ella standing pale and resigned, dressed in a cloak of the deepest crimson. Her hair is loose and billowing in the sharp, mid-summer breeze, and her eyes are dark.
She’s holding Brie.
“Get my grandma,” Kenna says, her voice edged with frantic desperation. “Grandma–Grandma Isla. Please, Dad! She can–she can help me–”
Ryatt has tears in his eyes as he shakes his head.
There isn’t time to spirit our grandmother from Maatua.
There isn’t time to begin with.
I fall to my knees beside Kenna.
Connor and Flynn stand in the distance beside a grave looking Commander Artyom. No one speaks. No one can possibly utter a word at a time like this.
I glance at Granger and Amanda. Granger’s eyes are lifeless as he stares down at his son, his hand curling into his mate’s dress as she silently sobs against Evander’s chest.
I look at Kenna, reaching for her, clutching the back of her neck. She sniffles as she looks up at me, her eyes red and bloodshot.
“This can’t be happening,” she whispers, devastated. “What do I do?”
What would I do in this situation? When all hope is lost? What if it were my mate lying on the grass on what could easily be the most perfect summer day I’ve ever seen, lifeless?
I still question my gifts. I’m a tangled mess of them. Half-cocked powers that make little sense.
But I lay my hand on Evander’s chest while holding Kenna’s gaze.
She swallows, hiccupping, but her eyes go wide with sudden understanding. “Can you…?”
“Lay your hand over mine,” I tell her.
Everyone around us starts to move, confused, as Kenna gently places her hand on mine.
We’re weak. Our powers have been strained, pushed to their limits, hampered by potions and poison.
My hand warms, soft blue light pouring from my palm. Kenna, too, reignites what’s left of her powers, merging them with mine.
Thank you,I say silently, Grandma.
This is the most useful gift of all.
Kenna’s tears that have dripped down onto Evander’s pale, lifeless face begin to shine as our combined healing gifts flow through him.
I watch my cousin. I watch hope flare behind her eyes.
And I promise myself… I swear, on the Goddess, that I will never find my mate. I will never put her through this, even if it means I’ll never know what it’s like to be loved like Kenna loves Evander.