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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

GRACE

T here’s an invisible force anchoring my eyes to the ground as The Lighthouse looms overhead.

It’s like the vile pheromones of an evil alpha but worse.

The heaviness in the air sinks into my bones as I trudge up the stone steps one at a time.

I want to run and run away if I’m honest with myself.

But I know I won’t be able to escape the weight of this force.

It’s evil. Just like the island, the benevolent looking white building holds a horrendous core.

As we get closer I become aware of the numerous remnants of scorch marks on the stone. They remind me of the tendrils of a snake and I shutter as the swirling patterns look poised to strike in the setting sun.

Then some splatter like paint until a whole wall is engulfed by the shadow of the fire that took half of this building’s foundation into the bottom of the sea.

It’s unstable and dangerous for other reasons that aren’t just structural.

But it holds answers.

Nakoa’s eyes narrow at that before he whispers, not answers to the questions you seek.

Before I can get a word in he slips his arm around my waist and drags me close.

Now come on and stay close.

We duck under a protruding beam. I look up to see Leo’s combat boot bashing into a slightly ajar door.

There isn’t an easier entrance we can take anymore?

Not one we can take with you, Raphael states as if that explains everything. It just leaves me spiraling in more riddles and half-truths.

Let’s go. Keep close.

“What’s in here,” I ask, damn near begging him for an answer.

A haunted look flashes in his eyes before Nakoa murmurs, “Nothing good.”

“Stay alert. And Grace, stay close,” Raphael orders as we make it to the hole in the gate. They weren’t kidding when they said it was the entrance to hell.

The metal is wrapped and scorched, an explosion ripping it open from the inside out like a screaming mouth.

Behind it is a crater inside the prison wall, and the darkness is so absolutely that when we first step in, I can’t see my hand.

I cling to Raphael, relying on touch and smell.

We can’t use lights, they said. But they won’t say why.

Too many mysteries. We’re too close to still be keeping so many secrets.

But I have a feeling now everything will be revealed.

“Leo, A block. I’ll search B. You stay on C and get the hell out of here if anything goes down, Nakoa whispers, and then he’s gone like a flash of smoke, his pehermeoens masked by the overwhelming stench of decay.

We pick our way down way I assume are rows of cells finally stopping at an open cell that has a tiny amount of light streaming in from a window covered in intact metal bars. I follow Raphael.

“What do I smell like to you?” he jokes.

“Lavender and eucalyptus,”

He pants, grabs his head, chokes. Is Nakoa using his powers? It seems like he must be because it’s driving Raphael mad.

My alpha slams me against the cell wall, my arms pinned above my head.

“P-p-please,” I stutter out, sucking in a sharp breath. “Release me.”

His dark hair shields his even darker eyes, storm clouds swirling through them as he grits out, “Never. I’ll protect you. I won’t let you go.”

He releases one arm to stroke my cheek, “This time I’ll save you.”

I grimace, knowing now he’s not looking at me. He’s looking through me at a terrible memory.

My eyes flick down to the hint of burn scars snaking down his hip.

What happened here, in this awful place? To my alpha? To my pack?

He releases a shuddering breath, as I gently pry my other wrist from his calloused hand.

He slumps against me, as the light from the sole window in the cell dims.

It seems the darkness scares him more than the shadows the light casts.

My alpha trembles as he holds the chains to the light. Chains he broke free from only seven years ago.

In that horrible moment, I vow as his omega to hunt down and chain the bastards that did that to him…

“Together.”

I reach up and pull him into a fierce hug.

We were never meant to be together, to be trapped in this limbo. But I promise myself in that moment for once, I’ll be the one to save them.

“Let go,” Raphael’s booming voice penetrates the silence like a sword.

I step back, fearful I’ll be cut by his sharp words.

He glares at his empire

His hand settles on the metal bar, warping it.

“They shot us up with so much shit I forget sometimes . But I thought I could save her.”

“Your mate?”

“No!” he stumbles over his words, trailing off, glaring at me before he whispers, “She wasn’t my mate. She was my sister. And I failed her. I watched her, then when she burned. They said they couldn’t risk it, the infection spreading.”

Something shifts in Raphael's heated gaze. My stomach somersaults as he steps closer. I suck in a sharp breath wondering if he’ll kiss me. Wanting him to kiss me. But he doesn’t He turns away and grimances.

I was sixteen when I was sentenced.

Sixteen? I can’t stop myself from shouting and he glares at me, but Raphael’s flare is half hearted.

Yes, sixteen. Tried as an adult.

For what?

Two counts of felonious assault with a weapon.

Then the story comes flooding back.

My blood turns to ice as his dark gaze shifts to mine, radiating rage.

“…against my mother.”

It feels so long ago, like a bad dream I can’t wake up from, the day my mothers body was found raped and butchered behind her office building. The day the Liberation Foundation burned to the ground. The day Faith and I lost our whole world.

He takes a step closer, a meaningful step filled with dark intentnions, and I step back rattling the chains as my back hits the wall.

But I shock him by leaping forward and tugging him back into my arms. And even though he stands like a garogyle, still as stone, I refuse to let go, to allow him to close himself off from me again.

The cell seems to melt away and there’s only my alpha and me, embracing in the darkness, as if we’re the only people left in the universe. It takes a long time for his shaking to subside, as I stroke the burn marks I can so clearly make out even in the near pitch black abyss.

How had I missed them before? I wonder, and then I’m struck by the fact that I wasn’t looking. Not really. Raphael wasn’t a person to me before this moment, as shitty as that is to admit.

He was a symbol of an alphas power, of all the forces that used to control me, and emotionally, still do. He was an avatar that I thrust my lust and hatred onto.

And now I see him fully, and it breaks my heart. Sixteen isn’t young, but he was still a child. He didn’t deserve to be sent here. To be abused and tortured and have whatever goodness he had left in him torn out until he was a bitter husk of a man.

And suddenly, Nakoa’s words make all the sense in the world to me. You remind me of him. I hated him because he was a mirror into my own twisted soul.

“But you’re innocent. So who set you up?”

The shock on his face barely registers before it’s covered up by a sneer.

Trying to run away from the truth.

What truth?

That your father set me up, who else?

Guilt throbs in my heart, distorting the rhythm until it’s pounding out of control.

My father.

His crimes against humanity are well known, with not justice. No peace.

He may be the monster who imprisoned you, but I grew up in his prison. I know what type of monster he is. Intimately.

He face twitches, distorts, cycling through fear, loathing, and anguish. And then, understanding washes over them all until his expression is empty.

Such odd reactions.

“And I’m sorry. I really am. But I was fourteen, and my sister was only twelve. We just lost our mom. What was I supposed to do—“

Stop making excuses.

I’m not—

Raphael slams his fist against the wall right beside my head, crouching down until we’re eye level, his broad back and mane of hair blocking the light.

“Then that means you were his first,” Raphael says so softly I have to strain to hear his usually gruff voice.

His first what?

Victim.

The word hangs in the air like a noose, and I struggle not to step into it and hang myself. The pain is immense, so much so my body quakes. It wants to break free, my trauma, my terror, and my tears. But I won’t let him win.

I’m not, I choke out.

I’m a survivor. I survived. I’ll…

You don’t have to apologize for that bastard. Never apologize for being born to a monster.

I wasn’t his only victim.

He nods in confusion.

I reach for him and frown, intimately…

instead of some snarky comment or anger about the fact that I saw him in a moment of weakness, as if trauma is weakness Raphael just freezes

Then his face crumbles and for the first time since we met since that fleeting moment and the force, I feel like he’s truly seeing me

Does he pity me? fear me? I can’t really tell all I can do is hold my breath as he strokes my arms. It’s only when my shaking subsides that I realize he’s keeping me warm.

He was once a sinfully sexy sworn enemy, holding a grudge against my family.

Holding hate in his heart for me that metastasized like a cancer in mine.

And we fed off that violent urge to destory each other.

But now, we are conntect but this brutal bond.

One so sick and twisted I refuse to put it into words.

His kisses, gentle lips moving against my forehead and a ritualistic motion as he mutters something in the language I can’t understand. A language I should understand…

The Kingdom of Erewon , the island and name under which I was born.

“Raphael…”

“What?” I urge as he looks at me.

“Raphael Foxcroft, of the Noble House Foxcroft.”

I still. Foxcroft. How the hell had I been that far away from the truth.

He runs his tongue against the throbbing pulse in my neck, moaning as his teeth sink ever so slightly into the mark at the base. Raw heat floods my entire body overwhelmingly my fear and confusion and rage. Like a puzzle piece fitting into place. So close–

Yet he pulls away before he can seal the bond, kissing my forehead.

“They didn’t rob you of your scent.”

“Why?”

“Because you smell like home.”

“You saved me the moment you came to this place. You saved me , Grace.”

The knife glitz in the shirt of sunlight peeking through the prison bars.

“You deserve to be safe. You deserve to be saved.”

Suddenly, my alpha flings the knife into the dark, yanks me into his arms, as an inhumane howl fills the cell.

“Remeber what I told you the first time Grace,” he says, the lights flickering on, and off, on and off, as some demonic surges down the hall.

“Run, rabbit, run.”