I’m not saying he could weave our species together into one societal fabric during his lifetime, but he could make a solid start at integrating the outliers, like the enclave, who were just as much children of this world as any other.
We piled our plates high and sat in a circle on the floor with our legs crossed. We invited the Malakhim lite to join us, but they ate out back at the picnic table to give us time alone together. I was glad. I wanted to soak it all in. The smells, the sounds, the smiles.
Once our bellies were full, we all pitched in and cleaned up so Sherry could relax. That left us with four hours, give or take, and the weight of the deadline pressed in on us all. The others might not grasp the permanence of this final step, but the coterie bond must have fed them bits of my anxiety.
Rixton and Sherry wandered off upstairs, giggling like teenagers, and I hoped they were on their way to defile Santiago’s new room. The coterie scattered to avoid witnessing what came next, and I couldn’t blame them. Not for the first time, I was grateful to have plain ol’ human hearing. There are some things you just don’t need to know about your friends.
Portia and Santiago lowered the backseat in one of the SUVs to give them a flat area to set up a game. I couldn’t tell what it was from here, but it didn’t take long before Portia started cackling. Miller leaned on the open door closest to Portia, laughing with her each time she beat Santiago, and I didn’t imagine the hints of Maggie peeking out to watch him.
Thom and Phoebe had climbed a tree near the back of the property. I wasn’t sure what they were doing, but she was chattering away, reminding me of her baby dragon self, and he had shifted into his other form to climb onto her lap while she massaged his wings.
Seeing that, my heart swelled until I ran out of room for the feeling. It pushed through my eyes at their corners and dripped down my cheeks. Thom had a long way to go before he could fly again, but I was glad each time I saw his boxy tomcat form. It meant he was healing, and not just physically.
“Happy tears?” Cole walked up behind me, slid his strong arms around my middle.
“Thom is spending more time in his natural form, especially with Phoebe.” I didn’t point out their location. His senses were keener than mine, and he never let Phoebe out of his sight. “That’s good, right?”
“It’s very good.” He brushed his lips over my nape, exposed by my ponytail. “It means he trusts her.”
Trust was a good thing. A very good thing. They would all need to lean on each other after I was gone.
“Want to go for a walk?” I linked my fingers with his where they spanned my abdomen.
“I could walk,” he said, a tease in his voice that caused me to glance over my shoulder and narrow my eyes on him.
“Why are your eyes twinkling?” I took a healthy step forward, but he didn’t release me. “What are you thinking?”
“I’ll show you.” He led me into the woods, away from the others. “Want to go for a swim?”
The invitation took me by surprise. “That’s not what I expected you to ask.”
“We could go skinny dipping.”
“That is definitely more of what I had in mind.”
“You just want to get me naked.”
“Um, yeah?” I ran a hand down his arm. “I should examine you anyway. We just survived an epic battle. Who knows what injuries you sustained without knowing? You could be dying, and we wouldn’t know unless you took off all your clothes and let me thoroughly examine you.”
Cole pretended to consider this. “It would be a shame to die after everything.”
Decision made, he scooped me up in his arms. It reminded me of the way Rixton carried Sherry, and that made me smile. When Cole did romantic gestures, he did them well. With my head cushioned against his chest, I swung my feet as he took us deeper into the woods, past our tent, to where the ravine dropped off into the manmade pool where Maggie and I used to swim as kids.
“Hold your nose.”
Busy snuggling my mate, I struggled to clear my thoughts. “What?”
“Your nose.” He stepped to the edge. “Hold it.”
“Cole.” I started kicking. “Don’t you dare.”
“Suit yourself.”
The crazy man stepped right off the edge, and we fell straight into the water with a percussive splash.
I came up howling.
Cole came up belly-laughing.
Clearly, I had created a monster. All those times I wished for him to enjoy his life to the fullest, I hadn’t envisioned this playful side of him. With the burden of Ezra removed, he acted freer, lighter. Hope lifted the edges of his mouth, and plans for our future spun out behind his eyes. I recognized a daydreamer when I saw one. I hated I would star in those fantasies when I was about to retire. Permanently.
“You’re evil.” I rested my hands on his shoulders and dunked him. “Evil.”
Heavy as he was, Cole sank like a stone. Concern tugged on my heart when he didn’t bob to the surface immediately, and I turned to search for him in the water, spotting him seconds before he pounced, plunging us both into darkness.
Beneath the water, his lips met mine. I was too busy devouring him to notice when he managed to get me free of my pants, but I cried out when he sheathed himself in me with one long stroke as we broke the surface.
Wrapping my legs around his waist, I clutched his shoulders, murmuring nonsense in his ear, and when I came, I saw stars I wasn’t entirely sure could be blamed on the oxygen deprivation.
Cole followed me over, a growl in his throat, his arms cinching around me.
Face buried in his neck, I couldn’t have asked for a better send-off than this.
CHAPTER NINEETEN
Cypress Swamp wasn’t far from the farmhouse. We left an hour before our deadline to ensure we got into position before Wu made his call. The entire coterie joined us, and it took both airboats to get us all on the water. It felt like overkill, and it felt comforting, and it felt like the worst possible scenario given what was about to happen. At least they wouldn’t see. They would be up here, and I would be down there. Suspended in that odd bubble where time ran slower and the fabric of the world frayed along its edges.
“Wu better hurry.” I hadn’t put down my phone since Thom killed the engine. “That window he mentioned is about to slam shut.”
Cole joined me, and I didn’t have time to finish smiling at him before he closed his hand around my throat. It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t done with affection. It’s not like he had decided to kiss me or get kinky with me in front of the others. This was more … restraining.
Uh oh.
Scanning for Thom or Miller, I spotted the others congregating on the secondary boat to give Cole a moment alone with me.
Traitors.
Meltwater eyes bored into mine. “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?”
“Um.”
“The god killer daggers were the final clue,” he said with quiet anger vibrating in his voice. “There’s no reason why each of you would need one unless you were both meant to use them on a creature that couldn’t be killed with ordinary weapons or without great difficulty. With Ezra defeated, and Sariah in the wind, that only left … ”
“Us,” I finished for him.
“I’m not surprised he put you up to this, or that your sense of duty overrode your common sense, but how could you not discuss this with me? I’m your mate. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“You wouldn’t have let me go through with it,” I whispered. “You would have fought me every step of the way.”
“Instead you stole my chance to save you. You accepted this was your fate.”
All along I had been a wolf in sheep’s clothing, so why not also be a sacrificial lamb?
“You’re a fighter.” Cole’s grip didn’t tighten, but it didn’t loosen either. “Why not fight this?”
“There’s too much at stake. An entire world. Filled with humans and charun I love.” I gazed into Cole’s eyes,
but his were as cold as his dragon’s ice. “The only way I get through this is if I know it makes you all safe.”
“The cost is too high,” he rumbled, tremors shivering in his fingers. “Damn you, it’s too high.”
Saying goodbye would have been so much easier if I hadn’t had to say a word.
“I’m glad you’re all here.” I hadn’t intended to do this in front of them, but here we go. “I have a gift for you.”
The Otillian words Wu had given me as a last favor cut my tongue when I spoke them. I tasted blood, but I kept going, forcing out the complex phrases until I reached the end.
The rose gold metal binding them all snapped in half and hit the metal deck in a deafening clatter.
“You’re free,” I announced into the silence.
Miller staggered, panic brightening his eyes, but Maggie held his hand, and he clutched her arm like an anchor in the storm of his unleashing.
The crimes of his youth were just that — youthful offenses. Along the way, he had matured, honed his instincts. He no longer required Conquest to leash him. He did fine on his own. If his control hadn’t been perfected by his lifetimes spent in service to her, then he wouldn’t be able to manifest his half form so well. He would have destroyed the world the first time he shifted, and that would have been that. He might not have faith in himself, but I believed in him.
Cole stared at his wrists where the rose gold bands that had bound him for so long usually rested, at the valleys of scar tissue that hadn’t yet healed enough to cover a lifetime of his attempts to break free, like he couldn’t believe what I had done.
I had given him what he had wanted for centuries, and betrayal pinched the corners of his mouth.
“We saved your world for you,” Santiago growled, “and now you cut us loose. Is that it?”
“You’re free.” I threw up my hands. “You’re safe.”
“You had no right to do this without asking us,” Miller said quietly. “How could you?”
“Luce followed her conscience,” Thom murmured. “Did you expect less of her?”
The heated argument that broke out among them was not the gratitude I had expected. Far from it. From the looks on their faces, a knife through the heart would have hurt less. As much as I wished I could undo it, for their sakes, that was the reason I had done it in the first place. For their sakes.
Let them spend the rest of their long lives pissed off at me. As long as they were still breathing, I could do this. Let them hate me for freeing them, hate me for leaving them. Hate was better than hurt.
From a great distance, through the ringing in my ears, I heard my phone.
“We’re in place,” Santiago answered in a clipped tone after prying it from my numb fingers. “Waiting on you.”
“Tell him to start counting.” Cole broke his reverie. “We need five minutes.”
Santiago relayed the information, unable to look at me, and I swallowed hard against Cole’s palm, which he had yet to lower.
Unsure what he had planned until this moment, until me granting him his freedom wrecked his equilibrium, he released me. There was no warmth in his voice, no emotion whatsoever. He set a timer on his phone and shoved it into his pocket. “Let’s go.”
The shame of disappointing him, of hurting him and the coterie, propelled me into the water without another word. Maggie cried out, wresting control of her body from Portia, but it was too late. I understood now, how she must have felt waking with Portia inside her. A denizen of a new world where all her options had been stripped away, her fate predetermined by someone else’s choices.
I didn’t require help this time finding the seal. Its presence shivered over my skin, drawing me deeper and deeper until my lungs burned from the pressure and my gut twisted in a wrenching tug seconds before my feet touched sediment. Breath exploded out of me, and I sucked in … whatever filled this place. I didn’t care so long as I could function.
When I opened my eyes, Cole stood beside me, his expression somehow grimmer than before, calculations running fast behind his eyes, lending him an air of distraction. But he was here. That’s what mattered. That he remained with me until the end.
He held up two fingers, indicating the amount of time I had left before Wu took his irrevocable step toward achieving his ultimate triumph. The phone hung from his fingers, his grip so tight it should have crushed the device.
Cole gave me a nod, and I positioned myself over the seal, careful not to disturb it. Then I took the dagger from the loop on my belt and placed the tip at my heart.
Two minutes ought to have lasted longer.
They passed in a blink.
When the timer on his phone hit zero, I expected him to wrestle the blade from my hand or knock it pinwheeling away, but he did neither. He watched, gears whirring in his head. Part of me wondered if he was in shock. The rest figured it must be denial.
Closing my eyes, I began mouthing the Lord’s Prayer in the same cadence as Aunt Nancy taught me as I pulled the sharpened metal toward me as hard as I could, blocking out the resistance in my body, in my mind. Focused on sheathing the blade in my chest, I didn’t grasp what the difference in sensation ripping through my body meant.
Breath hitching, I flung open my eyes and sought out Cole, desperate to warn him, but it was too late.
Conquest shot up my throat on a soundless battle cry, smashing through Luce Boudreau and shattering our bond forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Adam stood in ankle-deep turquoise water in Five Flower Lake in the Sichuan Province. He balanced on the rotting trunk of a fallen tree, one of dozens crisscrossing the lakebed, and indulged in a tranquil moment of admiring the ancient forest while breathing the crisp air. Despite what the place meant to him, and his kind, he had always found peace here.
“You told me it was beautiful,” Knox said from behind him. “I didn’t understand until now.”
“I wish you were seeing it for the first time in happier times.” Adam faced his descendant, his favorite if he had to choose one, and regretted heaping more death on his head. “You should come back one day.”
“These are happier times.” Knox crouched at the water’s edge, stared at his reflection. No, beyond it, to a place Adam couldn’t follow, his thoughts a million miles away. “The war is over.”
“You know as well as I do it’s far from over.” Adam tilted his head back, examined the expanse of blue sky and its stippling of white clouds. “This is the next step, not the last.”
“We have all the backup we need. Luce raised a formidable force, and most saw no action. They’ll be eager to contribute.” Knox grunted when he stood, his left leg still bothering him after a break decades ago. “We’ll keep the peace, even if that means hunting down every last Malakhim and spit-roasting them.”
“They’re automatons.” He borrowed the description from Luce because it fit them. “You can’t blame them for following orders. It’s all they know.” He flexed his toes. “Your best bet is to allow our people to continue their infiltration. Over time, they can redirect the Malakhim’s focus. They’ll be lost once their way home ceases to exist.”
That was the golden carrot Ezra had dangled in front of their faces.
Serve me, and one day I will send you home.
The fools believed he meant to their home terrene, which most had never seen. What he meant was one day he fully expected them to die in his service, and they would pass on to the next world, one where only souls could journey. But they believed him, believed in him, and there would be no deprogramming them.
“They killed her,” Knox rasped. “They’re no more lost than I am.”
The truth, that a Drosera had worn his daughter’s face the last time they saw her, he no longer recalled. His mind had blanked it, all of it, back to the moment Kimora was held captive by the Malakhim.
Adam didn’t have the heart to remind Knox of the truth, and he wasn’t certain he would listen in any case. He wasn’t convinced Knox could absorb th
e series of actual events that led to her death. The man was traumatized, barely functioning, but he had wanted to be here for this moment. For her. To give her death meaning.
Adam always pictured sharing this with Farhan, but in his heart, he knew that was never a possibility. Farhan was always going to die, and so was he. The odds of them dying together had always been slim. Now they were nonexistent.
His friend was dead, and he never thanked him. He never apologized. For any of it. For all of it.
Knox wasn’t the only one of them shattered by loss, but he was the only one who stood any chance of recovery. Knox had the enclave. His people would support him, nurture him, and help him heal. If he let them. Adam hadn’t had that network. He’d had two grief-stricken little girls to raise and a father to hate.
“It’s time.” Knox checked his phone. “You don’t want to cut it too close.”
“I’ll call Luce when I’m in position.” He lingered, but Knox made no move to embrace him, and he didn’t expect it. No matter who had killed his daughter, Knox would forever blame Adam for failing her first and foremost. Right behind himself. “Take care of the others.”
Once Knox would have snapped out a confirmation, but he didn’t so much as nod.
The enclave wouldn’t require his ironclad control to protect them in this new world, bought with so much blood, but they would struggle to adapt without him. Adam could only hope he would see that, and duty would, as it always had in the past, sway him to remain with his people.
Without another word, Adam took flight. He allowed himself one lazy circle around the perimeter of the placid lake. He raced his reflection as he had when he was a child, trailed his big toe in the cool water behind him, spreading ripples across the surface. But all too soon he reached Knox again, and he knew it was time to go.
“Wait.”
Convinced he had imagined the reprieve, Adam hovered above the felled tree where he began. “Yes?”
End Game (The Foundling Series) Page 21
