007 - Kael

Fire. And then ice.

One second I was burning alive, the next I was drowning in freezing agony.

I screamed, but the sound barely clawed its way out. My lungs seized like I was being born again, dragged from a grave I didn’t ask to leave.

My body and soul throbbed with the memory of being burned and torn apart.

Cold stone pressed against my back. Slight damp.

I tried to move but something sharp dug into my spine. My eyes darted around me instantly, noticing the shapes that gathered around me, still and watching.

What the hell?

There were cloaked figures standing at every corner of my laid down body. I looked past them to the surroundings, noting the symbols that glowed faintly across the chamber walls, like blood pulsing through veins.

Panic clawed at me with dirty nails and my heartbeat spiked. Even worse when I spotted the marked inked into the neck of the closet figure to me.

It was a serpent swallowing its own tail, crowned with a sigil of thorns surrounding a full moon.

The Ravenblood Pack—a bloodbound faction of werewolves.

No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening.

My hand snapped up on instinct, locking around the figure’s throat. My grip was weak. Too weak. But my rage did what strength couldn’t. “What the hell is this?! Where am I?!”

The figure didn’t flinch or blink or breathe. There was just … emptiness.

Then pain exploded in my limbs as something yanked my hand away from the figure’s neck, finger by finger, like I was being peeled apart. I was slammed flat again against the dais.

Magic.

I screamed as pure anger tangled in my throat. “ASHINA!” I roared. “Where is she?! What have you done to her?! Where the hell am I?”

There was still no answer.     

The silence cut deeper than the pain.

And then, like clockwork, the figures stepped back in a very disturbing synchrony, and the pressure holding me down vanished.

I didn’t hesitate and bolted upright, but my body betrayed me. I collapsed back onto the dais, my legs folding like paper beneath me.

My limbs were sluggish, it was like my body was still recovering from dying.

Or was I… still dead?

I barely had time to process that thought when a soft and maddening laughter sliced through the silence of the chamber, followed by the sound of footsteps I hadn’t paid attention to before.

I looked up, even as my vision blurred, to see a woman approach through the space, the cloaked figures had created.

She looked young, though still older than I was. Most likely in her early thirties. Regal. Radiant. Her presence screamed of danger wrapped in silk.

I didn’t care what she was at that point. I was being held by this faction of unforeseen wolves like any other wolf. I was a warrior and an Alpha, they had no right to put me in a position of lost dignity like this.

I bared my teeth. “You better start talking.” I spat. “Do you not know who I am?”

She didn’t answer right away or flinch. Instead, she tilted her head like she was examining a beast in a cage before lifting a hand and someone stepped forward to drape a cloak over him.

I yanked it around myself, covering up, with gritted teeth, and tried to rise again.

"Do not rush yourself," she said softly with a maddeningly calm voice that got on my nerves.

Do not rush yourself? What the hell did that mean?

I ignored her and stood anyways. Or tried to.

And for the second time, I failed as my legs buckled and I collapsed, slamming against the ground with a curse.

She let out another soft laugh. Like she was pitying me. I hated it

I forced myself up, biting down on the pain. “What the hell is going on?” My voice cracked despite me. “I should be dead.”

She nodded. “Yes. You were. And now… you are not.”

 “Explain,” I growled.

“I am Elenya. Mother of the Rivenblood. Your death was an inconvenience we couldn’t allow.”

“Excuse you?”

“So we brought you back.”

“I died for a reason!”

“And you are now alive for one.” Her eyes gleamed now. “You see, Alpha Veyrith… you are needed. A war is coming.”

"What war?"

"The one your blood was forged to end. You knew about the curse, didn’t you?"

My jaw clenched. "How do you know about that?"

She turned to the runes. “You thought dying and severing the bond with your mate would end it. But the Curse of Veyrith… cannot be broken by death alone. Your death was just the catalyst to bring you here.”

 “That fire—” My voice faltered. “That wasn’t the curse?”

“No. That was our doing. A teleportation spell from one of our own.”

Ashina.

I had made her suffer. I had ripped the bond away from her. I thought I was protecting her.

“Where is she?” My voice was barely a whisper now. “Where is my mate?”

Elenya's gaze turned solemn as she looked at me. "I’m sorry, but she died.”

No.

My body swayed. My soul convulsed.

No. No. No.

She died?

She—

The scream that rose in my throat never made it out. It got stuck somewhere deep, crushed beneath the weight of disbelief and guilt and grief.

 “Alpha!”

Tyro’s voice snapped me back into the present. My grip tightened on the binoculars as I blinked. The rooftop came into focus. The city noise filtered in.

Ashina.

Alive.

My heart stuttered. There she was—moving around her apartment, panic in every frantic gesture. Tugging at her hair. Pacing. Fear is written into every movement.

I’d called the NYPD. Some creep had been pounding on her door. I thought stopping that would be enough to calm her.

But something was wrong. Deeply wrong.

She looked haunted.

But my mind was fixated on one thing.

Five years. She had been alive all this time. Hidden from me. And I had believed it.

The only reason I hadn’t stormed her apartment to demand the answers I needed was I wasn’t sure that I could deal with the fact that it seemed like seeing me was sending her into some sort of panicked nightmare and then there was the repulsed look that she had on her face when she came to.

“Alpha,” Tyro said again, firmer this time.

I turned slowly. My eyes dropped to the old man kneeling between two of my enforcers, bruised and shaking.

Elder Myron.

The one who declared Ashina dead.

My jaw tightened as I inhaled slowly. I turned my attention to Tyro. “Have the best guards on her,” I said, my eyes flicking back to the apartment. “She’s to be followed and protected at all times. Have them report back every hour.”

“Yes, Alpha.” Tyro nodded before glancing toward the kneeling man. “And him?”

“To the chamber.”

“No—Alpha, please!” Elder Myron cried, writhing in their grip. “I didn’t know! I only told them what I was ordered to!”

I didn’t spare him a glance as I turned back to Ashina’s window.

Who gave that order was what I was going to find out, but not there on that roof?

Not when I was beginning to get bothered by the awful scent that I knew was coming from Ashina’s apartment. Something that of burning ancient wolf.

I was going to have to pull strings and get in contact with a spy embedded in an enemy organization that I was after to find out just what was going on and what had been going on for the past 5 years in Ashina’s life.

And then, whether she liked it or not, I was going to claw my way back into her life.

I’d lost her once, I wasn’t about to do it again.