Ryan
Hadley’s blood is everywhere, coating the wallpaper, the floor, the fine furniture and gilded frames in the foyer of my brother’s house. Her neck snapped so easily. It bent like a blade of grass between my fingers. I’m still holding her. Her neck is limp between my jaws.
Sarah’s voice is lifted in a scream. It echoes through my ears as pain ignites deep in my chest.
I let go of my mate. She drops onto the floorboards with a smack, her arms limp at her sides. I feel dizzy, like my heart has stopped beating, and all of my blood is rushing to my head. I make the mistake of looking down at her before falling over on my side, her blood soaking into my fur.
A white wolf stands in the shadow of the formal dining room just visible down the hall. It’s totally still, it’s glowing, silver eyes holding mine as it turns and disappears like it hadn’t been there at all. Inside, I feel my heart… twisting. Twisting like someone is flaying me open and jabbing a heated blade through my chest, twisting and yanking apart the golden threads of the mate bond, one by one.
I’ve known people who’ve rejected and also been rejected by their mates. I know it hurts, both mentally and physically, but this is not what was ever described to me. This is pain so severe I can’t think past it. Pain so strong it blinds me to the room around me, to Sarah’s screams as she calls out my name, to Hadley lying dead and cold only a few feet away.
I deserved this. I thought I was Hadley’s mate, yet I still took pleasure in other women. I didn’t settle down when I felt the first inklings of the bond. I thought it just wasn’t strong enough, that Hadley was too young. I thought I’d get the leg-wobbling sensation one day, when she came into her wolf, that finally made me see her as my mate. I thought one day, her scent would be overwhelming, her touch like a flame, and I wouldn’t be able to ever get her out of my head, but when she kissed me in my car that night I felt… like it wasn’t right. Like maybe I was confused, and it was wrong, and I needed more time. I had more time. One day, soon, she’d be twenty-one, and I’d know for sure that that stupid golden thread between us wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.
But that day hadn’t come, and it wouldn’t now, because I’d killed her. I killed my own mate. I killed my own mate.
More pain drifts through me, hot and endless as I melt into the floor, praying for not only forgiveness but for the Goddess to just strike me where I am, putting an end to the confusion and suffering I’ve felt for years.
That huge white wolf fills my vision again as I open my eyes to slits. It’s standing in the hallway leading to the dining room now, standing totally, utterly still as it watches me with glowing silver eyes. That golden thread binding me to Hadley finally snaps, and I scream at the pain of it, at the regret of it. I could have saved her from this madness.
But I hadn’t wanted to after seeing her in that video footage, laughing and smiling while talking to the very man responsible for so much of my family’s suffering.
Small hands touch on my face, trying to turn my head. I keep my eyes on the wolf. It starts to walk toward me, glowing, fragments of magic pouring from its long, flawless fur. An angel. The Goddess, perhaps, come to take me away to whatever hell awaits.
I’m sure there are ramifications for killing your own mate. There has to be.
I deserve it. Whatever comes, I deserve it.
“Look at me. Open your eyes.” Sarah’s voice is pleading as she yanks on my face. “Look at me, Ryan. Please, look at me. Open your eyes. I’m begging you, don’t go yet. Please don’t go.”
The white wolf continues walking toward me but stops, tilting her snout toward the ground. A rush of numbness skitters through me, blurring the pain, and then the heat of a fire warms my chilled skin.
“Ryan, please!”
More voices whisper around me, turning to violent noise that hurts my ears as Sydney’s foyer fades, and the wolf blurs to nothing but bright light. I turn to look at Sarah, knowing I’ll find her violet eyes full of tears for me, when she should be crying for Hadley.
But it’s not Sarah pulling me out of the darkness.
“Aviva?”
Aviva lets out her breath, her red, curly hair forming a halo around her face as she looks down at me in disbelief. The room comes into view. Walls of stone. A fire in the clay hearth. People I don’t know gathered around me wearing Endovian robes.
The firelight catches on the glass of a small vial in Aviva’s trembling fist. She clutches it so hard the glass shatters in her grip, blood dripping between her fingers. I feel the pain, the sharp sting, like it’s my own.
I look up at her, my vision slightly hazy, and see my own reflection in her amber eyes. “Aviva–”
She pulls her hand back and slaps me so hard it brings me out of my dream-like stupor in an instant. Pain burns through my chest and back, and the injuries heal rapidly, but the burning sensation on my cheek is fresh. I feel everything. I see everything in vivid color. I smell… her, for the first time.
She’s straddling me, her weight pressed against my bare stomach as she shakes with what I hope is relief but know is fury. But she smells… so fucking good… like everything I love, everything that draws me in, all in one. Like the first cup of coffee on a rainy morning. Like blades of grass in the plains after a storm. Like lying in a warm bed with her curled against my chest, her skin warm and scented like ozone and a tang of sweat, rich like whiskey.
How did I not notice before?
Her chest heaves as she looks down at me, the disbelief in her eyes shattering, replaced by white-hot rage.
“You fucking bastard!” she screams, tears streaming down her cheeks. The crowd around us gasps, murmuring to themselves as Aviva is dragged off me by two Endovian warriors who struggle to keep their hands on her.
“Get her out of here!” Jerrod shouts somewhere in the crowd, but Aviva is snarling like the wild animal she is.
“Fuck you, Ryan! You fucking prick! You were dead! You were fucking dead!” Her voice breaks around the heartache in her tone, but she continues to struggle against the hold of the warriors. My wife is the strongest person in the room, and she’s livid. Mad at me, actually.
My mouth ticks into a smile as she’s lost in the crowd, but she screams in frustration, and I hear the tail-tell sound of flesh meeting flesh, then a grunt of pain I imagine came from her fist meeting the jaw of one of the warriors tasked with subduing her.
“Fuck you!” she screams again, then she’s silenced as she’s dragged through the door.
People start to move as I regain feeling in my legs and arms. I’m beat to shit. I can feel the healing powers knitting slash marks together and healing bruises that cover every inch of my body. I feel the gaping, bloody hole in my chest start to close as Jerrod’s face comes into view, looking down at me apologetically.
“I think she brought you back to life so she could kill you herself this time.”
“I am aware,” I rasp, my voice deep and scratchy as the magic moves through me, fixing whatever was broken. “What happened?”
“You took a silver arrow to the chest. It was coated in wolfsbane for good measure, I assume. Such weapons are banned in Endova and Teshka. You were on death's door when she got here. You had mere minutes, Alpha Ryan, if that. We were doing what we could to stop the poison from spreading until then.”
“You shouldn’t have let her in here.”
“Do you really think any of us would have been able to stop her?” he replies with a wry smile. “She ran all the way here from Silverhide with that potion clutched between her teeth.”
“She needs to eat and rest.”
“So do you,” he says, pursing his lips as his eyes fall to where the magic is currently knitting the wound on my chest back together, slowly because of the poison in my veins. He pulls up a stool and sits, turning his head to nod in dismissal to the few people left in the room. They leave, and I grunt as I sit up, resting my back against the stone wall. It’s a single room with a door leading directly outside. Rough, homespun curtains block out the light of day, of morning.
“How many men did we lose?”
“Six out of forty. Those are good numbers.”
“Are they still out there?” I look for a shirt on the bed, meaning to dress and head back to the Navvan camp to finish what they started, but Jerrod shakes his head.
“Your man, Jacob, left one of the Navvan’s warriors alive to send a message back to Hardan.” The mention of his name brings a memory rushing back, reminding me that that man I’d been battling when I was shot through the chest by an arrow said that Aviva is Hardan’s mate. It sinks into me, festering into something cold and deadly I can’t shake, even if I tried. “The rest of the Navvan warriors are dead. It’s over for now.”
“Jacob will stay here. I can’t spare any more of my men to guard Endova. We don’t have the numbers and I need them in Silverhide.”
“I have enough warriors to keep my territory safe, but Jacob is welcome to stay. The patriarch of Teshka sent scouts who arrived this morning after we alerted them to the battle and will be sending twenty of his own forces to our aid. We will be fine here.”
My mind is numb. The only thing clear enough to focus on is the word mate bouncing around in my skull. I’ll kill Hardan before I give Aviva up, even if they are mates. My hand curls over the scar on my hand that never healed despite the minuscule amount of healing power I naturally possess. It’s nothing compared to my brother, Kenna, or my grandmother. “Will you bring her back in? I need to talk to her.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, his lips straightening into a ghost of a smile.
“I’d rather fall on one of her blades than anyone from Navvan. If your daughter killed me, it would be an honorable death.”
He chuckles, shrugging as he stands and nods.
A few moments later, the door opens again, and Aviva steps into the room with a shell shocked, pale look on her face.
I hold her gaze. “Come here.”
She walks toward me slowly, a bandage wrapped around her left hand from where the shards of glass from the vial cut into her skin. She licks her lips, looking me up and down, before sitting on the stool beside the bed.
I reach over and pull her to me so she’s on top of me, balanced with her knees on either side of my waist.
The only thing in my head as I pull her down to kiss her roughly, our teeth clashing, is that she’s mine. I don’t give a fuck about whether she has a mate. Whether it’s Hardan, or some other bastard. I’ll kill him before I give her up.
“Never do that again,” she says breathlessly, her hand sliding up to clutch my neck. “Never fucking do that again.”
“I’ll try not to die again, but I can’t make any promises.”
“I want you to swear on the Goddess.”
“I can’t do that.”
She lets go of my throat and pushes away. The look on her face crushes me, and she doesn’t look back as she storms out of the door.