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CHAPTER 17

C alla

I run out of the clearing, watching in horror as the wolves collapse, each one falling to the ground under a cloud of violet spores. But they don’t look like any spores I’ve seen before.

“What are you doing?” Nara yells, grabbing my arm. “If they can’t stop those things, you sure as hell can’t!”

“I have to do something!” I shout back, my eyes locked on the bracelet coiled around my wrist. “Come on! You’ve helped me before. Please do it again. Please help them!”

Thin vines slide from the band like tendrils, creeping along my arm. I extend my hand toward the treants, willing them to respond. Nothing. The tendrils flutter, but that’s it.

“Calla, I don’t think that tree’s going to apologize,” Tansy whimpers. “The other one wasn’t this angry.”

I wrench away from Nara and move forward, arm still outstretched like I’m commanding the bracelet. I’m not. I have no idea what I’m doing.

“Nurse Calla! No!” Fiona squeals, racing after me.

“Fuck it, I’m with you,” Brenna says, falling in beside me and gripping her stick like it might actually help. “They saved us. We can’t let them get shredded. Especially that one.” She nods toward the pile of twitching onyx fur beneath the towering behemoth. “He seemed nice.”

“The rest of you—stay back!” I shout, shoving Fiona gently behind me and stepping in front of her.

I should tell Brenna to stay behind too, but she’s clearly made up her mind. She was talking to Caleb earlier. I guess that was enough for her to care. I care too. Not just about Caleb. All of them. If they’re going to be my mates, I can’t abandon them.

The treant raises a massive branch, aiming for the downed wolf.

“Hey! Big ugly tree!” I scream, waving my arms like a lunatic. “Over here! We taste better… probably!”

The hulking monstrosity turns. Gnarled bark, cracked limbs, sap leaking from glowing purple fissures. I spot something strange near the others—twisted hearts, or knots, lying in the dirt where Gideon and Vance went down.

I don’t have time to think up a plan. The treant lurches toward us. I glance back—Nara’s huddled with the younger girls, shielding them with both arms.

“If I get eaten by a tree,” Brenna mutters beside me, “I’m going to turn into a ghost and haunt you. I mean that.”

“You might be haunting another ghost,” I sigh, realizing I’m completely out of my element. “I’m not really sure what to do!”

“Figure it out quickly,” Brenna urges.

I hold out my bracelet. Hoping. Begging. “Come on, do something! Seriously, if you can help, now is the time!” The tendrils continue to flutter, but the treant doesn’t slow down.

Brenna checks me out of the corner of her eye, then leaps in front of me, holding out her stick as bravely as she can. But bravery isn’t enough. The treant lets out a lumbering groan and swipes her out of the way with a swing of its massive branch. It turns where she falls and spews purple mist at my friend.

“Brenna, look out!” I yell, but the dust settles before she can move.

“H… Human me… meat.” The treant swipes a gooey, rotten brown tongue across the edges of its mouth. “Delicious.”

“Oh, no, Brenna!” I run toward her. “Bracelet… Vine… The Tangle. Whatever you are, if you let her die, you won’t get anything else from me!” I take a deep breath and exhale sharply. “Probably because I’ll be next, so… Please…”

The pulse gets yanked from my wrist, sweeps through my body, and dives into the dirt below. Straight through the vines. I’m in the ground. No, I am the ground. As quickly as I went down, I go up. It feels like I’ve been fired out of one of those cannons they used to shoot off at the Great War reenactment fairs Saul took me to when I was a kid.

“Whoa!” I say, realizing I’m glowing green. And floating. “Um, big… guy?”

The treant is about to flay Brenna open with a swipe, but I draw his attention. I’m not sure if it is the green glow, or the tendrils moving on my arm. He turns and I just instinctively know to take a swing. The tendrils keep reaching, more of them rushing forward to join the others as they hit the treant like darts. They impede, weave, then the purple drains out the leaking sap. He stops, settles into the ground, and goes quiet. Still. Silent. Only the wind moves now.

The pulse inside me fades.

And I fall.

My feet barely touch the ground before my knees give out. The world spins once.

Then there’s nothing.

I wake up with a headache. I’m groggy. My vision won’t focus. I’m on the ground, but in a different spot. I know that because I’m near a roaring campfire, and I can hear people talking.

“Yes, and then… I think Calla’s waking up.”

“Gideon?” I call out, as soon as I recognize his voice.

“I’m here,” he says, moving to my side and holding my hand. “We all are. And from what Nara tells us, you saved our lives.”

“Her bracelet did,” Fiona chimes, and my vision focuses enough to see her smiling face in the dim light of the campfire. “Are you hungry? Jace made dinner. Vance found some berries that taste like sour candy!”

I start to say no, but then my stomach rumbles like I haven’t eaten in days. “S-starving,” I mutter.

Gideon helps me sit up and I look around. Everyone’s here. They’re all safe. I look down at the vine on my wrist and rub my fingers across it. It’s pulsing again, in rhythm with my heart.

“Here,” Jace says, putting a plate piled with meat and a few berries in my lap. “Water? Something stronger? What do you need?”

“W-water,” I force out, realizing how dry my throat is.

Not only is everyone here, but they’re all looking at me like… like the younger girls look at Leon Hadaway. Like I’m some kind of idol because I can sing really well. Or in my case, summon tendrils from my bracelet that can kill a treant.

I take the water Jace offers and sip until I nearly choke. Once it settles, I eat some meat and try one of the berries. I manage a nod to let Fiona know she was spot on with the flavor comparison. Then I take a deep breath and look around.

“If you’re waiting for me to explain what happened, I have no clue,” I say. “I don’t seem to have any control over it, and it helps when it wants to. The rest of the time it just… pulses.”

“Mind if I have a look?” Vance asks, moving closer to me.

“Go ahead, but it might burn you. It burned Nara.” I motion to her and hold out my wrist to Vance.

“I knew Vance would be fascinated by it,” Knox grumbles.

I make eye contact with him. The hunger is still in his eyes, but it’s restrained, like he’s holding it back. It causes some heat to rise along my neck. My heartbeat quickens. Vance pulls his finger away from the bracelet for a moment before leaning forward and touching it.

“It’s not an instantaneous burn,” Vance says. “Looks like spikeshade. Feels like spikeshade. Definitely would scorch Nara’s skin, but it takes longer for us. If I kept my hand on it for a while, I’d have a mark. Definitely couldn’t wear it all the time like you do. It would start to itch.”

“Didn’t even really notice that thing last night,” Jace remarks, and my eyes get wide for a moment.

“We had other things on our mind, brother,” Gideon says, but he seems to notice my discomfort. “Getting ready for our journey required a lot of preparation.”

“Right,” Jace mutters, nodding in mock agreement.

“Wait,” I say, looking around in a panic. “Is it okay to have a campfire? What if something sees it?”

“Nah, we’re underground,” Vance says, turning and studying my bracelet. “Look up. It’s a really big cave.”

I look up and around me, realizing he’s right. I’m so used to the darkness in The Tangle that I didn’t realize there was no moon. No breeze. No trees nearby. We’re on a smooth dirt floor. A large cavern surrounds us. The exit is in the distance, but it’s blocked off by thick underbrush. I’m guessing they covered it up.

“It looks like an ordinary piece of spikeshade.” Vance shrugs. “Glows in the dark sometimes, if it stores too much light, but a lot of plants have done that since the solar flare. Looks like any other vine braided like this, except it pulses. The pieces of spikeshade you cut off never do that.”

“You’re the guy who talks to plants, but even I know spikeshade doesn’t let you glow green, float off the ground, and shoot tendrils out of your wrist like Spider… woman,” Jace scoffs, then motions to the other women. “Unless they were embellishing. I was choking on fucking spores.”

“That’s exactly how it happened,” Tansy says confidently.

“Yeah,” Fiona confirms. “It was awesome!”

“And I was choking on… spores,” Brenna mutters. “I’ll take their word for it.”

“All of you woke up before I did?” I question, shaking off the last of my grogginess.

“Yeah, the spores don’t knock you out long. We would have probably woken up before he finished digesting us,” Gideon says. “But you’ve been out the entire time. I think it was more than just the tree pollen.”

“He carried you,” Fiona says, motioning to Knox.

My eyes get wide again. I was in his arms. For how long? The entire afternoon. Into the night. Or at least until we got to this cave. I swallow hard, drink more of my water, and pick up another berry, popping it in my mouth.

“She’s just waking up. She’s hungry and thirsty. Let’s give her some breathing room,” Gideon says, some authority in his voice. “Leave her bracelet alone, Vance. Come on, this cave is big. Let’s find somewhere to sleep.”

There are some groans as everyone except Knox gets up. Soreness. A few already treated wounds. Gideon leads the rest of them away, leaving me alone with the next wolf who plans to claim me. I can’t help feeling a flicker of nervousness when he moves closer to the fire.

“Tonight, little girl. Tonight, you’ll be mine,” he growls.

His guttural exhale sends a shiver down my spine and makes my stomach flutter. My core tightens and I feel a tremor that makes me aware of the soreness I still have from being claimed by Gideon and Jace.

“Here?” I shake my head. “Everyone will hear us.”

“I don’t care,” he says, moving closer to me like he’s sizing up prey. “And neither will you once you start screaming my name louder than you were screaming for my brothers last night.”

“No, please,” I whimper. “I agreed to be your mate, and I understand you have a… need, or whatever. But I don’t want everyone to hear it.”

“Some privacy. Okay,” he grunts. “We’ll go outside. After everyone else is asleep. Until then, you can just imagine yourself on all fours, getting rutted by the big, bad wolf.”

The platinum scar in his eyes flickers and he stands up. His lips spread into a hungry grin before he turns and walks away from the campfire.

And I imagine it. It’s in my mind before I can even blink. I squirm in the dirt and can already feel dampness between my thighs. Rutted? It echoes in my head like a warning. Or a promise. Maybe both.

I shift my weight, trying to ease the ache building between my thighs, but it doesn’t help. The friction from the military fatigues makes it worse. My core clenches with every heartbeat, my bracelet matching the rhythm. The fire crackling in front of me doesn’t feel nearly as hot as what’s happening inside my body.

Golden eyes, with a glimmer of the platinum that hangs around his face. Rough, scarred hands. The growl when he calls me little girl .

He’s going to claim me, just like his brothers did. I’m powerless to fight it, and I don’t even want to. I just hope he’ll do it far enough away that my friends don’t hear. If they didn’t hear it last night. I’m not looking forward to having to tell them they’re going home and I’m not. But maybe they’ll be so happy to see Haven North they won’t care.

“Alright, sleeping arrangements are handled,” Gideon announces as he brings the group back. Everyone except Knox, at least.

“What are you going to do, Nurse Calla?” Fiona asks.

“What?” I ask, glad I didn’t say anything going through my head. “What do you mean?”

“We were just talking about what we’re going to do when we get home,” Nara explains, sitting down next to the fire and rubbing her hands. “I’m going to visit a few of my colleagues and talk about what I’ve seen. What I’ve heard…”

“After a bath!” Fiona chimes. “We all agreed we need a bubble bath first!”

“A bubble bath would be nice,” I admit, a slight pang in my stomach as I realize I’ll likely never have one again.

“A bubble bath, nice and warm,” Tansy says. “Maybe I can get my mom to let me use some of the cinnamon soap she got from her friend in the Upper District. She let me use some on my birthday last year. It was amazing.”

Brenna is silent. She jabs the dirt with her stick and rolls her eyes at Tansy’s comment. I understand it. She probably won’t get a bubble bath when she gets home. Maybe they’ll be considerate and let her stay with her guardian a little longer, but if she’s Unassigned, the time for her to move on to the Lower District has passed. She spent the days she was supposed to prepare for it in The Tangle.

The others continue to chatter. The wolves are quiet. The ones here, at least. I don’t know where Knox went, but it’s almost like I can feel his eyes on me. Watching. Lurking. Waiting to pull me outside so he can… have me.

On all fours. The worst part is I think I prefer it that way. I can’t deny the way it felt when Gideon and Jace took me with those deep, powerful strokes. But I was weary by then. Not fresh. This will be different.

“We should turn in soon,” Gideon announces. “We’ve had a long day, and we’ll need to get an early start tomorrow if we want to make to Haven North by nightfall.”

“I’m going to stay up a little longer,” I say. “I don’t think I can sleep yet.”

Vance gets up and says goodnight before walking away. Caleb does the same, minus the goodnight. My friends follow Vance, because Gideon and Jace remain where they are.

“Didn’t you just say…” I gesture toward the others.

Jace chuckles and shakes his head. “We’re staying up a little longer too,” he says. “Knox isn’t the only one that is going to fuck your tight little pussy tonight.”

Gideon nods, a grin making the fire glow in his eyes.

I swallow hard, but don’t respond.

It’s going to be another long night.