Sarah
It’s freezing. The cold air bites into my skin as I roll downward uncontrollably, my body bouncing off rocks and through pockets of ice.
My mind is in shambles alongside my heart. I don’t try to stop falling. I don’t have the strength, even if I wanted to.
Ten years of hiding my powers… I didn’t know what else to do. I can’t control them like I used to. I have no idea where I landed, but I know I’m still close enough to Sydney that I feel his gut-wrenching despair, grief, and fury as I continue to roll downhill.
My head smashes against something hard and cold as I come to a rough, jolting stop, half of my body submerged in icy water.
I look up at the clear blue morning, at the frost hugging the trees overhead.
Death is better. Death means Gabriel is useless. Death means he’ll never find me, and Blake will be safe.
Sydney and his family are safe at least as I close my eyes and demand the Goddess take me.
* * *
Sydney
“Sydney!” Cosette screams from the back patio, carefully stepping through knee deep snow as I stalk back toward the house.
Her face is flushed as I brush past her. She grabs my shirt, trying to yank me to a stop.
“You need to tell me what’s going on!” she shouts as she clutches my clothes.
She holds on, forcing me to drag her out of the snow and back onto the ice covered cobblestone.
Dalia is pale in the doorway leading into the kitchen where Blake screams in her arms. If I had any room to feel sorry for the poor girl, who just returned an hour ago to madness, I’d apologize.
But I can’t even breathe. I can’t see or think straight.
I can feel Sarah. She’s close, I hope. But that feeling is waning with each passing second.
“Cosette,” I growl, shrugging her off as I step into the house and march toward the hallway leading into the garage to fetch a jacket. My fingers are numb, nearly frozen. I’ve been outside for three hours looking for Sarah to no avail.
“What happened this morning?” Cosette snarls behind me as I pull several coats off the rack, tossing them onto the ground. “Where is she? What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” I growl, meeting her eyes.
“I read those letters,” she whispers, grabbing my arm. “Those letters you tried to burn in fireplace in the sitting room–”
“Gods dammit, Cosette!”
“Don’t raise your voice at me!” she shouts, shoving me hard. “I knew something was wrong with that poor girl. I knew she was in danger–”
“You should have come to me with your concerns–”
“I tried, but you’ve had your head shoved so far up your ass lately that I couldn’t get a word in without you going on about being busy, giving Sarah space, and now look at you!”
I’ve never heard Cosette cuss before. She shoves her finger in my chest, her fingertip piercing my shirt. “Whatever you did to her, fix it.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I repeat, hissing the words.
“Then find her. Shift, for fuck’s sake, and bring her home.” She jabs me with her finger again and then rips the coat I’m grasping out of my hands before storming away.
“Call in my warriors. Every single one of them, Cosette. And get them out on the ground to search for her.”
Cosette looks at me over her shoulder, shooting daggers as she opens the door back into the house. Blake’s cries echo through the garage when she slams the door behind her.
She read the letters. Sarah was smart enough not to mention the truth–that she’s not only my mate, but Sasha, the most wanted fugitive in the Allied Kingdoms. The woman my own uncle nearly killed me over when I told him not to dig up her grave.
In the end, my father and Ryatt were right in the suspicions that there wouldn’t be bones in that grave.
Sarah’s letter to me had been nothing more than a tearful apology, thanking me for my fucking hospitality.
I close my eyes and try to gather myself, but I’m torn to pieces. My wolf has no interest in coming out to aid me in my search, and part of me wonders if I’ll be able to find her, even in wolf form.
I go back outside, take off my clothes, shifting before the bite in the air can brush over my skin, and then I’m back in the forest again.
An hour passes then another. Eventually, I cross paths with my warriors. They won’t know her scent, though. Not her new scent, the scent she kept masked.
Daylight begins to fade when I come to a stop in a clearing on the outskirts of my territory where the mountains turn to a jagged, cliff-lined expanse of pure nothingness.
The far northern edge of Crescent Falls looms before me.
A couple of warriors have been following me, providing backup on instinct.
One of them steps forward, tilting his tawny ears toward a narrow valley nearly invisible to the naked eye because of the tall, frost covered trees blocking the view down.
I can hear the waterfall. It’s been warm enough the past few days with the slow changing of the seasons that some of the ice has broken away again, and the noise is a soft hum through the still, cold winter air.
‘Any chance she was making a run for the border? It’s across that valley, across the lake at the bottom.’
‘It’s the only place we haven’t looked,’ another warrior says.
‘Go east. Follow the wolf trail down,’ I tell them and turn for the trees where I know a sharp drop off looms.
I disappear over the edge before they can protest.
I navigate the side of the valley with ease despite the rough, rocky terrain. My claws dig into frozen shale that gives way as I leap my way down with the sunsetting above me.
It’s been too long. She’s been out here far too long in the cold. She was wearing nothing more than leggings and a sweater, her feet bare.
But I come to a stop when the scent of blood hits me.
An ice chute drops straight down to the bottom of the valley, to the ice covered lake fed by the waterfall.
A trail of dark, frozen blood is visible just as the sun sets behind the mountain peaks and casts the entire valley in shadow.
My heart stops, and my mind goes blank as I jump toward the ice. I slide all the way down, unable to stop.
A few large boulders line the lake.
And I see her, half submerged where she broke through the ice.
She’s lying flat on her stomach at the lake’s shore, her hair splayed out around her and frozen to the ground.
Goddess, no. Not my mate. Please, not her.
This can’t happen. It can’t. I can’t lose her. Blake can’t lose her, his mother.
How am I supposed to explain this to him when he’s old enough to understand? How do I even go about describing the sacrifice she had to make to keep him safe, the sacrifice she had to make in allowing me back into his life, and into her life, even though she was killing herself trying to keep our bond a secret?
A secret meant to save me.
I can’t do this. I can’t face the idea of letting her go. I’ve already lost her once. I can’t go through it again.
I pull her free of the water but she’s limp. I roll her over, and her eyes are closed, her mouth slightly ajar. Her skin is still pink but tinged with blue, and she’s… she is breathing.
My howl pierces the night as the first starts come into view.
* * *
“Get her in the tub,” Cosette says hurriedly as Dalia cuts through Sarah’s sweater in the middle of the foyer. “Now, hurry!”
I lift Sarah and rush upstairs. She’s like a rag doll, totally and completely limp in my arms and cold to the touch. Cosette rushes after me, trying to push past me to beat me into the room, but I don’t stop at Sarah’s door. I run through the second floor, past the narrow library and into my wing of my manor. I kick open my bedroom door, tearing it clean off the hinges.
Cosette is short of breath as she runs up behind me and hurries into my ensuite. I hear water running as I tear off Sarah’s leggings, crushing her naked body to my chest.
I had the sense to pull a pair of sweatpants on in the garage when I got home, having carried her for miles on a litter with the help of my warriors knowing we’d move faster in our wolf forms.
Her cold skin bites into my chest, a reminder of how precarious this situation is.
“Sydney, hurry!” Cosette shouts from the bathroom, half choked with tears.
Sarah won’t be able to hold herself up in the tub, I already know it. Cosette yelps with surprise as lukewarm water splashes over the edge as I get in and sink into a seated position with Sarah against my chest.
Cosette throws towels on the ground to soak up the water, rasping, “I need to call a healer–”
“Don’t,” I say, biting down on my lip as the water swirls around me. “No one comes into this house unless I say so.”
“She’s bleeding, Sydney.”
I reach up and cup the back of Sarah’s head. A huge gash leaks fresh blood.
“Get the tears.”
“You only have one vial. It won’t be enough–”
“Get them.”
“I’ll call your mother–”
“Do not call my mom.”
Cosette locks her gaze with mine as she lingers in the doorway. She nods and leaves to get the tears from the safe in my office. She knows the code. She knows just about everything.
And when she returns a few minutes later, she asks me for the full truth about Sarah, and I tell her.
I watch from the doorway of my room an hour later as Dalia and Cosette arrange Sarah in my bed. The tears have had little effect. Her wounds have healed, yes, but she hasn’t woken up.
My heart lurches as Cosette tucks her in and turns to Dalia who says there’s no milk left for Blake in the freezer.
“Formula, then,” Cosette tells her sadly, placing a hand over Sarah’s forehead. “It’s in the kitchen.”
Dalia glances at me as she leaves the room, tears in her eyes.
“No one can know,” I remind her, and Cosette nods, sinking onto the edge of the bed with Sarah’s hands clasped between her own.
I turn and leave the house.
The stars dance overhead as I pull up to my parents’ castle.
I’m ushered inside by a sleepy warrior and met by my mom’s lead housekeeper, who was rudely summoned from bed.
Within minutes, my mom is hurrying down the grand stairs in a robe, her eyes wide and worried.
“Is Dad still in Moorn?”
She nods.
I take a step up the stairs. “I need to use the Orrery. I need to talk to Kenna.”