Kai POV
Screams are coming from inside the cabin, and it fuels me to go faster. Each step I take toward the cabin results in agonizing pain, but I won't let that stop me. Knowing Tish is in there is the only thing that keeps me going.
Suddenly, the screaming stops, and so does the pain. Kaden doesn't give me a moment to ponder what has happened; he flies past me through the door of the cabin. As soon as he breaches the door he is frozen.
When I join him at his side, I see a dead woman on the floor and a Tish with a fire iron hovering above her head, ready to strike another woman. My eyes glance back to the woman on the floor, and it hits me that Tish beat her to death, and she is getting ready to kill this other woman as well.
I push past Kaden and grab the bloodied fire iron. Tish spins around, and the look in her eyes is feral. For a single moment, I am scared that she will try and attack me too, but she crumples to the ground. She drops the fire iron and I toss it onto the floor behind us.
I gather Tish into my arms, and she sobs loudly. I don't know what happened in this cabin or who the women are, but I don't think Tish would attack someone unprovoked. I glance over her head to the woman cowering in the corner.
Kaden finally breaks out of his trance and makes his way across the cabin. He picks up the fire iron and pushes it under the chin of the woman in the corner. He forces her to look up into his face. "I know you. You are Fernando's brat."
"I was supposed to be your mate," she chokes on the words.
I growl in her direction, and Fang is demanding that we kill her. I know of her and what she has done. She does not deserve to live. "What happened here?"
Fernando's daughter isn't brave enough to speak to me, but Tish manages to dry her tears. She pulls away from me and spills her heart. She tells us about how she doesn't feel like she is part of the pack and how she doesn't feel like we are hers because she can't mark us.
"I have been researching for three years on how to turn myself into a werewolf," she finally admits. "But no one would help me find a witch, so I had to do it on my own. I picked the wrong one."
I still don't have any idea what happened after Tish got to the cabin, but looking at the carnage, I am not sure I want to know.
"What do we do with her?" I ask Kaden, nodding to Fernando's daughter.
"We should probably take her back to the South Pack and get in touch with Raven. As far as we know, she is the last of the recusants," Kaden replies logically.
"No," Tish shouts, jumping to her feet.
She grabs the fire iron from Kaden and shoves it through Fernando's daughter's throat. The woman grabs at her throat and pulls the iron from her neck. It drops to the ground with a loud clang, and I watch her bleed out. She falls to the side with her brown eyes opened wide.
Tish is looking at her hands. They are covered in blood, and I assume that these are the first two lives she has taken. She begins to shake under the realization of what she has done. Slowly, she backs away from Fernando's daughter's body, and she trips against the body of the witch lying on the floor.
Her hands brace against the floor and land in a puddle of blood. She shrieks in fear and Kaden swoops in to pick her up. He scoops her into his arms and carries her to the door.
"Burn it to the ground," he says to me before he leaves.
"Wait," Tish screams. "Not yet."
"What are you talking about?" Kaden growls.
"The creatures in the jars," she cries. "We have to set them free."
I finally take a moment to look around the cabin and I see what she is talking about. There are glass jars lining the walls. Many have small creatures in them. I can't help but wrinkle my nose at the thought of setting them all free.
Tish forces her way out of Kaden's arms and carefully steps over the body of the witch. She reaches for one of the jars and unscrews the lid. Racing to the door, she sets the small creature free. Kaden and I watch her silently for a moment before I join in and begin to set them free as well.
"This feels like a bad idea," Kaden mutters under his breath. "We don't know what the witch had done to these creatures."
"I don't care," Tish hisses through her teeth. "They are living things."
It takes hours to open all the tiny jars and check them for small animals. Tish unscrews the last lid and sets a little mouse free. She leans against the wall of the cabin, and a smile creeps across her lips. This could have been a mistake, but it was something that Tish needed to do for herself.
She steps out of the cabin and silently makes her way across the grass to her car. It is the Corvette that Cedric gifted her when she first arrived to the South Pack. She leans against the hood and waits for Kaden and me.
Kaden looks around the cabin and lights a match. He tosses it on top of the witch's body, and she immediately bursts into flames. The flames spread out from her body and across the floor as if they know what they are supposed to do.
We join Tish by her car as the cabin goes up into flames. "We should get home," Kaden says, leading her to our SUV.
"What about your car?" I ask her.
"Leave it," she whispers. "It is part of the past."
"You don't mean that," I whisper.
"The witch took my keys," she says weakly. "We have no choice but to leave it."
She climbs into the back of our SUV and curls up in the back seat. I sit down beside her and pull her into my lap. Silent tears rush down her face, soaking my shirt.
'What are we going to do?' Kaden's voice breaks into my mind.
'I don't know,' I respond.
Kaden sighs loudly. 'We need to make her feel like she has claimed us.'
'She has claimed everything about me,' I respond to Kaden. 'She owns my body, mind, and soul. What more can we give her?'
'We have to figure it out,' Kaden replies through the mind link. 'What she did tonight was dangerous. We could have lost her forever.'