Fated Curse

by Skye Malone

  Her heart ached. “You came for me. Against the Order and my mother and the whole damn apocalypse, you came. Yeah, I forgive you.”

  He looked up, relief in his eyes, and she reached over, putting a hand to his cheek.

  “Thank you,” he said softly.

  She smiled.

  Gently, he helped her to her feet, and her legs wobbled beneath her before steadying with Wes’s strong arm holding her close. Carefully, she made her way toward the clothes folded on a nearby dresser, only to pause when she caught sight of herself in the mirror.

  A quivering breath entered her. The marks were still there. Dark and jagged lines like tattooed vines tangled across every inch of her body. Black shapes like claws extended from the back of her neck and past her temples to frame her face, and around her neck, the thick ring of a collar showed on her throat.

  But it was broken in the center, right at her voice box.

  She walked closer, her eyes roving over the marks, and as she passed through the light from the small window to her left, something flashed at the center of the break in the tattooed collar on her throat.

  Her brow drew down, and carefully, she twisted her head left and right, peering at it more closely. A hint of gold shimmered in the center of the gap, but she could only see it at certain angles, like it was embedded in her skin, a filament of gold barely visible unless someone knew what to look for. The shimmer formed a trail of runes she didn’t recognize, each one small and placed in a vertical line.

  She looked back up at herself in the mirror. Black clouds stained the whites of her eyes, and inside her mind, she could feel strange shadows. The curse the Order gave her, but it was different somehow. Even though it permeated her, it wasn’t numbing or dead. Wasn’t even frightening anymore. The shadows were hers, and even as she thought of them, they twisted away from her skin like delicate wisps of smoke.

  “What am I?” she whispered.

  “Something new.”

  She whirled, her breath catching. “What did you say?”

  Wes hesitated. “There were some people here. Earlier. Before you…” He cleared his throat. “They were ravens, and then they weren’t, and when they came in here, they said you were something new right before they disappeared.”

  Lindy turned back to the mirror, her eyes tracing the marks. “Do the bears have any idea what that—”

  Shapes of the draugar surfaced at the edge of her mind.

  She gasped and turned to shove the window curtain aside, scanning the forest. The trees were still, and nothing moved beyond them, but in her mind she could feel the Order and the draugar encircling the cabin like a snake.

  Right before they vanished entirely.

  “What is it?” Wes asked.

  Chills moved through her. She knew that feeling, like something being erased from view. She’d felt it only a short time ago when Carolyn captured her in the woods.

  “Lindy?” Wes prompted.

  She headed for the door. “They’re coming.”

  30

  Wes

  Wes raced after Lindy from the room, his mind bouncing between alarm for whatever she was sensing and alarm at what had just happened. What the hell was she? And what had he felt when she first woke up and he touched her? If he had to describe the sensation, it would have been wolf-but-not-wolf, ephemeral as smoke and yet nuzzling up against him.

  And gods, it felt good…

  He shoved the thoughts aside, not wanting to get his hopes up. Besides, he needed to focus. They weren’t out of this yet.

  From their seats around the sunken living room, the bears looked up in alarm as the two of them rushed into the room. Everett sat with an arm around Otis, the large child clearly nervous based on the way he seemed to be fighting the urge to suck his thumb. Across the space, Henry was sagged into a seat, his wounds bandaged and his face haggard. Maeve was in the kitchen, while Knox stood by the door as if still keeping watch, just in case. The dark-haired male’s neck and shoulders were wrapped, and hints of bloodstains marred the white fabric. Near the hallway, Andrew was crouched by Frankie’s seat. The man gripped his son’s hands as if in encouragement, and tears glistened on the kid’s face.

  “Lindy!” Frankie cried. The boy shoved out of his chair, sending the thing rocking as he rushed over and threw his arms around his sister.

  While Lindy hugged him, she gave a quick look to the others. “They’re coming. The Order. The draugar. Do you have any weapons?”

  The bears were frozen for less than a heartbeat.

  Knox shoved away from the wall and headed for the door. “Stay in the house.” He tossed the order over his shoulder like he didn’t have a doubt about being obeyed.

  Everett headed for the hallway, muttering something about weapons, while Maeve drew Otis to her, the kid giving up the fight not to suck his thumb. With a grunt, Henry maneuvered to his feet and hobbled toward the tarps covering the broken windows at the back of the house, looking past them as if checking in case anyone was sneaking up where the bears couldn’t see.

  Wes eyed the broken windows and then the door. His wolf rolled beneath his skin, ready to shift and attack.

  “Dad,” Lindy said. “Can you get Frankie somewhere safe in here?”

  Andrew glanced at Maeve, giving her a questioning look.

  “This way,” the female said, bringing Otis with her.

  Lindy’s family hurried down the hall with Maeve urging them on like an irritated school matron.

  “Y’all ought to head back with them,” Henry said to Wes and Lindy from his post by the tarps.

  Ignoring him, Lindy headed for the windows beside the front door.

  “Dammit, girl. The last thing we need is those folks getting their hands on—”

  “They’re here,” Lindy interrupted, stopping cold a yard shy of the door.

  Wes came up beside her. “Go protect your family. We’ve got this.”

  Her face tightened, her expression torn.

  He clasped a hand to her arm and then continued past her, yanking open the door and stepping outside, letting the shift rush through him as he moved. It’d be a pain to find more clothes, but the bears seemed to have a stockpile. And there wasn’t time to strip down all nice and neat, anyway.

  Shrieks from the draugar carried from the woods, closing in fast.

  A huffing sound came from behind him, and a bear walked onto the porch. Everett, he thought. A glance through the open doorway confirmed it, as he saw Henry shift quickly by the back window.

  Lindy stood, one hand on the doorframe and her eyes on the forest, unmoving.

  Wes made a gruff sound, urging her back inside. She glanced at him, and he couldn’t read the look in her eyes.

  The shrieks grew louder. He barked at Lindy and then whirled back toward the woods. Branches snapped and cracked. In the distance, the trees rustled, like a wave was rushing through the forest on all sides.

  And then it died.

  Heart pounding, Wes glanced around warily. On the snowy ground, shifted bears stood in front of their homes, watching the trees, while at his side, Everett growled, the low sound filtering out almost as if by instinct.

  But the rushing sound was gone. The rustling too. Shrieks and howls rose from all sides, as if the forest itself had become a monster, while the choking scent of decay spread past the trees.

  Where the fuck were the draugar?

  Green smoke rolled out between a row of evergreen trees like a noxious fog.

  Allegiants walked into the clearing, more than he’d seen even at the building where they had Lindy. Behind them, the draugar shuffled from between the trees, not moving past them but instead waiting like a silent, decaying host at the backs of the robed figures. The virulent clouds of smoke drifted around them, as if the snow itself were vaporizing into toxic mist.

  And at the center of it all stood Carolyn.

  A growl left Wes. Her hood thrown back, the woman eyed them with disgust. Her bearing was ramrod straight despite how
she was limping, and the shadows on her face gathered dark and severe in the hollows of her cheeks, giving her the look of a skull. Like the other Allegiants, her robes were torn, and from them all, he could smell blood, the scent sour like curdled milk.

  Carolyn took another step forward, her face twitching with rage. “Where… is my… daughter?”

  Wes bared his teeth and snarled. Nearby, a large brown bear growled and all around him, the other bears stepped forward, pacing toward the Allegiants.

  Carolyn made a contemptuous sound. “Then I’ll find her over your corpses.”

  Her hands moved, stirring the air, and the green smoke rose around her.

  Cold resolution settled over Wes. The magic was deadly, he knew. He’d seen its effects in Mariposa, days before, when it’d nearly killed them all.

  But it had to touch them first.

  He started down the stairs, still growling. All around him, the bears moved forward as well, and on either side of Carolyn, the other Allegiants shifted their weight, as if bracing for the attack.

  A door shut behind him. Swiftly, Wes risked a glance over his shoulder.

  Lindy stood on the porch.

  Ice shot through him. What the hell was she doing?

  But at the sight, Carolyn chuckled. “Well, hello, Melinda.”

  The woman hurled a hand forward, and smoke rushed from her palm, surging past him. The black line hit Lindy’s neck, and twisting her wrist sharply, Carolyn snagged the tentacle of smoke as if gripping a rope.

  Wes’s heart hit his throat. Not again. That leash thing—

  “No.” Lindy jerked her head to the side. The black line flew apart like shattered glass.

  Rage flooded Carolyn’s face. “You are the Scythe of Niorun! You are the weapon of the Order, and you will obey!”

  “Never again.”

  Iron filled Lindy’s voice, and Wes turned back to Carolyn, growling with pride. That was his mate. He could practically feel the strength rolling off her as if it were electricity charging the air.

  And it grew.

  A pulse thudded out across the clearing. It burned the air when it passed him, racing for the draugar and the Allegiants, and he recognized the feeling. The same blast had ripped by him in Nebraska when she first destroyed the draugar, only now it felt infinitely stronger. In a moment, it slammed into the noxious clouds as if to shred them like a hurricane.

  Sparks erupted, and the green fog blazed so bright, he flinched away, spots in his eyes.

  The draugar still stood when the light faded.

  Carolyn smiled. “You think we weren’t prepared for you, Melinda?”

  Cold stole over Wes. What the hell kind of power was in that fog, if whatever Lindy had done couldn’t stop it?

  At his back, he heard Lindy take two steps forward on the porch, and then a new wave of seidr rushed out, tingling over his fur. In a single bound, she leapt past him, her body changing as she moved. The confines of her clothes burned away with the power of the shift, and when she hit the ground, she wasn’t human.

  But he’d never seen anything like her wolf.

  Her fur was black like the tears through the sky, dark as the depths of space, but it drifted up like she was made entirely of smoke. When she threw a look to him, her eyes glowed green and light twisted up from them like auroras. It wasn’t the sickly color of the Order, but instead, a vibrant shade like fresh life in springtime, shining out in the gathering twilight.

  And he could feel her. Like one of his pack, he could, and joy bubbled up inside him despite everything.

  Satisfaction blossomed in her eyes as she regarded him, becoming iron resolution as she looked back at her mother.

  A low growl left Lindy.

  The contempt on Carolyn’s face vanished into rage. With an imperious gesture, she threw out her arms and the power around her thudded through the air like an explosion. Shrieks rose from the forest again, turning to a flood as more draugar poured from the woods into the clearing.

  Carolyn smiled, utter cruelty in her eyes. “Get them.”

  The draugar charged.

  31

  Lindy

  The draugar raced right at her, green smoke rising from the forest behind them, and yet everything felt right.

  Seidr coursed through Lindy’s new form and joy flooded her body, as if something inside her had been waiting all her life for this, and now, at long last, it was here.

  The Scythe of Niorun, never to be chained again.

  Shrieking and howling, the draugar charged from the smoke, clawing madly to reach her, but instantly, pure instinct took over, telling her what to do before she even had the conscious thought. Lunging forward, she tore into the draugar, shredding them to ash. To move on four legs was awkward for a moment, like crawling at high speed, but she could feel herself adjusting. Some part of her mind seemed to understand this, to know this, and effortlessly instructed the rest of her on what to do even as she sped through the horde. To her left, she somehow could feel Wes’s presence, and she knew he was unharmed for the moment, destroying the monsters same as her.

  It was exhilarating.

  Her eyes scanned the flood of draugar around her, their bodies strange in her new vision. The green smoke rose behind them like a backdrop, not moving forward though she couldn’t understand why. Meanwhile, lines tangled around the draugar like ropes, not black or green but somehow an absence of both, as if reality was inverted where the vines were. Anti-space. Negative color. The sight was disconcerting, and confusing too, and then she spotted one of the Allegiants.

  Understanding hit her. Some of the lines led back to the man, gripped in his fists like leashes. This was what the Order had done, different than what they’d tried with her but powerful all the same. This was their twisted, corrupted seidr controlling the monsters, marshaling them to the Order’s task.

  But why wasn’t the green smoke coming with them?

  Lunging forward, she snapped her jaws through the lines, and the invisible ropes broke, floundering around like cut tentacles for a moment before vanishing entirely. The draugar to which they’d been connected suddenly staggered, all of them stumbling around like autonomous puppets suddenly free of their strings.

  Satisfaction filtered through Lindy, and she charged forward, biting through more of the leashes and leaving confused draugar staggering into each other in her wake. The Allegiants shouted, whipping seidr through the air in an effort to ensnare the monsters again, catching some, missing others, while all around, chaos ensued.

  But something was wrong. There’d been more Allegiants here only minutes ago, yet now at least half were gone.

  Including her mother.

  Alarm spread through her, and Lindy inhaled sharply, testing her new sense of smell. Her head snapped to the right. There, a trace of her mother, threading a path through the draugar and toward the side of Maeve and Everett’s house.

  Her mother was going after Frankie and Andrew again.

  Digging her paws into the cold snow, Lindy took off, tearing past the draugar as she raced after her mother’s scent. Like hell, Carolyn would hurt them. Touch them. Like hell they’d ever live in fear of that woman again.

  Lindy rounded the side of the house, and there she was in a space between the wreckage of the porch and the edge of the forest, with green smoke hanging in the woods beside her as if the noxious cloud extended all the way around the clearing.

  And Carolyn wasn’t alone.

  Lindy skidded to a stop, her eyes darting over the Allegiants with her mother. The robed figures stood in a half circle, their arms outstretched. Behind her, Lindy could feel more of them closing in too, their shapes in her mind almost obscured by the draugar rampaging through the clearing to fight the bears and Wes.

  Her mother grinned. “Look who’s come back anyway. You’re ours, Melinda. You’ll always return to us.” Carolyn glanced past her to the Allegiants closing in. “No matter what you’ve done to yourself.”

  Lindy growled.

&n
bsp; Carolyn scoffed, clearly disgusted. “Now!”

  As one, the Allegiants shouted. Chains of glowing green smoke surged up from the ground all around her, lashing across Lindy before driving back into the earth as if to anchor her there. She staggered, fighting and failing to keep her feet as they tightened and dragged her down to the snow.

  Thrashing beneath the magical restraints, panic pounded through her. She was trapped. Pinned to the snow and frozen grass like…

  Like an animal.

  Carolyn walked closer, ignoring the others as they continued to chant strange words Lindy only vaguely remembered from her childhood. “You are such a disappointment.” Her mother’s lips curled up, cold and cruel. “But you’ll still obey.”

  The woman bent closer, contempt in her voice. “You let that wolf bastard corrupt you, daughter. You should have died rather than let that filth touch you. But no matter. We’ll still do what you couldn’t. Every other disgusting animal is going to die in these woods, drained of life and screaming their last. And him?” She chuckled. “You swore yourself to us, Melinda. You will be our tool. So I’m going to skin that cur alive, and hand you the knife right before the end, and you will obey when I tell you to cut that animal’s throat.”

  Stepping back, Carolyn raised her hands and the green smoke rose too, churning high above the trees like a wave ready to crash down and snuff all life from the clearing. Around her, the Allegiants chanted louder.

  The chains over Lindy’s body began to tighten, making her yelp in pain. Panic drummed through her, for herself, for Wes, for all the bears who were going to die if those green clouds came slamming down. But no matter how she thrashed beneath the chains, she couldn’t break free. With every passing heartbeat, the restraints sank deeper into her, their touch like death that bit like needles. Her strength drained even as something else seemed to seep into its place, as if the chains of smoke planned to drink down all the power inside her and fill her with their poison instead.

  Her thoughts slowed. The poison was not poison. The poison was the idea.