Chapter 72

Axel

Beast went insane, shifting into his wolf and bolting for the passage exit. He wasn’t thinking about his own life anymore. All that mattered to him was getting to his mate.

What had happened to her, no one knew, but it was quite clear that her distress had reached him through their mate bond.

“No! Stop him! You don’t know what’s out there!” Coyne ordered.

Jarryd and I were the first to follow but he had a headstart on us already. I have never seen him move so fast. Never.

Not during training, not in the midst of battle. He was a bullet. Swift and deadly.

“Take him down!” King Coyne hollered.

I lunged, digging my shoulder into his back, tackling him onto the cold hard ground.

He turned, snapping at me. The face I saw was not the face I had trained with, had laughed with. No. This was a wild, feral animal. Stunned, I retracted.

Jarryd was the next to jump, throwing himself in between Beast and the exit.

Behind him, a wall of blackness formed. Thick and impenetrable. Coyne’s nether fae obeying their king.

The young king was beside us in a heartbeat, “please, Wolf, do not act irrationally. All our lives hang in your hands. If you give our position away too early, you doom us all.”

Not a flicker of emotion came from the snarling, agitated beast. Saliva had started dripping from its exposed canines and the hair along the scruff of its neck stood on end.

I held my hands out, palms facing my warrior, “Beast, stand down, let us help you.”

Nothing.

His wolf refused to give control back to the human inside of him. His lips pulled back, baring every inch of his ferocious teeth.

Coyne stared at the wolf. No. Coyne stared into the wolf, his brows furrowing in concentration.

The only sound was that of aggression coming from Beast’s snarling muzzle.

Coyne’s gaze snapped towards me and shifted to Locke. Worry and devastation shone in them. It was bad. Whatever he had seen in there.

He glanced over his shoulder to his nether fae and said, “make sure he doesn’t leave.”

In the blink of an eye, the wolf was surrounded by blackness. A darkness so thick I couldn’t see the slightest shade of his grey fur peeking through. A cage.

He was trapped in a cage of shadows.

A shiver went down my spine like a spider running down my back. I swallowed, slowly turning to face Locke, face Coyne.

“His mate is dead,” the King said gravely, “he will only be a liability to the rest of us.”

We turned to the blackened mass of swirling shadows. My heart clenched. I knew the pain, the torment of losing someone you loved so dearly. And no matter what anyone did. What anyone said, I knew there was no going back after this. Beast’s life would never be the same ever again.

But for now, Coyne was right. We would have to deal with our packmate after we got back. Then, we would help him through his sorrow, support him and carry him through the days he didn’t have enough strength to get out of bed. Perhaps by the time we returned, his wolf would have given back control to Beast so we could communicate with him.

“Let’s bow our heads and pay a moment of silence to Beast’s mate, Molly,” Jarryd said and Dire Mountain, as well as Lighthaven’s warriors, lowered their heads in respect.

Not a single sound filtered through the barrier of Coyne’s fae. It was so quiet in the passage; you could hear a pin drop.

The men’s spirits were demolished. Beast’s loss had pierced a hole through all of us.

Coyne’s large hand landed on my shoulder, “we need to go, now, or there might be no one left to save.”

Gabrielle

In the thickness of the forest, Molly’s screams echoed through my head, penetrating into my soul.

“Ok, ok! Stop! I will give it to you! I will grant you my last wish, please just stop!”

The prince smiled at me. A knowing, wicked smile. “Stop,” he said.

I could still hear Molly crying somewhere in the background but it sounded less horrific than before. Kneeling in front of the prince, I looked up at him through red-rimmed eyes and asked, “what is it that you want? What do you want me to wish for on your behalf?”

He lowered his face closer to mine, slid his index and middle finger under my chin and tilted my head up, “I wish to be the sole owner of Yolanda Rivera’s heart. I wish for her soul to intertwine with mine, making her one with me, just like I had given all of myself to her. I wish that she would return every ounce of affection I had ever shown her and love me for who I am and not for who she has made me into.”

There was no doubt in his voice as he said the words. No uncertainty. It was what he wanted. What he had truly desired for quite some time by the sound of it.

My eyes scanned over his face. The stark, dark bands, the electric blue eyes underneath, his strong jawline and dark hair. He was absurdly handsome in a devilish kind of way and for a moment I wondered whether I would be doing the woman a favour by binding him to her or cursing her.

I had little choice in the matter.

The person’s name he had given didn’t ring a bell, and my friend, my fellow pack member needed me.

Reluctantly I nodded.

“And what is your name?” I asked.

A roguish glint flickered in his eyes. A mixture of hope and excitement I realized. Faith in knowing that he would finally be granted his heart’s deepest desire.

“Heir,” he replied, “Heir Moutier.”

My heart skipped a beat. Moutier. The same last name as Coyne. And Heir. The queen hadn’t even bothered to give him a proper name. He would simply be known as the heir to the Moutier bloodline. Coyne’s offspring. Bred from stolen seed.

And in that moment, I pitied the young prince deeply.

“I, Gabrielle Blake, sole heir to Dire Mountain pack, wish that Yolanda Rivera’s heart would belong solely to Heir Moutier from this moment on. That their souls would intertwine as one, making them inseparable and causing Yolanda to love Heir just as much as he already loves her.”

The burn sizzled into my side and Heir ripped my dress to inspect the mark as if he couldn’t believe it himself.

The fourth and last symbol hissed as it branded into flesh. The smell of burning skin prickled my nose and I had to grit my teeth to fight against the pain. It was excruciating.

Heir lifted his eyes to mine again.

I couldn’t read his expression.

“Kill her,” he said, and I heard Molly’s atrocious cry of agony ripple through the night.