by Bonnie Vanak
I nodded.
“The way I see it, having Fae blood gives you even more power to protect and defend us. It’s an asset.” Marc looked around and others nodded. “You’ve sacrificed much to keep us safe here, give us a home where we feel like family. Your Fae power makes us stronger, because you are stronger.”
He continued. “Many of us wouldn’t be alive if not for you. You saved me, and my mate, and my darling daughter because she never would have left us there in the cold Alaskan tundra. You alone gave us a home, cared about an old man and an old woman deemed useless by others. I don’t care if you have grizzly blood in you. Hell, you could be an ogre and I wouldn’t care.”
Pausing, he considered in that thoughtful way of his. “Well, maybe not an ogre. They can be downright mean at times.”
Everyone laughed.
“Can I go play now?” Carmen asked.
I nodded. “Everyone dismissed.”
The pack disassembled, but not before several came up and clapped me on the shoulder or offered thanks. Thanks for what, I wasn’t sure, but also in their eyes I saw relief, and realized Sienna was right.
It felt good to honest with my people, to level with them about what I truly was.
When everyone had left, Stephan finally approached. My beta embraced me.
He looked up, his eyes wet. “Thanks boss. Thanks for telling them. It makes me feel less alone.”
“I never wanted you to feel alone, my friend.” I clapped him on the back. “Only accepted.”
He brushed at his face. “Sienna taught me something. Real love is accepting someone for who they are, just as you accepted me for being wolf when I ate, and Sienna did as well. Real love is letting someone be free to choose their own path and loving them just the way they are. It’s choosing their joy over your own happiness.”
Wise words from a wolf who wanted his human side to show more than his beast. “Thank you, Stephan.”
He flashed his old, charming grin. “Now if Nick does his job, and makes her happy, maybe all three of us can convince her to return.”
My cell phone rang. Dread ran down my spine as I answered and heard Nicolas’ words.
“Grayson, we have a problem. We need help, fast. Kallan has found Sienna.”
Chapter 30
It started with a kiss after Nicolas showed me the grave of Grayson’s mother.
Only a simple headstone marked the place where he’d buried her. I knelt at the stone and brushed away leaves, touching the cold, gray rock, thinking of how many wasted years this woman had spent, only to reconcile at the last minute with her son.
And then, filled with sorrow, I started to weep for all he had lost.
All I had lost.
Nicolas took me back to the lodge porch, sat me on the steps and embraced me, letting me cry in his arms.
And then, the kiss. Perhaps meant to comfort, it turned passionate.
I kissed him back. The campground sign swung lazily in the breeze, lopsided on one chain. It was slightly eerie.
He brushed back a lock of my hair. “What’s wrong, Sienna?”
“I don’t know. It feels like something is coming. A storm.” Although it was barely past one in the afternoon, a heaviness lingered in the air and darkness shrouded the campground, as if clouds permanently hovered in the sky.
Nicolas glanced around, his expression changing. Maybe he felt it as well, the darkness hovering in this deserted, sad land.
Suddenly the wind shifted, blowing from the north, a coldness in the air that felt unnatural. Stiffening, I sat up and tugged at his arm. “We must leave. Now.”
The coldness brought with it a gray mist drifting over the land, creeping up to the stairs of the campground office. Droplets formed in the air and then seemed to freeze, falling down like icicles.
My cold fingers wrapped around Nicolas’ arm. “It’s too late.”
The mist cleared and standing in the driveway I saw my worst nightmare.
Kallan. My brother.
His long silver hair spilled down to his waist, his violet eyes glowing with purpose. Kallan wore leather leggings, vest and shirt. Armor to battle me.
I could not breathe nor think. My entire body went numb.
When you have dreaded something for so long, facing that horror can be a relief. Nicolas fumbled for his cell, called Grayson and barked out an order.
“Son of a bitch.” Nicolas hung up his cell phone and tucked it into his jeans pocket. He pushed me behind him. “Sienna, I’ll hold him off. Get my bike, ride back to Timber Wolf. Do it!”
When I was 21, I killed my entire family out of self-defense. Only my brother Kallan escaped.
Ever since then, he’s been on my tail, waiting. Watching. I’ve run for years, but now it was too late.
I had led him into the perfect arena for taking me out.
The abandoned campground rippled with powerful, ancient Fae magick. A powder keg waiting for a Fae match to light the fuse.
Kallan was that match.
Grayson may have tapped into that magick toward his land and defend his people. But he was not a pureblood. Only a pureblood Fionn Fae could activate the true evil lying beneath.
The same evil that had activated when I stepped onto that land – the evil that lured little Carmen into the glen. It was not my intention to stir the ancient power and use it. But my presence had ignited it all the same simply because I am Fionn. The old magick reacted the same way yeast will rise from heat.
Having the campground as a ready source of humming power meant Kallan could tap into it and use it the way a wildfire will consume dry brush. Enough fuel and the fire will grow out of control. Unless something stops it.
I was the only one who could stop Kallan.
He made no attempt to advance. He stood there, watching. Waiting. For what, I do not know.
Every instinct told me to flee. But there was Nicolas, dear, sweet Nicolas, now shifting into a wolf, snarling. My brother could take him down with a lightning bolt before Nicolas could leap off the porch.
“Sienna.” Kallan smiled the same type of smile he’d given me three years ago when he told me I would be free to leave if I surrendered my magick to all of my people.
“Little sister. Did you miss me? Your only family? You never wrote. Never texted or called.” Kallan laughed. “All these years spent running from me. You gave me a complex.”
I managed to find my voice. “Good. I hope you die from it.”
Kallan shook his head. “Sienna, you annoyed me when that wolf lover of yours at the lake. It took me a while to track you here, but I am determined.”
He smacked his lips. “I have a craving for wolf magick.”
My chest constricted with fear and dread. Facing Kallan alone would have been difficult enough, but with my lovers here at my side…
My brave, stubborn wolf lovers determined to protect me, even from evil they could never contemplate. Three years ago when I faced Kallan, my weakness was a desperate hope that my father did love me and would never hurt me. Then it bled into a slim hope that maybe Kallan would change his mind and I’d still have family left, for any family to a Fae is better than walking alone.
Now I realized my true weakness – I had three of them. Grayson, Nicolas and Stephan. I had no fears before meeting Grayson and his people, only the fear that I would release my magick and harm innocents.
My brother would use this against me as a soft point in my armor. I was not frightened for myself.
I was terrified for my boys, strong as they were.
Grayson and Stephan arrived on their bikes, zoomed up to the porch and leapt off the motorcycles. Grayson growled. “Sienna, you ok?”
“Get back,” I told him, shaking inside. “You have no defenses against his magick. He wants to drain all of your powers and use them against you.”
Yet Kallan made no move forward.
Instead he began to sing.
The chant of a Fionn Fae using ancient energy to create the weather. I b
raced myself, waiting to see if hail, a tornado or another weather disaster would rain down upon us.
My heart raced with terror as fresh mist drifted over the land and from those gray droplets rose not the events I dreaded, but something more terrible.
Forms began to take shape, become more corporeal. Ancient shapes I recognized from the texts I’d studied as a child. The old Fae, long dead.
Now ghosts.
Ghosts rippling with power. Nicolas leapt off the porch to tackle one.
“No, Nick, don’t,” I screamed.
My brave Nick, thinking he could bring down a spirit. Growling, he sank his teeth into the leg of the nearest ghost Fae.
His jaws snapped together at nothing. The ghost laughed, and my brother pointed a finger. The grayish specter collapsed, its energy hurling toward Kallan.
My brother was absorbing the ancient Fae spirits and energy, empowering himself. Grayson had siphoned only a little of the Fae energy in these lands and used it for good. He did not have the capability to do more. The evil was not within him.
But it was within Kallan.
Laughing, Kallan flicked his fingers and white-hot lightning streamed from them, heading straight at Nicolas. No!
I yanked on powers that I’d refused to use, channeled everything I had and diverted the fire toward a tree. The trunk exploded outward.
Still snarling, my brave Nicolas snapped at Kallan. Refusing to back down, standing as my wolf guardian.
The ghost army of ancient Fae spirits advanced, ready for the kill.
Still Kallan waited. And then my brother stretched out his hands, and breathed in.
Energy swirling around the ghost army faded, forming into mist. Droplets raced toward Kallan as my brother inhaled it. With each inhalation, he glowed a deeper blue, taking the ancient, evil energy into himself as one would suck at a Camelbak filled with water.
This was my world, the world of the Fionn Fae who grabbed power through any means possible. Ancient Fae energy. Using others.
I could imagine even Grayson, with his Fae blood, would find it inconceivable and hard to digest. Sometimes the enemy in front of you is too terrible to contemplate. Too terrible to believe in.
But Kallan was more than real. A familiar monster to me.
Half the ghost army was gone now, perhaps a few hundred remaining. Blue energy ringed Kallan’s body. Much stronger now, but I could still take him.
Ancient Fae magick. Powerful but dead.
Blue energy streamed from the ghost army into my brother, funneling into him in a rush.
My stomach turned and I struggled against the nausea rising in my throat. Kallan laughed.
Then his eyes glowed blue, his pale skin glowing blue as well.
My brother had become a force powerful enough to defeat me.
I fisted my hands, glancing at my lovers. “You need to go. Now, before he kills you as well.”
“Nicolas, Stephan, get back,” Grayson snapped. “Stephan, shift into wolf. That’s an order.”
Immediately Stephan shapeshifted into a wolf, standing at Grayson’s side.
“I have to do this.” I stared helplessly at Grayson. “Kallan is forcing me to confront him and take his life. But if I release my power, he’ll take the hit and absorb it because he’s stronger now for gaining all that ancient magick. This was his plan all along.”
“I know.” Grayson clasped my shoulders.
“But I can’t leave you here with him. You’ll die.”
“Listen to me, Sienna,” Grayson said quietly. “My betas don’t have magick enough to stop your brother. I don’t know if we’ll get out of here alive. But I’ll be damned if I stand here waiting for him to get at you and at us. I want you to retreat inside the lodge and take Stephan and Nicolas with you. Only you can protect them long enough to escape.”
Something inside me snapped. I stretched out my hand, now glowing blue and humming with my natural power.
“Fuck escape. I’m going to fight.”
Chapter 31
This was a fight I would win.
A fight I must win. Grayson and his betas had come to rescue me and now they would die because of me. They could not fight Kallan on this level. It was like fighting a hurricane.
But I could.
Maybe Kallan expected me to flee, for he stepped back as I let my powers rise. I could feel the glow warming me from inside, the magick gleeful at freedom at last.
Flicking my fingers out, letting my magick rise, I beckoned to Kallan. “Bring it.”
As he rushed toward me, he changed form. Not into vapor or even fire or freezing rain, but that damn mist again. Tentacles of fog snaked toward me. Fingers of mist reached for the bare skin of my arms. I released a tendril of magick and the mist screeched like a banshee as droplets sizzled and burned up.
Freed of the restraints, power danced on my fingers.
Confidence surged. I could do this.
And then the mist retreated, and horror filled me as a dozen ropes of fire slithered across the ground, burning all in their wake, heading for me.
The ropes turned into snakes of fire, each tipped with a head familiar to me. My best friend, Lily. My sisters and other brothers. Those whom I thought I had destroyed.
And then… I saw the face of my father, the king, on one of those snakes.
Only one thing could have recreated those faces – a Fae who had siphoned their magick before they died, taking it into himself.
Confidence fled. I staggered backward. “You absorbed their life force, their energy as they died.”
Kallan laughed as the snakes of fire slithered forward. “Of course. You destroyed the colony. But you forget, dear sister, we pure Fionn Fae can absorb a dying person’s magick.”
He cast a disdainful look at Grayson, who growled deep in his throat. “Pure, unlike the half-breed bastard you took as a lover.”
“You took their energy.” It was beyond belief, even for such a loathsome snake as my own flesh and blood.
“Not much to finish, thanks to your magick. I took what they no longer needed.”
He flicked his hand and the snakes finally reached the porch. I leapt off. Kallan organized them, turning them into a cohesive unit more dangerous than an army of wolves.
Nicolas and Stephan raced toward the snakes, picking them up and flinging them aside, howling in pain as the white-hot energy burned them. Still they fought, my brave wolves.
A snake seized my leg. I kicked out, the fire not burning, but sinking into my skin, seeking the magick that was the heart of me.
There were too many of them, like army ants attacking prey. I was the prey, and I was going down hard.
Magick bled from me. I could feel it leaving, as I felt my breath laboring and my heart stuttering.
King Eedmer’s daughter was dying at last, her powers passing on to his beloved son. His heir.
Kallan laughed as he channeled energy toward me, the white and black tentacles of magick sinking into my skin and stinging like dozens of bees.
I must kill him.
But each time I flung my powers at my brother, he simply absorbed it and laughed, growing stronger. Invincible. The snakes abandoned Nicolas and Stephan and covered me now, seeking my magick. Wind whipped at my hair, a fierce screaming as terrible as the shrieks of a dying Fae.
“Sienna, give your magick to me,” Grayson screamed. “Do it.”
Death was close. I could feel it, almost peaceful amidst the burning pain. Maybe I should give up. I reeled back my magick, but it was too late.
You deserve this, a taunting voice sneered in my head.
No, I do not.
But I was growing weaker and the fight drained me.
Surrender. Nothing in my sorry life was worth fighting for anymore, because I had no home, no family.
And then I glanced at my boys and knew I had everything worth fighting for.
I threw out my hand. Grayson caught it. Grimacing, he yelled for Stephan and Nicolas to shift back,
and then they held hands, struggling against the wind lashing them.
I released my power. Grayson yelled as the burning engulfed him, but he did not let go.
“Stephan, Nicolas, to me!”
The alpha released a mighty roar, clasped their hands and passed on the power to his betas. Through blurred vision I saw the white and blue glow surrounding Stephan and Nicolas. But then Grayson tugged away his hands. He staggered toward Kallan and his hands glowed electric blue, like mine.
And then he slammed his hand into the ground, and the ghost army rushed toward him, flowing like water.
Grayson absorbed the ancient magick, as he had in the past. His claim was first, and the ancients recognized this.
Glowing blue with energy, Grayson took the hits Kallan hurled at him, one after another. He grunted and cursed as whipcords of fire lashed his body, turning him bloody. But he did not stop absorbing the ancient Fae energy, not until the last ghost had vanished.
Then the alpha released the power. All of it. I saw it leave his body in a violent rush, like a damn uncorked.
My brother had not expected that. Caught off-guard, he flew backwards against a tree and the energy pinned him there like an insect. He screamed and writhed, but the power proved too much. It sank into his skin, burned his bones.
Caught in the web of Grayson’s magick, Kallan fought against it. Grayson kept directing more energy at Kallan. Even his own wolf magick, shown by his green aura, left his body and streamed into Kallan.
The alpha was using wolf energy and Fae to destroy my brother. Kallan could have absorbed the Fae powers and used it against Grayson, but the wolf energy was foreign, like a virus invading a healthy body, and all his energy was directed at fighting it.
But in doing so, Grayson was losing his life.
“No,” I screamed, my hair streaming in the forceful wind created by Grayson’s magick stream. “Don’t release all of it. You’ll die.”
Grayson’s face contorted in agony. “If it means you will live, then this is the only way.”
Summoning all my strength, I gathered more power and released it toward my brother.
Once we had been friends.
Laughed together.