by Lola Taylor
Alara didn’t spook when she climbed into the tree house and found her sister waiting there. Somehow, she already knew Izzy was there.
Old velvet pillows with golden tassels and bookcases full of fairy tales decorated the small room, which was only large enough to hold maybe four adults but had seemed like a palace when they were younger and smaller.
Mimicking her sister’s posture and sitting cross-legged, she looked out the little curtained window into the forest.
The silence grew thick, uncomfortable. Alara hadn’t noticed at first how still Izzy had gotten, but the fact that her sister had yet to look at or speak to her hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“You disappointed me,” Izzy finally said quietly. Still not looking at her.
Those words felt like a hammer’s blow to Alara’s heart. “I tried my best.”
“You didn’t fight.”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t!”
Alara blinked at the savagery in Izzy’s ladylike voice. There was something off about it, a snarl, a growl, a gurgle.
Alara’s brows furrowed. “You weren’t there. You’re not here. You don’t know what it’s like, living day after day without you. Knowing I can never bring you guys back, that I’ve failed you.”
“No, sister. You failed me the moment you became a murderer.”
Alara’s neck prickled with icicles.
“I felt it, your enjoyment and satisfaction as you took their lives. Have felt your guilt whenever you remember Father telling you Mother had been killed and you sigh inwardly in relief. You’re evil, after all.”
“No.” Alara shook her head then cleared her throat so she could speak louder. “No, you don’t understand. They were going to kill me.”
“Maybe you should have let them. Done the world a favor.”
“Izzy,” Alara breathed, reeling from the blow. “This isn’t you.”
Izzy’s shoulders shook as she coughed violently. She covered her mouth with her hand, and the metallic tang of fresh blood filled the air. Crimson coated the inside of Izzy’s hand when she pulled it back. Izzy slowly looked at her sister, face pale as death, a dribble of blood spilling out of her mouth. Her eyes were black pits, threatening to suck Alara’s soul into them. “You’re evil, Alara. Look what you did to me. Because the Order couldn’t kill you, they killed me instead.”
Alara scrambled away, standing. “No. No, I didn’t do this. It’s not my fault!”
“It is your fault!” Izzy bellowed in the voice of a demon, also standing. The sunlight outside dried up, chased away by gathering storm clouds. An icy gale ripped through the trees, making the leaves rattle. Izzy pointed to the window. “Look at what you’ve done! Sent all of us to early graves!”
Alara didn’t want to, but she did—she looked.
There, on the ground far below, the earth was stirring. Hands shot out of the damp soil, clawing at the earth as the bodies pulled themselves free.
Alara stopped breathing.
One by one, the corpses stood, covered in dirt and blood.
Blood that she had spilled.
There they were, the men she’d killed back at the plant. And Mother, a large red wound in her chest. On the end was Father, his fine clothes torn to shreds by her claw marks, his neck bent at an odd angle and his throat ripped out. Where the corpses’ eyes should have been sat two empty, black sockets.
“I had a pup and a mate waiting for me at home,” one of the guards said.
“My sick mother will die without me!” another wailed.
“You should have let me kill you,” said her father.
Tears ran down Alara’s face as she walked to the window. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Not sorry enough,” Izzy said, now directly behind her. “Not yet.”
Izzy shoved her, and Alara toppled over the window’s edge, screaming as she plummeted toward the hissing corpses, their bony hands stretched wide to grab her.
She gasped for air, eyes snapping open as she shot up off the gurney. The paramedic immediately went for her. “Calm down, miss. You took quite the blow. Please, lie back down.”
Alara’s scrambled brain quickly took in her surroundings. No darkening forest, no roiling, ominous storm clouds, no vengeful corpses waiting to tear her apart. Just the inside of an ambulance. Which should have worried her, but considering her nightmare, it seemed like a very safe, ordinary place in comparison.
With a long sigh, she lay back down and closed her eyes. God, she was exhausted. And her body hurt all over.
The paramedic checked her vitals again. “Do you remember your name?”
“Alara. Alara Crescent.”
“Do you remember what happened, Alara?”
Not at first, she didn’t. The sound of bending metal, the screech of tires, the sensation of spinning, of falling, all came back to her in a blur. She opened her mouth to speak, but Secret stopped her. Opening her eyes, she said, “Yes. But you won’t.”
Alara seized the paramedic’s head, eyes flashing silver as the bewitchment began. “There’s been a change of plans. We’re not going to a hospital. You’re going to take me home.”
You’d think as many times as Nik had been knocked out, he’d be used to the pain of waking up. The ringing in the ears, the headache, the general “what the fuck?” of it all.
His head bumped against something cushy, not quite as soft as a pillow, and it crinkled when he moved his head, like plastic. The sound of an engine and tires rolling over road were the next things he picked up on. He was in some kind of vehicle, going someplace he probably didn’t want to go.
Now, when you first came to and you didn’t know where the fuck you were, you didn’t open your eyes right away and alert your captor that you were awake. Doing a limb check—dumb as it sounded—he tried discreetly moving his wrists and ankles. They moved all right, but not by much. Something cold and metallic clanked against something else metallic. He didn’t even have to look to know what that sound meant. Someone had handcuffed him to something. Something, something, something…
Stifling a groan, he cracked his eyes open a sliver and squinted against the bright white light shining down on him. Suddenly, someone pulled his eyelids wide open, and he hissed. Fuck, it was as if he were two feet away from the sun, it was so bright. Growling, he jerked his head away.
“Oh, sorry!” said a female voice. The light immediately vanished. “I didn’t realize you were awake.”
When the spots before his eyes cleared, Nik saw an older woman—a Blue Witch—standing there, clad in the uniform of the Underworld’s paramedics. He’d always thought the uniforms were boring as hell, but whatever. He didn’t have to wear one.
Navy-blue button-down tucked into navy-blue pants, with a black belt and black shoes. The letters DPI and a Rod of Asclepius were embroidered in gold thread on the left breast pocket.
As he said, very trendy.
He looked around now. Duh. He was in an ambulance. The squishy, plastic-like thing he was lying on was a stretcher. And because he was so polite, the first thing that popped out of his mouth was, “Where the fuck is my mate, and who the fuck are you?”
“I’m fucking Paramedic Amber Dawson,” the woman said with a wry smile. “And your mate is in the ambulance ahead of us. You can’t sense her? Then again, maybe your senses haven’t fully recovered yet. You both took quite a blow.” She grimaced.
That was an understatement. If by “took quite a blow” she meant “you were hit upside the head with a two-by-four,” then maybe they were on the same page.
Nik immediately nibbled his lip. The bond between him and Alara was still muted.
Damn.
“Don’t worry,” Amber said. “The other paramedics just radioed me and told me your mate was fine.”
“You’ll pardon me if I don’t believe you until I see her.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to be much of an Alpha, or a mate, if you didn’t,” she replied steadily.
He
observed this woman with newfound respect. For a crummy DPI agent, she was all right.
“So it goes without saying we’re heading for a trip to the police station?” Nik said.
“Maybe after we evaluate you at the hospital.” Amber didn’t look up from scribbling on a chart.
Damn. The two last places he wanted to be, because they were both gigantic time sucks. His pack needed him. He knew his Beta could handle things, but still… These fuckers would keep him in a cell forever just to spite him. Or a doctor would want to do X-rays and keep him overnight “just for observation.”
“Hey, I’m feeling fine,” he said. “I’ve been through worse, believe it or not.”
“Not surprising. You are a wolf. We’re still taking both of you to the hospital.”
Hell, he knew he was screwed even before opening his mouth. If Alara was going to the hospital, he definitely wasn’t leaving her side. This time, he was choosing her over the pack.
“Besides, we’re almost there.” Amber glanced at her watch and frowned. “At least, it shouldn’t be too much longer.”
“What’s wrong?” Nik asked, studying her face.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Watch must be running out of juice.”
Nik brushed it off. His mind was too preoccupied with worry for his mate. That silver gleam in her eyes, the vicious edge to her voice, those stunt-driver antics behind the wheel… it wasn’t her. Nothing about that dark creature had been even remotely similar to the Alara he knew.
She was good, down to her core, and cautious. Perhaps overly so at times.
So what the fuck was wrong? Why was she acting this way? Had she reached a breaking point with her grief and just snapped?
The ambulance slowed, the sound of gravel crunching under the tires now. Amber’s frown deepened as she looked out the back window. “The hell?” she muttered. She tapped on the window to the cab. “Hey! Where are we? What’s going on?”
The ambulance stopped, and the driver got out without responding. The back doors to the ambulance opened. Another paramedic, a man Nik didn’t recognize, stood there, his expression blank.
“Hey, Johnnie, what the hell?” Amber said. “What are you doing? We have orders to—”
“Orders have changed,” Johnnie said in a monotone voice, eyes flashing silver. Lifting a gun, he fired.
Amber’s body jerked. Blood leaked out of the wound in her chest. Staring down in horror and gaping at her partner, she fell to the floor of the ambulance.
Nik jerked at his cuffs as Johnnie and another paramedic dragged the now-dead Amber out of the ambulance before grabbing his stretcher and wheeling him outside.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Nik growled. “Who the hell are you, really?”
He stopped and stared. The manor. They were back at Crescent Manor. But why would they bring him here?
“Because I told them to, darling.”
A chill went through Nik. Craning his neck, he looked over his shoulder.
Surrounding him was a crowd composed of his wolves and the DPI agents who’d been hanging out at the manor.
And standing at their center was his mate, her beautiful eyes shining brightest silver.
Nik didn’t take his eyes off Alara. He didn’t even fucking blink. “Alara?” he asked quietly.
“For the most part,” came her response, in that same monotone voice that’d come out of the mouth of the murderous paramedic.
And, come to think of it, out of the mouth of that girl they’d thrown in the dungeon. The one who’d been possessed by the doppelgänger.
He thought back to the corpse they’d found in the woods. She’d spelled out E-Y-E-S in the dirt.
That silvery glint he’d been seeing…
E-Y-E-S.
It had been a warning.
“Son of a bitch!” he roared, thrashing on the stretcher. The metal railings groaned, and the whole thing threatened to tip over. Glaring at those damnable silver eyes, he growled, “Get the hell out of my mate!”
Alara didn’t move, still smiling down at him as if she were privy to some secret he wasn’t. “In due time, young pup. I have use for her first.”
The thought of that thing living inside of her, controlling her and making her do God knew what… Nik would rather rip his own heart out before subjecting Alara to that.
Suddenly, her strange behavior made sense. The food processing plant, the dagger, the fleeting glimpses of terror in her eyes…
Damn it! Why did he have to be such a blockhead? Why the hell hadn’t he seen this sooner?
Because you’ve been preoccupied with the DPI and trying to keep your pack from revolting.
He stopped. “Wait a second…” he breathed, gears turning in his head. He looked around at the crowd, at the shifting, silvery sheen in the many lifeless eyes staring back at him. “You’re inside all their heads. You used them to distract me, to keep me from looking too closely at Alara so you could do with her as you wanted.”
“You’re only partially correct,” the doppelgänger said, strolling over to his side. “I did use them as a distraction, yes. Close as you werewolves tend to be to your mates, I knew you’d be a problem. But I can’t be inside more than one head at once—that’s impossible for my kind. I did, however, use the hypnotic powers of a very special witch.”
“The corpse we found in the woods,” he said flatly.
“Yes.”
“What about the paramedics?”
“I stole that witch’s power and used it on them too.” No remorse, not even a blink. His Alara would have been mortified. God, it was so hard to look at her, those silver eyes a reminder that he had failed to protect her.
She’s still in there. I know she is. And I swear, if it costs me my life, I’m going to free her.
“You’ve been planning this for a while,” Nik said.
“Of course. I knew once I got inside your pack and you realized what I was, you’d call the DPI first. I infiltrated them weeks ago. Then I silently made my rounds in your woods, courtesy of a shadow and cloaking spell, and hypnotized your perimeter guards.”
Thus why they hadn’t reported any disturbances to him. Fuck.
“All it took was a single word to activate the hypnosis. Imagine my delight when Penelope turned out to be decent enough at that trick that I could hypnotize the rest of your pack.”
“You were inside Penelope too?” He paused. “The backfired spell… you got inside her then.”
“Opening up a tunnel of magic to someone’s mind is one of the easiest ways for my kind to infiltrate another host. Luckily for us we’re so rare that the lore surrounding us is sketchy at best.”
He glanced at the dagger. The doppelgänger had strapped it to Alara’s hip. “What’s your endgame? Why us, and why go to all this trouble?”
“You’ll see soon enough. You’re not the only one trying to save the world.”
“Except you’ve hurt a hell of a lot more people.”
“In every war, there are sacrifices,” it said coldly. “It doesn’t make the cause any less noble.” It glanced at its watch—or rather, Alara’s watch—and snapped its fingers. “Take him to the dungeon.”
Nik growled low as it stroked his face, like petting a favorite dog. “It’ll all be over soon. And then this world will finally be safe.”
The touch of Alara’s skin, so cold and clammy, haunted him as they carted him away on the stretcher toward the manor.
Alara screamed inwardly as she watched her mate being taken away to rot in the dungeon of his own home. Her soul punched, kicked, and bit, howling like a wild animal, and still the doppelgänger’s hold on her hadn’t eased.
You’ll only waste your strength, Secret said. You need to recuperate—otherwise you might not be strong enough to take back possession of your body once I release you.
Wasn’t that your plan all along? she said bitterly. To ensure I’m beaten down enough that I can’t possibly resist you?
Perhaps.
Chills went through Alara. This thing was evil, pure and simple.
Why hadn’t she gone with her gut? Why hadn’t she fought harder? Had she missed opportunities? Had she just not tried hard enough?
Because you were weak, Izzy’s voice whispered. You wanted someone else to take over, and they did. Now look at where you are.
It was time for Alara to stop ghosting through her life and start living it. She couldn’t continue to live in the past. Doing so was literally destroying her future.
She had to save herself. And not just for her own well-being but also her pack’s and her mate’s.
But how?
Despair threatened to crush her. No, she told herself firmly. You will not give in. You are strong, far stronger than you give yourself credit for.
And she was. Hadn’t that strength helped her survive the trials and backstabbing at Court? Hadn’t it helped her get out of bed every morning after she’d left Crescent Castle for good, even though all she’d wanted to do was sleep forever?
No, she was strong. Strong enough to weather the courtiers’ ridicule, strong enough to keep breathing after she’d lost her family, strong enough to keep on living.
She was ready, finally. Ready to fight for her own damn life.
The wolf joined her, growling, silently waiting for its prey to slip up…
Secret snapped her fingers at Ralph, too busy coordinating its troops to pay much attention to Alara’s inner monologue. The gruff man strutted over to them, eyes glowing with an eerie silvery light. “Go with them to the dungeon. Make sure our pup behaves himself.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ralph said, without any inflection, and strode toward the manor.
Secret then ordered the DPI to set up a perimeter along with the normal perimeter guards and to let her know if anyone crossed over into its land.
Its land. Not Alara’s, not Nik’s, not the pack’s.
This damn thing was planning on putting down roots.
Not if I can stop it, Alara thought darkly. Her energy might be weak, but her anger was strong. It could fuel her, as it had those long weeks following her family’s murders.