Ryan
An hour earlier…
I can’t scrub the image of Aviva dead in my arms out of my head. It’s been several days since the battle, since the moment I put her in my uncle's arms and turned back to the ravaged scene, not knowing whether or not she survived the journey all the way to Maatua.
Three days. It was three entire days before Sydney arrived in Silverhide with news about my mate. I’d just arrived back at my territory, exhausted and in tatters, when he clapped a hand on my shoulder and used his powers to spirit us to Moonrise, then to Veiled Valley, then to Maatua. He’s not as strong as Ryatt. Jumping took a toll on us both, and when we finally arrived at my grandparents’ beach house, I collapsed before I even made it up their driveway.
Everything since the battle is a blur. Navvan is just… gone. The few survivors were mostly women and children who’d left the village and sought shelter in a nearby cave system. Those fifty or so people are in Silverhide now, recovering. Assimilating to a new home, new support systems.
And I’m here, in a beach house, walking up and down the driveway in the hot summer sun, trying to get my mind right.
Sydney and Sarah are here with their boys, having stopped by to visit our grandparents before returning to their home in Crescent Falls. Mom and Dad are still in Moonrise but are supposed to be here tomorrow. Sarah ties up her sneakers, squinting at me through the glare of the sun. “You don’t have to go with me.”
“I need to. I need to get out of here for a second.” I haven’t been able to leave the house since I arrived yesterday morning. I’ve been sitting in a chair in Aviva’s bedroom looking down at my hands, imaging her blood there, imaging her there, looking up at me sightless, no longer breathing.
By some miracle, she’d pulled through. She came back to life long enough for us to get her to safety where she could get help. My grandmother’s tears worked on her almost immediately, but she hasn’t woken up yet.
“Has Isla given you an update yet?” Sarah asks timidly.
I pause at the top of the driveway a few feet from where she’s sitting on the front steps. “Same as before.”
“So she’s sleeping?”
“I wouldn’t call it sleep, Sarah.”
Sarah stops me with a hand on my arm. “She’s going to be okay. She’ll wake up.”
“And what will she be like when she does? How do we go back from this? I finally found my mate. I got the second chance I didn’t deserve, and I’ve spent the last several weeks reckoning with the–the gift I was given and I… nearly lost her.” I’m not sure why I’m even talking. I can’t help myself, not around Sarah. “I should have stopped her from the beginning.”
“Stopped her from what? Being who she is? She’s a warrior, Ryan. The best. Ryatt….” She licks her lips and levels me with a look. “Ryatt and Evander have been in talks, according to Sydney, about sending their Ghost army to the Deadlands to train with Aviva. She saved hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent lives during that battle. She’s tough as nails, okay? She’s going to pull through. You have nothing to feel guilty for–”
“She’s my wife,” I rush out, closing my eyes as we stand in the center of the road, barely having passed through the security gate. “I’m her Alpha. When she got hurt, I couldn’t do anything but sit there and try to slow the bleeding for what ended up being… hours….”
“Ryan,” Sarah places her hands on my shoulders. “We’ve all been through this in some way, shape, or form. Your mate is alive and safe. She’s whole, and she’ll wake up. And when she does, you’re going to take her home and start living your life again. You deserve that.”
What I want to say is that so much is up in the air right now. We don’t know why Hardan turned the rogues on us, creating his own army. We don’t know why he turned on his own pack, and we never will, because he’s dead. We don’t know where the Book of Whispers is.
And now there's a gold-plated bow and quiver sitting in the corner of the bedroom where my wife is sleeping that just… appeared in her hands after I thought I’d lost her, like she’d been given back to me but with strings attached.
Aviva is a warrior, and she works for the Goddess now. That’s clear to me, at least.
That has to mean she’s going to have to use it soon, and I’m full of dread at the idea.
‘Where are you?’ Grandma’s soft voice drifts through my head. ‘She’s awake and asking for you.’
Sarah and I look at each other. Sarah heard Isla’s voice through the mind-link as well. I turn back to the house, unsure if I heard her correctly.
“Go,” Sarah says, giving me a shove.
I trip, catch myself, and then I’m sprinting back through the gate, up the driveway, hopping up onto the porch and darting inside.
I nearly trample my little sister in my haste to reach Aviva’s room. “Hey!” she shrieks, swatting me as I rush past her.
I reach the bedroom at the end of a long hallway on the first floor and brace my hands on the doorframe, my head lowered. All I want is to see her sitting up in bed, smiling at me with that ruffled, sleepy grin she gives me every morning. All I want is to run my fingers through her curls as she leans into my touch.
But if she’s awake and changed? Or awake just enough to feel pain instead of a dreamy, drugged bliss?
I’m not going to be able to handle it.
“Make sure she takes these,” Grandma says, handing me three vials of medicine, one of which is her tears.
I drop my arm to allow her to pass, then I step into the room, turning for the door and closing it gently. I feel the breeze drifting in from the patio door and the open windows, carrying Aviva’s scent. It’s different. There’s something new there that hadn’t been there before.
“Misty said you have my bow.”
My heart skips a beat. Slowly, I turn from the door and look down at her. She’s sitting against the pillows, the strap of her tank top sliding off one shoulder as she adjusts her position to sit completely upright. Her hair is curling like mad and falling loose over her shoulders, and her eyes are… clear. Clear, and bright, the color of my favorite whiskey.
I take a breath, close my eyes, and open them again. She’s still here, smiling at me.
I crush her flat against the bed, the vials of medicine forgotten and cracked on the floorboards.
“I can’t breathe!” She gasps but laughs as I roll over and pull her against me, taking her face in my hands. “Hi.”
“You idiot,” I rasp, then I’m kissing her harder than I ever have, parting her lips with my tongue and tasting her. My mate. Her mark on my neck burns with satisfaction and relief as her scent and touch works through my body, untangling knots of stress and anxiety that’ve been festering for days.
“I’m sorry,” she says, but I shake my head.
“I knew you were going to go after those rogues. Your eyes were glowing, Aviva, and I couldn’t stop you.”
“I had to.”
“I know you did.” I brush her hair away from her face. “Goddess, I love you. I thought I lost you.”
“I–” she licks her lips and looks up at me with a strange expression on her face. “Do you believe in angels, Ryan?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“They tried to take me away, and I refused. I wasn’t done here. I wasn’t done with you. So I came back and… I held on as long as I could. You handed me to Ryatt, and that’s my last memory until waking up a few minutes ago.”
“You were severely injured.” The words fall out of me, broken by emotion I’ve been trying to keep tamped down. “I don’t have healing powers that I could have shared with you. I had to send you away. I didn’t want to, but I was going to lose you if you stayed in the Deadlands.”
She grips my hand. I pull her closer so we’re flush against each other. “My sisters?”
“They’re alive.”
“Jacob and Andrew?”
“Yes,” I whisper into her hair, tears blurring my vision. “They made it. Mercy and Jacob marked each other. I just took Andrew home to Freya.”
“What day is it?”
I tell her, and she sighs heavily, a few tears sliding down her cheeks. “She turns twenty-one in two days. Do you think we’ll be home in time to see them find out they’re mates?”
“I think Andrew already knows,” I tell her, closing my eyes as my body sinks against hers, relaxing for the first time in days.
But I tell her everything else. The casualties, the investigation in Navvan, the missing book. Eventually we untangle, and I walk to the corner of the room where I’d lazily discarded a sweatshirt over the huge bow leaning against the wall. Aviva sits straight up as I carry it over to her, biting my lip as I hand it to her.
“Firestone made,” I say, watching her hands grip it. “Ella confirmed it.”
“This is the Gilded Bow, isn’t it?”
I nod. “I don’t think it could be anything else.”
“Where did you find it?”
“You said angels were trying to take you away. I think you brought it back with you.”
Our eyes meet in the hazy midday sunlight. “What does this mean?”
“We don’t know yet.” War. Chaos. Battles so epic I can’t form them in my mind. I don’t voice these worries. But Ryatt’s warning still echoes in my head.
The battle of Navvan all but confirmed his worries that something was amiss. This was just the beginning.
But I’m tired, and so is she.
I get under the sheets with her and mold my body against hers, holding her as close as possible. Images of her from the battle rage through my mind but in a new light now that this is our outcome. “You were incredible out there. Everyone agrees that you won that battle for us.”
“You went over the side of a cliff with Hardan. You won the war.”
“The rogues would have overrun the tribal lands. You saw what they were able to do to Navvan, even with warriors there to try to keep them out. You gave Endova and Teshka a chance. I… I spoke to your father, and the patriarch of Teshka.”
She curls into me, burying her face in the crook of my shoulder. “About what?”
“Silverhide formally got an invitation to the harvest festival two months from now. You’re going to be honored there.”
She sits up and looks down at me, narrowing her eyes. “I am?”
“The patriarch of Teshka mentioned something about initiating you into some… round table, of sorts. I didn’t really understand.”
“The Firestone witches used to have knights,” she says, her eyes still narrowed. “But that practice has been reduced to legend.”
“Well, my aunt will be there to see us get married officially, anyway. I guess she’s going to give you a medal or something.”
She swats me playfully, but I can feel the nervous energy pouring off her. “I just killed a couple of rogues. That’s nothing new for me.”
“You killed over five dozen before the battle even began.”
Her cheeks go a little pink. I sit up facing her, smoothing my hand over her cheek. I pull her in for a kiss and linger there, my lips brushing across hers.
“I want to go home,” she whispers against my mouth.
“We will. Ryatt will be here tomorrow. We’ll leave then.”
“Then what?”
“Then we… settle in. Finally.”
She rests her forehead against mine, closing her eyes. I should let her rest so she’s strong enough to travel. So, I reluctantly untangle myself from the sheets and pick up the cracked vials, directing her to take the carefully measured doses that thankfully haven’t leaked onto the floor, and she’s asleep before I even leave the room, walking across the patio and out onto the beach.
I sit in the sand and watch the tide roll out. A shadow passes over me, and then Misty is sitting on my left side, her hair bunched on the top of her head and held in place by a huge claw clip.
We silently watch the waves for several minutes before she says, “Do you feel at home in the Deadlands?”
I ponder the question for a moment. “I do. Now I do.”
“Because of Aviva?”
I nod, looking over at my sister, noticing for the first time the lines around her mouth from… frowning. I’ve never seen Misty stressed out before, but now?
“I heard that Mom and Dad want you to come back to Crescent Falls,” I say.
“I’m not.”
“I know.”
She looks at me, searching my face, my expression. “Did you ever feel like you were being pulled toward something that was just out of reach? Did you feel like that when you lived in Crescent Falls? Did it change when you moved to Eastonia?”
“Are you asking if I found myself in the Deadlands?”
“I guess… yeah, I guess that’s what I’m asking.”
“I think I was always supposed to end up there.”
She turns back toward the waves, her glacier blue eyes narrowed in thought.
“Is everything all right?” I ask, noticing the strange tension causing her shoulders to tighten.
“Something’s coming, isn’t it?”
Now I’m looking out at the water, at the peaceful, untouched turquoise of this absolute paradise.
“Yeah.”
“I feel it,” she murmurs to herself, turning to look at me with her lips parted like she’s going to continue, but Grandma calls out from the deck, telling us lunch is ready.