by S. Young
In the time she took to blink, Kiyo was already gone.
It was worse than the time in that horrible apartment with Kiyo. The weariness was so much worse.
And there was also the pain.
Niamh laid on her stomach panting against the damp concrete floor, unable to move, as though paralyzed. Torturous flames of sensation shot up her spine and down both legs.
“You are awake,” Sakura’s voice drifted somewhere above her.
Niamh let out a grunt, trying to ask her what she wanted, but the words came out a mere whisper.
What was wrong with her?
“You have a very large iron dagger stuck in your spine,” Sakura answered, as if Niamh had voiced the question out loud. “You are not going anywhere anytime soon, faerie.” Her face came into view as she bent low to the ground to stare into Niamh’s pained eyes. Horror suffused Niamh as Sakura swung a familiar jade pendant in front of her face. “And our Kiyo-chan will not be able to save you.”
35
The silence in the abandoned tunnels that led to the basement of the Iryoku Towers was palpable. Kiyo could hear the overly loud, much too fast beating of his own heart as he tried to move swiftly without making a sound.
Rats fled his alpha energy as he rushed through the earthy, metallic darkness. If he wasn’t careful, Sakura would sense him before he even got there.
He had to calm.
He didn’t know how to be calm.
They’d taken Niamh, and whatever they’d done to abduct her had caused her pain.
Rage burned in his gut.
Sakura and her mate would be lucky to survive the night.
Slowing to a halt, Kiyo’s night vision revealed the blacked-out door off to the side of the tunnel. When Eito was so sure Kiyo wouldn’t be able to say no to being Sakura’s mate, he’d shown Kiyo this secret entrance. It led into the basement where they hosted their supernatural underground fights.
The key was hidden in a pipe across the tunnel.
Kiyo shooed a rat out of the way and felt cool metal touch his fingers. Wrapping his hand around it, he pulled out the old-fashioned key and returned to the door.
The door opened on hinges kept oiled to perfection so it made no sound as it swung into darkness.
Beyond was a narrow corridor blanketed in more shadows.
Kiyo snapped his hands out at his sides, his long, black claws slicing into the air. Opening his mouth, he forced his canines out.
Then strode onward to meet the shadows face-to-face.
He was silent as the night, pulsing in the blackest depths of the low-lit basement.
It had taken much not to rush into the gargantuan room once he’d reached it.
Years ago, the room had been decorated in cool greens and gold wall coverings, three fight rings in matching colors set along the center of the room.
Tatami mats had been placed over nearly every inch of the concrete floors.
Now there was nothing but empty echoes in a space that resembled an underground parking lot.
Except for the sconces attached to concrete pillars. Real flames lit them.
It reminded Kiyo of hell.
Except it couldn’t be because Niamh could never belong anywhere but in the light, and his mate was in the room.
Lying sprawled on her stomach, seemingly unable to move.
A long iron blade protruded from her lower back.
Kiyo grew cold and silent.
This was a new level of rage he’d never felt before.
“I can feel you,” Sakura said from her spot near his mate.
Kiyo stared at her. He didn’t see a woman he’d once known intimately. A wolf he’d once admired and respected.
He saw nothing but an enemy.
Daiki and Haruto stood off to the side like two watch dogs.
Were they fools? Did they think they were enough to protect Sakura from him?
Kiyo strode into the light, his eyes glancing over the three of them as he tried to calculate the fastest way to end them all so he could get to Niamh and remove the dagger.
His mate emitted a soft moan and he felt it, much as Emil had felt his katana slice at his Achilles tendons, taking him to his knees. It took much to keep moving as though it hadn’t affected him.
“Take him down but try not to kill him,” Sakura commanded.
Kiyo assumed she was talking to Daiki and Haruto, but the air shimmered across the room in front of him and the feeling of magic prickled his skin.
Fifteen werewolves, male and female, appeared out of thin air, standing in a row between him and Sakura. Some carried silver blades.
They lunged at him.
Kiyo was faster than any of them. He moved as a blur and was able to take five down by breaking their necks before he felt the first blow across the back of his head. He used the momentum from the hit and fell forward in a shoulder roll, grabbing up the silver katana one of the downed wolves had been carrying. Springing to his feet, he turned to face ten members of Sakura’s pack.
The first was easy. The male came at him without a weapon, and Kiyo slashed the katana across his gut, low near his groin, and the wolf fell to the ground howling in pain. The next had a sword, and Kiyo had to defend with his katana while kicking out behind him as other wolves tried to approach.
A moan of anguish from Niamh made its way to him through the grunts and clangs of the fight, and his impatience became a well of strength. He kicked out with a roar at the male in front of him, sending him and the three wolves behind him soaring across the basement. He lunged at the nearest female, dodged the air around her as she slashed out at him with a silver knife, and spun around to punch a hole through her back. Tearing her heart out, Kiyo held it as he scowled in warning at the rest of the wolves.
They’d momentarily frozen, shocked by the death because until now, he’d just been incapacitating them.
“You still will not kill him,” Sakura’s voice echoed around the room. “But take him down. I grow impatient.”
Kiyo was a cyclone, a tornado of vengeance. Within seconds, four more wolves lay on the ground without their hearts.
Snarls of outrage filled the basement and the remaining wolves launched themselves at him in unadulterated fury. They closed in on him, giving him little room to move as fists and feet hammered into his body. One snapped his wrist and the katana slipped from his grasp.
A burn scored up his back and then down his hip as two of them slashed him with silver. Ignoring the pain, Kiyo unleashed his claws and spun, feeling their clothes and skin tear, the impact juddering up his arms.
As they fell back, wounded, Kiyo found a way out of their circle.
It was more expedient to snap their necks. He took out three in seconds but as he approached the last, she turned, blood dripping from her chest where his claws had raked her. Fire blazed up Kiyo’s neck as she swung a katana at his throat, connecting. Despite Sakura’s orders, her intention had been to decapitate him. The curse binding him in immortality rebounded on the blade, and it shattered.
Terror flooded her expression as she realized the extent of his invincibility. Something flickered inside him, a soft feeling he’d blame his mate for, and it stopped him from killing the wolf. Instead he snapped her neck. As her body crumpled atop one of her downed comrades, Kiyo touched the cut on his neck and hissed.
Blood was leaking from several areas of his body.
Silver poisoning the wounds.
He was bruised and battered.
Covered in sweat and dust from the disused basement.
But there was still enough fight in him to take down a fucking army.
And he was going to kill Sakura for this.
“Impressive,” she said, walking toward him. “It was a test, and you passed. What would it take to stop you? Twenty, thirty, fifty werewolves? Oh wait … I know.” Sakura lifted her arm and something gold winked in the light as it unraveled from her hand.
It was a necklace.
Kiyo halted in utter
shock.
Dangling from the end of the chain was Mizuki’s jade pendant, the stone shaped like a water droplet.
“Hai.” Sakura smirked, slipping the necklace over her head. “Before you think about killing us to get to her, think again. Or I will smash this jade to pieces and we will watch you crumble to dust.”
How the hell did she know?
Sakura took a few steps toward him. His wounds seemed to hurt more the longer Niamh had to lie there with the iron inside her. He wished she’d speak to him in his mind. Assure him she was okay.
Sakura snapped her fingers. “Look at me. Not her.”
Revulsion rolled through him. “All of this because you and I fucked three decades ago.”
Daiki snarled behind her. Kiyo cut the puppet of a wolf a murderous look.
“How arrogant to think this is about that.” Sakura shook her head, sighing dramatically. “Oh, I admit that I was obsessed with you for a while. Kept track of you on your adventures out in the world, hoping you would come back to me.”
Daiki cursed under his breath and turned his back on her.
Kiyo didn’t blame him.
“I know about your little house in the mountains of Kyoto.” She nodded smugly. “And every year that you returned, you never seemed to age. Word in the supernatural world got out about a mysterious Japanese American werewolf who rarely lost a fight in the underground. Rumors spread that he was not what he seemed. So I did some digging. It is amazing how money and connections can speed up the research process. And what did I find”—Sakura fingered the pendant—“but a puzzle. Small puzzle pieces that all fit together, leading back to 1898 and Mizuki Nakamura, Japan’s greatest miko.”
“How?” he asked flatly.
“You taught me all about poker face, Kiyo, but I have never surpassed my teacher. You look so unaffected, but I know better.” Sakura stepped dangerously close to him. “You made a mistake all those years ago. You slipped up and confessed your real name to Oji-chan, as well as your place of birth. And he told me. Kiyonari Fujiwara from Osaka. My researchers scoured letters, documents, contracts—every piece of literature connected to the supernatural community in Osaka. What did we find? A diary stolen from Mizuki. It was in the private collection of a coven. The Yamamoto Coven.”
“The Pack Coven,” Kiyo replied, feeling the pieces come together. The Yamamotos had been on retainer to Pack Iryoku for nearly a hundred years. “They spelled the wolves just now?”
“Yes.” Sakura glanced to her left and he followed her gaze. He saw nothing but darkness. “Three coven members. They left when they saw the blade of the katana break when it should have cut off your head. Cowards.” She turned back to him. “Still, they have their use. They were happy to let me have a look. And there you were. An entry about a werewolf—made, not born—who took vengeance on Mizuki’s grandson for the rape of your mother. I commend you, Kiyo. I would have done the same. But Mizuki took offense to your killing her grandson, and she sacrificed another miko to curse you with immortality. She said in her entry that you loathed being a werewolf. That tormenting you with an eternity of being trapped as a wolf was a greater revenge than death. I think she was wrong. I know no wolf as connected to his animal as you are. Watching you take out my wolves like a beast was highly arousing.” She snapped near his lips with her teeth, and it took everything within him not to rip her fucking heart out.
But her hand was still wrapped around the jade.
Sakura narrowed her eyes. “So here you are. The world’s only immortal werewolf.”
“How long have you known?”
“About eighteen years.”
“And you kept my secret all this time?”
Her face softened. “Even from Daiki. You see … in her diary, Mizuki spoke of this jade talisman and how it held all of her spells within. No other miko had the power to contain it. She tried to warn them to bury it with her, but they did not. Unfortunately for you. Destroy the talisman, and her spells would be undone. Never mind what chaos that might unleash upon Japan … what if it meant you did not just become mortal but that you would die?”
Sakura’s eyes brightened. “I did not want you to die, Kiyo.”
He was untouched by her emotion. “It looks like you’ve changed your mind about that.”
She shrugged and retreated a few steps. “I have a difficult life, Kiyo-chan. It is a constant struggle as a woman to remain alpha of one of the world’s most powerful packs. You have no idea what I have to deal with day to day.”
“Get to the point, Sakura.”
Her eyes flashed in warning. “It happened the day the fae grabbed at my wrist. Haruto saw it burn her. My iron bracelet. I knew nothing of the fae other than the myths. The bracelet was a gift from Haruto’s family, who have a deep belief in the legends. And he knew about the pure iron and how it hurt the fae. At first it seemed ridiculous to imagine the fae as real, let alone walking among us … but she smelled and felt so different from any other creature, and she did react strangely to the bracelet.
“Haruto told me more about the gifts of the fae. How their magic is limitless. How they are not bound by the laws of nature. How they do not have to pull the energy from the world to power their magic. They are energy. They are pure magic. To have such a being within my control … I will never again have to worry about losing my position as alpha.”
He was going to kill her.
There was no question of it now.
“There was still part of me that did not want to hurt you … that did not want to be your enemy.” She curled her lip in bitter disappointment. “You were my one weakness, Kiyo. And I wanted to be your weakness. But that will never be now that you are true mates with the fae. So, in lieu of being your weakness, I now own your weakness. Both of them. The fae bitch and the jade. I had the coven steal the pendant from the museum in Osaka last night.
“I do not want your death. Even now. But the fae will remain here with me,” she announced proudly. Arrogantly. “And you will leave Japan. No arguments, no fighting … or I will stick iron through the fae’s heart before I smash the jade to pieces.”
A loud grunt stopped Kiyo from lunging forward to rip out Sakura’s heart. Their eyes shot toward the sound to see Haruto and Daiki both dropping to their knees, their bodies loosening like their strings had been cut.
They sprawled forward lifelessly, and a figure behind them stepped into the torchlight.
A stunning redhead stared placidly at them, Daiki’s and Haruto’s hearts clenched in her hands.
Astra.
Sakura’s scream of grief wrenched Kiyo out of his stunned stupor.
“While I appreciate your expeditiousness in removing the other wolves from the picture,” Astra said to Kiyo, “I’m beginning to grow impatient with this conversation while my sister is in torment.”
Realizing what Sakura did not, that they were in the presence of a far more powerful enemy, Kiyo blurred toward Niamh, falling at her side. His fist wrapped around the dagger in her lower back. He tugged it out, his stomach lurching at how deeply embedded it had been.
“Komorebi,” he murmured, throwing the dagger away. Kiyo leaned down, brushing her hair off her face. “Komorebi, wake up.”
“A-a-wake,” she replied hoarsely, barely audible. “C-can’t move.”
Fuck!
He glanced over his shoulder at the piercing howl that echoed around the basement.
A black wolf, much smaller than Kiyo, bared its teeth as it prowled toward Astra.
Sakura.
His eyes searched the floor near Sakura’s clothes, but he couldn’t see the gleam of gold and green from the pendant.
They’d have to leave it.
“Come on.” He slid his arms under his mate. Ignoring the ache from his own wounds, he swung Niamh up into his arms and eyed the exit—
A shimmer of gold flew up in front of them.
He turned and another wall appeared.
And another.
And another, until
he and Niamh were trapped in a magical cage.
“What’s happening?” she mumbled wearily against his throat.
He kicked at the barrier and it hit back with such impact, it took him to the ground and Niamh with him. She cried out in pain and his heart splintered.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Astra yelled as she blurred out of Sakura’s way.
She was toying with the wolf.
Tell her to bite Astra, Niamh’s voice sounded stronger in his mind. He looked down at her to find her staring out at the fae and wolf.
“No. It’s not safe for Sakura to know about that.”
Niamh turned her head slowly, like it weighed a ton. Astra will kill her.
“I know,” he responded grimly.
Shaking her head, Niamh pushed against his hold. He grunted as she hit the wound on his hip. She tensed. “Kiyo?”
“I’m okay.”
She fumbled for his shirt, revealing his silver-inflicted wound. Then her eyes flew to his throat where the cut ached the worst. “What happened here?”
“One of Sakura’s wolves tried to decapitate me with a silver katana. Now let’s go.”
Just like that, the color returned to her cheeks. Dark circles remained under her eyes, but the indignant rage flooding out of her fueled a renewed strength.
Niamh pushed to her feet as Astra laughed gaily.
They looked out of the cage to see her traveling from one spot to another to avoid Sakura who grew more aggressive with frustration. Niamh raised her hands against the barrier. Energy pulsed from her like a light bulb at the end of its life.
“Niamh—”
She shook her head, fierce determination filling her expression. “How many times did they wound you?”
“Niamh?”
“How many?” She glared at him.
“There’s a cut on my back as well.”
At that, she shocked the shit out of him by throwing her head back on a scream of pure anger. That release was like the doors of a dam breaking open. Golden light streamed out of her in warm, pulsating waves.