Page 20

I become dimly aware of something damp on my face and try to brush it away, but my hands don’t seem to work properly.

It takes so much effort for them to reach my face.

When I do, I feel a strange texture, like wet grass resting against my cheek.

The confusion sets in hard, and my brain spins, trying to catch up with my reality.

Tristen, I think desperately. Where is he? The sound of fighting and shifters howling in the distance sounds distorted but shatters the silence, and I whimper, my heart pounding in my chest. I’m in the forest, and he’s close, but he feels so far away somehow.

My surroundings come into focus, and I realize I’m in a clearing.

The trees tower above me, their branches reaching for the sky, but as the trucks rise, their leaves begin to look distorted; glancing around, nothing looks right.

A haze surrounds me as though the clearing is in some kind of cocoon.

The smell of damp earth and pine needles fills my senses, but underneath it all, there’s something else.

I can sense I’m not alone. I turn sluggishly, expecting to face the rogues, but instead, I see someone far more terrifying.

Malik. He must be close by, too. Fear grips my insides like icy claws digging into my stomach.

I struggle to sit up, but my body rebels against me.

Panic wells up inside me when I notice the strange golden netting they threw over me is still half covering my body.

It feels warm against my skin, the heat seeping into my very bones.

I try to push it off, but it takes all of my energy just to move it a fraction.

It’s made of pure energy, almost weightless, but somehow feels as heavy as concrete.

I hear him chuckle. Laughter usually sounds light or fun, but this sound is anything but. “You’re even more pathetic than I thought,” he sneers, the laughter fading as he approaches.

I curl into a ball as he crouches in front of me, my thoughts immediately going to my unborn baby and what he might do to us. “L-let me go,” I attempt. “Tristen will find me.”

Malik laughs again, just as humorlessly. “Oh, please,” he scoffs, “that dog could run right by us, and my shield would hide us. He could be looking right at you and see nothing.”

My heart stops at his words, and I can feel the fear bubbling up in my chest. “Let me go!” I scream as loudly as I can, but the netting muffles my voice, making it sound tiny and warped.

“I don’t think so,” he muses, running his hand over my hair.

I cringe away from his touch, feeling repulsed.

“You see, you are far too valuable for me to let you go. Your bloodline is rarer than you think.” He smirks, and dread coils in my stomach as realization dawns on me.

He knows a lot more about my power than I do.

“What do you want from me?” I spit out through gritted teeth, trying to sound braver than I feel.

His eyes glint with malevolence as he leans in close enough for me to smell his foul breath. “Everything.”

I shudder, my breathing becoming ragged as I try to make sense of his words. He straightens up, towering over me and running a hand over my hair, and I can't help but flinch away from his touch.

"Your father, Aaron," he begins, and I stiffen at the mention of my father's name, knowing I’m about to find out more than I’ve ever known about him.

"He and I," Malik continued, "were once close.

Bothers. We were going to rule. But then he met your mother.

" His voice is dripping with contempt, and I can feel the hatred emanating from him in waves.

"She had power—nothing like ours, though. Not worth giving everything up for."

He crouches down again, his eyes boring into mine. "He went and got her pregnant, starting to talk about building a life here. Living with the witches." Malik scoffs as if it were the most ridiculous suggestion.

I swallow past the lump in my throat, already suspecting how this story ends. "What did you do?"

Malik shakes his head as if feigning sadness. “I had to kill him,” he shrugs. “We had a deal to never share our gifts, never reveal our magic. And certainly never to settle for less than we deserve. We stuck to that for millennia, only for him to want to throw it all away for some witch.”

A wave of sadness hits me for my parents.

They must have really loved each other. I always assumed my father had simply left.

It wasn’t unusual for witches to raise their children as single mothers in the coven, and I just figured that had been my mother’s plan.

But now, I can see they intended to really be together.

The heartbreak must have been unimaginable.

I don’t even think she knew he had died.

Malik pulls the last of the netting from me as he continues, “I looked for you, you know. We’re family, after all.

” He laughs. “I couldn’t find you, though.

I assumed you died with your whore mother.

Until there you were. Your magic is weak but undeniable to me.

A little parting gift from my dear brother.

And a baby, too, with elemental magic from the shifters. Delicious.”

My blood runs cold; I know he absorbs magic.

I know it kills whoever he targets. My hand rests subconsciously on my belly, and I curl into a ball as if I can somehow shield my unborn child.

Whatever magic was in that net has left my power weak.

What little control I have over my powers feels dimmed.

I look at Malik and briefly wonder if he resembles my father; they were brothers, after all.

But Marian said my mother had good taste and that Aaron was handsome.

Malik is anything but. His muscles ripple with strength, and he’s tall, but his face looks gaunt in comparison, and his eyes are wild and far too black.

“You know, Aaron nearly killed me. It was a hell of a fight,” he sneers. “It’s taken me years to recover, living off the scraps of rogues and witches, but once I take your power, I’ll be unstoppable. I guess it’s Aaron’s way of finally making it up to me.”

I know I need to keep him talking. It’s already occurred to me that with this shield up, he doesn’t seem to have any intention of taking me further into the forest. That must mean he intends to take my magic, my baby, right here.

The longer I can keep him talking, the longer I have to try and escape or hope that Tristen finds me.

Malik continues to ramble about Aaron, and part of me wants to listen and learn as much about my father as possible, but I know that I need to focus on surviving.

That’s what my parents would have wanted.

I try to summon my powers, but I feel all over the place.

It feels like the shield itself is stifling my energy in a similar way to the netting.

I search my pockets and feel several of the small smooth runes I’d been handing out earlier; rubbing my fingers over the engravings, I begin to activate them.

Malik could never cross the rune defenses, and that’s probably what he meant about still being weak.

Perhaps I can use them to defend myself.

Suddenly, I hear a commotion in the forest beyond the shield as a group of shifters and rogues crash through the undergrowth not far from our position.

Fighting and tearing chunks out of each other, oblivious to our presence.

I desperately try to see if Tristan is there, shouting as loud as I can, but no one even looks up.

Malik laughs hysterically, “They can’t see you.

Even the dogs can’t even sense you,” he giggles.

“They could be looking right at you, and they’d just see trees. ”

I look again and see the shield's golden shimmer glowing slightly, blurring the shifters on the other side. I’m close to the edge of the shield but too scared to reach out and touch it in case it dims my power even more.

When Malik turns away again, I attempt to see if I can summon any energy, and the tiniest spark appears at my fingertips. Not enough.

I attempt to supercharge the runes with the little energy I have, something that Marian talked to me about and showed promising results.

They begin to grow hotter in my pocket, and I feel a tiny boost to my powers as the fog I feel begins to lift slightly.

More fighters break through the tree line, and Malik watches with glee as the vicious fighting continues.

In the distance, I see Ryan fending off a rogue with one of the other betas.

I open my mouth to call out to him, but then pause, knowing it’s useless and not wanting to draw Malik’s attention back toward me while I’m still working with the runes, desperate for some kind of defense.

With Malik’s back still turned as he seems to be entertained by the fighting beyond the shield, I take one of the runes from my pocket and slide it up against the shield.

Although my arm feels weaker the closer I get to it, the rune’s magic doesn’t falter, and I notice the shield’s golden glow diminish slightly as the rune touches it.

Perhaps I need to be further away from the shield, but the runes need to be closer.

I take another rune and push it against the shield, creating a tiny patch of disturbance in the shield.

I wonder if it’s a genuine hole in the magic or simply disturbed energy.

Before I can think about it, I suddenly feel Tristen’s presence.

It’s like a warmth spreading over me. My soul is calling out to his.

I look up as another wave of fighters moves through the forest in a blur of violence.

I don’t see him at first, but I know he’s there.

Then I see him burst through the tree line and rush straight past the shield. Instinctively, I reach out a hand, almost willing him to stop. He looks desperate and feral as he shouts something to Ryan I don’t catch. Then he races off but stops abruptly, shifting into human form and glancing around.

“Well, well, well,” Malik says, walking to stand directly behind me as I return to my curled-up position in an effort to hide the runes behind me. “It appears that shifter bond even extends beyond their own pathetic species.”

I turn slightly to check where he is, but don’t respond.

I can barely tear my eyes away from Tristen’s face.

Despite the fact he’s covered in blood, and disheveled from the fight, he’s as handsome as ever.

Something deep within me stirs at the thought of our family, and the very real danger that we will never have a future.

I physically feel it when Malik steps back into the center of the shield, his darkness retreating momentarily.

Then, he claps his hands together. “It’s been a fun show, but I’m done waiting,” he declares.

“It’s ironic that he knows you’re near but can’t see you.

You can see him, though, and you can watch his confusion as your bond dies with you.

When I drop the shield to kill him, he’ll see your body first.”

The cruelty of his words takes me aback. “Why do you hate me so much? What have I ever done to you?”

Malik pauses for a moment, as if thrown by the question, but then sneers. “You represent my brother’s greatest weakness and betrayal,” he says, leveling me with a hard stare. “Of course, I’d kill you anyway for your power, but I’m going to enjoy it even more as a final fuck-you to Aaron.”

As Malik spins around, lifting his hands high as his dark energy begins to manifest, I know I’m out of time.

He’s going to kill me and my unborn child.

And then, he’s going to kill Tristen. I fumble in my pocket for the last of the runes, channeling everything I have into them, making them burn my skin as their magic spirals almost out of control.

Malik chants in an unrecognizable language, oblivious to my movements, as I pull the runes from my pocket.

I glance at Tristen, whose eyes are fixed on me, almost as if he can see me, but the confusion in his expression tells me he can’t.

I know I only have one chance, one shot. Lifting my hand, I throw all the runes at the tiny hole made by the other two and follow up with a blast of dark energy that completely drains the last of my strength.

“You bitch,” Malik roars as the golden shield falters, almost completely fading.

I roll over to shield my stomach from Malik’s advance and try to gather my power again.

Facing Tristen, I see the exact moment he spots me through the faded barrier and unleashes his own attack, summoning a direct hit of hurricane-strength wind that breaks through, knocking Malik off his feet and flinging him across the clearing.