He sighed softly. “A lot.”
“I don’t—”
“Drink it,” he ordered, thrusting the bottle under my nose.
I jerked back, the sudden movement snapping the last of my control. Thankfully he must have read my mind because an empty trash can was shoved onto my lap just in time for me to vomit into it.
Dimitri sucked in a sharp breath and waited for me to stop heaving before pulling the bucket out of my hands.
With a pitiful, humiliating whimper, I screwed my eyes shut, willing the pain away. I sank deeper into the buttery soft leather of the chair that cradled me.
“Now will you drink this?” he asked, exasperated as he tried handing me the bottle again.
I would have drank arsenic if it got rid of the pain.
I fumbled for the container, tilting it awkwardly until the thick liquid touched my lips. It had a strangely minty taste, and even stranger, I felt better after I swallowed the first mouthful.
By the time I drained the bottle, the pain had receded enough that I could sit up. The cobwebs of my memories started to clear.
Oh, God.
I wished I had just drank arsenic.
I didn’t bother stifling the cry that ripped out of my throat as I remembered the last few seconds before I lost consciousness.
The memory of the explosion tore apart my mind, fragmented memories became shrapnel that shredded my soul.
Remy.
Dimitri saw the shift in my demeanor, his entire stance changing. “Whoa, hey, calm down.”
“There was an explosion!” Fuck the lingering pain. I scrambled to sit upright.
“I know,” he said softly.
“What the hell happened?” I demanded, looking around wildly.
An airplane.
I was on an airplane.
A private one, if I had to guess, slightly smaller than the Blackwater one. I craned my neck to look around. Two men sat towards the front of the plane, two more in the back. Tate was asleep in the chair to my right across the aisle.
As my anxiety ratcheted up a notch, mixing with my desperation, I reached out for my wolf, ready to fight my way out of this if I had to.
There was nothing there.
This was worse than when I had suppressed her in Long Mesa because even then, I could still feel her buried somewhere deep inside of me. Even if I couldn’t always reach her, she was there.
Now there was just a silent void. An endless chasm of silence.
Chest heaving as I started to spiral into a panic attack, I glared at Dimitri. “Where am I? Where’s Remy?”
Dimitri held his hands up. “Skye, I can explain everything, but you need to calm down.”
“I’m on an airplane with people I don’t know, a guy who kidnapped me, and one of my friends is unconscious next to me!” I exploded. “Don’t tell me to calm down!”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “First? I didn’t kidnap you.”
“Then how did I get here?”
“What do you remember?” he countered, lowering his hand from his face slowly.
My fingers curled around the arm rests.
What did I remember?
I gasped as the memories swept in faster than a tsunami. “I remember looking for Remy. The explosion.”
He nodded. “It knocked you out. I picked you up and got you out of there.”
“Where’s Remy?” I whispered the question again, fear filling the hot places of fury with ice.
My eyes swept the cabin of the plane again, desperately hoping to see Remy somewhere.
Dimitri cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Skye, the main lodge was obliterated in the blast.”
I started shaking my head.
“Remy was last seen inside, going into one of the meeting rooms.” His tone was infinitely, uncharacteristically gentle.
“No,” I whispered, my stomach lurching.
I was going to be sick.
Again.
“I pulled you and Tate out,” he continued. He jerked his chin at Tate. “We had to sedate Tate to get her to come with us, but Skye, that blast took out most of the Alphas in North America. If not all of them. It leveled the building.”
“You’re wrong,” I replied desperately. My knuckles turned white as my grip tightened.
The pity in his gaze made me flinch.
“I hope I am,” he agreed. “I still have some people I trust looking for survivors. Getting you out before the authorities got in was my priority. Not Remy, not Gabe.”
“We have to go back!” I twisted in my seat, looking out the window of the plane. All I saw was white clouds and blue skies.
“We’re halfway over the Pacific,” he said with a frown. “We’re not going back.”
I leaned forward with a growl. “I don’t care. Take me home. Now!”
“I’m taking you somewhere safe,” he replied, looking away.
I slammed a fist against the wall of the plane hard enough that one of the men in front twisted to look at us.
“Take me home to my pack. Now.”
He gave me a slightly bored look. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll tear this plane apart and everyone in it,” I vowed, reaching again for my wolf.
His lips pressed into a thin line. “No, you won’t.” He jerked a chin at one of my hands. “That won’t let you.”
I followed his gaze to my left wrist where a silver bangle was molded around my skin, just above my hand. It was so lightweight that I barely felt it.
I lifted my hand, the silver glinting in the light that streamed in through the window.
“What the hell is this?” I twisted my arm, but I didn’t see a clasp or mechanism to take it off. It was a perfectly unbroken circle of metal.
“It blocks your wolf,” he explained.
My gaze rose to him. “What does that even mean?”
“I’m not entirely sure how the magic works, but it smothers the bond between you and your wolf.” He grimaced. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t be exactly stable once you woke up, and the idea of a wolf tearing through the plane wasn’t exactly smart.”
His lips twisted into a sort of smirk. “You might have survived falling off a cliff, princess, but none of us would survive a twenty-thousand foot drop from the sky.”
“Magic?” I repeated with a hollow laugh. “Maybe you’re the one who got knocked out in that explosion.”
“I wish,” he muttered darkly. “I know the doc told you about the origins of the original pack. How shifters were created.”
“That’s fiction,” I snapped. “Magic isn’t real. It’s a … story.”
He arched a single dark brow. “Is it? Can you shift right now? Feel your wolf? Feel anything other than your basic humanness?”
I tried again, not wanting to believe him, but I couldn’t feel her. Worse yet, I couldn’t feel Remy. Our bond was just … gone.
There was a hollow space in my chest where he once lived. Darkness crawled out from the vast emptiness of it, threatening to swallow me whole.
“Take it off,” I begged, changing tactics. If I could connect to my wolf, I could connect to Remy.
He couldn’t be gone. Bonded or not, I would know it. I would feel it.
Dimitri looked genuinely apologetic. “I can’t.”
I closed my eyes briefly, sucking in a deep breath. “I promise I won’t—”
“Skye,” he cut me off with a shake of his head, “I can’t. It’s magic. One of the witches will remove it when we land. I don’t have the ability to take it off. And short of cutting off your wrist, it’s not going anywhere.”
“Magic isn’t real,” I repeated stubbornly. I tried to slip a finger under the band, but there was zero give.
“Don’t be deliberately stupid, princess,” he told me. “It’s not a good look.”
“Fine,” I snapped, throwing up my hands. “Then we’ll let a freaking witch take it off when we land … which is where, exactly?”
“My pack,” he answere
d.
“Your pack,” I echoed with a scoff, rolling my eyes. “You said your pack is from—”
I stopped myself as I quickly, soberingly, remembered where he was from. Where his pack was from.
Fresh panic clawed at my throat. “I can’t go to Russia!”
He shrugged. “Actually, you can. That’s where this plane is headed. Conveniently, you’re on it, so you’re going to Russia, too.”
“Why? Why are you taking me to freaking Russia?” I demanded, my voice raising an octave.
“I told you,” he replied, meeting my gaze levelly, “I had orders to get you out safely.”
“Orders from who?”
“My Alpha.”
“What the hell could your Alpha want with me?” I snapped. “I’m no one.”
“Actually,” he sighed and leaned back in his seat, “you aren’t, princess.”
My eyes narrowed. “You keep calling me that.”
A small smirk played on his lips. “Because that’s what you are.”
I snorted. “Right.”
“The Alpha of my pack is your father.”
My body froze. Everything stopped as the air whooshed out of my chest.
“I never met my father,” I finally said. “How the hell do you know who he is?”
“That file Elias had on you?” Dimitri gave me a grim sort of look. “He figured it out. He figured out who your father is. Even managed a DNA test and everything.”
“And who is he?” I twisted my fingers together on my lap to hide the way they shook. Hell, my entire body was shaking. Maybe it was a panic attack, maybe it was fear or adrenaline.
Everything in me craved the one person who wasn’t here.
Another piece of my heart cracked and broke away.
“He’s the Alpha of the Narodnaya pack in Russia.” He paused, whether for dramatic flair or because he was genuinely worried I was about to lose my shit, I didn’t know. “The Narodnaya pack is the first pack that ever existed, Skye.”
“And my … father is the Alpha.” I tasted the words as I spoke them, digesting what he was saying.
“Nikolai Dashkov,” he confirmed with a nod. “As his daughter, that makes you royalty amongst our pack and the European and Asian packs.”
My head snapped up. “Dashkov? That’s your last name.”
Dimitri smiled at me, his eyes practically sparkling. “That’s because he’s my father, too. I’m your brother, Skye.”
Epilogue
Remy
Another Alpha was dead.
I gently lowered the piece of plaster I had lifted off the man at my feet, setting it on the ground beside him.
“Shit,” I muttered, kneeling in the dirt and debris beside him.
I knew this Alpha.
Jack Carmichael had been the Alpha of the Elysian pack since before my dad took over Blackwater. I had seen him every year at the Summit since I was ten and started attending. He was one of our allies.
And he was dead.
My heart sank as I added his name to the list I was keeping in my head. Another pack I would have to call and inform their Alpha was gone.
I stood up, surveying the carnage and chaos around me. Only a few people moved in the wreckage. Most were buried underneath it.
It was only dumb fucking luck that Dante, Griffin, and I had stepped out of our meeting. We had been heading back when the building blew up.
“Remy!”
My head snapped up and I looked at where Griff was standing grimly.
“It’s Nero.”
Fuck.
Griffin glanced down at the body at his feet and slowly shook his head before meeting my gaze.
Everything in me wanted to scream. The pressure in my chest was ready to crack me open, but I knew I would bleed out if that happened.
I fisted my hands and nodded back, swallowing my emotions. I had to keep moving forward. Dad and Luke were somewhere in this.
I couldn’t lose them, too.
As soon as we realized the lodge had been blown to hell, Dante and I ran to the cabins. The panic that hit me when I realized Skye wasn’t there had been crippling. I’d torn the cabin apart before running outside, hoping she would be somewhere.
The only thing I had found was her necklace. The clasp was broken, but the sun caught the diamond chip in the star nestled against the moon just right. The flash of light drew my attention down and stopped my heart.
When Dante found me and told me Tate was missing, we grabbed one of the people who worked in the kitchens, a terrified guy who had been taking a smoke break when the bomb went off.
He mentioned seeing Skye and Tate. It would be hard for any guy not to notice the two of them together. He had seen them out here talking to a man before everything went to shit.
I knew my girl. The only reason she wasn’t currently by my side was if someone was keeping her from being there.
I sucked in a deep breath, ignoring the smells of burnt flesh and charred wood hovering in the air.
“Here!” Dante’s voice cut across the wreckage. “They’re here!”
I took off running, stumbling across broken stones and navigating spikes of rebar that protruded grotesquely from chunks of concrete. Glass crunched under my boots.
Griffin beat me to Dante by half a second, and when I looked down, my hands started to shake.
“Oh, God.”
Luke and Dad were together, but pinned by a massive beam. It looked like Luke had taken the brunt of it. His body was covering half of Dad’s. Almost like he had thrown himself in front of Dad when the world crashed down around them.
Dante’s eyes met mine for a brief second, and I could see the same fears I had reflected in his gaze. It took all three of us to lift the beam up that had them pinned.
By the time we lifted the thousand pound weight, more staff who hadn’t been inside had come from where they lived on the edge of the property to help. We managed to piece together a couple of crudely assembled stretchers to lift them up and out of the area.
Griffin led the others away to keep looking for survivors while I knelt beside dad, my fingers pressing against his throat until I found a pulse. Relief hit me hard and fast.
I glanced over at Dante and Luke.
Dante met my gaze. “He … I don’t know what to do. His pulse is weak.”
They needed to get out of here. We all did. Someone had deliberately set off a bomb in the middle of the Summit. They had chosen a time packed with scheduled meetings for maximum damage.
And maximum casualties.
I wiped a hand down my face. “Get a car,” I told Dante. Ours had been parked by the side of the lodge and was currently smashed under a slab of concrete and metal. “We need to get to the airstrip.”
“What about survivors?” he asked, but was already standing.
I exhaled as I straightened, my gaze cutting across the mess. “I don’t think we’ll find any others. We need to get out of here before someone realizes there are survivors. I’m pretty sure none of us were supposed to make it out of this alive. I’ll tell Griff we’re leaving. He may want to come with us.”
Dante gave me a grim nod and took off for the far parking lot.
I turned and started making my way back to Griffin. I made it four steps when a hand grabbed my ankle.
“Jesus,” I swore, looking down at the bruised and dusty hand underneath a small mountain of rubble.
“Help,” the weak voice called up to me. “Please … help.”
I bent and picked up the heaviest pieces holding the man down.
He blinked up at me, and realization slammed into me a second before rage filled my heart.
Preston fucking Loomis.
His eyes widened when he saw me. The bastard actually flinched away from me, and then cried out when the rebar skewering him to the ground in his stomach didn’t give.
“Shit. Fuck.” His curses were a mumbled mess. His eyes looked up at me, begging. “Just … please, help me.”
Despite the severity of what was happening around me, I couldn’t help the chuckle that slipped past my lips. “Help you?”
If I didn’t know for a fact that he was a bitch, I did now.
His face twisted. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. Can you help me? Please? It fucking hurts.”
I dropped into a crouch beside him, my jaw tight. “How many times did Skye tell you something hurt?” I asked darkly, reaching for the rebar. “How many times did she need help and you fucking hurt her?”
“Shit, man,” he whimpered, his face crumpling.
Jesus, was he going to start crying?
My hands curled around the metal holding him in place. The tiny movement of my hand touching the bar made him cry out in agony.
“Where’s Linden?” I demanded, ignoring the way he started to tear up. “Was he with you?” My eyes scanned the area around him. Maybe, by some lucky twist of fate, Linden had been pulverized in the explosion.
“Gone,” Preston gasped, a tear sliding down his face. “He … I was on my way to meet him.”
Everything in me went cold.
“He wasn’t inside?”
“No. He told me to meet him in the parking lot.” His face twitched as he struggled for another painful breath. “He was outside when the bomb went off.”
Skye and Tate had been seen with a man moments before the explosion.
Skye was missing …
… and so was Linden.
With a roar, I yanked the rebar from Preston’s side and freed him.
He screamed, slapping a hand to his stomach as blood started flowing. It seeped through his fingers as he slumped back, panting.
“Thank you,” he muttered, blinking up at me. He was surprised I had helped him.
I smiled. “Anytime.”
And then I drove the rebar down through his throat. I stood up as he started to gurgle and choke, wiping my palms on my jeans as I walked away.
Coming Soon
The final installment in Skye & Remy’s story, LEGACY, will be out Spring 2021. You can pre-order it now on Amazon:
LEGACY (Blackwater Pack #3)
Bonus Scene
Larkin
Prey (Blackwater Pack Book 2) Page 44