Page 47 of The Never List (Never List #1)

Jax

One second, I surrender myself to the bond that connects me to Rylee as she undergoes the Athanry, dreaming of all the ways we’re going to spend our eternity, and the next—

Searing pain snaps through me, like being struck by lightning.

Something in my soul severs…as if a vital piece of myself has been chopped off.

Rylee!

My eyes snap open, my heart racing.

I slide my hand over my chest, checking to make sure I haven’t been stabbed in the heart.

Pierce’s eyes are wide with panic, too, and Kal’s and Axl’s.

Something’s wrong.

That connection that bound Rylee to me moments ago, the one that was blazing hot with an icy fire that froze and burned me from the inside out, is deadly numb .

Internally, I grapple for it, reaching out with my mental fingers in an attempt to catch it, but it’s as useless as trying to grab smoke.

I race toward the doorway, where Rylee is suspended in the silver liquid.

She falls forward the second I touch her, the liquid releasing her in one quick move.

“Rylee.” Her name is a cry from my lips, her body slamming into mine with the weight of a free fall.

I gather her into my arms, dropping to my knees before the statue of my mother. She’s not breathing. I press my ear to her chest, desperate to hear her heart beating.

Nothing.

There’s nothing.

Rage and grief and despair split me open from the inside out.

“What’s happened, son?” Baydel asks, but I can’t see him, can’t hear him properly as I hold Rylee.

“Jax!” Pierce is there, next to me, then Axl and Kal.

“She’s…she’s dead,” I roar.

I feel it.

“I can’t feel her anymore,” Pierce says, grief coloring his voice.

“No,” Axl growls. “No, she can’t be.”

“Jax…she’s…she’s not breathing,” Kal whispers as if the breath from his lungs has gone thin.

“Rylee!” I scream her name, gently shaking her, running my hands over her body in search of a pulse that isn’t there.

“No,” I hear Pierce say behind me, and Axl and Kal.

I can hear them all, can feel the weight of their powers as they drop to their knees where I hold Rylee, her lifeless body still warm in my arms.

Tears spill over my lashes, rolling down my cheeks as I try and fail to revive her. I blow breath into her lungs and push against her chest in an effort to make her heart beat.

“Pierce! Help me,” I scream, looking to my friend, begging him.

My screams break him from his shock, his despair.

“ Help me,” I cry out again from where I’m working on her chest.

She didn’t make it. She didn’t survive the Athanry.

“She’s strong…” Axl whispers. “How did she not survive?”

I glare at him, my power crackling outside enough to make him flinch.

“She’s strong enough!” I yell. “She is.”

“Jax.” Pierce draws my attention, his tone commanding as he waves at me to stop working on her chest.

I do as he says, watching as an emerald ribbon of his energetic power slides into to the center of her body, folding itself into her skin until I can’t see it. I look from her lifeless face to his and back again, holding my breath as I desperately wait.

“No.” Pierce whispers the word, injecting her with more of his power, so much that her body jolts before me.

But she does not breathe.

My mate.

My match.

She’s dead.

Kal is shaking as he smooths his hand over her forehead, tears welling in his eyes.

Axl slams his fist against the floor so hard it cracks.

Pierce stumbles backward, shock and regret clinging to his face.

My entire world shatters beneath me, and rage splits me open like a cracked egg, my power spearing out in every direction around me in a terrifying snap that sends the entire audience of the Choosing ceremony running .

Screams of terror fill my mother’s sacred temple as they rush out of the building, my power biting at their heels, lashing out at anybody it can as my grief consumes me.

“Jax!” my father screams, but his elite enforcer is pulling him away, forcing him out of the temple for his own safety. The other elite enforcers are doing the same with the other kings, until the temple is completely emptied out and there’s no one left for me or my power to attack.

No one but the Legends and myself.

“She’s mine,” I yell up at my mother’s statue, stomping toward the small table set up near the doorway.

I glance down at the wooden box containing the other four vials of elixir. The last four chances at ever having a mate.

I snatch one up, uncorking it with my teeth.

“Jax, what are you doing?” Pierce asks, suddenly at my side.

Axl and Kal aren’t far behind, each of their faces mirroring my own grief.

“She’s ours,” I say, holding the bottle toward them. “I’m going to get her back.”

“Like fuck you are,” Axl says. “Not without me.” He grabs a vial out of the box.

“These are the last vials,” Pierce says, ever the logical voice.

“They are.” My entire body shakes with adrenaline. “You can stay. All of you. Try again another time if I don’t succeed. But Rylee is my mate. I know it. There is no one else for me. Either I get her back or I die.”

“She’s our mate.” Kal uncorks his own bottle. “I don’t need another chance.”

“I don’t, either,” Pierce says as he looks at each of us. “We drink this, and there’s a good chance we may be lost to trials that were not meant for us.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I reiterate, looking at my friends. “You could stay behind, remain here in case the worst happens—”

“Not a chance,” Axl says. “Legends live together, and we die together.”

I nod and bring my bottle to my lips, my friends doing the same as we all drink the elixir that was meant solely for a potential mate. But I don’t give a shit. This took Rylee to the goddesses? Then it’d better fucking take me, too.

The liquid burns down my throat, feeling like I swallowed a bottle of razor blades, but the pain is nothing compared to the grief ripping my heart to shreds.

I glance at my friends one last time before I feel the weight of a thousand universes fall atop me.

My back hits the floor, and I manage to roll to my side, my heavy eyes on Rylee as I reach for her—