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CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

STONE

The faintest of heartbeats fluttered against my palm.

I sprawled my hand across someone’s stomach, blinked a few times, and then shifted my gaze upward to Zuri, who stood over me. My eyes widened slightly, and I sat straight up in the bed, heart pounding. Stars danced in my vision, and suddenly, pain split through my head.

“Thank Goddess,” Zuri murmured, sitting beside me and gently motioning for me to lie back down. “You’re going to hurt yourself, Stone. You’ve been out of it for almost an hour now.”

“Y-y-you’re alive,” I murmured, resting my head against the pillow and staring at her.

How was she alive? I had seen Derrit kill her, rip out her womb, and murder our baby.

My gaze dropped to her belly, which didn’t even look like it had been wounded at all. I squeezed my eyes closed and shook my head. None of this made any sense. She was dead. And I didn’t … we didn’t …

“Derrit is dead,” Zuri whispered. “You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“Did you—” I began, but then visions began playing through my head, as if I hadn’t seen them before right now. Visions of Zuri floating in the sky, her chest burning as bright as the moon, tearing Derrit to pieces. “You … killed him.”

“I did.”

While I was so fucking proud of Zuri, I had been completely useless. My contract with the devil had been useless. My strength had been useless. My blood—that of an alpha—had been useless. I hadn’t been enough to protect my mate and my pack.

She pulled me into a tight hug, one of her tears falling onto my cheek. “I’m so happy you’re safe and back to normal. I thought I had lost you for good. I don’t know … I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Maybe you should go get him some water and a doctor,” a woman said to our left.

Zuri glanced over at the tall, slender woman and nodded. “You’re right. I’ll be back.”

Before I could get out another word, Zuri scurried out of the room and down the hallway. I winced from the pain shooting through my head as another vision of Zuri clutching her belly during the fight drifted through my mind.

Did Zuri … was she pregnant? Really pregnant?

“Do you think she knows yet?” one of the women whispered to the other.

I pushed myself to a seated position and leaned against the headboard. “Knows what?”

Both the women stared over at me through wide eyes.

“You can … hear us?” one said.

“Yes …” I murmured, blinking my eyes through the pain. “Can see you too.”

The women, who seemed like sisters, shared a look with each other and then walked to my bedside and stared down at me quizzically. With their brow furrowed, they stalked around me and hummed.

“Why do you think he can see us now?” one asked.

“The dark magic perhaps?”

“We’re only visible to those that are worthy, and he hasn’t been worthy before.”

“Ifa,” the other said, “you literally paired Zuri with him as mates.”

The other rolled her eyes. “For mating and babies! Not for seeing us in our true form.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m still here.”

The older, skinnier sister sat at my bedside. “I’m Shivani, and that’s Ifa. We’re Zuri’s sisters.”

“And your goddesses,” Ifa said.

Shivani rolled her eyes again. “Don’t mind her. She loves being dramatic.”

“I do not!” Ifa said, throwing up her arms. “I just want to know why he can see us.”

“He can see us because, now, he is worthy, sister,” Shivani said. “Stop it.”

After moving closer to me, Ifa looked into my eyes and placed her fingers inches from my face. The pain began evaporating from my head, as if being drawn out, and then a black mist began rising from my skin and swirling in the air. Shivani’s eyes widened.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The Dark One. He’s here.”

“The Dark One?” I repeated after they didn’t continue explaining.

Where had I heard that name before? It sounded so familiar.

Shivani grabbed Ifa’s hand. “We must tell Zuri.”

Before either of them could run off to find my mate and tell her anything, I snapped my hand around Ifa’s wrist and yanked her back. The black mist wrapped around her forearm like a rope, one I wasn’t controlling.

“What is it?” I asked.

The door reopened, and Zuri stopped in her tracks with water in her hand and a doctor behind her. The doctor’s eyes widened, and she shuffled backward.

“What happened to him? He looks like?—”

“The Dark One,” Shivani said to Zuri, “is here.”

“He never dies,” Ifa said, her flesh burning underneath the mist.

I released her wrist, and the mist swarmed back into my body.

“Just as gods and goddesses never die, the Dark One doesn’t either,” Ifa continued.

“His spirit moves from one body to the next once the time has come. At least, that was the ancient myth that I learned. But when our other sister died, I don’t know…

I didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t have hope in it anymore. ”

“W-what else does the myth say?” Zuri asked.

My throat dried, and suddenly, Grandma Bee’s prophecy finally made sense. She had talked about a goddess and a dark spirit saving our pack from all the evil, the prophecy that she had seen in her dreams since she had been a girl.

“If the Dark One doesn’t see that a body is fit for him, he leaves it behind,” I finished.

“Derrit wasn’t contracted with the Dark One,” Shivani whispered, as if it all made sense.

“Derrit was the Dark One,” Ifa whispered.

I stared down at my tattoos that began lifting off my body and forming a dark mist around me.

It swirled through the air and then swarmed around Zuri, pieces of it clinging to her and drawing her closer to me.

If what they had said was true and if the Dark One had really chosen not to be with Derrit anymore, then that meant …

It had chosen me.