Page 24 of Bound to Four Alphas (Silverthorn Alphas #1)
The room was pristine. Untouched, even.
Kaelen had to fight not to rip the whole place to shreds.
She was missing. Vanished into thin air, not a single wisp of her left.
As soon as Malek had spoken, they had raced back to the chambers, Elian’s hands slashing through the air to remove the complicated layers of wards he’d erected over the threshold.
The wards hadn’t worked.
She was gone.
How could they have been so stupid? As the four of them whipped around, desperation and agitation thick on their scents, Kaelen felt as if he had been stabbed in the stomach. He was supposed to protect her. They were all supposed to protect her.
And not just her. The child she carried. That perfect, tiny being growing inside her. His heir. Their heir. When he thought of the fear in her eyes when she had questioned whether he wanted a child, wanted a family, he could have wept.
He wanted nothing more in the entire world.
But she had been stolen away, and he couldn’t stop the screaming in his head.
It was his fault .
He knew one thing, however, with a molten intensity that threatened to consume him.
He would burn the whole world down to get her back.
Ronan shifted, his nose much keener as a wolf, and began scenting every item in view. He growled, clawing one of the rugs in front of the fire until it flipped, revealing a dark red stain on the other side.
Kaelen’s heart nearly stopped.
But he smelled it quickly, sharp and sweet. Pomegranate. It was just pomegranate juice.
“It’s laced with something,” Ronan growled, rearing back from the stain. “I can’t tell what.”
Elian crouched down by it, some shadows creeping from his palms and weaving through the fabric.
He dropped it like he had been burned.
“Sleeping draught,” he said, his voice dark with malice. “It will have made her unconscious almost instantly.”
“The baby?” Malek was shuddering, visibly fighting to keep the beast within under control. “Will it have affected her pregnancy?”
Elian shook his head. “No, not to my knowledge.”
Kaelen felt as if he could breathe some air in. At least the child wasn’t harmed.
Not yet, anyway.
He shook his head, visions of his father’s dead body slumped in his chambers flashing before his eyes.
No. He growled, fists clenching, nails biting into the skin of his palms. Not again. It couldn’t happen again. He couldn’t lose someone he loved because he wasn’t there to protect them again.
He wouldn’t survive it.
He was torn from his thoughts by an almighty growl from Ronan, who leaped forward to pin Elian under one great paw, snarling maw right in his face.
“You. Your people did this. Explain.”
Elian was perfectly capable of escaping, but he didn’t move save for his hands grasping two of Ronan’s paws to try and alleviate some of the crushing weight. Kaelen snarled, overcome with worry and hit with the waves of pure fury from the alphas before him.
Malek transformed, hackles rising at Ronan. “He didn’t know, he had no part in this!”
“He must know something,” Ronan’s voice was thick with emotion, his yellow eyes desperate behind the rage.
“Ronan,” Kaelen snarled, “this is not the time to be fighting each other. Do you really think Elian would do anything to put Selena in harm’s way?”
Ronan’s ear flicked, and he stepped back, letting Elian stand and brush down his jacket.
“It was my father,” Elian said simply, voice carefully neutral. “He was goading us, in the throne room. Distracting us. This was his plan from the start.”
“What?” Kaelen stalked forward, half tempted to shove the Fae against the wall, his alpha roaring at him to do something, take action, fight anyone—
“Kaelen,” Elian growled, his face twisted in anger, “we don’t have time to ask questions. We need to start tracking her now. We’ll figure out the rest along the way.”
Kaelen nodded, his stomach churning, turning itself inside out with his pure desperation to find her.
“Can you follow her scent?” Kaelen turned to Ronan. The massive wolf circled, nose to the ground, eyes narrowed in concentration.
“Yes,” he replied, “but it won’t be easy.”
“I can help,” said Elian, “I spent all day working with her magical signature. My shadows should be able to help track her. Just,” he turned to Kaelen with narrowed eyes, “don’t stab me again this time to get my powers working better.”
Kaelen growled, “You heal in seconds, Fae.”
Elian rolled his eyes, “Still bloody hurts though.”
“Come on,” Ronan growled, storming out of the room, Kaelen hot on his heels.
Her scent led out of the palace and through the city, which rose around them empty and haunting. Kaelen swallowed. He couldn’t sense a single other being. It was eerie.
“He must have gone mad at last,” Elian hissed as he peered in yet another empty window, “I can’t think why else he would do this.”
“He was always power hungry,” replied Kaelen, “why do you think I never invited either of you to the volcanoes? I never trusted him. It’s not surprising he’s finally making a move.”
“But the human invasion,” Elian shook his head, “he puts us all at risk by making a bid for power at such a vulnerable time.”
“That’s probably precisely why he’s doing it.”
Malek snarled in anger, pacing in his true form alongside Ronan, “Why does he need Selena?”
“Because he likely knows something about her that we don’t,” replied Elian, “I learned precious little about what she is, what magic she carries.”
“Phaendar doesn’t hold nearly the same amount of power as you, how could he know more?” Kaelen growled.
Elian stopped short, his golden skin paling, his eyes widening, “Fuck. Fuck! ”
“What is it?”
Elian swallowed, his throat bobbing, “Five hundred years ago, when the Forest God left and the magic became unstable and deadly, I became fascinated by the prophecy. An omega with the power to unite the realm? I knew enough of legend and myth to know that nature loves balance. The Gods value order and abhor loose ends. The coming of an omega of power almost guaranteed an alpha of equal power to reach symbiosis.”
“And you wanted it to be you?” Kaelen said, baring his teeth. He knew the Fae had a penchant for arrogance, and this all but confirmed it.
“Of course I did,” Elian replied with complete certainty, “I was the greatest mortal power born in the First Realm for millennia. My birth was blessed by the Forest God himself. Who else would it be?”
Ronan snarled, his jaws snapping as he whirled on Elian, “I have never met such an arrogant, self-important, blustering fool in my entire life!”
“I would like to point out,” Elian said through clenched teeth, “that I am in fact one of the mates of the Omega of Prophecy.”
“So it is Selena? She is the one the Forest God foretold?” Malek asked.
“Yes? No? I don’t know, but at this point, we’d be foolish to ignore the signs.”
“What is the point of all this, Elian?” Kaelen growled. Fury was building beneath his skin, the insistent urge to find his omega, to rescue her, to lock her away for the rest of her damned life if he had to, it was driving him near mad.
“For centuries, I researched, hunted down cold leads, ran experiments on the dark manifestations of the Forest God’s absence.”
Malek hissed, and Elian at least had the good grace to look somewhat abashed.
“I never hurt them. It was vital for me to have an understanding of the essence of the magic, of the remains of the God’s power.”
“And yet, you couldn’t work out if Selena is indeed the Omega of Prophecy?” Kaelen snarled.
“The creatures were born from the absence of the Forest God. If she is the Omega of Prophecy, then her magic, then by her nature she would be everything that those creatures aren’t. The sun reflected in a pool of water. Unfortunately, lots of things can reflect in a pool of water. Until she is able to take control of her magic, I can’t prove a negative. Saying she is the absence of darkness does not necessarily make her the light.”
“You’re so full of shit, Benellane,” Ronan growled.
Elian laughed, but there was no humor in it, a hysterical edge creeping into the dark chuckle, “Unfortunately, I’m not. I was rigorous and meticulous in my study. I took copious notes of everything I did. I was so close, all I needed was one missing piece. A part of the Forest God to compare her too, something he left behind. Legend says such objects exist. I spent the better part of a century trying to track one down.”
“And you failed?” Kaelen said, crossing his arms.
Elian nodded, “Yes. I failed. But if my father found one, or was given one, then all he would need to do would be to break into my laboratory and steal my notes. The picture would be complete.”
The cold, harsh reality crashed into Kaelen, threatening to knock him from his feet.
“If I’m right,” Elian snarled, “then he can steal her power for himself. All the power of the Forest God. She will die.”
“Come on,” Kaelen said, striding forward and gesturing to Ronan, “we have to find her.”
As Ronan and Elian resumed their tracking, Kaelen choked over Elian’s words. Selena. Beautiful, brave, infuriating Selena.
Offered up on an altar for an ancient Fae Lord to massacre.
There was nothing he wouldn’t do to get her back. He would rip Phaendar limb from limb, string him up to rot from the beams of his throne room, burn his city to ash.
Anything to get them back.
Their path led them back west through a network of tunnels through the mountain, emerging into the forest beyond. As they got closer, her scent rapidly fading, Ronan sharply reared back.
“What is it?” Kaelen asked, taking a step back from the enormous spooked wolf.
“Humans,” Ronan said, “I smell humans.”
“Maybe they attacked Phaendar?” Malek suggested, his sleek black form prowling through the shadows in the trees, “This is close to where we fought them.”
“No,” Elian’s voice was hoarse, “no, I think something much worse has happened.”
His eyes flicked to Kaelen’s. “I think my father has made an alliance with them.”
Sure enough, as they crept up a small hill, careful to remain downwind despite Elian’s shadows concealing them, they were met with a vast war camp. Blood-red tents in neat rows, all flying the flag of the Silverthorn Kingdom, seemed to have sprouted from the earth. Soldiers marched up and down, the sun catching the tips of their spears. At the very center, the crumbling ruins of a temple.
“There,” Elian hissed, “if they’re holding her anywhere, it’ll be there. The ritual needs to take place in a sanctified temple.”
“The ritual?” Kaelen turned, his voice dark.
Elian didn’t turn back, only nodded stiffly, the tendons in his neck jumping out.
A ritual. Kaleen felt the urge. To transform into his dragon skin and burn the war camp to the ground, incinerate every single one of the soldiers and Fae that dared stand between him and his mate.
“What’s the plan?” Ronan growled, muzzle pulled back over his teeth, “Storm the place?”
“No,” Elian said quickly, “the object that Phaendar has. I’ll bet it’s the mystery weapon the humans have been threatening us with. We’ll never make it to the center of the camp before we’re stopped by it. Our only chance is to infiltrate the temple and make our stand there.”
Kaelen’s eyes combed over the camp, caught by every movement, every wave of fabric.
And then he spotted him. A great, hulking, beast of a man that he recognized from the ball thrown by the priestesses. Damien’s personal bodyguard.
A slow grin crept over his mouth. “I think I’ve just found our way in.”