Unchained Beauty (Deadly Beauties Live On Book 5)

by C. M. Owens

  I leave out the part that I learned this when I watched this idea fail me, costing Ella her life. My stomach roils, and I start looking forward to closing this journal so I can go back to forgetting those two particular timelines.

  “So you really do both have to die, even though the Gemini Twin bond legend was all—”

  He stops talking when I give him an exasperated look.

  “Sorry,” he grumbles.

  I nod slowly. “There’s always truth to a really good fictional legend, even if the truth is different than presented.”

  “What do you need from me?” he asks seriously.

  “I’ve done all of this with one simple goal: Save Ella. It’s up to you to save everyone else, and I also request that Kya always be taken care of. She’ll also be able to help ease my people into your flock.”

  “Kya is one of us,” he says as if that’s a nonissue. “You’re sure Hannah will possess you as a substitute?” he asks, then grimaces.

  “When the portal explodes, she always immediately directs her attention to Ella. She needs a power source to open the portal, and in the past, she always tried to take Ella, failing every time. She always found an alternate power source, such as Alton, most recently. Now she’s using a Lokie to do it instead, since Alton clearly didn’t work the way she planned. Regardless, the portal can’t actually be reopened. It was sealed permanently by cutting threads to that dimension, using the true blood of the Firsts she’s insanely tried to recreate. But the portal obsession has distracted her from concentrating all her efforts on Ella. She’d already be ruling the world if not for that. We needed time, and this obsession with the Lokies gave us that.”

  Standing, I walk over, my eyes skimming a picture of a laughing Ella, and I go to it, lifting it and opening the back of the frame as I continue speaking.

  “She always knew Ella was so much stronger than I was. She left me alive because I wasn’t a threat worth wasting energy on,” I state absently, removing the picture and tossing the frame aside. “But now I’m just as strong, and because I started siphoning the rage and focusing on it, Ella was tethered to all that darkness that has been accumulating for centuries. She’s effectively weaker without that control she once had, and Hannah has likely been slowly figuring that out.”

  “You made her weaker?”

  “Everything I did had various reasons as to why I did it,” I go on, the memories starting to fade as I open the journal to restart them. “I only purposely put in new variables that furthered my agenda in a multitude of ways.”

  Closing the journal again, I start toward the door.

  Before I walk out, I say, “Prepare for the unexpected. I’ve changed a lot from those timelines to this one, and it will have a ripple effect on Ella’s end with details. The only thing I’ll be focused on is Hannah. I won’t watch Ella die one thousand and two times.”

  I dematerialize and blow out a shaky breath when I land in my cabin, then close my eyes, seeing nothing. It’s frustrating, because when I see nothing, it’s supposed to mean she’s with me. I should kill Alton for showing her how to block me out.

  Then suddenly…

  I see Ella on her eighteenth birthday as she blows out her candles, silver flickering in her eyes for a second, and I curse as my eyes fly open. Quickly, I grab my phone and actually call her for a change.

  “Hello?” she says, though it sounds like there’s static on the line.

  “Where the fucking hell are you?” I snap. “You’re too far away if I’m seeing your eighteenth birthday.”

  She grows so quiet that if not for the crackle of static, I’d believe the line to be disconnected. “Well, this necklace doesn’t work then,” she says, confusing the hell out of me.

  “Ella,” I growl.

  “I’ll be home soon. I just picked up new lingerie. Talk later. About to go through a tunnel.” She starts making obvious faux-static noises before hanging up, and I roll my eyes while massaging my temples, side-eyeing my journal.

  Huffing out a breath, I resume my task of checking my math again, assuming my old papers are with Ella. I’m not too worried about them figuring out my formulas. I’m more concerned about what the hell Ella intends to do.

  My eyes flick to the hatch on the floor of this cabin.

  Some parts of my plan aren’t in the journal, assuming she’s read it. As much as I hate it, I walk over to the hatch and pull it back, dropping into the hole of the hidden basement I created.

  My eyes land on the bars in front of me for the small cage I created. I hate myself for this part of the plan, because everything about it feels wrong.

  Chapter 34

  ELLA

  “That’s Arnold Trout—the sole survivor of the Trout clan, and one of the transporters who took the twins in,” Chaz tells me from the corner as we stand at the edge of the immortal bar.

  “They’re rallying behind him,” he says close to my ear as one man talks about the old, reputable lycan highlanders’ clan who must have been the butchers.

  “They didn’t get the memo?” I whisper.

  “Oh, Kane made sure the video hit all the heads of families, but it takes a little while for word to really travel down to all the individual clans across the globe. It’s not like we can put a blast on the internet,” he points out.

  Arnold Trout is an idiot.

  “Why pick a fight with the lycans when he knows who killed his family?”

  “Because he might not know. It’s not like Kane sent the blast to the Trout household,” Chaz points out.

  “Well then. I guess it’s time to inform the locals.”

  “Ella, don’t—”

  His words are cut off as I walk over to Arnold Trout and slam his face into the bar before pulling him back and punching him hard enough to knock him out.

  The bar goes deadly quiet, all eyes cutting to me and narrowing.

  “Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with, girl?” a dark user snarls, a small orb of power circling his hand.

  “Arnold Trout, a member of the recently dispatched Trout family who have been aiding and accepting money from the slave rings your queen recently broke up. Didn’t you get the memo?”

  A few confused looks are exchanged.

  “This man dragged our own kind into a prison of horrors and torment. His family allowed our kind to be torn apart. The slaves didn’t just die, they were recycled for certain projects, becoming mindless drones in an army that’s rising against our queen. Meanwhile, you’re all sitting around, planning a war against lycans who had nothing to do with that massacre. That massacre was a message to everyone in this region. More will come. Feel free to side with as many traitors as you want when the queen returns to reap the rest of the traitors.”

  The same man steps into me, though everyone else seems to move in behind me. His eyes widen a little like he’s surprised by the quick shift in the air.

  My eyes flash silver as I smirk. “Do you know who you’re dealing with?” I drawl.

  He stumbles backwards, no longer confused now that my eyes are telling him the truth.

  Several people drop to a knee, which is weird. No one at home ever drops to a knee. Maybe we’re more respected over here.

  “The Trout family were traitors with the rings?” someone asks as I start dragging Arnold toward an enraged Chaz.

  “The family tree has been trimmed. This is the last of it,” I call out, letting Chaz do his really cool power of zapping us halfway back around the world.

  When we’re back in the forest of Pine Shore, he looks at me like he doesn’t know me at all.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “That was me not being little anymore,” I tell him dismissively as I wait for him to leave so I can execute phase two of this plan.

  “Ella, what the hell is going on with you? You don’t just walk into bars and announce to people the queen is massacring—”

  “Why not? Right now, I bet those people are planning a trip over to stand behind us so
they aren’t next, simply because the princess just caught them rallying behind a man they didn’t know was a traitor. More soldiers. We could really use more soldiers, trust me.”

  “That’s not how you think. That’s Slade!” he snaps.

  “Good,” I say as I start dragging Arnold by his foot.

  Honestly, Slade would have just killed anyone who tried to stop him from leaving with Arnold, or at least left them for dead.

  “Good?”

  “Yeah,” I tell him, looking over my shoulder. “I’m doing all I can to be worthy.”

  “Be worthy? Ella, are you fucking listening to—”

  I dematerialize and bounce around to a few places before finally landing in front of Alton’s cave. Arnold is just rousing when I drop his foot.

  “He’ll dematerialize if you wait too long,” I say as Alton walks over, eyes wide and face pale as he stares down at Arnold with no recognition. “He’s one of the masked men who aided the rings in your retrieval. I just need to—”

  Well, apparently he doesn’t need much prompting.

  In the next instant, I see Alton go feral for the first time. He throws himself on Arnold, and I watch as he rips him to shreds, even as Arnold’s bloodcurdling screams beg for mercy.

  Yes, it’s vicious. Which is sort of the point of this experiment. Plus, Alton looks like he feels a little better by the time he’s completely obliterated the man.

  There are a lot of variables, but we finally figured out the key ones. I hope.

  Alton sags back to the ground, his back pressed to the cave. “You should have given him to Slade,” he says, his eyes more silver than they’ve ever been.

  This particular Trout didn’t actually play a part in his capture, though he hauled in plenty of other innocent souls for the ring runners to wreck. But I’m not going to steal the only moment of joy Alton’s possibly had in too long.

  “Slade’s had his fill,” I say as I turn and walk out.

  “Why?” he calls to my back. “Why give that to me? Why give me even that little bit of peace?”

  Glancing back, I say, “It wasn’t for you. But I’m glad you liked the present.”

  With that, I dematerialize and land in our little underground cellar.

  “When he externalizes that force, it will lose a lot of its power. We’re going to need a counter source. It’ll need to be an enormous, quick burst of power from a source like the forest, but it can’t be channeled unless she sacrifices someone with the same blood as a medium,” Kimber is arguing.

  “Ella has that sort of power on her own,” Kya snaps just as heatedly. “She just needs to—”

  “If she taps into that much power, she could accidentally kill us all, and what’s the point in doing all this instead of letting Slade at least weaken her?” Kimber points out.

  “If my powers had been forced to stay as dormant as Slade’s, I could have created a source like that. Did you know Slade felt how to do that on instinct, since he never truly got to physically inspect the forest? It’s one of our survival instincts, oddly enough,” I interject. “Same way Mom realized how to pull the purgatory residue in to create that forest.”

  Kya takes one look at the blood splattered on me, compliments of a brutal, messy Alton, and cocks an eyebrow.

  “I guess it worked?” she asks.

  “Yep. So there’s that theory proven.”

  “What does Slade knowing how to do that as an instinct have anything to do with this?” Kimber asks me.

  “How’d the deer go?” I ask Kya instead of answering.

  She shudders. “I can’t believe you were right about…” She pauses, and we both look over at Dice, who is crunching on a Kit Kat, eyes glued to us.

  “Really? This is how you’re helpful?” I ask him.

  “I’m working on the little things,” he points out. “But this is my break time. I’m part of a union, so you can’t take this away from me.”

  Rolling my eyes, I look back to Kya. “Now see if you two can figure out where I’m going with this.”

  They both slow blink.

  Then suddenly Kimber’s eyes widen just before Kya’s, as if they’ve realized what I’m saying.

  “Oh, that’ll do. So long as you’re right.”

  “We’ve never had to do as much surviving as the ones in those rings. Look at Kya,” I say, gesturing to the dark-haired girl dressed like a sex kitten for reasons I’ll never understand. “She dematerialized for her first time on the night they were freed, and managed to follow Slade’s trail at a cold pace. She can dematerialize humans without killing them, which used to be considered impossible. She’s unnervingly instinctive because her life has been survival first.” I pause as if for dramatic effect, when really I’m just catching my breath. “We do the impossible every day. She’s proof.”

  Kya’s lips thin when we both just stare at her like she’s been a tiny clue of how strong instinct truly is in our kind. An overlooked detail we’ve taken for granted without acknowledging the ferocity it holds.

  “Okay, that’s creeping me out,” Kya finally says, waving her hands in front of her face like she’s uncomfortable.

  Kimber looks back at me. “Then that’s the extra boost we’ll need to pull this off,” she says on a long, shaky breath.

  “I’m sure shit will be real bad real fast if Hannah gets to walk out of there inside of anyone. Just so we’re clear, I don’t trust Slade to nuke her without accidentally blowing himself up and just releasing her into the world again,” Dice interjects. “He has anger issues. It should be factored into every equation.”

  “If he hadn’t been helpful, I’d have already thrown him out of here,” Kimber tells me when I open my mouth and take a step toward him.

  “Where’s Leah?” I ask, reigning myself in before I slap Dice.

  As if she feels her cue, Leah appears, and we all glance at her as she staggers, still learning the ins and out of dematerializing when her own survival instincts aren’t driving her on.

  “I’ve filled her in on most of it,” Kimber says, sitting back as Leah glances around at all our boards.

  “I pride myself on being a logical person,” she states as she takes a seat too. Dice crunches on his candy bar, watching like he can’t look away as she continues. “Logically, I’d think monsters needed to die if they threatened all mankind,” Leah goes on, her fingers pausing beside one timeline where she killed both Zee and me. “I just don’t know how they convinced me that all of you were monsters.”

  “Because we technically are. You just see things more our way since you had blinders on for your bloodsucker and he turned you into one of us,” Dice points out unhelpfully.

  “Slade’s the reason I’m with Zee,” Leah says, laughing under her breath. “I already knew that, since Zee did all he could to push me out to a safe distance until Slade left him with no other alternative but to save my life the only way he could. It was seeing Zee struggle to keep me safe, even after he learned about what I am, that convinced me monsters existed on both sides,” Leah adds.

  “It might have taken time to see that if you’d been with them while they hunted some of the worst of us,” I tell her, trying to keep her from looking guilty about things that have never actually happened. “They came for you, and you took over their little tribe.”

  “Someone’s logic is a matter of their own personal experiences that creates their individual perspective,” Dice says in a bored drawl. “It’s why both sides of an argument think they’re right. It’s why we argue at all.”

  We all blink at him.

  “That was oddly insightful,” Leah whispers to me as though she’s worried the apocalypse is here too early.

  “I doubt Zee man realized there was an alternate universe where you join the stabby cult and come back to kill all of us as often as you can,” Dice prattles on. “Hashtag, crazy bitch alert.”

  “And he’s back,” Kya groans.

  “What do you need me to do?” Leah asks, ignoring Dice agai
n now that the moment is over.

  “I’m actually sort of asking you for a lot. Because I finally understood the most important variable he created without actually meaning to.”

  She shrugs a shoulder. “If it’ll save everyone, I’ll do it. No matter what.”

  “Don’t be such a—hashtag—drama llama,” Dice says, shattering the selfless, intense moment for Leah.

  Dick.

  “You’re not going to die, so long as Dice’s Angels aren’t wrong about this,” he carries on.

  “For the last time, stop calling us that,” Kya snaps.

  “Fine. Dice’s Devils. Better?” he asks seriously.

  Kimber puts us back on topic. “Aside from Dice, we’ve all died in one way or another.”

  “Hashtag, don’t want to be a single daddy,” he inserts.

  “This will prevent that. If Hannah falls, they all fall. We just need to hold them back long enough,” I go on.

  Kya runs a frustrated hand through her hair.

  “But what’s my part if it’s not dangerous?” Leah asks.

  “Your part is very dangerous, but you’re a huge variable. Slade pushed you to us, because even without the memories, he left his rage for you intact,” Kimber explains.

  “You almost became a benign variable to him after Zee turned you, even though you’re still Aquarius,” I add.

  “A completely different species altogether, if we’re being honest,” Dice states, actually being helpful. “You and Zee never had Gavin’s power boost in the past, but that’s not the most important part. Well, not technically, but it’s still sort of important.”

  “What’s the most important part?” she asks.

  “It’s the little things,” Dice says, sounding far too proud of himself, since he’s the one who actually pointed out the part Leah needs to play, for the most obvious reason ever.

  “If it even works. You’re relying on something you’re guessing about,” Kya states. “And you’re also relying on one incredibly unreliable variable to—”

  “You’re scaring the poor girl,” Dice says, gesturing to Leah, who looks confused but not afraid. “And you’re being vague again about this part again. I see what’s going on here. You’re all trying to exclude me from the super secret part of the plan,” he adds.