Chapter 54
Chapter Fifty-Four
“Hello husband.”
Holy shit. It’s Ashley.
She’s here. Walking into the courtyard in a long floral dress that hangs on her frail body. Her hair is
pulled back and even sickly, she is beautiful. Her voice is like a siren’s song and I wonder if this was
one more deal she made with the witches to be able to entrance others so easily.
As the sound fades, I shake my head to clear it.
She turns to our mother. “Adriana.”
My mother nods. There is something in her expression that is haunted. Is it eptance or regret? The
recognition that all of her choices have led to this moment of reckoning. Or maybe it’s just seeing her
two daughters whom she’d abandoned together. Finally.
Then again, it could be the gun in Ashley’s hand.
Ashley sniffs the air. “Well, I must say, this feels familiar. Fucking her again, Cameron?”
He doesn’t argue or apologize. “It was only through your treachery that I was separated from my mate
in the first ce, Ashley.”
His voice is calm, patient even.
What is that sound? The singing is back only it isn’ting from Ashley now, maybe it wasn’t her in the
first ce?
The melody… it’s distracting me, drawing my attention to the mist.
Mia! It’s Eric. He’s in my head. My sister…
“Corinne,” I whisper. “You need to leave.”
She points up to the balconies.
And then I see them. Wraiths. Dozens of them.
They’re human…but not. They smell like death. They are death.
And their insatiable appetites mean we will have a hard fight to break free of this ce.
They’re in the mist, a part of it, and the singing in the air drowns the jazz and hisses of the wraiths.
“Why the hell would you bring me here!?” I shout at my mother.
It was her map.
I came to find her, seeking answers and instead I led us all into a trap.
“You brought me here,” Ashley says to me. Sheughs cruelly.
Oh my God. I’ve caused this.
I set us on this path.
And in doing so, I brought my love and my Alpha, Corinne and her warriors, into this ce.
“Corinne. Run!”
“Toote for that,” she says.
I turn to Cam. “You need to get out of here. Now. You need to get back to our kids.”
He’s already shifting. His body expanding and his face morphing into his lycan form. He won’t run. He
won’t leave me.
“Ashley,” I try to reason with her. “Please don’t do this.”
“I have lost everything!” she reminds me. “And it’s all because of this bitch!”
She lifts the gun in her hand and shoots our mother. At such a short range, the bullet goes straight into
Adriana’s heart.
The st echoes in the courtyard.
It is the signal the wraiths are waiting for.
They leap over the balconies and pour out of the mist before my mother’s body hits the ground.
Ashley stands there. She doesn’t fight and the wraiths don’t attack her. The creatures are normally
mindless so it must be something in the blood or some spell to hold them back from her.
That’s myst thought and then I’m shifting and fighting, using fists and ws and the butter knife
beside my te to cut my way through these beasts.
The Titans draw back … they don’t fight. They don’t interfere in any way. One wraith leaps onto
Corinne’s back and Theo breaks their ranks and charges into the fray, but the others catch him.
They retreat–dragging Theo away. He roars and tries to break free, but is restrained.
I focus on fighting as I call N.
I shiftpletely, giving myself over to my wolf.
She’srge and fierce and right now I can’t have any emotion.
I need to fight and kill and do everything I can to get back to my children.
Cam is sweeping and roaring. He dives from one creature to another, ripping out their throats, his ws
digging into chests.
He’s brutal.
The Ravens fight like a unit. Backs to each other. The local wolves also fight as a team.
But it isn’t enough, we’re gravely outnumbered and these hideous creatures pour like ants over the
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walls into the square. Rachel falls first, her body overrun by wraiths that drag her into the mist and then
up into the air to the third floor where they feast.
Her screams are piercing.
Ashley stands over our mother. “Maybe you should’ve seen thising.“
Adriana gurgles blood. It stters on her pristine dress. “You will find happiness, my child.”
Ashley’s eyes are cold. “And you will find death. Alone. With no one to grieve you.”
I manage to maul the wraith in front of me but two others are approaching Cam’s blind side. I’m only
partially aware of what’s happening around me. N sees. She hears.
Her focus lets us fight.
We run for Cam and lunge at the wraith closest to his back. Its sinew and bones break beneath our
maw, but something crashes into my side, cutting off my air and pinning me to the ground.
The wraith thrashes its head from side to side and even though I’m wing at its eyes and biting its
face, the monster doesn’t let go of my throat.
There’s a horrible roar and then the creature is thrown off me.
I shift back to human.
Corinne is above me. She’s in her lycan form and she’s thest thing I see before three wraiths drag
her away. “Noooo!”
The mist melts.
The screaming fades.
But the singing intensifies. I blink, my vision blurry.
There is a woman. She’s tall, over six feet tall, with dark eyes and hair. She walks among the fallen
wolves, pausing at Lianne and Rachel. Jessica’s body is somewhere on an upper floor.
“Sisters,” she proims.
Her hand sweeps over them like she’s scooping the air and then she holds her hand to the sky. Actual
ravens circle her and take flight. A second flocknds on one of the upper balconies.
I see this in slow motion.
I think I’m hallucinating.
The battle still rages.
At one point, Corinne’s body drops from the balcony andnds on the table, shattering dishes and
sses. Her head lulls to the side and her eyes are unseeing.
My vision too, is dimming.
Then Cam is above me. He’s dragging me up and holding me against his chest. He’s roaring, and
trying to staunch my bleeding.
I get it now. Why I panicked when he tried to mark me.
Because if he had… If we finished our mating bond.
Then he would die now with me.