Chapter 143

Evelyn

The pack ran. The man took Aurora and disappeared. Dane lay dead at the base of the stone, his blood soaking the ground. I felt the ring in my pocket, the one that had promised me control. Maybe Dane had broken up with me, set me aside. But when I told him the truth, he didn’t kill me. Even if he lived, I realized in that moment… I didn’t want power. I just wanted the man who had been my security, my lover, my friend, to be all right.

Waylon Reed stood over Dane’s body, grinning at it like he was about to do something. Did any of them realize: we didn’t even have the relic yet, and the woman who knew the ceremony to get it was gone?

Chapter 143

Men were so stupid sometimes.

“Come on,” I said to Camila and the female rogues. “We’re not leaving here without Dane.” I took the packet with the cursed ring out of my pocket, and I threw it into the woods. Behind me, one of the rogues gasped. “Look! The Alpha! He’s alive!”

Dane

There was nothing. The suffocating emptiness of a breath held too long. It stretched out forever. Then there was a hand on my back. Soft, cool light. I heard a woman’s voice—a voice as ageless as the sky and the sea—whisper, “You have made the sacrifice, my warrior. This is the last thing that was needed for you to reach your full power. Now, rise.” The moon was in my hand. My fingers closed over it. Finally, I could breathe again.

Chapter 143

I inhaled. My lungs were on fire. My chest was sore, like a giant made of rocks had been using me as a punching bag. I blinked. The nothing was gone. My eyes were full of dirt. So was my mouth. Dirt and blood. The iron tang of it was everywhere. I pulled my hands beneath me, then reached out with my mind for Aurora. She wasn’t there. I growled and staggered to my feet… and I came face to face with Waylon Reed. The old man’s mouth hung open like he was a fish trying to breathe air.

“How are you alive?” he said. His hand went to the blade of the silver knife at his belt. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I stalked toward him. He stumbled back.

“Where is Aurora?” I snarled.

“Gone!” There was victory in Esther Reed’s beady eyes. “He took her.”

Fingers of ice clenched my heart in a tight fist. “Who is he?”

Chapter 143

“Him?” she chuckled, like we were sharing a joke over tea. “He has no name. He’s older than memory. Older than time. The Moon Goddess’s dark other half. He is Nameless.”

Her words struck something in me. A primordial fear that felt like it must have been ingrained in all wolves since the Goddess first blessed us with the gift of the moon.

Nameless. The word whispered through my mind. In a flash, I saw visions of all the shadowed monsters, all the evil we’d dealt with.

“They’re his,” another voice whispered. “The ageless one. The goddess?”

My hands flexed into claws. They seemed longer than before. Stronger. Power filled me like I hadn’t felt before. I glanced down and realized what was in my hand. It was Aurora’s pearl pendant, round and fat. Was it the source?

Several wolves growled. The Broken Forest wolves were moving around, trying to surround me. I shifted into my lycan form and growled. But before the circle could close around me, a golden wolf smashed through the last part of the circle along with a dozen others. They snarled at Broken Forest, and the other wolves backed up.

Evelyn and her rogues.

“You should have run,” I told her.

“And left you behind?” She sounded breathless. “You’re alive. I’m glad.”

“We’ll see how long it lasts. If we’re going to survive this, we might have to fight our way out.”

The rest of the pack was gone. I caught faint thoughts from them—flashes of a figure stepping out of the stone. Of Aurora commanding them to run. I saw Trajan through their eyes, and my children, safe and alive.

I took a step, and my knees nearly buckled. Apparently, surviving death—or coming back from the dead, whichever I had done—meant I wasn’t exactly in fighting form. Even though I had shifted, I felt weak. Unsteady. Or maybe that was the lingering effect of stabbing myself in the chest with a silver knife.

Esther muttered something I didn’t catch. When I looked up at Waylon, he had planted his feet and was standing his ground. He glared at me.

“Well, then. If you aren’t dead like you’re supposed to be, I might as well use this moment to my advantage. Dane Montague, I challenge you as Alpha in a fight to the death. If I win, I get control over the Blue Ridge pack.”

Chapter 143