by Lila Felix
“That makes no sense.” I turned the ignition. I was good enough to drive, and after I hung up I was going to make my way back to Knox and… I didn’t know what, but I was going to make it right.
“Your father was my mate. He died. End of story.”
And there it was. The bomb I was expecting, and yet it was nothing like I could have possibly expected. All my life I knew my father freaking left me. My mom, the single mom by asshole, not choice. What the heck was I supposed to do with that information?
“Died?” I swallowed, the words bitter in my mouth.
“I’m sorry I never told you.” Sincerity flowed through the phone and right past me because this was not something to simply let slide by. My father, who I painted as this evil person all these years was dead. Not gone with some side chick in every town gone, but six feet under gone.
“Sorry?” My voice cracked. “Fuck you, Mom. Fuck everyone with all their stupid secrets. I need to go.”
It was all too much. The entire day was too much. I needed… I had no idea what I needed, but I needed it now. Actually I knew what I needed, and as stupid as it sounded to even my own ears, it was Knox’s arms wrapped around me.
“I love you.” I heard her say as I hung up the phone, threw it on the passenger side floor, and began to back out onto the road. If my inner navigation system was accurate, I could be in Knox’s arms in less than five minute. I didn’t care if begging was required. Whatever it took to get a second chance, I was willing to do it.
Unfortunately, in all my determination I forgot to do one simple thing: look for traffic. The last thing I saw before everything went black was a light blinding me as the sound of metal crumpling filled my ears.
15
Knox
There wasn’t a dish in my house that hadn’t been smashed in the time since Kallie left. I could’ve easily blamed it on the Mate Craze, which felt like an infection, that while hovering in Kallie’s presence had now settled into my bone marrow for the long haul.
It didn’t matter. None of it fucking mattered without her in my life. This house would rot beneath my feet. Earth would keep turning along with my mind turning to ash and beast. Her life would go on, and one day she wouldn’t think of me anymore, maybe when Rhi reminded her of that spring break where she visited that small town.
I pushed the refrigerator over just to prove my point, watching the contents spill out, like my sanity would spill out sooner than later.
One day I would simply turn into my dragon and never turn back.
He would rather I found Kallie.
My dragon was clawing me open from the inside, begging me to get free, begging me to bring her back. He could do what he wanted—chew on my bones, gnaw at my organs—he wasn’t getting his way this time, and the beast would just have to deal with it. His vision and words to me were clouded by his rage and his undying mourning for the mate that could’ve completed our existence.
Exhausted from the mental anguish and needing anything to help, I laid on the floor, cool and inviting, to clear my head. There, I could close my eyes against the pressing pain between my temples and the wringing inside of my chest.
A vision of Kallie came to my mind. The tears rivering down her face. The impact of my words grasping her consciousness. The betrayal was written in her stare and in the cries from her throat.
If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought the female really did love me and wanted to be my mate, not to save me, but because she wanted a life with me.
What else was I supposed to do? I wasn’t going to do that to her. I loved her. When you love someone, you do what’s best for them, despite yourself.
One day she would’ve hated me.
Whether it came with old age or tired bones, she would look at me one day, and maybe not out loud, but she would say to herself that she should’ve run while she could. She should’ve never come to this town. She should’ve never gotten in my truck or sat at the table with me that night at the diner.
When she looked at her mate, the only thing she would be able to see and feel would be regret. It would eat her alive.
I would look in her eyes and see the pain. She would stop looking at me the way she used to, or avoid eye contact altogether.
There would be a space between us in the bed.
Everything would change. And after everything she gave, I would’ve lost her to regret anyway.
I couldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t allow it.
With my eyes still closed, I felt the jolt of sadness sink down further, the sensation crept to my chest, to my neck and made my visible scales burn like I had dipped them into hellfire. In the reflection of my glass door, I saw the scales glowing, shimmering from teal to red, the colors that signified my rank as Alpha to this clan. Without a mate, that would be over, too. Samson would take over even though my father thought he was incapable of putting the clan before himself.
“What the hell?” I yelled out to nothing but the walls of my home.
For a few minutes I lay there, flopping on the cedar planks like a dying fish. I reached inside myself to connect with my dragon within, who was in just as great of pain, if not more.
What is it?
Pain.
Pain from where? What is happening to us?
Somehow, I wrestled myself onto my hands and knees and tried to fight the pain. I needed to shift, maybe this was the Mate Craze taking its full effect, the madness seeping into my marrow. Already, she was probably getting further and further away from me and this was my punishment finally fulfilling its vow.
The raw undertaking took hours until my dragon pulled me out with three words.
Not us, her.
There was no translation required. I didn’t need to verify what he was saying or why. It simply clicked.
My mate was hurting. My writhing was hers. My pain was hers. My sinking into the blackness of unknowing belonged to her heart.
No matter what happened earlier in the day, there was no way I would stand for her hurting.
I wretched myself off the ground, found my phone, and called Derrick, one of the hidden guards at the entrance to the town.
“Yes, Alpha.”
“Did Kallie leave this town?”
“Yes, Sir. She left about an hour or so ago.”
“Headed which direction?”
“West, Sir.”
“She’s in trouble. Leave your post, follow the direction she took and find her. I don’t care how long it takes. Go!”
Derrick would be able to get to her way faster than me. I had to pull myself together. My mate needed me now.
I pulled on a shirt, only to cover my scales, and got onto my bike, zig-zagging through the town with enough speed to warrant Samson dropping his food at the diner to see what I was doing.
But, I wasn’t stopping for anyone.
After getting out of the town, I went the way Derrick said she’d gone. The treads of my truck tires, her truck tires, could be seen in the dirt. I could smell the light scent of her on the wind. Not enough to give me a good enough indication of what was happening to her, but enough to know that I was at least on the right track.
It was when I went through a crossroads and didn’t smell her anymore that I knew something had gone wrong right at that spot.
Except now, her scent was mixed with blood and something else I couldn’t put my finger on.
“Sir, something happened here,” Derrick said, when I got off my bike. He was already there, but with my tunnel vision, I hadn’t seen him.
“Search this area. There has to be some clue.”
We looked from the road to the trees. The swerve of tires was apparent, but other than that, the remains of the incident were gone.
“Here, Alpha. This looks like paint from your truck.”
When I turned to see what he was talking about, I expected a piece of metal or something else from my truck. But instead, what I saw caused all the blood to rush from my face and my dragon to tense in anger and
hurt.
The paint Derrick spoke of was rubbed on the side of a pine tree, about four or five feet up the trunk.
I hoped to the Creator that Kallie wasn’t still in the truck when it hit that tree so high up.
I’d kill whoever did this to her.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I picked it up, thinking Samson or someone else had gotten word of the situation and found her.
Please let someone have found her and this was all a mistake.
“What?” I barked into the phone.
“Oh? Not so sweet now, huh Alpha?” In my blind rage I didn’t recognize the voice.
“Who is this?”
A cackle, along with some background noises filtered through the phone. “Come on, lover boy. I know you know your mate’s best friend’s voice. Don’t give me that shit.”
Rhi? What in the world was she talking about?
“Rhi? Where’s Kallie? What is going on?”
“Give me a break. Do me a favor. Ditch the little security boy and come to the place where your grandfather’s ashes were scattered. I know you know where that place is. Oh, and while we’re at it, don’t bring anyone else. If you do, your little mate will die knowing that you rejected her, didn’t want her in your life.”
“Don’t you fucking touch her!” I roared into the phone.
“I don’t really have to. It looks like she’s dying right here before my eyes. All that blood. You’d better hurry.”
There was no time to waste. I could feel Kallie’s energy fading while I talked to her best friend, or who she thought was her best friend. I tucked my phone into my pocket and jumped back on the Ducate, telling Derrick, mentally, to go home and not to tell anyone what he’d seen.
My knees treaded against the rocks and dirt roads as I took the turns at more than a hundred miles an hour. The place she spoke of, the place that my grandfather’s ashes were scattered, was at the very top of the mountain. It was a sacred place to our elders and to our clan. Every wedding, funeral, and anything else important took place there.
How dare she use it for such betrayal.
I nearly killed myself several times getting to that place, but by the time I did, best friend or not, if Rhi was responsible for Kallie being hurt, I would unleash my dragon and rip her head off myself.
“Come on, Kallie. Hang in there. Don’t you give up on me, darlin.”
Even though we hadn’t been properly mated, I prayed that maybe my words would get through and she would hang on. We had clan healers who could do double what traditional doctors could in half the time.
I could get there in time.
I had to get there in time.
I hadn’t even gotten off the bike fully before I began calling her name.
“Over here, Knox. We’re just getting started.” The voice belonged to Rhi, but the only thing I could see was Kallie, strapped to a pole, standing up with logs and rocks encircling her. Her mouth was gagged with a piece of cloth and her hands were bound with rope. There was something poured over her head. When I realized what my knees gave a little.
It was gasoline.
Like Rhi intended to burn my mate at the stake like some antiquated Salem ritual.
Now I was really going to kill her.
I approached Kallie, not caring where Rhi was, but when I did, I was stopped, as though there was a transparent wall between me and my mate. I tried again, over and over in vain, determined to release her, though it shocked me every time I tried.
“Can you please stop? You’re embarrassing yourself. Damn, I mean, you’re kind of embarrassing me. You can get her down. We can be done with all of this really quickly. Wanna know how?”
16
Kallie
Darkness. Pain. Darkness. Pain. Darkness. Pain. I couldn’t process anything around me except for those two things. One moment I was sitting in a truck, the next I was… holy crap, I was dead. I was hit by another car and was killed. In all my imaginings of what death was, this wasn’t one of them.
As a child, I pictured bright lights and angels swooping down to take me to the clouds. As a teen, I thought it probably would be less dramatic, but still pleasant. As a college student, I pretty much decided it was going to be like going to sleep but without the waking up. This pain and darkness, no this wasn’t at all what I had anticipated.
“Roll over,” Rhi called to me in a loud whisper. Maybe I wasn’t dead. That didn’t explain how I was here, in the dark, and in so much pain. I blinked rapidly hoping to adjust to the darkness quicker, but with no success. Wherever we were, it was dark, the kind of darkness we rarely saw in the city. “I said, roll over.”
“Dead?” I asked just to be sure. As much as a relief as the whole not being dead thing was, the pain and darkness had me instilled with just as much fear and anxiety. This was wrong. The entire scene around me was just plain wrong.
“No.” Her voice cracked as she spoke. That was not good. Not. At. All. “Not yet, but you need to get up.”
I wished I could see her to see if she was, as her voice indicated, crying. She often cried out of frustration and sometimes out of rejection, both of which I understood and could deal with. This, this didn’t sound like those kind of tears. These tears sounded like they came out of a place of fear, and that was something I’d never seen in my friend before.
“Rhi, what the heck happened?” I tried to roll as she asked, but the pain radiated beyond the massive headache and into my shoulder. Freaking perfect.
“About that. I kind of rammed into your truck.” If I had been close enough to her, I would’ve… I don’t know what I would’ve done, but rage was filling me to the point of surpassing the pain. Deep down I knew I had to keep her talking. I couldn’t move my arms apart, as evident with my attempt at rolling which meant I needed her, which sucked since she was the reason I was there. “On purpose,” she said the last part lower, probably hoping I didn’t quite here it. Not that I could blame her because if we were anywhere but this dark space with my arms bound, I had no doubt my hands would be around her throat.
“Wh-wh-why would you do that?” What I really wanted to say, and by the force of will power and self-preservation, somehow managed to completely avoid, was How the eff did I not know you were evil? Sure I knew she wasn’t like me in so many ways and she made far different life choices than I did, but that never lead me to believe she was evil. I felt bad for her, sympathized with her, and on occasion wanted to smack her, but never thought she was capable of doing something at all like this. She rammed into Knox’s truck, with me in it, on purpose. It made no sense.
“Long story short… my parents.”
I tried again to roll over, biting my lip as I did as to not scream out in agony. If she were whispering, there was a reason. A reason I now could name. Her parents. Unlike Rhi, I had thought of them as evil on more than one occasion. Mostly for how they treated their daughter. Mostly, but not all.
The first time I met them, they gave me the squeamies. Rhi and I were roomies, but hadn’t quite crossed into the friend zone yet, although I was questioning whether we had ever truly become friends right now. There was something off about them, almost slimy. I’d felt that feeling only once in my short life and it was with a fellow at the local library. Turned out he was a perve who preyed upon kids.
I assumed it was something similar with one of her parents and was glad they were only going to be around for one afternoon. Later on, I attested it to them being awful to their daughter. Now. Now I was guessing what I really sensed both times was evil. Freaking brilliant. If only I could’ve known that back then and could’ve avoided all of this, whatever this was.
“I’m gonna need the longer story.”
“Fine, but roll over here so I can get you untied.” So Rhi was as blind as I was and didn’t know I was even attempting to roll already. That wasn’t good.
“So you can what, try to kill me again?” I was only half joking. Part of me knew she wasn’t really trying to kill me. I hoped
.
“No. So then you can untie me and we can save Knox.”
“Better get to that story.” I grunted as I rolled over again. If my ears were fully functioning, I had only a couple more rotations before we’d be in touching distance.
“I’m a witch.”
How did I not know this? I mean, I knew she was off and different. I also knew she sometimes did odd new age garbly gook as I had teased her for it, but part of me always knew it was more. True, I was blind to the paranormal world in many ways, never believing that dragons were a thing for instance, but I always knew there were witches. That was something my mother and Gran had mentioned in passing over the years and I just took as truth. In my imagining they were the gallivanting naked in the woods kind of witches, but their existence was still there.
“Rhi.” I gave my best teacher voice as I rolled once more. She couldn’t just say I’m a witch and stop there. There was so much more going on here than that, to be sure.
“No listen, I’m a witch by birth.” She misinterpreted my frustration as not believing her or thinking she was censoring her use of the word bitch. I took one last roll, unable to hold in my grunt as I did so. “To the left,” she directed, and I used my feet to help move closer to her. “So my parents are awful and made me.”
“Do not tell me your parents made you try to kill me because then I may just kill you instead.” I couldn’t believe she was using the parents-made-me-do-it defense. She often griped about things her parents made her do from which classes to take, to going home mid-week for what she deemed stupid family shit, but to blame them for her actions was too much, even for Rhi.
“No, at first they had me friend you, force my way into your life.” Looking back, that made sense. She seemed to all of a sudden be all places. At first it was annoying and gradually I got used to it, and then well, then we became friends, sort of, kind of. I thought we had become friends, but the whole trying to kill me thing had me reevaluating our entire relationship. “They said you were important and nothing would happen to you.”