Far away, muffled voices spoke.
“What the fuck did you do to her? You’re gonna be fucking sorry you ever existed.” A snake hissed.
There were smacking sounds, skin against skin.
A wild animal growled loudly, the terrifying warning of an enraged predator.
“Calm down and relax,” Molly snapped. “Don’t act like you care. I’ve just met her, and it’s obvious how much you’ve hurt her.”
Shhhhhk. Blades had been drawn.
“You know nothing. She abandoned me. I mean, us,” a honeyed, accented voice whispered menacingly.
Molly laughed, a harsh, forced sound. “Moon goddess, you’re all dense.”
The animal growls stopped.
Another voice said, “We know.”
The hiss got louder. “Don’t try to fucking twist the situation. She’s fucking covered in bites because of you. You don’t know fuck all, and if she doesn’t wake up, I’m going to tear you limb from limb.”
There was the unmistakable sound of the safety clicking off a gun as Z said, “Back off! Step away from Molly, or you’re dead initiates.”
Surrounded by darkness, I could feel the tension and violence rolling across my skin.
I needed to do something.
Desperately, I tried to speak and defuse the situation, but cold female hands grabbed me roughly and dragged me deeper.
Recover, the numb said softly.
Cold darkness consumed me once again, and I thrashed about for what felt like infinity in a cold abyss.
I drowned in water.
A light purring sensation vibrated across my chest and was the only thing that stopped the panic festering in my gut.
I didn’t know how long I drowned in the murky depths of a dark lake, but ever so slowly, I drifted upward.
Red droplets rippled across the surface and slowly sank past me into the darkness as I rose by them.
Distantly, something poked at my mouth, and I tried to swat it away.
It stabbed harder.
I surfaced.
Sitting up with a gasp, I patted my skin.
Even though I shivered like I’d been deep underwater, and phantom droplets clung to my skin, I was completely dry.
The poking sensation in my mouth was Aran sitting beside me in bed, shoving the end of the pipe between my lips.
“Really?” I sputtered and slapped it away.
Aran shrugged. “I thought maybe it would help.”
“You thought drugs would help?”
Aran didn’t respond, just threw herself onto the bed and squeezed me against her shaking body.
I relaxed into the warmth, my skin still raw from the sensation of drowning in ice-cold water.
“Why are you shivering?” Aran asked, her eyes narrowing. “What did you see while you were passed out? You muttered some interesting things. Tell me before the guys come back and smother you.”
Aran sensed my confusion and explained, “Cobra’s jewels turned to snakes, and he literally stood over you on the bed like you were his egg to defend or something bizarre. It was super creepy.”
She shook her head. “Everyone tried to pull him off you, but then you started muttering like you were talking to someone, and thrashing, and basically all of them went berserk. The men partially transformed, except for Xerxes, who shifted fully into a kitten and purred on your chest. It was the only thing that seemed to calm you.”
My jaw actually dropped at the thought of Xerxes trying to comfort me.
The bastard had been frigid ever since the shower situation.
He hated me.
Aran nodded. “I know, right? You stayed that way for a few hours, but suddenly Cobra’s shadows swarmed off his skin and made a big black snake. It tried to lay on you, which kitten Xerxes did not like. Jax tried to intervene and got covered in scratches and bites.”
She paused dramatically. “Then you started thrashing again, and Ascher’s creepy ram head bleated so loudly that Walter ran in and yelled at everyone to get out.”
Aran chuckled.
“You should have seen him. Kitten and snake in one hand, Ascher’s horn in his other, Walter threw them all out into the hall. Jax was the only one that went willingly. It was chaotic, and the most entertained I’ve been in months.”
I took a long draw from the pipe Aran was still pushing between my lips and explained the icy water that felt like a lake and the numb voice speaking to me.
The droplets of red that floated past me.
“How did this start?” Jinx asked from across the room, her dark eyes wide with something close to fear.
I focused on the enchanted smoke burning my lungs as I explained the sensation of euphoria while fighting.
How, for an impossible moment, I’d predicted every move Molly made before she did. How it had turned into unimaginable pain.
Jinx and Aran were pale as ghosts, but that wasn’t anything new. They really needed to get some sun.
I opened my mouth to ask why they were so freaked out, but a loud squeal distracted me.
“Sis, you’re awake!” Lucinda threw herself into my arms, and I squeezed her as tight as I could. “Don’t scare me like that again.”
“I won’t,” I promised, relishing the feeling of her against me.
The lightness in my heart immediately dissipated as four pissed-off men stalked into the room.
Lucinda crawled off me, and I shifted uncomfortably under the sheets.
Were they finally going to admit they were acting rude to me because they were butt-hurt about the circumstances? From everything Aran had described, it sure as shit seemed like they still cared about me.
My brush with whatever the hell had just happened was maybe just what we needed.
I missed their friendships, and I wanted their support.
I was ready for peace and adult enough to accept their apologies.
“YOU EVER FUCKING DO THAT AGAIN, AND I WILL KILL YOU MYSELF!” Cobra launched himself across the room.
Jax and Ascher lunged at him like they’d known what he was going to do before he did it, and their quick reflexes were all that stopped the six-foot-five snake warrior from crashing into me.
“Oh, grow the fuck up!” I yelled back, more annoyed than ever. “Why do you insist on acting like a class A prick?”
I stumbled out of bed and marched over to go toe-to-toe with the bastard.
Shadow snakes writhed across his pale skin.
“Don’t. Antagonize. Him. Please,” Jax said in a clipped tone. His gray eyes glowed brightly, and he rubbed at his chest with one hand.
“Princess,” Ascher whispered.
He released Cobra and fell to his knees, tattooed arms rippling as he wrapped them around my legs.
My body trembled from the force of his shaking.
I patted his golden head, unsure what in the sun god was going on.
As if he sensed my question, Xerxes leaned against the wall, apart from everyone, and said slowly, “My heat is starting much sooner than expected. Years of taking supplements has…changed my body’s responses, and I’ve been going haywire after bonding. It’s affecting all of them and making them emotional.”
His face contorted into a scowl. “It’s just biology.”
Suddenly, I was hyperaware of the scent of intoxicating cinnamon. It was more sugary than it had ever been.
Ever since they’d bonded, cinnamon had been haunting my dreams. I’d been overly attuned to it and couldn’t walk down a hall in the mansion without licking the sweet scent off my lips.
His words were a punch to the gut.
Ever since they’d bonded, I’d been uncharacteristically emotional; the men were only acting this way because of their biology.
None of it was real.
I detangled myself from Ascher’s grip and stumbled away.
He whimpered.
My headache started up again.
Jax’s grip on Cobra tightened, and they both stared at me like predators watching prey.
Shouldn’t they be attacking the omega, not me?
“It’s just biology.”
I shoved everything that had happened into a ball and deposited it into the dark recess at the back of my mind.
A few thoughts filtered out, and I refused to acknowledge them until I was satisfied the entire ordeal was hidden away.
Them fawning over Clarissa flashed through my mind.
“Get out,” I whispered.
“Kitten,” Cobra snarled.
My gut twisted as it dawned on me.
Sun god, I was a fool.
That was why they were all hanging all over Clarissa. The heat had them fucking randy, and they wanted a female alpha to join them with Xerxes.
He’d said he was addicted to a female alpha, and as far as I knew, he was only into women, which meant he likely wanted one for his heat.
“GET OUT!” I shrieked as loud as I could, putting every ounce of an alpha’s command into the words.
There was a long pause, then they turned and left without another word.
They didn’t fight for me.
“It’s just biology.”
My heart crumpled in my chest.
I stood in the middle of the room, heaving.
Aran stood silently and said nothing as I screamed and punched my fists into the bed.
“Fresh towels,” a maid said quietly, slipping into the room and placing them on the chair.
“Thanks,” Aran said as the maid curtsied and turned to leave.
I ran my hands down my face dejectedly as Aran arched her eyebrow at me questioningly.
“Ugh, it’s just all too much.” I ran my hands over my face tiredly. “I just feel like th—”
A familiar voice cut me off in an ancient fae language that was supposed to be dead.
The maid stood in the doorway, back ramrod straight and an intense expression curling her feminine features into something terrifying as she bellowed in a masculine voice,
“Ties are formed in the dark light,
The endless war it has been read,
But fate demands we all must fight,
There is no choice the gods are dead.”
Abruptly, the maid staggered against the door and looked around in confusion. “Miss, did you need anything?”
“A bullet through the brain.” I groaned.
Aran dragged her hands through her short hair. “Answers to the questions of mystical powers and bigger forces that plague civilizations.”
The maid looked back and forth between us.
“Um, I’ll bring another towel.” She ran out of the room and tripped over the hall rug in her haste.
Silence stretched.
“Should we talk about it?” Aran asked after a few minutes.
I considered banging my head through the wall.
“What’s there to say? ‘In dark light’ is super clear, and the good news is we have war and fighting to look forward to, and oh yeah, the gods are dead.”
Aran nodded at me and slowly relaxed. She grabbed the pipe and took a long drag.
We were on the same page—ignore the weird poem that no one wanted to hear and pretend like it had never happened.
And do drugs.
They were always the answer.
Everyone knew that.
“We should talk about something else,” Aran said, her fingers shaking as she struggled to hold the pipe.
Nodding, I turned to the window. “Wonderful weather in this realm. Do you think it will rain tomorrow?”
“Most likely.”
A head popped into the room.
I screamed.
Aran jumped.
The maid opened her mouth, jaw distending unnaturally as once again a male voice boomed out a poem:
“One must join and raise the rear,
Other must break and bring the kings,
One must grow and lose the fear,
Other must die and rise with wings.”
When the voice stopped, the maid leaned forward like a marionette doll and slammed her head into the wall.
She fell to her knees, then hastily stumbled to her feet while looking around in confusion. “Did I bring the towel?”
“Leave!” I yelled desperately, terrified she’d open her mouth again.
She stood still, eyes wide with shock.
“Please leave.” Aran pushed her forward gently. When the girl had crossed the threshold, Aran slammed the door shut in her face and screamed, “And never come back!”
Aran twisted the lock, then slumped against it, breathing heavily.
“Great, more good news, also something about breaking and dying,” I choked as an awful weight settled in my gut. “Do you think they knew we were going to ignore it…so it came back?”
Aran itched at her back, then keeled forward like she was going to throw up. “Fuck, maybe.”
She took another drag of the pipe. “Quick recap, so it doesn’t. One, which I bet is me or you, must join, raise the rear, grow, and lose fear.”
Aran inhaled desperately, like she was drowning in the air.
“Other, whichever one of us isn’t ‘one,’ must break, bring kings, die, and rise with wings.”
Nodding casually, like I wasn’t totally freaked out, I slammed my head into the antique mirror on the wall.
The crack echoed.
Cold glass crunched therapeutically under my forehead as I said, “Odds are I’m ‘other,’ with the whole break and death thing, although I’ve always wanted to be a bird. That could be a win.”
Aran smoked more, not even flinching at the blood dripping from the gash on my head. “Then who are the kings? Jax, Cobra, Ascher, Xerxes? That doesn’t really make sense.”
“Couldn’t Cobra be considered royalty? Maybe the pack by association?” My gut was telling me that was what it was referring to.
Aran shivered. “I don’t know. That doesn’t seem right to me. The last time a poem read itself to us, it said,
“Blood burns red, through the air it’s blown,
Blood pours bright, across the fated throne,
Blood draws truth, and rips apart the mind,
Blood creates pain, it kills the weak-spined.”
Aran snapped her fingers with excitement and pointed at me. “Then you discovered you had blood powers and attacked my mother, who sat on the fated throne. You ripped apart her mind and killed her. Actually, the poem was all very literal.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Wait, how did you remember that poem?”
“What do you mean? Did you somehow forget it?”
“Never mind, I definitely remembered it.” I’d forgotten it completely. I mean, there were a lot of words to keep track of.
Aran grimaced. “That reminds me.”
If there was any more bad news, I was offing myself.
The men were cheating fucks who were interested in one of the prettiest females I’d ever seen in my life (I was confident enough in myself to admit she had the “it” factor, while I had the “are you sure you took a shower” factor), I’d had a vivid hallucination of drowning, and now creepy poems were reading themselves to us again.
My quality of life was nonexistent.
It literally couldn’t get worse.
I inched closer to the window, prepared to dramatically throw my body through it in a display of sheer unwellness.
“You have that damn test tomorrow for the trial, so you have to study tonight.”
That was it.
I couldn’t live like this.
Lunging for the window, I almost slammed my way to freedom, but Aran intercepted my path and chucked me easily onto the bed.
“Come on,” I moaned. “This is so unfair.”
Aran wrestled me into a headlock, her arms and legs wrapped around me like a pretzel, so I couldn’t move. “If I have to keep living and dealing with this shit, then so do you.”
“Ugh, don’t be so selfish, Aran.”
“Don’t be so unhinged, Sadie.”
“Don’t be so ugly.”
“Don’t be so scrawny.”
I gasped with hurt. “Take it back. You said my muscles were looking bigger, you lying cow.”
“Moo, bitch.” Aran released my limbs from her death grip and climbed off the bed.
A terrifying thought struck me. “Oh my sun god.”
“What?” she asked.
“Do you think the ancient fae voice is an alien? From the stars,” I whispered with horror, remembering a human movie about a weird blob thing in a basket.
Aran rolled her eyes.
“First, no sentient beings live on a sun; the temperature is way too hot. Second, aliens are a ridiculous human conception. Of course there are people from other realms. Planets are connected by portals. The different realms are all just individual planets, duh.”
I gasped, the world shaking around me.
“Wait, so I’m an alien?”
Aran narrowed her eyes at me. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or actually an idiot, but I’m going to pretend for the sake of this friendship, and apparently a prophesied war, that it’s the former.” She rubbed at her forehead tiredly. “Also, I know you’re deflecting from studying.”
“I’ll show you deflection.” I took a running jump off the bed and spun in an impressive roundhouse kick.
Aran caught my foot in midair and pulled it up, so I tipped over. “Very impressive. Can’t wait to see you with wings.” She chuckled. “I’m envisioning you flying into a building.”
Funnily enough, I also saw that for myself.
