Page 66 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)

AUDREY

I woke at dawn the next day covered in a blanket and wrapped in Bishop’s arms. The sense of warmth and calm of being in his embrace filled me with a heavy, relaxing warmth, although my muscles did ache a bit from having walked most of the day yesterday — guess I wasn’t quite as healed as I’d thought I was.

Across from me lay Cyrus and Knox, both covered in their blankets and asleep. It shocked me that Knox still hadn’t shifted back to his wolf, the form Bishop had told me he preferred. It, however, didn’t shock me, that he’d waited until I’d passed out before joining us at the campfire.

His lids cracked open and his gaze jumped to mine as if drawn to me, unable to look anywhere else first. For a second the icy hollowness wasn’t as overwhelming and hope that he didn’t despise me for accidentally trapping him flickered inside me.

Even if we weren’t permanently bound together, I didn’t want him to hate me. If Bishop and I were going to be in a relationship, everything would be easier and less awkward — or as less awkward as things could get given the circumstances — if Knox didn’t hate me.

Then his eyes narrowed, bursting my hope, and with a grunt, he got up. He shoved the blanket into my pack and marched around to the other side of the wall, taking my pack and that hope with him.

Only half a day to go, I told myself. Half a day and it will be over.

Knox might never forgive me, but by noon today he’d at least be free, and I wouldn’t be able to sense that hate.

We ate a quick breakfast of dried rations, tidied up our campsite — since we were going to be returning to it tonight — and headed out.

The sunrise had burned away most of last night’s mist, but there were still a few curls of it undulating in crevasses and shaded areas where the light had yet to reach, and a chill still hung in the air. As we walked, the land grew more even and more barren without a shrub or weed in sight, leveling out to look more like a cracked, water-starved desert than the rocky mountainous lands we’d been hiking, and it still hadn’t warmed up.

It was hard to believe that all my hope lay in the middle of complete emptiness, and by midmorning, a part of me started to fear that the desolation around us was all there was. There wasn’t an altar to a death god and there was no hope that the bond would ever be broken.

But Knox, who walked a good hundred feet ahead of us, kept going north. I didn’t know if it was because he sensed something or if he just couldn’t stop, couldn’t give up on the hope that he’d be free.

I focused on the possibility that he sensed something. I’d come this far, walked until my feet bled. It couldn’t all be for nothing. There was an altar and the spell would work. I would get my life back.

No, I’d get a better life. I was still a weak shifter who couldn’t shift, but that didn’t mean I was helpless. Humans did just fine without any shifting or magic, and I could find a place for myself in this realm. If it wasn’t in Cyrus’s pack, then a human community.

It wouldn’t be easy, especially since I was illiterate, but for once in my life, I could make my own decisions, choose my own path.

And in a few hours, once we found this altar, I could get started.

Another hour later and I realized the ground ahead of us wasn’t so flat. It was hard to see, just a bump on the horizon, but it kept getting bigger and bigger the closer we got to it.

That was the temple. I just knew it.

My pulse leaped in anticipation and I picked up my pace. Bishop and Cyrus didn’t say anything, but they easily matched me, and we hurried toward the?—

Lump.

It was a giant, three-story mound of earth in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t look anything like Tzanagoth’s detailed, multi-spired temple in Anakar, and I wasn’t even sure it was anything. There were no windows and no doors — at least from this side. For all I knew, it wasn’t even hollow.

Perhaps we had to climb to the top… except I couldn’t see any stairs or hand and footholds, and the surface was smooth enough that climbing would be difficult. Or at least difficult for me. The guys could probably climb that thing no problem.

“Is this the temple?” Bishop asked, staring at it, his brow furrowed.

Cyrus glanced at the sun. It sat high in the sky indicating it was close to noon. The villagers had said if we left at sunrise and headed straight north, we’d reach the temple by noon.

Maybe we hadn’t walked north. It was highly unlikely with Knox leading the way, but maybe.

There’s an entrance on the far side, Knox said in my head, and presumably in Bishop’s and Cyrus’s as well since we all hurried around it to find Knox standing a good ten feet back from a dark, narrow entranceway. His posture was stiff and he glared at the entrance as if he were furious with it.

“I’ll check it out,” Bishop said and he headed inside.

The passage was barely wider than his shoulders and only a foot taller than him, and within a dozen feet, he disappeared into darkness.

With a growl, Knox paced a good fifty feet away from the mound then stomped back. Then his head jerked toward Cyrus and his growl deepened.

“I’ll be fine,” Knox snarled, a hint of darkness in his eyes. “This needs to be done.”

“Then get ahold of yourself,” Cyrus snarled back, his power crashing over me and dropping me to my knees before I realized what was going on.

I fought to breathe against the crushing force, my body bending forward and pressing my forehead to the ground in complete submission.

Knox groaned, dropped to one knee, and bowed his head.

“Better,” Cyrus said and the pressure released me.

Fuck. I sucked in ragged breaths, my forehead still pressed to the ground, and trembled at the reminder of just how powerful Cyrus was. Sterling had been able to bring me to my knees as quickly, but never with as much force.

God, was that his full strength completely unleashed? I’d known he was strong, but that was so much more than I could have possibly imagined.

The tunnel is about a hundred feet and it opens into one enormous chamber, Bishop said, thankfully distracting me from just how terrifying Cyrus really was. A bit of the ceiling has fallen in so light isn’t a problem.

Good, Knox replied. He squared his shoulders, his expression pinched as if the idea of walking inside made him angry, but he marched ahead anyway, a man on a mission.

And I suppose he was. He wanted the bond broken even more than I did.

“Come on,” Cyrus said, holding out his hand in an offer to help me up.

I narrowed my eyes at it, wanting to snap at him for crushing me while trying to control Knox for whatever reason. But snapping wouldn’t change anything. Flattening me was collateral damage and I wasn’t important enough to be considered. Better to not pick a fight with a man who could crush me with a look and put me back into a lifetime of servitude. Even if he had agreed with Bishop about finding me a place in his pack where I was happy, he was still an alpha. He could easily change his mind.

I followed Knox down the passage with one hand dragging on the wall and the other held in front of me, slowing to a crawl once I was in complete darkness. The air was even cooler inside than outside the mound and damp even though the surrounding land looked like it was starving for water.

Cyrus drew up close behind me, a whisper of his body heat radiating against my back, but thankfully didn’t complain about my pace. He just remained a hulking, intimidating presence at my back. One that, even though he’d just terrified me with his show of power, still sent a teasing shiver of need rushing through me.

I quickly tamped down on that. It was just more residual good feelings from having sex with Bishop. Cyrus was gorgeous in that sexy bad boy kind of way and now I knew how amazing sex could be. That was all.

After what felt like forever but was probably only about ten minutes, I could make out the end of the passage and a hint of light beyond. The light didn’t get much brighter when I reached the end, but it was enough to tell I’d reached an empty cavernous room.

The edges of the room were draped in darkness and I couldn’t tell if there were any other passages, while most of the floor was smooth flat ground. The exception was where the rubble had fallen from the ceiling and the coffin-sized slab of stone in the center.

The death god’s altar.

Bishop and Knox stood by the altar, and Bishop had already pulled out the piece of paper with the instructions along with the vial of shimmering golden liquid Whil had given him to power the spell — since shifters couldn’t summon magical power like a fae sorcerer or even a human witch.

“Let’s get this over with,” Cyrus said, nudging me forward and making me realize I still stood at the mouth of the passage.

“Right.” My pulse picked up with hope and anticipation, and I hurried across the perfectly smooth floor, my footsteps echoing around me.

This was it. This would break our bond and I’d be free. For the first time in my life, I’d be free.

“You need to stand across from each other,” Bishop directed, and Knox moved to the other side of the altar as I stepped up beside Bishop.

The altar was the only thing that hadn’t been left plain. Unlike the outside of the temple/mound and the floor, it was carved in an intricated, mesmerizing swirling pattern so fine it must have taken hundreds of hours to complete.

“Now you need to prick your finger and smear blood on the death god’s seal.” Bishop frowned and ran his hands over the altar, sweeping away a thick layer of dust, revealing just how precise the swirling pattern was. “Here,” he said, pointing to an intricate circular symbol in the center of all the intricate swirls. “Smear your blood here.”

“Which finger?” Cyrus asked me, stepping up beside me, his claws extending from his fingers.

“How much blood do you need?” I asked Bishop, who was back to reading the piece of paper.

“It doesn’t say. A good smear if you can manage it,” he said with a shrug.

Which meant the wound was going to be deeper than a papercut, might need a bandage, and be a pain for a few days, but thankfully no worse than that.

“This one,” I told Cyrus, holding out my left ring finger. It was a finger that I hopefully wouldn’t use as much as my other ones for the next few days.

Cyrus nicked my fingertip, his claws so sharp I didn’t feel it at first. Then my blood welled over my skin and I felt the sting. I smeared a large red streak across the symbol, squeezed my fingertip to draw out even more blood, and added another streak just to be sure while Cyrus nicked Knox’s finger and he did the same.

“Place your palm on the seal and keep it there until the spell is done,” Bishop commanded. “Whil’s instructions say, don’t worry if you touch the blood or each other. Knox, when I say go, I want you to pour Whil’s potion over both of your hands and the blood.” He uncorked the vial of golden liquid and handed it to Knox. “Then both of you repeat what I say. Got it?”

I placed my hand on the symbol and nodded that I understood, while Knox did the same, his fingers on top of mine, his hand almost big enough to cover the seal by himself.

A hint of desire shivered down my spine and pooled between my thighs, a reminder of the mating bond we were trying to break. Knox’s eyes narrowed, and he sucked in a sharp breath as if he, too, could feel the urging from the bond.

Then the muscles in his jaw flexed, his eyes narrowed, and the icy hollowness of his rejection swelled, devouring the need and leaving me shivering not just from the cold in the chamber.

“Okay,” Bishop said as he and Cyrus took a large step back.

Knox raised his gaze, finally meeting mine. His eyes were still a normal brown with no hint of his wolf, and for a second, I was falling inside their hard depths. They were so unlike Bishop’s warm eyes and yet so very much the same, and I ached for him, for us, for what never should have been.

For just a second, hope and desperation flickered in those brown flecked with green depths, then he blinked, releasing me, and the hard mask he’d been wearing since I’d seen him in his human form returned.

“Ready?” he asked, his voice gruff, his body so tense a vein in his temple had started throbbing.

“Ready,” I told him and he poured the potion out of the vial, trailing it over our hands and onto the seal and making sure some of it landed on the blood. A sudden jolt of power snapped through me and heat swept from my hand and up my arm, almost too hot in contrast to how cold I was.

“Oh, gree-ate god-ESS,” Bishop said, his pronunciation strange as if he no longer knew exactly how to speak his own language.

“Oh, great goddess,” I repeated.

“Oh, pow-erful ru-EL-er over the EEE-ternal slu-umber and the EEE-nd of all things,” he continued. “I sta-and before you with hope-E, DEE-sire, and HU-mility. Heear my plea and gr-ANT your gree-atest mercies and might that I, your most HU-umble sea-er-vant, might sever and EE-x-cute the magic that Buh-hinds me. Oh, most REE-vered, awesome, and May-ges-tic ru-EL-er of death.”

Knox and I repeated it all and waited…

And waited…

Time dragged forward with only the initial heat from Whil’s magical liquid warming my hand and forearm.

My pulse pounded in my ears, and I held my breath, hoping and praying that it would work.

Knox deserved to be free. I hadn’t meant to bond with him, hell, we didn’t even know each other, he shouldn’t have to be stuck with me for the rest of his life.

Please. If there was a death god asleep under my feet, please let her hear my prayer and free him. Please.

Sudden, ferocious light exploded from the shimmering golden liquid and the heat from the power turned into an inferno. It raced past my shoulder, into my chest, and flooded around my heart, stealing my breath, and painfully tearing into me, threatening to consume me. Every muscle in my body locked, the force of the power the only thing holding me up, and it jerked me upright, my head thrown back on a scream I couldn’t release.

The pressure and agony was more powerful than anything I’d ever felt before. Even Cyrus’s crushing power outside the temple that had brought me to my knees in an instant was nothing compared to the force ripping into my very essence.

But a mating bond was a powerful form of magic that no one had ever broken before. The magic needed to destroy something so strong had to be a force unlike any other, and I feared that force was going to tear me apart with the bond.