F I F T Y - T H R E E

NIX

"Nix, wake up" Small hands tapped my face as a familiar voice filled my ears "Phoenix James...please wake up. I need you to wake up."

My small whimper at the end of my sister's sentence managed to clear the fog that was currently clouding my brain.

"Sphinx?" My croak turned into a hiss as a slice of pain pierced through the skin of my neck for some unknown reason "What...what the hell are you doing here?"

I tried to move my limbs only to see that they were bound to the floor, thick metal chains wrapped around both my wrists and each ankle.

"Don't move too much" My sister's dirty face swam into view, gently touching my face and wincing as the skin underneath the collar began to hiss"I tried as hard as I could to get them off but they just won't budge."

My eyes snapped down to her charred hands, fresh blood still oozing from her unhealed wounds.

"Why would you do that?" I barked at her "Don't touch anything down here."

My sister narrowed her eyes at me and in that moment, she looked identical to our mother, right down to the white-blonde hair and freckles spanning across her cheeks.

"I couldn't sit here and let my brother suffer" She huffed, shooting me a dirty look "I'm not as useless as everyone thinks."

I snorted and then groaned as the collar burned me once again.

"The day someone thinks that Sphinx Fenrir is useless is the day that hell freezes over " I wheezed out "And frankly, I'm fucking upset that you see yourself that way."

She looked away, her jaw trembling slightly.

"How'd you get here Inx?" I asked redirecting the conversation as softly as I could given the fucking burning on my neck "And where is here?"

"One minute I was in my dorm sleeping, and the next, a gigantic portal was ripped open in the middle of my room" She growled "And then I was being hauled into said portal by a Vamp, a Witch, and a stupid Wolf from my class."

"What?" My head reared back in shock, more hissing sounded out as the skin at my nape made contact with the metal "That's impossible. Witches don't work with those from other districts...Not to mention that Vampyres hate us."

The clanking of chains and the sounds of footsteps coming from the darkness that had my hackles raising.

"I told you I'd get her involved if you failed me" A cold, familiar voice declared from behind me "And now your poor sister has to suffer from your mistakes."

Sphinx screamed and tugged on my chains as hard as she could, urging me to move.

I barely dodged in time, turning to see a large paw slam down on the concrete underneath when I was previously sitting.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!" She yelled, yanking on my chains again as the monster attacked once more

I tugged at my chains, screaming in frustration as they refused to budge.

Tÿr halted the monsters with one simply foreign and unknown word.

How in the hell he controlled that fucking creature was lost on me.

"This was you from the start, wasn't it?" I growled at him "This has been all been your doing right from the start."

His smirk, so much like my own, infuriated me with rage that I've never felt before.

"Why the fuck would you have me shadow Nova if you were planning to kill her from the start? What was the purpose of that entire ruse but? Why waste so much time?"

Tÿr shrugged, stopping just a few feet short of my sister and I, and moving quicker than I thought possible, gripped both my sister and my face's tightly in his hands.

"I wanted to kill her the moment she was located but the others had different ideas" he sneered "So we settled on sending an execution team to her house instead. Unfortunately, we had to adjust our plans when you idiots managed to kill those incompetent nitwits."

My sister's small gasp barely registered behind the roaring blood in my ears at his words.

The others...

Of course he wasn't alone in this...

I just didn't expect...my best friend's parents, people I looked up too since my mother died...to be involved with him too.

"The others?"

"You didn't think I was alone in this, did you?" His grip tightened "No one from our world wants the Lupine girl alive."

"Why not?" I glared at him "Why is everyone afraid of one little teenager?"

He ignored my question, instead turning towards my sister with a fake sad frown.

"You know, all of this could have been avoided if Wolfe Lupine never got your mother involved " he let go of my sister's face, pushing a lock of blond hair behind her ear "It's because of him that your mother is no longer with us."

"What are you talking about?" My head reared back in shock "She's gone because you killed her. You murdered her in cold blood after Sphinx was born."

My sister flinched at my words, finally finding out the truth of our mother's death.

"She's gone because she got involved with something she should have never been involved with in the first place" My father's face darkened and turned even uglier "She should have killed that brat the moment a dying Wolfe put her in your mother's arms."

My sister's choked gasp verified the words that came out our father's mouth.

"You killed our mother," I swallowed down my rage "You killed our mother because she saved her friend's daughter? The last Heir to a fellow pack leader?"

"Sacrifices needed to be made" he said "And it was either between the traitor I called a wife or the spare newborn daughter I had no use for."