Page 26 of Bound to Four Alphas (Silverthorn Alphas #1)

Her throat was on fire. That was the first thing she registered as she woke, groggy and dazed.

She tried to lift a hand to her neck, certain in her stupor that she must be on fire, but her wrist met resistance alongside a sharp bite of pain.

Cold, hard stone grazed her back as she tried to jerk up to see what had happened.

Stone.

That wasn’t right, she had been in her room.

Hadn’t she?

As she blinked, moaning in pain, everything came crashing down with ferocious intensity.

She was on a stone table of some kind, cold and rough. Her hands and feet were bound with iron manacles, securing her, the sharp bolts biting into her skin whenever she struggled too much. The cold had seeped into her very bones, her muscles trembling.

Oh Gods.

The baby? Was the baby alright?

She craned her head, trying desperately to look down at her stomach. She breathed out. There was no blood between her legs, no pain. Only relentless, driving cold shielded only by a thin, white shift.

Her baby was still alive, still thrumming with life within her.

She had to get out.

With a groan, she lifted her head, surveying the room with rising panic. It was built of crumbling stone, dead leaves drifting on the drafts from holes and cracks over the uneven floor, iron sconces coated in dust bolted into the wall. There were various arches and doorways leading deeper into the gloom, dark with shadow.

It was old. Ancient, even.

Dead.

There was such a profound absence. A freezing void that she could sense once teemed with life. A bleached skeleton long since rotted away.

Her mates.

She wanted her mates.

Had they been attacked, too? Drugged and kidnapped? Surely not; surely there was no power in the realm that could subdue them.

Except the weapon. The weapon hidden away by the humans, spoken only about in hushed tones.

Had it been used on them?

Fear clawed at her throat, and she struggled against her binds, desperate to break free. It was no use. Whatever they had used to knock her out was still in her system, and her muscles protested the slightest movement.

It would be so easy to slip back into sleep. To close her eyes and give in to the fear and exhaustion.

No.

She couldn’t.

If her mates were alive, she would escape, and she would find them.

She had to.

The sconces roared to life, and she squeaked at the sudden, bright heat, narrowing her eyes and flinching away from the flames.

“So lovely to see you again, my dear.”

She craned her neck. Damien. It was Prince Damien, his handsome face painted with a lazy smile, a rusted crown balanced in his hands.

“You,” she hissed, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” he drawled, tossing the crown up into the air and catching it again. “I’m taking back the magic you stole and claiming it for the Silverthorn Kingdom.”

Her stomach clenched, “Stole? I haven’t stolen any magic, what are you talking about?”

He walked closer, footsteps echoing from the walls, shadows from the torches throwing a hundred shadows of him against the stone.

“You really are a pretty thing,” he said, drawing a finger over her cheek.

She shuddered away from his touch, snarling at his proximity, limbs straining against the chains. “Don’t touch me!”

“It’s such a shame,” he continued, hand drifting down her chest to rest on her stomach, the burning heat scalding as if branding her as his head lowered to whisper directly in her ear, “that I didn’t find you first that night you were sacrificed.”

With an almighty grunt of effort, Selena bucked forward, her forehead making contact with his nose with a sharp crunch.

“You bitch!” he yelled as he stumbled backwards, blood pouring from his broken nose. “Look what you’ve fucking done!”

“Problem, Damien?” The smooth voice came from behind her, and she twisted around, gasping at the Fae male standing behind her.

Her immediate thought was that it was Elian.

But the face was wrong, the hair too short and peppered with gray, the eyes too cruel.

Phaendar. It had to be. Elian, as mischievous as he could be, always exuded a warm aura of protection and affection. Not to mention the undercurrent of dark power that made something deep inside her clench with longing.

The male standing behind her made her want to hiss and spit and fight.

“I thought you said she doesn’t have control of her fucking powers!” Damien said, clutching his face.

Phaendar tutted and walked around, assessing Selena with cool, calculating eyes, “She doesn’t need magic to headbutt you, Damien. It’s your fault for getting too close.”

“Stupid fucking omega,” Damien snarled. “If you were my mate, I would grind you into submission!”

“But you’re not her mate,” said Phaendar, his voice detached, “and so we have to do things the hard way. Honestly, how difficult is it to follow simple instructions?”

“I didn’t get there fast enough, it was Ronan and his fucking wolves. They’ve been guarding the border like mangey hounds desperate for a bone. By the time I got past they’d taken her!”

“What are you talking about?” Selena said, unable to keep the quiver from her voice.

Phaendar glared at her, but Damien released a high, mocking laugh, “Did you really think the humans came up with the idea to sacrifice you? I ordered it.”

Her blood ran cold. “But you said you punished them, killed them for breaking the law!”

“I killed them,” said Damien through gritted teeth, his face coated in blood, “because they couldn’t follow simple fucking instructions and took you into the woods an hour too early.”

No. No, that couldn’t be, right?

But she remembered the sacrifice as clearly as if it was yesterday. The men had been so clear about their instructions, so scared of the first. If they had truly wanted her gone, why not just kill her in her cottage, or else force her to mate?

“Why?” she whispered, but the horrible truth was beginning to dawn on her.

“Your magic needed to be awoken. And for that, you had to be handed to the forest,” Phaendar replied, looking with distaste over at Damien. “Once that had happened, Damien was supposed to find you and mate you.”

Anger bloomed in her chest. She wasn’t some animal to be captured, bound, and bred. “Why didn’t you just do it yourself?” she hissed at Phaendar.

The Fae grimaced, and glanced over to Damien, who waved the crown in the air, “Because he needed this,” said the prince, “the crown of the Forest God. Left as an object of power when he abandoned his throne and slunk away from his duties. And yes, it is indeed powerful, but not nearly as powerful as the chosen vessel of the Forest God’s magic.”

Chosen vessel? Surely, he couldn’t mean…

“A daughter,” Phaendar said simply. “An omega, born from a mating bond with a human. The last action of a dying God to preserve his power, leave it safe and slumbering until it was time.”

And just like that, the mystery of her life clicked into place.

Why her mother never revealed the alpha who had left her alone and with child.

The magic buried within her.

Why the villagers called her a witch, sensing the difference in her very being and fearing it.

Why four of the most powerful alphas in the realm had bonded to her.

“I’m the daughter of the Forest God?” she breathed, unable to speak louder than a whisper.

“And you could have been a God yourself, if you so chose,” said Phaendar, “Alas, I have other plans for that power.”

“We have other plans,” interrupted Damien, narrowing his eyes at Phaendar. “You need the crown to contain the magic you take from her. And you can’t have the crown unless I give it to you. And I won’t give it to you unless you honor the terms of your vow.”

“Don’t remind me,” hissed Phaendar. “Caeda will be your mate. I will owe blood loyalty to you, and you to me.”

“And I claim the western territories, and you expand your eastern borders,” replied Damien. “We both get what we want.”

Selena ignored them, ignored the clear animosity between the males, the spike of tension in the air. Let them fight it out, she didn’t care. They could rip each other to pieces; it would be doing her a favor.

Tears welled in her eyes, her throat growing thick. She had had a father. One who hadn’t abandoned her like she had thought. He had died. After bonding to her mother.

Perhaps that was what had killed her in the end. The death of her mate.

She wondered what it might have been like if he had lived. Could he have taken on a human form? Helped raise her? Lived as an alpha and teach her his history? Taught her about the power inside of her?

But no. Of course not. He had been dying, and sacrificed the last of his power to an unborn child in the hopes that one day, she would bring peace.

Her purpose hit her with clear, single-minded focus.

“I don’t have any magic,” she said suddenly, interrupting Damien. “You’ve got the wrong girl. I’m not a God’s daughter. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous.”

Phaendar raised an eyebrow as if asking what she thought she would accomplish with the lie. But it wasn’t him she needed to fool.

“For fuck’s sake, yes you do, you stupid little chit,” Damien growled. “Not that it matters. You’ll be dead before you ever have a chance to use it.”

“Then how do you know killing me will work?”

“Damien,” Phaendar warned, but it was too late.

“It needs to bond with the crown before it’s released, that’s why we’ll be siphoning it into the damn thing. It’s far too disobedient at the moment.” Damien rolled his eyes. “Speaking of which, I think we’ve been here long enough.”

The crown. That was the answer. All she had to do was get to the crown, and her magic would be unlocked. Released. She could escape, find her mates, protect her child.

She just had to get to the crown.

“Would you do the honors?” Damien passed it to Phaendar, who held it high above her head, his face sharpening into focus. Tendrils of magic, similar to Elian’s but not nearly as potent, crept through the metal. A sharp, high-pitched scream erupted from the crown, and Phaendar shuddered with the effort of keeping it still.

“It’s a shame,” Damien walked to her side, a lethally sharp dagger in his hand, “I really would have preferred it if you had been my mate.”

He raised the dagger, eyes focused on Phaendar as he began chanting, the crown rattling and screeching in his grasp.

A distraction, that’s all she needed. She just had to unbalance him, injure him, shock him somehow and then he might drop the crown onto her. Perhaps that would be enough. She thrashed and bucked wildly, looking for something, for anything she could use against him.

There was nothing.

Damien grinned as Phaendar’s chanting reached its zenith, muscles tensing to plunge the dagger into her chest and—

A deep snarl echoed from one of the dark corners of the room, where a large archway curved, menacing and shadowy.

Damien whipped around, dagger clenched in his hand.

Phaendar fell silent.

The snarling grew louder as, out of the shadows concealing him, a gigantic wolf stepped into the light.