Page 124 of My Solemn Vow

Valor slams Neil up against the wall. Metal rattles and clanks, but if I try to turn my head, the pain in my neck gets worse.

At least Kerrianne is safe.The truce holds.

I’m fading in and out of consciousness.

The world bustles around me, and I try to speak. “Make it look like an accident.”

I don’t know what the world hears, but I feel nothingness.

53

VALOR

THE TRAITOR, THE WOLF, THE REMORSE

Neil is securely chained to a wall. Dad is tracking Royal and scrambling all the guards we know we can trust. I lock down my home into an impenetrable fortress. Kerrianne is visible on the monitor, but it doesn’t stop my fears.

Antonella is covered in blood. It coats the chair and the floor beneath. The mess from the knife piercing her side. It shouldn’t have hit anything major. But ‘shouldn’t’ and ‘didn’t’ are two different things. Not to mention the cuts to her jaw and throat. She’s lost a lot of blood.

I dart to her chair and press my fingers to the wound on her stomach, trying to feel for bleeding. I strain to hear what my ears are telling me. Her heartbeat is far too slow. Her breathing is practically nonexistent. I let go of the wound in her stomach, and my hands are slick with her blood.

“Antonella.” I start releasing the binds on one side of the chair.

Dad is at my side, unstrapping her other arm, her leg, her neck. “We don’t have time, Valor. She won’t survive this. You need to give her a wolf.”

The noise that comes next, I’ll never forget. It’s almost like a death rattle, but she’s fighting.

My wolf is nowhere to be found.

Dad’s right. She’s not going to survive.

I look for the monster inside me. But he retreated deep in my mind as the evidence was presented against her. And he didn’t resurface as we learned more. As she poked holes into what Neil was saying.

I’m afraid, lost, and looking for him.

Dad pulls Antonella from the chair, and blood stains her blouse on the back from the spikes cutting into her shoulders. He sets her on the stainless-steel table I had her over not that long ago.

“Valor!” my dad shouts, and his alpha command presses through the air. “Shift.”

It awakens my wolf, and he whines. I force it, pushing myself to shift.

This isn’t how it should be. This isn’t how any of this should be.

I find my four feet and approach her. She smells like death, the literal life force seeping from her.

The wolf knows what needs doing. Lifting his paws onto the table, he opens his mouth and digs our teeth into her flesh, tearing through the fabric of her shirt and straight to the bone.

Some ask if wolves are venomous. The truth is no one knows what magic is at work here. But a bite, bone deep, to a human on the edge of death, is all it should take.

I let her go carefully. Lowering myself to the floor, I press my nose against her head and gently lap her neck, cleaning the bite.

You can’t die, Antonella. Princess, until death do we part shouldn’t be so soon. It shouldn’t be like this.I whine, thinking about all the things I said and did incorrectly.

“There’s nothing you can do for her right now, Valor. Let the magic of it work. We need to find Royal.” Dad tries to pull meaway from her, but it’s like standing and seeing her body in the morgue.

The stainless-steel table and sterile room. I can’t tear myself away from this spot. I’ll have to burn this house to the ground because I’ll never be able to forgive myself.

“Valor!” Dad commands again, but he turns soft. “Let her rest. Your mother is on the way. We need to find Royal.”