Page 89 of WitchBorn

“Let me talk to Liam,” Sebastian said. “Maybe we can find a way to get you in and provide a shield? I don’t want you to die if we can’t saveapa.”

But I’d wanted that for years, until I met Finn and had his sweet smile directed at me, his arms around me, and his gentle kisses peppering my face. I watched Sebastian turn away from me, fists clenched, his grief over losing his adoptive father palpable. But I wasn’t ready to give up on Finn yet.

I grabbed the bottle off the side table. The potion Toby had given me to help reconnect with Finn—my last hope. I uncapped it, the potent scent of the alcohol wafting up like a final warning. Sebastian turned as I brought it to my lips.

“Don’t, Wesley,” Seb began.

But I tipped it back, drinking down the entire bottle at once. The liquid seared down my throat, setting my veins on fire. Too much, my senses screamed. The world tilted; the light dimmed as the darkness yanked me back to where I belonged. I felt like I was falling, a sudden drop out of myself in a gut-wrenching rush.

A voice whispered in the darkness, familiar and haunting. Finn calling my name. I let his power catch me, and floated for a brief moment in weightlessness. Then the drain began, my power leeching away. The suction of my magic and life force jolting from me happened so fast I screamed, though the sound was lost in the void of blackness around us. The chill in the air, cool, but not icy, I ached to see Finn one last time.

I wouldn’t fight him, or the end. If he was lost to me, then I hoped to join him in whatever beyond for a final taste of peace. The blackness rose like a viper to attack, and then, there was nothing.

Sixty-One

FINN

Darkness slid over me—thick, suffocating, and endless. I gasped for air, clawing at the void that swallowed me whole. My mind, splintered by memories that flashed like shards of glass, each one cutting deeper than the last, screamed as if a thousand nerves bled the agony of the past. Every failure, every loss, amplified, dragging me further into the abyss, as if there was no light to be found.

I raged as the monster, cycling between hot and cold, screaming into the emptiness without sound. The crushing weight of sadness threatened to shred my soul. Faces, fleeting and twisted by my guilt—a thousand lives I’d destroyed, leaving nothing but more weeping wounds of soul deep pain.

I snarled, raging as though somehow it could stop the assault. The icy bite of Winter dug her talons into me, tearing the wolf back into the dark each time it reached for me, leaving only the beast and I, helpless to find control. Her curse weakened us. The Autumn realm, dying around me, consumed by the blackness that was me, and yet not.

My father had lost himself to the dark. I never understood why. Then my mother died, and he passed as though the lastbreath of light had vanished from his soul. This nightmare took over, and devoured him from the inside out.

Help me,I begged, uncertain who I was even asking, heart breaking in loneliness and fear. I hated being alone. The beast wallowed in the sadness of isolation. Memories fit into place inside my mind, dozens of lifetimes of trying to find light, family, and love, each loss tearing down the boundaries between the monster inside and me. I’d been unable to find the beautiful creature my mother’s side gifted me after her death. A lack of control? A curse of the dark? Or something else?

I caught a glimpse of Wesley, a snapshot picture of him staring at me with his head tilted, curiosity and irritation on his face. One of the first moments after we’d met. I longed to stare at the brightness of his face, and his glowing gold aura, which illuminated him like a halo. He’d have snapped that he was no angel, but he was my light.

I gasped as the darkness paused for a half second. I realized a thousand things at once. My father died because my mother had. Her light had been all that held him to the living world.

Wesley!My soul screamed for him, though I caught no more than a glimpse of a dozen other memories of him. They tumbled over one another, a chaotic tide pulling me under. I saw Wesley again, his eyes full of fear and sorrow as he called my name. I couldn’t reach him. Each time I reached for another image of him it shattered to dust, slipping through my fingers, sucked away from me by the biting cold.

Unworthy. Weak.Not the wolf’s words this time, but the Winter witch who infected us with self-doubt. She suctioned away my control and any glimpses of joy we’d clung to of the past. The wolf and I snarled and snapped, enraged by the witch stealing him from me and let loose a wave of what could only be described asdeath, as it felt like the end of everything. A cascade of power, rage, and pain blasted everything I touched. WithoutWesley there to temper me, I let it all go. The endless rage that the wolf had been trying to lock in the dark, the wild chaos of magic that blazed beneath our skin, and the suffocating pain of failing over and over. We were weak, but I’d take experiencing love over beingstrongany day. We poured it all into her, using her words echoing in our minds as the link to drive the darkness into her core. She wanted the monster? So be it.

She screamed, the darkness overwhelming even her fading shrieks as her hold on us burst, and she vanished with a pop. Escaped or dead, I wondered? Not that it mattered as the darkness slid back into place, the third part of our broken soul, reuniting.

The cold slipped away even as the darkness whispered, its voice seductive and cruel, demanding the spread of the soul suctioning ooze to end everything. It offered a dark quiet place to rest, and tried to hide the aching loneliness that lingered there, impenetrable by any light.

The beast roared its insatiable hunger. Fury boundless. It wanted to consume, to destroy, and I was powerless to stop it. The wolf, free of Winter’s curse, but weak, exhausted, and heartbroken, wrapped itself around the mortal half of my soul. It, too, had lived a dozen lives of lost loves, families, and darkness. How easy would it be to give ourselves to the pain and let the beast free, sinking into rest as it rained terror on the world.

We were weak because we were divided. Did he understand? Even the monster would die if any part of us faded. The wolf sank into my touch, heartbeat sluggish, mind shattered as the sadness overwhelmed us both. We needed family, pack, and love, while we were also pure destruction. The monster had grown over the decades to an insane weight of magical darkness, reabsorbing what it lost from Felix’s birth and destruction and now offered the end of everything as it shoved the wolf andI apart. Hadn’t that been what Wesley’s dream predicted? Not Winter as he’d thought, but me, us. The wolf, the beast, and I were the obliteration of life. Separated, none of us were strong enough to suppress the demon.

Wesley.My heart ached, as I felt my mortal soul stuttering its last breath under the weight of the darkness. I floated untethered, searching for the wolf, but drowning in the black.

I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough. I’m not worthy of you.Or any love really, that’s why it was always ripped away. Ever since I’d lost my mother I’d been cursed because I was weak. Too weak to save her, too dark to save my father, too broken to save Cassa, or Felix, or even Sebastian. The memories of him and how my wolf had tried and failed added to the weight of my guilt. Fuck, how worthless was I?

Finn…

The thought was so faint, I wasn’t certain I heard it or if it been a wishful dream.

Honey…

I gasped, my heart lurching to pump when I only wanted to end the pain.

Don’t leave me.

Wesley?