The Marked and the Broken
Page 28
I fight the smile that wants to creep across my face and work hard not to laugh. I picture a whole van full of Brun look-alikes chasing the Silas pack wolves around, and I can’t wait to do everything in my power to make that happen. “Absolutely,” I assure Alpha Volkov. “As soon as we get back to Solace, we’ll speak with Alpha Silas and get things rolling.”
He pulls Torrez into another rough hug, and I don’t miss the look of irritation that Torrez sends me over his shoulder. I chuckle and then spot a familiar blond head of hair. I thank Fedor again and ask him to pass it along to Manya, and then I excuse myself from Fedor’s description of all of his eligible bachelorettes, to slowly make my way to where Sorik is sitting in a chair next to Vaughn. Seeing my dad again makes my whole chest ache, and I take some deep breaths as I approach them.
“Hey,” I greet Sorik when I get closer, and he pauses whatever he was saying and looks over at me with a smile.
“Hey there. How are you feeling?” he asks me, and I return his smile.
“I’m good, I should be asking you the same thing. Siah said you were hurt.”
Sorik waves away my concern. “It was nothing a little magic couldn’t fix,” he teases with a wink, and he turns to watch Siah make his way towards us. Sorik’s smile turns beaming as he takes in the runes all over Siah’s arms and hands, and he turns to me, radiating pure happiness.
“It looks like congratulations are in order,” he tells us, and I chuckle at the bashful smile that sneaks across Siah’s face.
He clears his throat. “Thank you,” Siah finally tells him, and he reaches over and takes my hand.
“Chosen, and by Grier’s daughter.” Sorik shakes his head in happy disbelief, but I see a hint of sadness in his eyes. “I’m overjoyed for you, friend, and I’m grateful to see some good come from all the bad.” Sorik looks away for a moment, and I can practically feel the loss and loneliness that covers him like a cloak.
I feel like I’m intruding on his pain uninvited, so I pull my gaze away and let Sorik be alone with his emotions for a minute. I focus my attention on Vaughn and work to ignore the stab of sadness in my chest when I take in his vacant look. I’m not sure what to do, so I just stare at him as he stares at nothing.
“He follows commands, oddly enough,” Sorik announces, and I look over to find him watching Vaughn. “If you tell him to eat, he will. If you tell him to walk, he will. But he doesn’t respond or show any indication that he can hear me or knows who I am. I activated the runes behind my ear to talk in his head, but he doesn’t talk back. When I share how I feel with the runes on my chest, he stays exactly as he is now.”
Listening to Sorik talk about Vaughn as his compeer, someone he’s connected to through runes and magic and love, hits me deeply. I picture any of my Chosen in this position, one of them lost while the others try to find him, and it breaks my fucking heart. It makes Vaughn as a person so much more real to me and not just this figment in my head with Lachlan’s face and my eyes.
I look at him and know he’s my dad, but that’s just an empty title to me at this point. I don’t really know what it is to have a dad, and so there’s no emotion other than maybe loss that I can really associate with the lost man in the chair in front of me. I know he’s Lachlan’s twin, but I don’t know what his personality was like. Would he have resented my existence like Lachlan did? Would he have looked at me and felt the absence of his mate? Or would he have seen me, his daughter?
There’s so much I don’t know and don’t really have the capability to process when it comes to Vaughn, and I’m just not sure how to see or understand who he is to me. But as I watch Sorik interact with him, I can see who Vaughn was to Sorik, and I can understand and relate to that because of how my Chosen are with each other.
“What do you think we should do, Sorik?” I ask, my voice quiet and my eyes trained on the details of Vaughn’s face. “Do you think he can come back from whatever Adriel did to him?”
Sorik watches Vaughn for a moment and then looks at me. “I don’t know. All I do know is I’m not ready to give up yet.”
I nod and give him a small reassuring smile. Sorik knew Vaughn better than any of us did, and it makes sense to defer to him about what he thinks we should do.
“Maybe the others will know,” Sorik says offhandedly, his eyes searching Vaughn’s face for something.
“Others?” I query, not sure what he’s talking about.
Sorik stares at me expectantly for a second, and then realization dawns in his eyes. “I never got to tell you.” He slaps a palm to his forehead. “I could have sworn I said something in the cell, but I just realized that I didn’t. Do you remember when Siah and I first tracked you down to warn you?” I nod. “I told you that I was working on something to help keep you safe.”
I nod again. “Yeah, but you didn’t say what.”
“Grier used to tell us stories about what it was like where she grew up. She never told us specifics as far as the location, just that there was a city of Sentinels and they kept themselves hidden for reasons that are obvious,” he explains.
A strange feeling starts buzzing through me, and it’s an odd combination of adrenaline, anticipation, and shock.
“I never thought much about it until I saw you in the club that night. And when Faron took you, I knew then that you would only be safe in that city. So I started hunting for it. I took what I knew from Grier and combined that with what Adriel shared from when his brother became Chosen. I mapped things out and went searching.” Sorik pauses for a minute, and it’s all I can do not to shake him and make him keep going.
“I found it,” he tells me, and his tone and gaze are filled with the same shock and awe that mine are. “I didn’t know if I ever would, but I did. As soon as I saw the barrier, I knew what it protected, and I immediately turned around to go get you. I came here to let Siah know, but you were already here. That was when we came up with the plan to break you out. I was going to take you home.”
Home.
The word moves through me like a warm breeze, and I try to reach out and touch it, but it flutters just out of reach. I’m not the last, I tell myself, and the words feel hopeful on my tongue, but my chest is heavy with uncertainty and nervous hesitation. I lean into Siah and he wraps an arm around me as I bringing my shocked gaze back to Sorik’s.
“Holy shit,” I finally squeak out, and an understanding smile breaks out over his face.
“You, of course, don’t have to go now that Adriel isn’t a threat to you, but if you want to, I’d be honored to show you the way.”
I activate the runes on my ring finger, and Siah jerks a little from the jolt it gives him. I shoot him an apologetic smile and realize we need to start working with him right away on his runes. In less than a minute, I’m surrounded by the rest of my Chosen. They loom over us, looking at me and my still shocked face, and wait patiently to be filled in on whatever is going on. I clear my throat and look up at each of them.
“If everyone is cool with it, I’d like to leave first thing tomorrow and follow Sorik to the city of Sentinels that he found.”
Their faces light up with surprise and they look from me to Sorik and back. There’s a moment of pause, and then emotion makes my chest tight as they swallow down the millions of questions I see in their eyes and each of them voice a resounding, “We’ll follow you anywhere.”
The End of Book 3
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Also by Ivy Asher
The Lost Sentinel Series
The Lost and the Chosen Book 1
Awakened and Betrayed Book 2
Found and Forged Book 4
Standalones
April’s Fools
Shadowed Wings Series
The Hidden
Book 2 out in January
About the Author
Ivy Asher is addicted to chai, swearing, and laughing a lot—but not in a creepy, laughing alone kind of way. She loves the snow, books, and her family of two humans, and three fur-babies. She has worlds and characters just floating around in her head, and she’s lucky enough to be surrounded by amazing people who support that kind of crazy.