Chapter 13

“Sylvie.”

Kerensa dragged a bewildered Sylvie behind her and took on a fighting stance. “Stay back.” The woman blinked, wiping a smear of brown from her bare chest, before pulling her long, fiery mane to cover her breasts.

“Wait,” Sylvie tugged Kerensa’s arm and walked around her. “Rosie?”

The glowing light of her eyes sparkled as she stepped back behind a tree along the roadside.

“What are you doing here?” Kerensa demanded, placing herself in front of Sylvie again.

“Running. I like to run.”

Sylvie frowned. How was it that Rosie managed to appear exactly where she was twice? “Are you spying on us?”

“What? No! I just like to run. After all the attacks, I just need to get away sometimes.”

The flash of fear in Rosie’s eyes took Sylvie by surprise. “What do you mean, attacks?”

Why she cared about the wellbeing of Rosie’s pack escaped her, but a slight furrowing of Rosie’s brow shared she noticed the emotion.

“Vampires have been stealing our people for months now. One or two each time.” She sniffled, hiding her body behind the tree as if it were a shield from her emotions.

“I shouldn’t be here.” Her wide eyes flitted between Kerensa and Sylvie, shifting foot to foot. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Wait. It wasn’t us if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, no... I didn’t- Crap.” Without another word, Rosie morphed and dropped onto all fours, her skin coated in copper fur and disappeared into the woodlands, her bushy fox tail the last thing Sylvie saw.

“Well, that was interesting.”

Sylvie sighed and ran a hand across her face. “I’m so fucking tired of this shit,” she whispered. “And I’m so fucking confused!”

Kerensa scowled at the sudden shout.

“Would you be quiet? If she found us out here, the rest of her pack will likely be around. Now move your ass. We need to get back to the farmhouse.”

They turned and jogged back down the path, Sylvie’s legs and lungs screaming in protest with every step.

“Should... I... run away?” Sylvie rasped.

Kerensa scoffed and looked over at her. “And go where? You’re the perfect target for demons and your mates’ enemies. If any of them got their hands on you, it wouldn’t just destroy them; it would put every fucking realm in jeopardy.”

Sylvie scoffed, pushing her rising anxiety as deep as possible.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Hart. The Fates put you with those men for a reason, whether you like it, want it, or think you can handle it, or not. I’ve spent enough time with you to know you’re strong and don’t let bad things define you. Unlike others I know, you turned your experiences into positives. Or at least neutrals. And that’s exactly what the realms need.”

“I can’t...”

“It doesn’t matter what you want, Hart. The sooner you accept it, the stronger you’ll become, and the better life will be. For everyone.”

“How?”

“The realms are dying. The shifter realm died after the division and wars, forcing the last of the six shifter bloodlines here. The Fae haven’t had a birth in nearly three hundred years, and I’m certain the vampires are hardly better off. That is the only conclusion I can make from their kidnapping of shifters. And now you happen to be the mate of each species? This isn’t a coincidence. You’re here to fix this.”

Sylvie skidded to a stop, clutching her throat as if Kerensa were strangling her. “Don’t you... put that... on me, Kerensa. Don’t you... dare!”

She spat in the dirt by her feet and gulped air into her lungs. Every inch they expanded brought agony. This was why she didn’t run.

“I thought you, of all people, would get it,” Sylvie said, feeling the sobs about to break free. “I just want to hide away. I don’t want to be anything... for anyone. I’ve been a ‘thing,’ an ‘object’... a fucking ‘prize’ for the biggest creeps my whole life. I’m not gonna fix anything. At this rate, I’m gonna destroy my marriage and ‘almost marriage’ because, for some fucking reason... I can’t touch them without wanting to scream!”

Her face grew wet, and she looked up expecting rain, but the blue sky stared back.

“I’m going back to yours,” Sylvie finished, dragging her feet along the path.” I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Kerensa’s silence kept her company until she dragged herself into the tiny house and collapsed on her thread-worn, dusty couch, letting her eyelids shut.

Just for a little while.

Bound, gagged, and bleary. The hazy light of the full moon barely pierced the trees above as Sylvie writhed against a solid structure. Her wrists ached from their restraints behind her, the pain radiating up her arms to her chest.

“He’s coming,” a disjointed voice hissed in her ear.

As her vision adjusted to the dimness, the rows of haphazardly strewn logs at her feet stretching for rows and rows appeared. The scent of smoke and gasoline filled her nostrils as her tongue worked at the cloth jammed between her teeth.

“Let him in.”

She bucked and sobbed as the voices merged with the whistling winds, only stilling when a rhythmic one-two-thud echoed from the darkened path in front of her. In the distance, a blinking light appeared. Melting orange and yellow, like a firefly, illuminated hazel-green eyes and raven hair. Fur.

A beast.

The light grew, and the popping crackle of the living flames danced behind her lids as she squeezed them shut.

Wake up.

Wake up.

“Open.”

Twigs snapped and screamed as the beast prowled closer. Sylvie opened her eyes, crying into the cloth as the familiar pair of eyes stared her down from a foot away, the branch aflame close enough to scorch her arm hairs.

“Accept him.”

The gag dropped from her face, and she spat at the beast. “No! Get away from me! I don’t accept you!”

Hazel-green eyes turned molten gold as the beast opened his mouth wide.

Sylvie gasped as the torch slipped from his mouth and dropped onto the logs below, flames leaping from one to the next.

The flames licked her bare feet, and white- agony drilled up her legs as the fire spread.

Her throat ached as the smoke tendrils from her melting skin dove into her mouth. Soon nothing but screams filled her ears.

“Wake up!”

“Sylvie!”

“Sylvie!”

“Don’t touch me!” Sylvie screamed, striking the unknown assailant, every inch of her skin burning and doused with sweat.

The room around her was dark, only the light of the swollen moon illuminating the space. She screamed again as the pain rolled up her body, and her mind grew fuzzy. Was she dreaming still? What was real?

“Throw a blanket on her and take her to the main house!”

Kian’s voice soothed some of her terror, but the smothering of the blanket on her burning skin filled her with fear.

“I’m burning! Put it out, put it out!”

The world whizzed past so fast she couldn’t see the person carrying her until he threw her onto the mattress and ripped the blanket from her flushed body.

“Fates be damned.”

“Elias, that isn’t going to help her,” Kian growled, sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her with a furrowed brow. The lip he gnawed between his teeth only spurred Sylvie’s anxiety further.

She squeezed her eyes shut and writhed, praying for respite from the flames that carved burning holes in her skin.

“This didn’t happen when you blood-shared with her.”

“Different species and different circumstances. She didn’t fight this hard against your claim on her, and it’s a fucking full moon.”

“Please help me!” she cried, rolling off the bed and landing hard on the floor. She had to move; she had to roll to get the fire off. The hand that touched her shoulder only burned deeper, the pain she felt prior like a sunburn in comparison.

“Stop!” she shrieked, crawling across the floor to the corner of the room.

Why did they keep hurting her? Why wouldn’t the pain stop?

Stop. Just stop.

“Stop!”

A pained howl came from outside, and a wave of agony clutched her stomach. She was going to be sick.

“Kerensa, you need to leave.”

“I’ll get him,” she said, turning and running from the room.

“Who?” Sylvie groaned. “Who?” She didn’t want anyone to see her like this. She was going to die. This was it.

“Go away,” she swiped at the men standing around her. “Go!”

“Fuck,” Elias punched a hole through the wall behind him, and Kian shouted.

“Stop! If you can’t handle this, then you have to leave.”

“I won’t leave her!”

“He’s coming.”

“I know.”

“Help me!” Sylvie begged, slapping the ground and pushing her face onto the cold floors. If only she could merge with dead wood, then everything would stop. The pain, the fear, the fury.

“Touch yourself,” Elias said from her side, his clenched fists pinned to his sides. Sylvie blinked at him through her tears and hiccuped. “What?”

“Touch yourself,” he repeated. “It will help. Not much, but it will help.”

How could anyone think of touching themselves at a time like that? No, she wouldn’t do it; she couldn’t.

“Go away.”

Elias growled and backed off a few feet. “I know you’ll regret this when your heat is over. Just know I don’t blame you. I told you I want you to be my wife, and I still mean it.”

Why would he? She couldn’t stand him.

“No, you don’t.”

“Do not speak for me, Sylvie Hart, or you will not like my punishment for you.”

“Fuck you.”

“No. Quite the opposite.” He peered over his shoulder toward the door, his eyes burning red. “You cannot mark her.”

Sylvie frowned, body trembling as she made sense of his words. “What?”

“Do not tell me what to do,” a guttural voice responded, the bass shooting pleasurable tingles through her head to toe.

“She’s a vampire. It could kill her.”

“Half,” Kian added, reappearing in Sylvie’s line of sight, his lips pressed in a thin line. “If they don’t mark one another, this won’t end. She might not be able to accept us.”

“Better that than dead, Kian,” Elias growled.

What was he talking about? She was already dead. Or almost.

“Let me see her,” the unfamiliar voice spoke again. Elias stood and moved to the window as Sylvie pushed herself to her feet. The fiery burn remained, but she felt stronger. Only slightly, the stranger’s voice providing a brief reprieve as she swayed and blinked in the dark.

The moment her vision cleared, and the bare-chested tattooed man came into view, all the fury she had suppressed or directed at her mate’s bubbled to the surface, her body reacting well before her mind could.

His primal gaze raked down her glistening body as she clenched her fists and screamed, running straight at him, swinging her fist with Vampiric speed right at his godlike face.