by Bella Jacobs
I can feel that, too, how it’s killing her to know we might not make it. She might not be able to get us all to safety, especially…
Especially me.
She knows I’ve been shot, she can feel the way my heart stutters as blood continues to seep from my wound. The flow has slowed since the initial rush, but not enough.
If I don’t get medical attention soon…
I refuse to finish the thought, but I know where it leads. The world is spinning, my limbs have gone cold, and if it weren’t for the arm Creedence has locked tight around me, I wouldn’t be here. I would have slid off Wren’s back during take-off.
And if it weren’t for Luke, you wouldn’t have been up here in the first place.
I open my eyes, pulling the wolf into focus. He’s clinging to Wren’s mane between Sierra and Kite, blood staining the top of his gray tee and streaks of red smeared across his forehead.
I made a mess of him, but he didn’t hesitate to help me.
He’s part of this, now. Part of us, whether he realizes it or not. And he’ll be good for Wren. He risked his life for a man he barely tolerates; he won’t hesitate to give it for her.
He loves her, it’s written all over his face, humming, warm and steady, in his energy. Before bonding with Wren, I didn’t have much talent for reading people. Now, there are times when Kite’s kin gift wafts through me, like smoke carrying the scent of whatever’s cooking inside a person’s heart.
Luke is hers, now, and he’ll bust his ass to take up the slack I’ll leave behind. And there are other beasts of antiquity who bear the mark. My cousin, for one. Or one of the ice dragons, though they won’t be happy about this new form of hers.
But there are options.
Options that make my heart feel like it’s twisting in the wind.
I want to stay with her so badly it burns inside me, causing a pain keener than the bullet lodged in my chest. But if she makes it out of here alive, she’ll have a chance without me.
Getting her to safety is the first, the only priority.
There’s only one choice to be made. I know it even before a rocket whizzes past overhead, getting so close that when it explodes beneath us, I feel a burst of heat on my skin.
It’s time. I have to give what I have left to give and hope like hell it’s enough.
Turning to press my face into the whisper softness of Wren’s dragon’s mane, I funnel everything I’ve got into a cloaking spell. Almost immediately, my wound starts to bleed faster, but I don’t stop. I open my mouth and breathe magic into the air, pouring it out like a bucket flipped upside down, and we wink out of sight.
Through the milky haze of the spell, I can still make out the dim outlines of the others, but our enemies won’t be able to see a damned thing, a fact proven when Wren cuts sharply to the right, heading north over the mountains, while the choppers whizz due west on a trail they have no idea has gone cold.
Ice cold.
Like what’s left of the blood in my veins…
By the time we reach the border crossing fifty miles from our camp, I’m shivering so hard Creedence has to dig his claws lightly into my arm to keep me from shaking my way off Wren’s shoulders. But I don’t back off the spell. We’re traveling at the speed of dragon, the fastest fliers the world has ever known. If I can hold on to the spell a few minutes longer, we’ll be able to land far enough away from the border guards to be safe.
Or at least, the others will be safe.
“The passports, the money,” I mumble, my lips as frozen as the rest of me. “In the lining of my…coat.”
I figured there was a reason you were rocking a suit coat in the middle of the woods, Creedence replies telepathically, aside from your commitment to stuffy asshole fashion. Good thinking. We’ll need that passport to get you checked into a hospital.
There’s a hospital in Lethbridge, Kite pipes up. Wren’s headed there now. We’re going to touch down just outside of town and—
“No,” I whisper. “They’ll know. They’ll be looking for gunshot victims. They’ll find us. Stay out of the cities. Find…” I try to suck in a breath, but my lungs refuse to respond. They sip the air, leaving me just enough to wheeze, “Hide… Promise…”
Wren flies faster in response, making me wonder how sensitive her hearing is in this form. Pretty damned keen, I’m guessing, and she’s apparently communicating telepathically with Kite, which is huge. That was a problem for her, even a few days ago.
She’s come so far so fast. She’s going to make it all the way.
She’s going to rip that old man off his throne and burn it all down. Every mess he’s made, every prison he’s built, every war he’s helped start and lie he’s fostered, it’s all going up in flames.
I swear I can see it, that bright future, flickering behind my eyes as they slide closed. It’s like when I touched Creedence in the glen—a vision, a prophecy—but so beautiful and full of hope. I want to share it with Wren. I want to tell her that we were wrong, that it isn’t too late, but my lips refuse to move.
And then my heart refuses to beat.
It goes still in my chest and pressure builds behind my ribs. It swells, bigger and heavier, until I’m pinned beneath a thousand-pound boulder, but still, I hold on to the spell, keeping us out of sight until Wren touches down in a field between two mountains.
Only then do I let go, gasping for air like a landed fish.
I force my eyes open, drinking in the sight of a meadow filled with flowers—delicate alpine flowers that would be just as at home in the mountains of France. It reminds me of where my parents celebrate summer solstice, hiking deep into the mountains outside Annecy to meet with ogre friends and dance until the sun sets in the middle of the night.
I’m suddenly possessed by homesickness, by a longing to see my parents, even the twisted halls of Meadwood Castle, one last time.
But this is beautiful, too. As last looks go, it could be so much worse.
Wren is safe. And I got to love and be loved by her.
I’m a lucky man.
It’s my last thought.
My last—
Chapter 34
Wren
I come out of my dragon skin screaming and clawing at my bare chest. My heart is being torn apart, shredded, hacked to pieces by a butcher who doesn’t care how much it hurts. The pain is unlike anything I’ve ever known—physical, yes, but psychic, too. Mental and emotional and magical and so terrible I fall to my hands and knees in the grass, sobbing so hard I make myself sick.
I bring up cheese and crackers and chunks of something charred I don’t recognize and continue to wretch long after I’m empty and my fire-ravaged throat is begging for relief.
But there is no relief.
There is no way out, no way back.
Dust is dead. Dust has been carved out of me, and this aching emptiness in my soul will never heal. I will walk wounded the rest of my life, carrying the memory of the love stolen from me like a piece of shrapnel lodged in my heart.
“No, no, no,” I sob.
I become aware of hands on my back and a soothing voice whispering, “Sorry, baby, I’m so sorry,” but I don’t want to hear “sorry.”
I shrug off the hands and stagger to my feet, swiping my arm across my mouth as I search the grass around me. I see him almost instantly. There. Dust. Just a few feet away, curled on his side, not moving, not breathing.
Dead.
And no one is doing anything about it. They’re all just standing there, staring at me, looking sad when sad isn’t going to do jack shit to make this better.
“We have to fix it,” I shout, anger flaring so hot my palms burst into flames. “Help me fix it!” I flap my hands, swiftly putting out the fire before curling my fingers into fists. “Come on! We have to get him to the hospital. Now!”
Kite shakes his head, tears shining in his eyes. “He’s gone, baby. We can’t bring him back.” He reaches for me, but I shake my head.
“No!” I sho
ut, my entire body trembling as I stagger back. “It’s only been a few minutes. And he’s strong. He’s not human. He’s Dust.”
“He didn’t want to be taken to the hospital.” Creedence, fresh out of his lynx form, sinks wearily to his knees in the grass. “He made us promise not to take him. He knew they’d be looking for us there.”
I shake my head. “No. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.” I rake clawed hands through my hair, thoughts racing. There has to be a way. There has to be a way to turn back time, to get him help faster than we’re thinking possible, to crawl inside him and stitch him back together with my bare hands, to pour my life into his body.
“That’s it.” I motion to Kite, pulse spiking as I kneel on the grass beside Dust, grateful, for once, that we come out of our kin forms naked and there’s nothing between his skin and mine. “My blood! It can help. Make him stronger. Like when we were kids.”
“No,” Kite says, fear leaping into his eyes. “You can’t, Wren. Blood magic is forbidden. It could wreck you, even kill you if—”
“It’s dangerous, but she’s right,” Creedence interrupts, appearing beside me on the grass, one finger already curled into a lynx claw. “It could work.”
“He could also kill her,” Kite says, “and come back as something fucked up and unnatural.”
Creedence shakes his head. “Not if we stop him before he takes too much. Give me your wrist, Wren. You’ll need to hold it to his mouth. Smearing blood on his skin isn’t going to be enough for something like this.”
“Get close.” Kite gestures to Luke and Sierra, clearly not thrilled about this decision, but ready to help since I refuse to be stopped. “It might take all of us to pull him off her. If it works.”
I hold out my arm. “Yes. Do it. Now.” I’m so high on fear and adrenaline that I barely feel the sting as Cree rakes his claw across my wrist, going just deep enough to bring blood pooling slowly into the cut.
I’m about to insist he deepen the wound, to make sure Dust has enough, when he brings my wrist to Dust’s mouth, cupping the back of the other man’s head to press them closer together.
Almost instantly, I feel a spark, a sizzle, a wild cry echoing through my bones. A moment later, Dust’s lips part, the small sign of life enough to make my heart thrash like it’s going to beat right out of my chest. And then Dust’s breath rushes across my skin, making my wrist pulse and sting, and his mouth closes around the wound.
The suction is faint at first, but as the color begins to seep back into his cheeks, he drags harder, deeper, until my head begins to spin. I try to pull away, but Dust’s hands shoot up, gripping my arm and holding on with surprising strength, giving me a good idea why blood magic is forbidden.
“Now! Get him off her now!” Kite calls, prying at Dust’s fingers.
Dust, who is still unconscious but clearly prepared to claw his way out of the grave by any means necessary, with no clue he might be killing me in the process.
It takes Creedence, Kite, Luke, and Sierra, all fighting like hell to separate us. By the time they do, I’m gasping for breath, and my heart is racing like I’ve just sprinted a mile uphill. I’m trembling, pulse jerking hard in my throat, stomach pitching, my entire body sending out a red alert that I’m headed toward the dangerous side of empty.
But I don’t care how close we cut it, or how easily this could have gone wrong.
All I care about is Dust opening his eyes. Coming back to me. Stitching up the empty place in my soul only he will ever be able to fill.
I huddle, shivering in the grass as Dust lies quietly on the ground. Sierra takes her hands off his legs, Kite releases his torso, and finally, Creedence and Luke loosen their grip on his arms. Luke stands, taking a cautious step back, clearly ready to rush in and pin him again, but Dust doesn’t move.
He doesn’t move for a minute that feels like a breathless, terror-filled eternity before his lashes finally flutter. And then his lips part, and he sighs in a weary voice, “Don’t ever do that again, Snow,” and I burst into tears.
I sob so hard my vision blurs, and I can barely see Kite’s face as he scoops me into his arms, cradling me close. He carries me to Dust, and I throw my arms around him, fighting not to squeeze too tight, “No, don’t you ever do that again,” I whisper, pressing my damp cheek to his. “You are not replaceable. Not to me. Not ever.”
He wraps a weak arm around me, “I’ll argue with you later. Right now, I just…love you.”
“I love you, too.” I sob harder, unable to stop now that the dam has burst. I’m just so relieved. “We’re all okay. We made it.”
“Not quite yet,” Sierra says, running back across the field. I’ve been so out of it, I didn’t even see her leave. “Border agents. On the road headed this way. I don’t know if they saw us or this is just part of their usual patrol, but I suggest we don’t stick around to find out.”
Nodding fast, I smear the tears from my cheeks and take a quick glance around. “Let’s divvy up clothes, get those of us without anything to wear covered as best we can and head into the woods toward Lethbridge. I’m tapped out right now, but hopefully, by the time we get to civilization, I’ll have enough juice to work a cloaking spell on those of us who are going to attract too much attention. Then we’ll figure out who we have to rob to get enough money for a hotel room.”
“Dust has money is his coat,” Creedence says, holding up the suit jacket. “And passports. We didn’t come out of there empty handed.”
My shoulders sag with relief as I slip on the white wife-beater Sierra offers me from beneath her flannel. “Good. Then we’ll get a cheap room, send someone out for supplies, and see where we go from there.”
We head for the woods, a ragged group of battered people with Luke and Kite carrying Dust in a cradle hold between them and most of us dressed like mental patients escaped from the psych ward, but I can’t help feeling like we’ve won.
Our enemies ambushed us. We were surprised, outnumbered, and laughably under-armored. But we’re all here. Alive and almost whole and north of the border—one step closer to Atlas.
Maybe it’s the blood loss, but for the first time, I feel like we have a real shot of taking him down. Maybe even a good one.
“You ready for this, mama?” Sierra asks as we crouch in an overgrown ditch at the edge of the city an hour later, waiting for a bus to pull in at the stop across the street so we can hopefully scramble quickly on board without attracting too much attention.
My shielding is going to have to be in top form to conceal the more naked among us, but I’m not scared.
“I’m ready,” I assure her, adding silently, So fucking ready.
Chapter 35
Wren
We’re in a motel room again, but not in the middle of nowhere this time. We’re in the heart of southern Alberta’s largest city, sharing two adjoining rooms in the kind of place that takes cash and doesn’t ask questions.
I’m not sure they clean the sheets, either, but Dust’s wound is wrapped up tight in bandages Creedence stole from an urgent care facility a few blocks over—crawling in a back window after it closed for the night and crawling back out with bandages, drugs, and bags of various blood types he assured me would all be fine for Dust and me.
The blood of the beasts of antiquity isn’t particular, apparently. It will mix and match with anything human without putting up a fight. I took one bag of AB negative, but I’m not sure I really needed it. I recover so fast these days. By the time we checked into the hotel, I felt good as new.
Almost as good as new…
I won’t be fully whole until I know Dust is out of the woods. He passed out as soon as we laid him down and has been sleeping like a rock ever since, not even Cree cleaning and dressing his wound enough to wake him.
“It’s going to be okay, you’re going to be fine,” I murmur, smoothing a hand over Dust’s forehead, brushing his hair away from his face. He’s still too pale, but his skin is warm to the touch, and sometim
es his lids flutter when I talk.
“You’re going to wake up tomorrow feeling so much better,” I promise. “We’ll find a place to lay low until you get your strength back, and then we’ll finish what we started. All five of us. Together.”
And in the meantime, I’m going to find a way to shut Highborn down. He’s done enough damage. It’s time he, and his institute, become a thing of the past. I won’t let him hurt the people I love. Not ever again.
I’ll kill him if I must.
I’ve killed lots of people, now.
I close my eyes, willing away mental images of the creatures I set on fire, screaming and writhing as they burned. The death toll makes me physically ill, but I had no choice. No more than they did. Highborn took all our choices away, forced us to do terrible things to each other.
It’s past time for him to have a taste of his own medicine.
“Wren? Can I talk to you for a second?”
I glance up to see Sierra standing in the doorway leading to the adjoining room, where the others are finishing dinner.
I should eat something, too, but my stomach is still full of smoke and rocks. I almost lost a piece of myself today—did lose him for a little while. That horrible knowledge is taking up all the room in my belly where food used to fit.
How can I eat dinner and go about business as usual when I know exactly what it will be like when the man I love is lost to me forever? When I know that it’s worse than dying?
So much worse…
“Yeah, sure.” I lay a gentle hand on Dust’s cheek. “I’ll be back.” His lids don’t flutter this time, but I know he’s okay. He’s getting better with every passing minute. I can feel the strength pumping back into his body, knitting his soul tight to his flesh and bones.
Still, it takes willpower to force myself out of the chair beside his bed and cross to meet Sierra as she opens the door leading onto our cramped balcony. I don’t want to leave him for a second. And though it’s nice to escape the sour-bedding-and-moldy-carpet smell of our room, the view outside definitely leaves something to be desired.