by C. M. Owens
Zee groans, I curse, and Reese almost tears through Kane’s invisible hold to rip apart the incubus.
“Down, Fido,” Dice continues. “Was the girl yours before she forgot all about who she really was? I guess you didn’t think about that when you had your little memory spell cast. You don’t exactly have the right to be outraged about Thad getting his dick wet. After all you’re the one—”
Dice’s words end on a squeal when Reese loses his fucking mind, and shifts before breaking through Kane’s hold. In a flash, the black wolf is charging across the room, and Dice is running in a circle, dodging each snap of Reese’s jaws.
“Someone bloody help me!” he yelps, narrowly dodging Reese’s razor sharp claws.
“We might should have clued him in,” Zee says on a sigh, as we all stand around and watch the incubus flex his agile moves of retreat.
More and more shit clatters to the ground, and Kane runs a hand through his hair as the big bad wolf tries to shred the squealing bitch—better known as Dice.
“Enough!” Kane roars, throwing out power again, and slamming Reese back into the wall.
A howl of pain erupts from his mouth, and we watch as the fur flees to make room for the flesh.
“Someone could have warned me he was so damn possessive! Apparently it was more than a casual fling between them,” Dice snaps.
Reese roars again, and Dice yelps while jumping back, even though Reese is still pinned to the wall.
Rolling my eyes, I ignore Reese snarling, still half animal right now, and look at the stupid incubus.
“They weren’t a casual fling,” I point out, shaking my head.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Dice hisses, glaring at me.
“They weren’t a couple at all,” I go on, confusing him. My eyes go back to Reese as his eyes die back down from werewolf to human… ish. They’re almost black right now.
“Everyone, meet Roslyn’s father.”
Chapter 20
ROSLYN
The room I’m in is growing more boring by the second. Thad hasn’t even been gone five minutes, and already I feel like my body is humming for his.
Great. One intimate encounter, and I’m already acting clingy.
My chest starts aching, and I reach up to rub the pain away. Instead of subsiding, it only gets stronger, forcing my breath to actually seize in my chest.
What the hell?
The room suddenly feels so small, making it even harder to catch a breath. My head spins, and dizziness claims me, forcing me to stumble as I try to blindly grasp for anything to steady me.
Air. I need air.
The window seems a thousand miles away, and my shaky legs refuse to do anything but collapse when I try to reach for it. It’s nauseating and suffocating, and every image around me seems to be shifting from one place to another, moving in a pendulum motion that makes me feel like I’m rocking on a boat.
A familiar song plays in my head, my own voice singing it to me, but I have no idea where I’ve heard it. The tune sounds much like something a child would jump rope to, something harmless yet creepy as hell at the same time.
The monster grows tired of the wait.
Hell is waiting to fulfill their fate.
They listen not. They don’t say a word.
You can scream but you won’t be heard.
The woods are just outside, but that damn song keeps playing on repeat, driving me crazy as I try to reach the window. But then it’s all spiraling, and I feel a weightlessness grabbing me as blackness shrouds me from all over.
Almost as suddenly, there’s a touch of light again, but I’m not in the bedroom anymore.
I can feel pavement under me, and my blurry vision spots the street. The sun is blaring, and even though I can see it, it still seems so dark. So, so dark. As though the burning ball of fire is nothing more than a flashlight beam inside an empty abyss.
Play. Play. Play all day.
Tomorrow I’ll get the chance to slay.
Blood and death. Yes they’ll pay.
I’ll survive now to kill them all one day.
I cry out as images assault me, taking me inside a world I didn’t know existed, and a scream leaves my throat as a whip slices through my skin. One second I’m in a stone room, begging for mercy, the next I’m back in the street. It’s as though my mind is being torn apart from the inside, and I claw the pavement beneath me, praying to escape the pain.
Soon I’ll set the monster free.
I’ll kill them before they kill me.
Chapter 21
THAD
“Fucking hell. You’re Roslyn’s father?” Dice asks in disbelief.
Reese scowls at him, and Dice swallows audibly before glaring at me.
“Thanks for the fucking warning, you dick!”
I shrug, unconcerned with the incubus’s anger.
“Where are the girls?” I ask, noticing it’s nothing more than a sausage fest in here.
Kane, Zee, Reese, Dice and I are the only ones in here, and Reese could really use a break from all the testosterone. It’s making him too defensive, which means he’s ready to rip me to shreds.
I don’t think killing Roslyn’s father is the best way to her heart.
“Gage is helping out with what you requested. He said he needed some time and supplies. The rest are helping Alyssa get set up,” Kane says cryptically, telling me with his eyes that he doesn’t want to talk about it in front of the pissed off werewolf.
I always heard a girl’s father was a bitch to deal with.
Never thought I’d have to get on Reese’s good side. This definitely sucks.
“Why’d you risk a spell like that if you care about her so much?” I ask him.
A pile of clothes appear at Reese’s feet, and Kane crosses his arms over his chest. Sometimes I wish I had just a touch of magic to do shit like that.
With a glare at me, Reese starts tugging on the new threads.
“Because she was in hell when she broke out of that place.” The pain in his voice kills the anger in his eyes, and a sadness replaces it that I didn’t expect to see.
“What do you mean? What’d they do to her?” I demand, walking forward. “You told us she couldn’t remember anything when we questioned you about the rings.”
The weight of the world seems to be pushing him down when he finally slumps down to a chair in the corner. When he starts massaging his temples, I can’t help but notice the unshed tears in his eyes.
At least I feel less compelled to kill him now.
“She remembered everything, but she couldn’t talk. I had a witch take a look inside her mind to find what we needed to know. Unfortunately, I also asked her to link to me so I could see everything as she saw it. I wish I had never seen it. Now I can’t unsee it, and it’s painful.”
A lump forms in my throat, and I start questioning having Gage do that spell on her.
“Karma was in the rings for longer than Roslyn. She had a rough time, but she survived without a spell that split her apart from her fey half,” Kane says, sounding pissed. “Do you have any idea how dangerous you made her? If she doesn’t kill someone, she gets killed. Her survival instincts are all animal when she’s in form. She has no control at all.”
Reese groans while pinching the bridge of his nose. “That wasn’t intended. The spell went awry. It was too powerful, but I was desperate to save my daughter from the things haunting her mind. They were so fucking brutal to her.”
I’m not sure I want to hear. Hell, I don’t know if I can hear it without my beasts taking over, but I have to.
“Start at the beginning. We need to know who she is before we decide what to do,” Kane says.
A growl comes from my throat at the same time one comes from Reese’s, and we both glare at Kane like we’re plotting the same violence. Kane rolls his eyes.
“I mean if we can lift the memory spell or not. She can’t go on like this.”
My hackles go down, and Reese seems to calm as well.
“You want the beginning?” he asks, looking between us. “Then I’ll start at the beginning.”
He stands and starts pacing, apparently needing some suspense for drama, while I grow all the more impatient.
“Roslyn is so much stronger than you realize. My blood is pure alpha. Every sire in my line has been an alpha, including myself. We’re stronger than the rest of the werewolves, and Roslyn is no exception. In fact, she’s stronger. Where my line has depended on bitten venom, obviously, she was pure. No one under the age of seventeen has ever survived the bitten venom. Even if someone manages to survive the venom, they don’t survive the first change. It’s painful, and it’s exhausting.”
He looks directly into my eyes.
“My first change took several long, agonizing hours that seemed to go on forever. And I didn’t have full control of my wolf for almost a decade. Even you had problems leashing your beasts when you were new to powers. And you were immortal before you started shifting.”
He continues staring, doling out more unnecessary suspense.
“Roslyn changed in less than a minute her first time, and she had sole control of her wolf immediately.” He glances around before adding, “She was seven.”
Okay, so that’s a little disconcerting. She’s definitely stronger than I initially imagined. But all it does is piss me off as the pieces that aren’t getting talked about flick around in my mind.
“Those records were real. If you were in her life, then how the hell was she in so many hell homes?”
A snarl breaks the air, and I glare at him, unaffected.
“What was I supposed to do? Let her live with me? Explain to my pack of wolves that I somehow managed to have a child with a witch, even though that shouldn’t be possible? Then what? Watch her back all the time to keep them from using her against me?”
He laughs bitterly while shaking his head. “You forget what sort of pack I have. To be the strongest pack, you have to have a lot of nasty people who love death. I kept expecting more of them to conceive, but they never did. No one but me. Turns out, back in the old days when types of fey could breed, only certain ones could have children. Turns out, my line was one of them.”
Well, that’s news that would have been nice to know sooner. We’ve been scrambling for information like that.
“Where’s her mother? Who is her mother?” Kane asks, hopping up on one of the counters near Amy’s cage.
Reese purses his lips for a moment. “Her name was Rose. I barely knew her. We met after the purgatory incident. Lust was in the air for a while after that—all that magic coursing through the earth. It was intoxicating. We hooked up, and she got pregnant. Obviously I didn’t believe her at first, but I still helped her find a spot to lie low. I figured she was just scared of someone.
“But then Roslyn was born. One look at her, and I could actually feel my blood running through her veins. She was beautiful, and I knew it. I knew it was impossible, but somehow I had a daughter. And because of the world we live in, I also knew I had to keep her a secret. As terrible as it was, the humans were the best place to hide her.”
“Fuck that,” I spit out. “You know damn well Alyssa would have helped you. You could have come to her instead of making Roslyn live through all she did.”
He curses while running a hand through his hair. “No I couldn’t. Alyssa would have tried to make our world accept her. She thinks she has control over us, when really, she doesn’t have any more control than the old council did. They don’t give her the respect she deserves, because they don’t fear there will be any consequences. A loving queen is adored. But she’s not feared.
“Everyone would have found out, and Roslyn would have had more gunning for her than just my pack. And believe me, I dealt with the homes that were bad. Most of them were good, but Roslyn would run when she had an episode. She could control her wolf, but she couldn’t always control when she turned into a wolf. She knew that she couldn’t be seen.”
“And the foster dad who beat her?” Dice asks too flippantly.
I’d have killed him, too.
“That was handled very, very brutally, and I loved every violent second of it,” Reese says in a low, dark tone. “Got a problem with that, incubus?”
“Nah. I would have gutted him if it had been me, and then I’d have fed him to a real bear piece by piece. We just thought that was in dark user territory, so didn’t see how you could have done it.”
Reese looks away, his jaw ticking as though he didn’t need the reminder of Roslyn’s abuse. I sure as fuck wish it hadn’t been brought up.
“You don’t live as long as I have without making a few friends who owe you their lives. I told them there was a human who owed me a debt; they let me tear him to shreds and helped cover it up. I watched over Roslyn and met her in secret her entire life. I trained her to fight, taught her all about our world, and destroyed anyone who hurt her. She understood. She was always so strong and mature, and she understood why she couldn’t be outed.”
“What about her mother? Was her bloodline strong? How did she die?” Kane asks, getting back on topic.
Reese squirms this time, as though he’s uncomfortable all of the sudden. “Her bloodline was fairly strong. A spell backfired and had deadly consequences. Roslyn was young when she died. Still a baby.”
The rest of the conversation has seemed so easy and not at all forced. He’s been real and in pain until right now. Now… Now he seems like he’s lying. And he sucks at lying. But he speaks before I can try to call him out on it.
“You can’t reverse the spell. If you did, she’d be in all the same pain she was. If you’re going to help her, you’ll need a different spell. And keep Alyssa away from this. I don’t want everyone knowing who my daughter is, especially now. She’s left a trail that makes her seem vicious and feral. She’s not. At least, she wasn’t.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You were assumed to be feral once. I’ve heard the stories. She can’t be worse than you, and you knew what was going on.”
His anger returns as he glowers at me. “I was around when you went through your change. I wasn’t the only one who loved the taste of blood through a kill, Thaddeus Maximus.”
Dice coughs on a laugh as I glare at Reese. Pasts are off limits, so I guess I brought this shit on myself.
“Thaddeus Maximus?” Dice asks on a laugh. “Hashtag—gladiator.”
“It’s better than Dicera,” I remind him, which immediately puts a halt to his laughter, but it ignites Kane’s laughter. “For the record,” I add, “gladiators were all the rage in my day.”
Gage appears suddenly, startling the lot of us.
“You could whistle before just appearing, you know?” Dice grumbles, peeling himself off the wall he was just plastered to.
“What’d I miss?” Gage asks.
Chapter 22
ROSLYN
The pain comes when they do.
They can hit, but I can too.
The monster grows stronger now.
When it breaks free, it’ll get me out.
Pretty bones will break for the beast.
On their blood I shall feast.
The sun waits, and the moon breaks.
The time is coming to escape.
I keep finding myself in different places, disoriented and crying out for help, only to be met by my own singing voice in my head. The pain is almost unbearable, and I can’t stay on my feet. Every time I try to stand, it feels like the wind is knocked back out of me, and I end up a crumpled pile on the ground.
Break me now, but I’ll be back for blood.
I’ll shred their skin just to have some fun.
They’ll feel my pain without mercy.
They’re going to scream so prettily.
Chapter 23
THAD
“That’s a lot to take in,” Gage says on a sigh. “If I can’t reverse it, then I’ll figure out something else.”
“If I hadn’t had the spell done,
she would have immediately gone after them. And I couldn’t even show how furious I was. I had to hide it all while my daughter suffered so much pain she couldn’t even be trusted around me. More than once she tried to tear me apart,” Reese says quietly. “I barely survived one of her attacks.”
“I can totally see that,” Dice says casually. “Daddy issues are still trending.”
Reese glares at the incubus like it’s new that he’s an insensitive ass.
“The spell wasn’t supposed to go that way. It was supposed to cloak her memories, but her anger triggers her change. She freaked out when she woke too soon, and when I came after her, trying to calm her down, she dematerialized from the room. I lost her after that. She somehow found out about her bank accounts, probably from a memory that was distorted and surfaced as something else. She took all her money out before I even thought to check them. And she ran.”
“I’m going to go check on her,” I say while turning around.
“Can I see her?” Reese asks, sounding so fucking weak. I’ve never heard him like this, and I suddenly feel like an ass.
“Yeah. But you’re not taking her to your pack. Even if she is strong enough to defend herself now. She doesn’t know she’s strong enough.”
“I’m not taking her. She’s much safer here as long as no one tells anyone what she is.”
“Will she know who you are? She said she didn’t know your name when I asked.” She lied to me?
I turn back around just as he starts to speak.
“No,” he says, a sadness to his tone. “I’m part of her fey life. All her memories of me will be cloaked. But she should be close to her immortality.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” I ask, already feeling a surge of excitement. Roslyn is mine for good.
“There’s… well, there’s something you should know. She has a little power on top of her already substantial power. And there’s a problem with the spell.”
Exchanging a look with everyone else, I cross my arms over my chest. I’ve had about all the surprises I can handle.