Sylvia Frost - Heartbound (Moonfate Serial Book 4)

by Sylvia Frost

  “Pain doesn’t make you stronger, Artemis.” She looks up straight into the harsh fluorescents, as if the light will cleanse her. “God, trust me, it doesn’t.”

  A single tear blossoms at the corner of her eye, but doesn’t fall. She tries to wipe it away with the back of her hand, but the handcuffs make the motion awkward. “Early in my career, I was assigned to take down a cadre of drug-dealing weresharks. Our order was to kill the leader.” Lola shrugs, but the handcuffs limit her range of motion. “But it was bad intelligence. When we arrived at the marina, only the weremates were there. And their children, of course…”

  My heart feels like stone. “I thought werebeasts don’t like to be apart from their weremates.”

  Lola clucks her tongue. “I thought Cooper told you that not all weremate bonds are the same. He died for that information, Artemis. For noticing you and speaking with you. And you don’t even remember.”

  “You ordered Cooper killed.” I swallow. “Not me. I’m not responsible for that.”

  “I saved your life,” she says solemnly. “If he had told his boss that he had found a suspiciously strong weremate named Artemis, and he would have, it wouldn’t be Lawrence they took, but you.”

  “Why? What do they want with me?”

  Lola ignores me, still looking up, as if the ceiling is going to part so that she can fly away, far, far away from here. “The order was changed. Kill the leader’s mate. Send a message. It was easy. They were on the deck of the yacht, but because the child was awake, with a fever, you see…” She trails off, her voice choked. “I couldn’t get a good sightline from my position across the bay. She kept holding him and rocking him. But I was running out of time. So I took the shot anyway. I hit the child. He was dead on impact.” She shuts her eyes and flinches, as if the bullet she fired all those years ago has finally turned around and has been refracted toward her.

  I am too shocked to do anything.

  “I never wanted to kill an innocent. I thought I would be doing good. Protecting people.” Lola gives a choked exhale, the last of her sobs passing like the final gusts of wind in a dying storm. “Can you imagine how much I hated them, Artemis? The FBSI? For what they had made me become?”

  My shock gives way to rage, slow and steady as bubbling magma.

  “But I’d kill a hundred men if that could keep you from hearing that mother shriek into the dark, salty night, knowing that you had ruined your soul just for the chance to play in a world of gods and monsters.”

  I explode.

  I lurch toward Lola across the table, my whole body on fire with fury, until I’m close enough that I can smell the last waft of her sweet perfume hiding the stench of her wounds. My fingers itch to wrap around her throat. I will not let her make this my fault. I will not accept the blame. Not anymore. I hold myself back from strangling her, but only just.

  “I’m not sorry I did all of this for you, Artemis.” She doesn’t blink. “If you want to hurt me, go ahead. But I’m not the one who killed your parents. And while I gave the order for him to be taken, I’m not the one who’s going to kill Lawrence.”

  My whole body feels hollow, the echo of her words whistling through me. Kill Lawrence? Oh god. The tears come hot and thick down my cheeks and there is nothing relieving about them. My shoulders shake, and I clench my hands so I don’t dig my fingernails into her flesh. “Who, then?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “No.” I can’t control myself any longer. I grab her by the collar, wrenching her toward me, as if my werecall will be more effective at close range. “You know, so tell me.”

  She closes her eyes. I feel her pulse against my hands as they close around her neck. She sighs, like she’s at the dentist. Like this is just a procedure. Like dying is some mildly unpleasant thing she’ll have to do to make herself better.

  “Who?” I shriek.

  But she’ll never be better. Not until she tells me. I squeeze.

  Lola doesn’t cry out, or answer. All I can hear is the humming of the florescent lights until behind me the door swings open with a clang.

  “Artemis.” In the mirror to my right I see him. Orion. His eyes are wide with horror.

  I let Lola go, the bones of my fingers turning to liquid as I slide back across the table and into the chair. The metal of the back of the chair is freezing against my burning skin. Behind me Orion’s once powerful aura now seems weak in the face of my overwhelming grief and rage. What was once my whole universe now feels like nothing more than a speck.

  What have I done?

  I watch numbly as O’Mailey enters the room too. “That’s enough, Ms. Williams,” he says. Then he and another agent escort Lola from the room. If she looks at me, I’m not aware of it. I focus on the metal top of the table. Searching for some kind of pattern. Some kind of answer.

  After the door shuts behind O’Mailey and Lola, Orion’s hand reaches out for my shoulder.

  I jerk away. I wish he had let me kill her. Maybe if she died, the part inside of me that feels that she’s right, that I have lost a part of my soul, would die, too.

  “I would’ve stopped you sooner. I should’ve…” He retracts his hand, but doesn’t go to the door. Instead he pulls out the chair opposite me. He moves stiffly, and when his hands fold over each other on the table, they tremble. “Gods.”

  “I wish you hadn’t.”

  “I don’t think you really do,” he says.

  Neither of us looks at the other, each of us stuck in our own private hell of regret.

  “While you were interrogating Lola, O’Mailey was filling me in on the full scope of what they had discovered from the information stick. They didn’t have a name for Cooper’s boss, but they had a picture.” Orion swallows. “It’s my father,” he says, his voice as cold and emotionless as a star at the end of the universe. “He’s the one who kidnapped Lawrence. He’s the one who murdered your parents.”

  12

  “I didn’t know,” Orion says. “But I suppose it makes sense. You wouldn’t be bloodbound to me unless either I or someone from my family killed your parents.”

  Startled more than anything else, I look up from my hands. Orion’s face greets me, as haggard as my own was when I looked in the mirror before questioning Lola.

  “But he should’ve been dead. He should’ve been dead the moment my mother died. I thought…” His flickering, colorful eyes are dull and remote. When he speaks next it’s in a monotone. “As for the bloodbinding, I thought… I thought we were different.”

  He expects me to be angry with him, I know. Maybe I should be. But I’m not. Exhaustion from the car wreck, from last night and from every other hard night before it clenches in my muscles and then releases. I slump farther into the chair, feeling light and lost. “Orion,” I say.

  “I wanted to believe he survived because he loved me, that he needed to take care of me. And that once he couldn’t any longer, he died.” His lips twist into a grimace worse than the one he wore after he was shot. “Weak human emotions. No, it seems he was only hoping he could create a new mate through bloodbinding. And when he found out that he couldn’t, that killing your parents had only made a mate for his son, he tortured him. Locked him up in a room filled with silver. Then when he heard you had died, he left his son for dead too.”

  It doesn’t escape me how Orion doesn’t refer to himself as his father’s son. Funny how seeing Orion’s pain douses the anger burning inside of me, like a thunderstorm drowning a wildfire. It’s hard to be angry when he’s hurting, when I can see myself reflected in his eyes hurting too.

  He sniffs once, even though he’s shed no tears, and stands up abruptly. “I can understand if you want to leave me,” he says. “I won’t blame you.”

  I stand up too, but don’t stop there. Instead, I walk softly over to him, my hand finding his cheek. When I stroke it, my fingers come back wet with his tears. Then, carefully, I envelop him in an embrace, one limb at a time so that he won’t start. “I’m not going t
o leave you, Orion.”

  With each centimeter closer that I come to him, some of my own anger fades away, and by the time I’ve nestled myself in his arms, the hole that was splitting me in two only a few minutes ago feels small enough that one day I’ll be able to stitch it up. Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe not even next year. But one day.

  I still want to shoot Lola for everything she’s done, but I don’t have to.

  Funny, all along I’ve thought loving Orion would turn me into a monster. Maybe it almost did, but it’s also the only thing that’s kept me human. I do love him, I realize. I press kisses to his still damp cheek, into his star-white hair, and to his forehead. He trembles at my touch, and our bodies arch and twist toward each other like two vines.

  “I love you,” I say, and my heart feels as fragile as the smile that blooms across his lips. Part of me doesn’t want to kiss him for fear of ruining his tentative expression, but I can’t resist. I need the taste of him on my tongue. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I love you, too, Artemis,” he says, more of the exhalation of a pardoned man’s prayer than a real confession.

  But I don’t mind, as long as the warmth of his body crowds out the cold of my bloodlust. I shake in his arms. We’re both unsteady, but somehow together, we manage to remain standing.

  Lola was wrong. She thought that knowing that Orion was connected to the deaths of my parents would make me hate him.

  But it’s that very thing that makes me love him. Makes me understand him. Makes me realize that my desire to protect him isn’t my weakness, it’s my strength. The longer he holds me, the deeper our embrace becomes. He buries his face in the crook of my neck, bending down, inhaling my scent as if he could lose himself in my presence. I feel so much gratitude for this moment, for the beauty of it. For him.

  This is what my parents had. This kind of deep affection. It won’t last forever—but nothing does. I have to protect it, not by defending it with a gun, but by defending it inside myself. By keeping this feeling safe within my heart and letting nothing destroy it. Not anger. Not grief. And not revenge.

  My truest power isn’t my ability to control others.

  It’s the ability to control myself.

  I know what I have to do.

  After we sigh one final time in unison, I gently part myself from the embrace. “We have to stop your father,” I say.

  “The FBSI won’t let either of us anywhere near their SWAT teams. Not after all of this,” Orion says.

  “Who says we ask their permission?”

  13

  We run through the specifics of our plan during the drive back from FBSI headquarters. It’s a miracle they let us leave, considering everything. But neither Orion nor I have actually technically committed a crime. And I suppose O’Mailey is grateful that we’re not trying to embroil ourselves further in his official assault on Letchworth State Park. We tell him we’re going to visit Stefania at the hospital, and it isn’t entirely a lie.

  What we work out is this. Tonight is the full moon, which means that if Orion’s father is going to be doing any kind of bloodbinding, he’ll want to wait until then. Chances are, if he’s killing Lawrence, that’s what he’s going to kill him for. The next question is where. There are three waterfalls in Letchworth. When we check Tracker we see that the bulk of the red dots denoting werebeasts are located near the upper falls. No doubt that’s where the FBSI will go.

  But that seems too easy. The werebeast rebels must know that they’re being tracked. They wouldn’t gather in such great numbers otherwise. Which leaves the lower and middle falls. As the middle falls is located near the lodge and the parking lot, we rule that out, and decide to mount our attack on the lower falls.

  I’ll use my werecall to disable Orion’s father, who in turn will have authority over the werebeasts around him. Unfortunately, Orion won’t be able to help, as his father has seniority over him within their family structure. His werecall won’t work. Instead Orion will find Lawrence, and we’ll leave the rest to the FBSI.

  There’s only one problem. To get to Orion’s father, we’ll no doubt need to sneak past whatever guards they’ve posted. The best way to do this is to have a scout. Which means we need a third person.

  Someone crazy enough to go against the FBSI.

  We need Cal.

  Thankfully, as she’s on Tracker herself, we know where she is. But neither Orion nor I have any idea how we’re going to convince her to come. Still, that doesn’t mean we won’t try.

  Which brings us to Strong-Memorial hospital.

  All of Rochester University’s campus is clean and green, built mostly in neoclassical red brick, and the hospital is no exception. Orion and I enter the main hallway holding hands. As the smells of disinfectant and sickness wash over me, his touch tethers me to reality. To my purpose.

  When we reach the receptionist, Orion asks the first question. “We’re here to see our friend, Stefania Strike. She was in a car accident earlier.”

  The receptionist looks up from typing, narrows her eyes at us, then returns to the computer. “I’m sorry, visiting hours are over, and even if they weren’t, she’s in intensive care right now. Family members only.”

  Orion grunts and fishes a badge out of his pocket and flashes it at her.

  The receptionist raises an eyebrow. “Do you have a warrant? That would impress me more than a badge. Especially a badge that’s probably stolen.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Orion snaps shut the leather badge case and shoves it into his pocket. I can sense that he’s probably too proud to use his werecall. And too worried about seeming suspicious.

  “A werewolf, an agent of the FBSI? You’re lucky I don’t call the real FBSI to verify your story.” The receptionist flips around her computer monitor to face us. On it is the classic interface for Tracker, where Orion’s dot hovers right over the gray square marked “Strong Memorial Hospital.” As she turns the monitor back around, I notice a sticker on the top of her screen. It takes me a moment to realize why it’s familiar. It’s the same picture that was on the magnet I found at the gun shop, with the same text.

  “May the Williams family be always in our prayers and may justice rain down upon their killers.”

  The last time I saw that magnet, it made me angry and sad. But now, after everything, staring at my parents’ goofy expressions and my adolescent awkwardness, it almost makes me laugh. It’s ridiculous, this woman refusing to believe that Orion could be FBSI when he is, all the while entirely ignorant of the fact that the woman standing next to him is Artemis Williams, the very girl she probably claims to champion.

  I shake my head and, before she can protest, take a nice deep breath. Then, in a calmer, gentler tone than I’ve used before with my werecall, I say, “You’re going to show us where Stefania Strike is.”

  The woman’s brown eyes widen, the nostrils of her large nose flaring. “Oh.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  She nods, straightens some of the papers on her desk, and says, “All right, fine. She’s up on the fourth floor. I’ll take you there.”

  Orion follows her immediately, but I have one more thing to do. I lean over the edge of the desk and grab at her monitor. Then I rip the sticker from the edge of it and stuff it into my pocket.

  They’re my parents. Not hers.

  14

  Although all werecreatures will die without their mates, and bear the matemark from the moment they meet their beloved, the weremates’ experience varies greatly from species to species. For birds and cats, the weremate might go years before they grow their matemark. For bears it takes minutes. Wolves, usually only a few months.

  Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and Their Mates

  By Dr. Nina M. Strike

  We find Cal in Stefania’s room, and we see her before she sees us. The walls of the ICU rooms are transparent and inside is a menagerie of machines. If Stefania were awake, I’m sure she’d feel right at home. Tubes sna
ke into her skin and up her nose, and a white sheet covers her body up to her chin. Cal is sitting beside her, holding her hand, rubbing it gently in time with the beeping of the machine. I wouldn’t call the soft expression on her face a smile so much as a wish for one. Her lips are puckered, and her eyes are wide and liquid, more gold than yellow.

  I reach for the handle, but Orion puts out a hand to stop me. “Wait, Little Mate.”

  My hand drops off the knob.

  Inside, Stefania begins to stir. Small movements at first, the crinkling of her sheet as her breaths deepen and her body turns. I bet there were even smaller motions Orion noticed that I didn’t, and that’s why he stopped me.

  Cal stiffens and stands up from her chair.

  Then Stefania’s eyes open and she reaches out a hand. She’s saying something, I think, although I can’t hear what.

  Cal does, but whatever it is, it doesn’t keep her from moving toward the wall. It’s hard to say if it’s wonder or horror in her eyes.

  Stefania says something again, and this time Cal returns to her side. Then she bows her head over Stefania’s outstretched hand and kisses it tenderly, murmuring something over and over again. Maybe Stefania’s name. Maybe “I’m sorry.”

  “Her mate,” I say with wonder. “Is that possible? Could Stefania be Cal’s mate?”

  “No,” Orion says. “She told me that her mate died years ago.”

  I shake my head. “No, but it fits. Weremates can only be female. Cal didn’t come with us to the tower before. She freaked out when Stefania got in the car accident. She wanted to kill you, Orion.”

  “Cal wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “Really?” I ask. “Then what about her whole speech on the doorstep? About you having no idea what her life was really like? And wouldn’t she worry that you wouldn’t approve if she told you? Wouldn’t it be better if her mate was just missing or dead? Aren’t same-sex relationships frowned upon in the werebeast community? Isn’t that why Cooper was killed?”