Page 13 of Owned by Four Alphas (Silverthorn Alphas #2)

When she woke from yet another dream, her head pounding, her mouth dry and her bladder complaining, she didn’t even have to look before straightening out the books on the desk that had moments ago been her pillow.

She rarely left the library these days.

Ever since that day two months ago, since Kaelen had loomed above her with nothing but wicked contempt in his eyes, she had felt herself withdraw and crumble. More often than not, she found herself weeping amongst the cold aisles of books, wrapping her arms around her swollen stomach, trying to find strength and warmth in her child.

It wouldn’t be long now. Maybe a few weeks.

Kaelen had only gotten worse. She wasn’t allowed to leave the palace now without at least two of her mates. When she walked the corridors, there were always guards behind her. He barely let her be alone in the library, his amber eyes narrowed and watchful of her every step, waiting for her to fight back.

She hadn’t. She didn’t know how to. If she fought him, disobeyed him, flaunted his stupid rules in his face, then he would only get more draconian, draw further from her, widen the chasm between them. She didn’t want that. She wanted to fix it. She wanted him back.

But she wouldn’t beg. She wouldn’t give in and accept the prison walls he had built around her. She couldn’t, not without betraying everything she believed herself to be.

The rift had trickled out, poisoning the whole pack. Elian was perfectly happy to let Kaelen dictate her life to her, claiming with a mischievous wink that her guaranteed safety put him at ease to pursue his plans.

She hadn’t asked what they were. She couldn’t find the energy to care, either. Elian would always scheme and plot, and now he had Kaelen as his playmate, the two were a force. They commanded every room they were in, masterfully pitting the nobles against each other, weaving the threads of their control until it was near absolute. Caeda, who had wanted to go and explore the world, had vowed never to talk to her brother again after he prohibited it. So far, she was doing an excellent job keeping to her word.

Ronan they sent away on an increasing number of missions to his territory to try and stop Ordovic from digging his claws further into the wolves. It was essential they kept control of the wolf shifters and their land to guard against the human threat. He never liked leaving her. But she couldn’t ask him to stay, not when his people were in danger. At least he would be returning today for a meeting with the nobles. She shuddered. She was dreading it.

Malek had not done well in the face of Kaelen’s domineering. Selena was amazed that the situation hadn’t devolved into an all-out fight between them. She had sensed it, looming and dangerous, a storm on the horizon threatening at any moment to sweep in and decimate.

It was always the same. Kaelen would make an order, Malek would challenge him, and the two would stare each other down wondering if the other would break first. Malek always broke first. He would retreat to the woods to shed his human skin and let himself lose control. He would never risk hurting her by attacking Kaelen.

A small part of Selena was glad of it. She had seen what formidable warriors all of her mates were, both when they fought together or against each other. But Malek was something different. He was vulnerable to Elian’s magic, but Kaelen’s was not strong enough to rein him in. And if the two of them ever lost control, she didn’t know if they’d be able to stop themselves from killing one another.

She wouldn’t survive the heartbreak.

Malek knew that. So he escaped to the woods, to his Nightwalkers, and lost control there instead.

She missed him terribly when he did.

She missed all her mates.

Her baby kicked suddenly against her, shocking her out of her spiraling thoughts. She glanced down, caressing a hand over the spot where the baby’s solid little foot had fluttered.

Her baby.

A tear slipped down her cheek.

Her sleep had been terrible, more and more nightmares of her father plaguing her. At this point, she was certain he was alive and calling to her. But she couldn’t reach him. The frustration was enough to make her want to tear her hair out.

Despite the trove of books from the archives, her research had only gotten her so far. Confirmed what she already knew to be true. More tears fell and she sniffled, wiping her nose against her sleeve.

“Selena?”

She whipped around, furiously rubbing her tears away, painting a smile on her face. “Castien! It’s good to see you, I think I’ve found something interesting here!”

He raised an eyebrow but said nothing, hovering awkwardly at her side, fingers drumming against an ancient book.

“Really,” she said, her voice high and thin, “I’m fine, I promise! It’s just…the pregnancy. Just the pregnancy.”

He nodded slowly, his expression making it clear that he didn’t believe her. After all, this wasn’t the first time he’d caught her crying.

Clearing her throat, she gestured to the book. “What do you have there?”

Glancing down in surprise, as if having forgotten that he carried a book, he let out a nervous laugh. “Oh, this? Could be nothing. I found it on one of the furthest shelves. I think it might help us translate that book you found. What was it again? Something about prophecies?”

“The Prophecies of the Great Gods: The Language of the Divine?” she asked, gasping in sudden delight. The book she had spotted the first time she had found the archives. The one Elian had begrudgingly allowed her to take. The one that constantly mocked her with its unidentifiable language.

Castien nodded, letting the book fall with a dull thud to the table, coughing as it kicked up a cloud of dust, “I was doing inventory when I stumbled across it. Didn’t understand it at first, so was happy to leave it, but then some of these symbols caught my eye.” He traced his finger over the spine. “They’re the same as in your book, right? So I had a closer look and sure enough, this seems to be a translation guide!”

“Castien, you’re amazing!” she cried, the thrill of the new discovery enough to banish the heavy cloud above her head for just a moment.

He flushed, biting back a smile at her praise, “Oh, I’m not sure about that. Come on, let’s see what we can work out.”

Hours passed in companionable silence as they scoured through the book together, comparing the two texts, trying to find a thread of something, anything , that could help them work out how to locate the Forest God.

After a while, Selena leaned back with a groan, her joints aching from craning over the words. “It’s going to take us days to get through all of this! Maybe we should just translate it from cover to cover, make sure we don’t miss anything!”

Castien winced slightly, but Selena ignored him. She had to do this. Finding her father was the key to all of this, she was sure of it. If she could find him, then he could teach her how to control the magic, and then there wouldn’t be nearly so many claiming she was nothing but a danger to the realm. And then maybe, just maybe, her pack could be happy.

It had to work. Her efforts to control her magic had only gotten worse. At the merest attempt to wrestle with it, it would unfurl and lash against her, a wild animal snapping and twisting in her grasp.

It was utterly exhausting.

“Hang on,” Castien leaned forward suddenly, his eyes brightening, his pointed ears flicking. “Wait a minute, wait a minute! I think I’ve found something!”

“What! Let me see, let me see!” She tried to push his shoulder out of the way, but he was unmovable, his eyes flicking between the books as his lips moved, forming the words.

“Castien, what does it say? You’re driving me crazy!”

“It says,” he said slowly, his brow furrowing, his finger tapping against the ancient paper. “It says…I think it says…no, no. Wait, maybe?”

“Castien, I swear to all the gods, if you don’t tell me what it says then I’m going to feed you to Malek!”

He huffed at her, pushing away her grabbing hands.

“Okay. I think I’ve got it. It’s a prophecy, a very old one.”

“Well yes, I could guess that, it is a book of prophecy! What does it actually say?”

“It’s talking about the Forest God, about his power waning, about him giving it away.”

“What?”

“Look here, this translates to ‘bleeding out,’ and this word here means to plant, as in a seed, but I don’t think it’s literal. I think it means he bled out his magic, so to speak, in order to water a planted seed.”

“Or father a child!” Selena gasped, the pieces falling into place.

“Precisely. It talks of him seeing an oncoming storm, and knowing the only way to avert it is to father a child and give over his magic.”

Selena looked closer at the text. The letters were strange and blotchy, hard to read against a swirling pattern of light green that covered the page. Something tugged at the back of her mind, and she looked closer at the swirling lines. One in particular, bold and curving, struck her as being remarkably similar to the river that ran through the First Realm.

She cried out, jabbing her finger against it, “I think this is a map!”

“What?”

“Look here! Doesn’t this look like the river? And these markings here, they’re slightly sharper than the rest, they could be the northern volcanoes!”

Castien’s eyes widened, “And there’s the borderline. Selena, I think you’ve got it! This doesn’t just predict what the Forest God was to do, it’s showing us where he was to do it!”

Her eyes raked over the map. “Where? I don’t see it!”

“It’s clear as day! Look here, the only direct reference to the Forest God’s name, rather than this pronoun that seems to refer to deities in general, is here to the north! What if this is where the Forest God gave you his magic?”

Her heart was in her throat, her hands trembling with a sudden onslaught of emotion, “Do you really think…I mean…could it really be?”

Castien nodded, his mouth curved in a grin. “Yes, I mean, nothing else makes sense, if you look at…”

He suddenly trailed off, his eyes narrowing, his finger grazing the text.

“What, what is it? What have you seen?”

He was silent a while as he translated, his face growing pale, his brow furrowing.

After a while, he swallowed, his hand trembling. “There’s more to the prophecy,” he said, his voice catching slightly.

“What more? Where? What does it say?”

“Selena, I don’t think—”

“Tell me, you’ve got to tell me! I’ll just translate it myself if you don’t!”

He looked at her, his warm brown eyes filled with pity and sadness.

“It says why he had to give up his magic to his child. It talks of an ancient power rising from the depths. A being of fire and death. A being that he defeated once, but cannot defeat twice.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t think…it’s not Theldir, is it?”

Castien sucked in a breath. “It goes on to say that the Forest God’s child is prophesied to conceive her own babe with four beings of strength and power unmatched. And that this babe is the only being capable of destroying the ancient power that would plunge the world into darkness.”

Selena frowned, her hands flying to her stomach, cradling her baby, panic coursing through her. “This child? My child?”

“Selena,” Castien said, his voice thick, “it says that the babe will either destroy the ancient power. Or join it.”