Maeve
Misty doesn’t ask questions, and I’m thankful for it. Blake watches with a scowl as Soren sits on the edge of the bed and extends his arm to Misty, who inspects it then looks at me.
“It was an accident,” I tell her, swallowing past the guilt, and honestly, shame of hurting Soren like this. “I meant to do that to Blake.”
Misty glances at Blake with a frown. “What the hell has gotten into you two?”
Blake widens his stance, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down at his shoes instead of answering her question.
“Later,” I breathe. “Can his arm be healed fully?”
Misty nods, but her eyes betray the motion. She inspects his wounds with a sigh then motions for him to lie down. Soren looks at me with a skeptical expression shimmering behind his eyes but does what she asks, and in a matter of seconds, Misty’s light begins to dance around the room.
Soren takes several shallow breaths as she grips his hand, sending her magic of light and healing deep into his veins. I watch, tilting my head as I follow the magic up his arm and into his shoulder then his chest. He’s lying next to me while I sit in the bed, my arm wrapped around his shoulder and my hand resting protectively on his chest. I can feel her powers, taste them. Misty is very powerful. She inherited her powers from Isla, my great-grandmother, her grandmother, and it’s… beautiful.
I look down at my hand before curling it into fist over his shirt.
My powers are of… death. Death by fire. Death by shadow and starlight. I can’t heal the sick and wounded. I can’t bring people back from the dead. I can’t paint a picture of the past using fractals of mist or peer into the tangled threads of our futures.
I can destroy. That’s all.
Soren’s sharp exhale steals my attention back to the present. He slumps in the bed, trembling, his face going a ghostly pale. Even Blake takes a step closer to the bed, his eyes going wide and stance uneasy as he says, “What’s wrong with him?”
“I can’t–something’s blocking my magic,” Misty says with effort as she pushes the full brunt of her healing powers into Soren, gripping his hand so tightly her knuckles turn white. “It’s not just a burn, is it?”
“No,” I tell her, biting through the words. “He was bound in silver and had an ironsmith cut through it. I treated him with healing drafts, but it was only enough to kill what I thought was an infection–”
“It’s not an infection,” Misty cuts in. “There’s something stuck… here.” She presses against the tight muscle of his triceps, gritting her teeth as her eyes flicker with light. “Shit. My powers can’t even touch it–”
“There’s something in his arm?” Blake asks, now looking suspicious as hell. I watch my cousin move toward the bed, and my hackles raise.
“Don’t touch him, Blake,” I warn, my tone dropping several octaves. Even Misty looks up at me, glancing between us.
Blake looks me up and down before asking Misty, “What can we do?”
She releases Soren’s hand, her powers shuttering out in a flash. “I need Cole for this. I can feel it. I know where it is, but I can’t heal him. Whatever’s in his arm is making it impossible.”
“It’s silver,” I breathe, shaking my head. “It has to be.”
“Cole can cut it out,” Misty says, “Unless you can get him down to the clinic–”
“No,” Blake and I say in unison, and Misty narrows her eyes at us.
“No,” I repeat, shaking my head, and Blake disappears in another burst of violet mist and starlight.
Unstable footsteps echo in the hallway before Patton appears in the doorway looking unsteady, still gripping his head. He blinks several times to clear his vision before looking at me under his lashes, then turns to Misty, a total stranger, then Soren.
“What happened?”
“Come sit down for a minute, Patton,” I urge, silently praying Blake didn’t totally scramble his brain.
But Patton comes to completely, his head snapping back in Misty’s direction. He gapes, then snaps his lips shut. I smile to myself as I slide out of bed and guide Patton into a chair at the very moment Blake reappears with an incredibly angry Cole, also pulled from bed, but gripping a large, metal medical kit in his hand.
Patton nearly faints.
“I’ll introduce you to everyone in a minute, okay?” I promise him, and he nods, glancing between Misty and Cole like this is the moment of his life, a dream come true.
“Would either of you care to explain why you ripped my mate from our bed?” Cole snarls, dropping his kit on the ground at his feet. “It’s the middle of the night in Shadowcrest–”
“Cole, I need you,” Misty says calmly, a soft, almost secret smile touching her lips, and Cole turns to her, seeing Soren for the first time.
Everything from that moment happens quickly. Blake and Cole move Soren into the living room as the last inklings of the sunrise break through the curtains, illuminating the damage done in the hallway. Plaster and glass coat the ground, and the walls are scorched, and while I watch Cole kneel on the ground, directing Patton to roll Soren onto his side, Misty comes to stand beside me, leaning in to ask, “Who is he?”
“He’s mine,” is all I can muster.
Misty, one of the more… level headed members of the family, just nods.
“He’s the dad, then?”
“Yeah.”
“What exactly happened in the hallway? I remember how much you fretted over this plaster when it was installed.”
I cross my arms over my chest, wincing as the baby rolls, her little feet fluttering under my ribcage. “Ask Blake,” I say with effort while Cole dons gloves and unpacks several scalpels.
I force myself to watch. Misty joins Cole and Patton, the latter pale but doing his best to support his friend. Soren weakly refuses when Misty offers to put him to sleep using her powers, and allows Cole to slice into the meat of his upper arm.
Blake hovers behind me in the shadows for several minutes, watching in solemn solidarity as Soren finally succumbs to the pain and passes out.
“Do you realize what you did to him?” I whisper into the fading darkness as sunlight drifts toward my toes. “What you made him be for years?”
“Do you feel it like he does?” he asks after several seconds of a sucking kind of silence broken by Cole’s soft grunts as he flays my mate open in search of whatever Misty felt, whatever her powers couldn’t pass. “He could just be saying he’s your mate–”
“I do,” I reply. “Maybe not like a shifter would, but… I understand why I couldn’t forget him now. He’s… branded on my heart, has been from the beginning, I think. I… jumped to him,” I say, looking over my shoulder at my cousin. “My powers were so weak, but I had just enough to get home, and instead I woke up in a forest, and he was there, just a few yards away. When I told my powers to take me home, they took me to him. I should have known then.”
Blake doesn’t say anything. His eyes remain locked on Soren, those wells of violet dancing with flecks of starlight, like the entire universe lies just behind his gaze.
“Did you know about us?” I ask.
“No. I never bothered to look into his future because I wasn’t going to keep him alive when I was done with him.”
I stiffen at the knowledge. “Why did you do it? Why him?”
“Because he could handle it,” he says, finally meeting my eyes.
He’s not wrong. Soren is the strongest person I know. Nothing seems to faze him. Nothing but me, I realize with heartbreaking clarity.
“But why, Blake? Why kill Alphas–”
“Most are in hiding.”
“He told me. He told me all about the Architect. Does our family know? Are they in on it?”
“No.”
“What is the reason?”
He licks his lips as he deliberates his next words. I’ll take them as a half-truth. He won’t tell me the entire reason why. Maybe me and Blake aren’t that different after all. “I realized early on that I was the only one who could ever come close to finding the Spider. He’s like us, Maeve. Powerful. Unexplainably so. It was easy enough going off the information our parents have gathered on his people–his den leaders, including the Viper. I knew there was someone special in their midst, someone the Viper trusted more than others, and… I was able to find Soren. He was easily swayed, already disenfranchised and wanting out from under her thumb. He needed money to get out of her debt, and I have plenty of it, so when I asked for his help, he accepted.”
“You turned him into a killer.”
“He was already a killer. I turned him into a hero, Maeve. The people he killed at my command were working directly, or indirectly, with the Viper. The people we moved into hiding were at serious risk of death along with their families.”
“Our family will find out what you’ve done–”
“They will,” he says, unblinking. “But not until after the Viper has been taken down. She’s his neck mark. His last mark.”
I turn to him, shaking my head. “Do it yourself. He’s not going back–”
“Don’t touch it!” Misty screeches, and we both whirl to the bloody scene in front of us. Blake brushes past me, his body suddenly lighting from within as his powers surge, drawn to whatever just fell from Soren’s arm onto the floor. Blake grabs a circular ball of silver with his bare hands then suspends it with a burst of his magic, pressing it tightly into a shield of what I only describe as starlight.
He quickly banishes himself from the suite, moving at the speed of light. I watch him go, then turn to Cole and Misty, torn between Soren and following my cousin to what I believe is his office, his lair in my palace.
“Heal him,” I croak, my voice cracking, and Misty replaces Cole’s spot next to Soren, letting her powers rain down on him to their full extent.
Cole pulls me aside, walking me into the corner of the living room, and says, “I’m not going to ask what happened here, but do your parents know what's going on?”
I shake my head, and he curses under his breath, looking back at his wife.
“Whatever was in his arm is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. This needs to be discussed–”
“Blake is going to figure it out, and we’ll go from there.”
Cole searches my eyes then sighs, “Maeve, I’ve done this before. Kept secrets, tried to be the hero and refused help at all angles. You know how that ended.”
My chest convulses. “I understand, but for now, my priority is him. His health. Is he going to heal? Can his arm be saved?”
“It’s saved.” He turns away, running his fingers through his dark blond hair as Misty rises, asking Patton if he’s all right, but he’s still completely starstruck.
Soren is moved back to my bedroom. He’s tucked in bed but begins to stir while I ask Cole and Misty to stay and to keep things quiet for a while, at least until Blake and I have more answers. Misty accepts this even if Cole looks like he’s about to find the nearest phone and snitch on me to my parents.
I’ll deal with everyone else later.
They leave, and silence fills the room for several minutes while Patton and I watch Misty’s magic fade from Soren’s skin.
“Maeve?”
“I’m right here,” I say to Soren as he opens his eyes with a start, sitting straight up in bed. Patton rises from a chair near the window as Soren drags his arm from under the covers, inspecting the… totally healed, flawless, scarless skin.
His eyes meet mine then Patton’s.
“Later,” I whisper, grabbing his hand.
Jane’s gasp, then hurried footsteps, echo through the destroyed hallway into my bedroom.
“Oh, shit,” I murmur under my breath, coming to the realization that no one got in contact with her about what happened during the night.
She rushes into the room, her eyes meeting mine and relaxing when she sees me in one piece, but then goes completely, utterly still.
Soren straightens, his eyes on Patton.
Patton stares at Jane, who slowly turns her head in his direction.
A mate bond snaps into place in my bedroom between the kindest man I’ve ever known, and his feminine counterpart, the best, sweetest woman I’ve ever met.
“Finally,” Soren says under his breath, and I smile, squeezing his hand.