Brie
“Logan!” I fly out of bed as the boat tilts dramatically, several books, a pair of boots, and a hairbrush sliding across the floorboards as I dart toward the closet and snatch a pair of pants from a hanger. Logan hastily buttons his shirt, turning his head from side to side trying to locate the boots that just flew to the opposite side of the room.
I pull on the pants and grab the first shirt my fingers graze–a men’s shirt, but it doesn’t matter. Logan rushes to the far side of the room for his boots, pulling one of them on, cursing under his breath while the purple lights continue speeding in our direction.
“Logan,” I hiss, tossing his other boot at him.
“Why are you getting dressed?” he asks, pointing to the bed. “Stay here–”
“No, I’m not going to stay here.” I growl, shrugging the shirt over my shoulders and doing my best to button it with trembling fingers. Echoes of pleasure still thrum through my body, mingling with the adrenaline now pumping through my veins. “I’m going with you.”
Shouts from above split the air. He mumbles something under his breath before whirling toward the door and rushing out. I catch the door before it slams shut.
“Stay here, Brie. I’m not fucking around.”
“Neither am I!” I rasp breathlessly, struggling to keep up with his long stride. “Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m safer in our room than I am with you, on deck, while we have what looks like over a dozen royal armada ships heading in our direction!” I stumble on the stairs leading to the upper deck, yelping in pain as the wood bites into my knees.
Logan jerks me upright but doesn’t let me go. His eyes darken, shifting from his usual golden hued green to that wolfish, inky black as his pupils expand. Moments ago, we’d been on the verge of… something we couldn’t take back. He would have marked me. I would have marked him back, reinstating the mate bond we threw away.
My breath catches in my throat as his gaze scans my face. He’s rigid, his grip tightening on my arm as emotion floods his eyes, sending shadows over the planes of his face. “We’re not going into the water a second time. I promise you.”
“I trust you,” I whisper, rising on my toes and pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
He shudders. His scent shifts, that cedar smell changing to something deep and heady, reminding me again just how close we’d come to the point of no return and how badly I wish we were still tangled in bed together.
Logan pulls away, grabbing my hand and yanking me through the door to the upper deck. The change is immediate. Electricity crackles in the air as people dart across the deck. The sails flap in the wind, and the boat groans against the choppy, white capped water despite the sky being clear and starry, not a single storm cloud in sight.
A man I don’t know rushes toward us, grabbing Logan’s shoulder. “I was just sent to fetch you. We have royal armada ships coming in quickly from the east. They see us.”
“Where’s Sawyer?”
“The helm–”
“Cut all power to the ship,” Logan says hastily, tugging me along as he glides across the deck, the other man struggling to keep up with us. “Power the engines down completely. Cut the lights.”
“Why?” I ask, but the other man disappears, running at full sprint into the depths of the ship.
Logan doesn’t let me go, nor does he answer my question. He races up the stairs to the helm, where Sawyer turns, casting a wild look at the two of us.
Logan pants as he rasps, “I pledge my loyalty to the pack Tempest Valley and its Alpha and Beta.” I rear back, my heart skipping several beats as he says the unthinkable, “I denounce my affiliation to the pack Silverhide, of the Deadlands, and it’s Alpha.”
“Oh, my Goddess,” I whisper. Logan’s hand unravels from mine, my arm falling slack at my side.
Sawyer clasps his arm, nodding grimly.
And then Logan… changes. Sure, I’ve seen his warrior face. That look of cold, icy death. I’ve seen him fight. I’ve seen him kill.
But I haven’t seen this man captain a ship and lead over a dozen wolves.
I have no choice but to press myself to the railing as the man I’ve started to fall head over heels in love with begins to shout orders. Everyone in the vicinity obeys him–a stranger–someone they don't know well enough to trust, but his voice echoes over the panic like a death knell, commanding obedience.
He’s an Alpha. It’s in his blood, in the marrow of his bones. This is what he was born to be.
My eyes water as Logan turns to Sawyer, toward the map nailed to the table fixed beside the helm. I watch his back straighten, his spine turning to steel, as he braces his hands on either side of the map and hangs his head, scanning the illustrations before reaching for the helm again.
Silence settles between the three of us. I understand why he just denounced his loyalty to Silverhide. He needs to be able to mind-link with Alex, but still…
I turn to the railing and look out at the water, at the two shadows and their sparkling lights ahead of us, heading straight toward the armada.
But my gaze catches on something I can’t make sense of right away. In the distance, against the starry sky, what looks like a mountain stretches against the horizon, but it’s moving, crashing back against the water.
My stomach sinks as I look back at the stars, at the hazy rope of violet light as the sun begins to rise, and it’s all wrong. The constellations are upside down, tilting at odd angles.
I wasn’t alive during the time of the veil that used to hide Eastonia behind its massive, unexplainable magic shield. The stories from the time describe it as this… forcefield. An impenetrable barrier made of mist.
But my grandma and grandpa used to tell us stories about passing through it–the only two people in the world with that ability. Grandma Ella described it like being pulled through space and time itself in a place where everything was upside down and skewed, a place where time knew no end or beginning.
Grandpa always described it as the birthplace of violence.
Here, it's just… waves. Waves taller than buildings. Waves that would drown and consume these ships in seconds.
How had Logan and I survived that? And if there’s a similar ocean barrier between Eastonia and Emberfyll, how did he survive that twice?
I watch the Asteria and Atropos go dark against the sea, their lights shutting off completely, turning their wooden bodies to starlit shadows. The armada is still a mile or so away, but closing in with every passing second.
Logan turns the boat violently west, tipping dangerously to the side. The Asteria and Atropos fade into the background.
I turn to look at Logan, wishing we had the ability to mind-link and cursing myself for rejecting him once again, but he says to Sawyer, “That group of islands six leagues away, which direction does the current run during low tide?”
“You’re joking, right?” Sawyer asks, leaning toward the map with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. “We’ll runaground. There’s a reef there and sandbars that stretch more than a mile at low tide!”
“We have no weapons on these ships,” Logan asserts, “No way to defend ourselves. Your only defense so far has been hiding, but we’re in open water, and there’s nowhere to hide now. If we cut through this island system and continue west, we’ll reach that strait I noticed yesterday before noon tomorrow.”
“We can’t risk the engines-”
“We won’t be using any powers but the sails and the current,” Logan cuts in sharply. “The armada has speed on its side in open water. Their ships are smaller. They can’t see the sandbars. They’ll get caught in them, but we won’t.”
“You won’t be able to see them either!”
“I can, and we have enough weight to burst through them, over them. They don’t,” Logan says, and I might be imagining it, but I swear his eyes glow. “We’re doing it.” He yanks on the helm, sending the ship into a spin so abrupt I have to clutch the railing for dear life.
My hair whips against my cheeks like little knives. I peek through the railing, watching as seven purple lights break from the group, speeding in our direction instead of chasing the Artemis and Atropos.
The five other armada ships whiz in all directions like they’re trying to decide which boats to hunt, but eventually the entire group settles on us.
My heart slips into my stomach, which pitches and rolls with the boat as we bank heavily west, the sails snapping taunt against the wind. “Logan!” I shout, pointing at the purple lights. Logan looks over his shoulder at me, his eyes wild and full of starlight as he spots the boats tearing in our direction.
But then he meets my eyes again and exhales slowly, reaching for me. I hold his gaze while stumbling to my bare feet. I didn’t have a chance to put shoes on, but if we end up in the water again, it won’t matter much, anyway.
Logan pulls me against the table, steadying me with my back pressed to his chest. Everyone on board realizes that the entire might of what is either the royal armada or bounty hunters are now heading in our direction. They must have seen us turn, cut our lights out abruptly. We’re flying across the water at the speed of light away from the two other boats. They must think we’re carrying something–or someone–important.
The Alpha himself.
I glance over Logan’s arm at the shadows drifting in the distance. Alex and Monica are on the Artemis, which is leading the charge in the opposite direction from where we’re heading, but those purple lights dart past the two other ships, chasing us instead.
Logan’s tricking them, leading them back into the swallows on what will be a wild goose chase through reefs and sandbars while Alex and his pack stay safe in open water, continuing their journey while we bear the brunt of the violence.
I wonder what Logan and Alex have been talking about through the mind-link, but the sunrise begins to bleed over the sky, casting the sails in shades of purple, gold, and pink as the water sparkles with morning light, camouflaging the incoming shallow patches and sandbars beginning to sprint past the boat.
Even without the engines, the sails carry us with the wind at an incredible rate of speed. The sunrise illuminates several small islands, some of them are only raised blobs of sand, others with a handful of trees, some with rocky hills and multiple beaches. Logan speeds past all of them, steering the ship toward a larger island chain whose mountains cast shadows over the sparkling water.
My heart is in my throat when I look over my shoulder again at the sleek, silver boats finally coming into full view.
They’re like speed boats–small yachts, perhaps. Narrow and long, they sprint over the water, their engines roaring over the waves and wind, but their length makes it hard for them to maneuver around the sandbars jutting from the ocean floor. The salty smell of low tide hangs heavy in the air, a warning sign that not everything in the water is what it seems.
Floors below us, I can hear the scraping, crunching echo of the Asteria sliding past the sandbars.
Logan was right to cut the engines. The current is carrying us, pulling us through the islands as the tide retreats.
“Stand over there, Brie. Hold onto–onto something,” he grits out.
I step away from him, swaying toward the railing as he turns the helm from side to side. Sawyer grabs my arm and yanks me toward him at the same moment the Asteria slides across another underwater sandbar that nearly catches us, causing the ship to lurch painfully, the sails clapping and groaning in protest.
A sharp crash and explosion behind us makes me scream in surprise. Sawyer whirls with me in his arms as one of the armada cruisers hits a sandbar and launches into the air, soaring and diving into one of the other armada ships. A shockwave of heat bursts toward us as the two ships explode into a fireball that consumes four other cruisers, knocking out half the fleet in one go.
I gasp, choking on my breath as I turn to Logan, who’s smirking at the fire blazing behind us. The Asteria continues forward toward the island chain, and the single gap between the islands that opens back up to clear, open water.
But then, with a violent jerk, we slam into a reef.