Page 262 of Blackwood

“I don’t know what she has left. She’s already shut down. She’s empty! What the hell am I supposed to even reach—”

“Rage.” I cut in. “She’ll always have rage.” The words punch out of me before I even think. Sharp. Solid. Certain.

Sabine’s head tilts slowly. A smile pulls at the corner of her mouth. “Yes,l’ombre,” she breathes. “Rage, the old fire. The sleeping wolf. That surely still lives.”

Knox stares at me. Then at her. “Rage, are you serious? You want me to wake up rage? Have you met her? Do you know what she’ll do to me if I poke that bear and she actually feels it?”

He gestures toward Bella, still motionless on the couch. “How the hell am I supposed to pullrageout of her and still keep my head—or my dick—intact?!”

Sabine clicks her tongue once, sharp as bone.

Knox shuts up immediately.

“Rage is not what we should pull out of her,” Roman says quietly. “Her mother—”

“You don’t get a vote here!” I snap.

Roman’s eyes flick to me. “I’m her father.”

“You may be herfather…” I take a step forward. “…but you don’t know her. You don’t love her.” My voice cuts through the room, ice-cold. “So, no. You don’t get a fucking vote.”

Roman opens his mouth to respond, “She doesn’t—”

“You speak of blood, and yet you do not know her soul.” Sabine steps forward, her presence cutting through the room like a blade as she locks eyes with Roman. “And for that you will not speak again.”

Roman freezes.

Then she turns to Knox. “The path is chosen.” Her voice drops even lower, but it echoes through the air like she is casting some sort of voodoo curse.

“There is one among us who bears the flame.

To call her back, to speak her name.

One who can shake her to the bone,

And break the silence with a scream alone.”

Her gaze sweeps the room like a slow-moving spell.

“And only then will the tether hold steady.

Only then, Knox, will she be ready.

To hear your voice, to feel your touch,

To come back those she loves so much.”

Sabine turns to me and Cade. “I’m sorry,l’ombre. But what must be done to awaken her cannot come from love.

For your love runs deeper than the sea,

Darker than bone magic, older than the oldest tree.

It would die in her place without a second breath.

But love like that, chéri, can’t hold back death.

To wake the rage, no love can stay.