Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3)

by S. M. Reine

  Rylie had emerged for the full and new moons, guiding the pack through the transformation, leading them on a silent chase through the forest. It was easier to deal with the pain as a wolf because the wolf didn’t care about pain. It didn’t care about drowning. It only cared about the moist soil under its feet, the strange acid smell of smoke drifting over the forest, the crimson tinge to a normally blue sky.

  That was probably why Abel had stopped changing back at all.

  She saw him through her bedroom window, stalking along the lake. Fog clung to the waterfall and the cliffs and the surface of the water. He was a grim, a black dog, a creature marking his brother’s death. Abel hadn’t lost weight like Rylie had. Somehow, he had grown larger as a wolf, as though the beast were inflated by his anger.

  Rylie pressed her hand to the cold pane of glass and watched him prowl beyond.

  “Abel,” she murmured.

  He stalked along the lake, glaring into the sanctuary with golden eyes. He picked up his pace near the rocks and disappeared again.

  Rylie let her hand fall. A clammy handprint remained where she had been touching.

  It was never going to end. She would never be okay again.

  She realized that her thumb hurt, and looked down to see that she was gripping Seth’s fang earring too tightly in her other hand again. Its point pressed into her skin hard enough to leave a deep indentation. Rylie forced her hand to relax.

  Pushing the window open, she allowed the chilly air to flood into her bedroom. Rylie closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Information washed over her—the damp hint of approaching snowfall, ice that had already formed high on the mountain, cooking meat and the gas that fueled the stoves.

  She also smelled buttery popcorn.

  Her eyes popped open.

  “Nash?” she whispered. He always smelled like popcorn to her. Summer said that he smelled like bonfires, so it seemed that everyone smelled and felt and saw something different when it came to angels. Rylie didn’t understand why her perception was popcorn, but it never failed to give away his presence, since werewolves didn’t eat it.

  It was always good to see Nash. He made Summer smile. But he would have news of the war, too. The war that Rylie had failed to prevent, and that Seth had died for.

  Somehow, she found herself standing, and she walked to the front door of the cottage. She pulled a sweater over her head. She walked into the open air outside, crisp and chilly with the approach of winter, and it was still too hard to breathe.

  The pack was having dinner. Thank goodness for Summer and Abram—they had been working through the grief, taking the lead in organizing meals for the pack, helping them prepare for winter. They were so functional. Rylie didn’t want to begrudge them their normality, but she hated how easy it was for them. The truth that was drowning her didn’t hurt them.

  She walked to the edge of the street and peered down at the pack sitting at the tables. Nash had been there, but his scent was already fading. He had moved on. Rylie didn’t have the energy to seek him out.

  She turned from the lights of the main street and walked.

  Somehow, she found herself behind the split rail fence separating the lake from the cottages. There was cold, soggy dirt between her toes. Water sloshed to her ankles.

  Rylie stared into the lake and thought about diving in.

  She wasn’t sure how long she stood there. She could feel the moon crawling across the sky, but couldn’t connect its movements to the passage of time.

  Eventually—a few minutes later, an hour later—she smelled popcorn again.

  Nash strolled down the beach toward her, barefooted with his jacket flung over one shoulder. He smelled like Summer all over, even more than he smelled like popcorn. The oils she put in her hair to control her curls was on his skin. Their sweat was mingled. She was even on his every exhale. He had just been with her in a very carnal way.

  At first, it had been embarrassing that Rylie could tell every time her pack members had sex, and doubly embarrassing when her daughter returned from the Haven with a boyfriend that she was very intimate with. But there were only so many times a girl could be embarrassed before growing numb to it. At least Summer was happy.

  “Rylie,” he greeted with a small bow. It was too formal for the pack, but where mothers-in-law and werewolf Alphas were concerned, Nash seemed to think that a little extra formality couldn’t hurt. As long as she didn’t expect him to do the dishes, he could be really nice.

  “Don’t do that bowing thing,” Rylie said. “I feel like I should be bowing to you. You’re the war hero,” she said.

  “We’re all doing our duties.” Nash had shown a lot more respect for Rylie since he had learned of her attempt to prevent the Breaking. He wouldn’t have respected her so much if he had known the full story.

  Rylie dragged her bottom lip between her teeth. “So is Summer asleep?”

  He glanced down at himself, smoothing a hand down his chest, as if looking for a visible sign of what he had been doing. “Yes. She’s in our cottage now.”

  That was good. Summer deserved the rest.

  Rylie turned to gaze out at the lake again, and Nash stood just behind her, beyond the reach of the waves.

  “Evacuations are progressing more quickly in the West than they have in the East,” he said. His words were quick and clipped, as though reporting to a general. “Populations are condensing at the port cities and hundreds of ships depart daily. Any ship that brings supplies to the front leaves with as many humans as can fit on it. It will be weeks, perhaps months, before a full evacuation is possible—the invaders are interfering with travelers reaching the harbors.”

  He might as well have been speaking Greek for all that Rylie understood it. The waterfall was thundering in her mind, beating along with her heart. Why was he talking about evacuees with her?

  Nash added, “I’m sure that we could secure passage for the pack.”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. Even with his shirt unbuttoned halfway and his hair rumpled, he looked every inch the soldier. Was that a sword at his waist? Had he really brought a sword into her home? Her stomach flipped at the sight of it.

  “We’re not leaving,” Rylie said.

  “For now. But I’ve seen how the war is progressing. I’m doing the best I can with what help I have, and the Union is fighting, but…” He sighed. “The pack might need to leave. There just won’t be supplies much longer in the cities. Growing produce won’t be adequate when we can’t get other human necessities.”

  Rylie clutched her heart to hide how much her hands were trembling. “But we can’t leave. This is home. We’ve got a few cows frozen, and—“

  “And a pack of forty werewolves will eat all of that within weeks,” he said.

  “We can hunt the deer in the forest.”

  “How long will the deer survive in this air?” Nash asked. “Once the fissure spreads, there may be no habitat for them, either.”

  He painted a terrible picture—a picture that Rylie hadn’t even begun to conceive of until that moment.

  “Is it that bad?”

  “It’s becoming that bad very quickly. You should be prepared.”

  That was a big thing to try to prepare for. Rylie wouldn’t know how to start, even if she wanted to. But hadn’t they already been preparing? They had been stocking up on meat, they had water filters, they had the river, they had the greenhouses… Wasn’t it enough?

  “Why are you telling me this?” Rylie asked around the lump in her throat.

  “You’re the Alpha,” Nash said. “The decision will fall to you.”

  But I don’t want to be Alpha anymore.

  None of this should have even happened. If only Elise had exorcised her—if only they had shut the fissure before the demons came through…

  “I’ll think about it,” Rylie said, even though it was a lie. She couldn’t stand to think about any of it. She could barely keep going through her life.

  Nash let out a si
gh. “Here,” he said. He sloshed into the water and settled his jacket over Rylie’s shoulders. The smell of popcorn overpowered her senses.

  “What’s this for?” she asked.

  “You’re freezing.”

  She looked down at her feet. The water was rising, and her skin was clammy and damp halfway up her calves. The jacket did make her feel warmer on the outside, but it didn’t do anything for being submerged.

  Rylie stepped out of the water. “Thanks,” she said, casting a sideways glance at Nash’s sword again.

  He rested a hand on the pommel as he moved away from her, seemingly aware of her unease. “I should return,” he said. “Where’s your mate?”

  Annoyance flared inside of her. “I don’t need my ‘mate’ to take care of me.”

  “My apologies,” he said, although he obviously didn’t mean it. Nash had said more than once that even the strongest of women needed a man to shelter her in the worst of times. Rylie didn’t really disagree with him. She could have used Abel’s help. But he had never been as selfless as Seth, and he hadn’t been there for her.

  “He’s out there somewhere,” Rylie said softly, gesturing at the trees. “Running. Always running. Looking for something.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know anymore.”

  They watched the trees together, as though expecting Abel to emerge, but the night was quiet. The trees shifted and creaked. Leaves rustled in the moist breeze, as if the entire forest sighed.

  Rylie picked at her fingernails, peeling dirt from underneath the tips. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said. She glanced up at him through her hair. “But don’t leave Summer. Not while she’s sleeping. At least wait to say goodbye.”

  Nash studied her for a long, silent moment. He looked tempted by the suggestion. “There aren’t nearly enough angels engaged in the conflict for me to rest yet.”

  “They can survive without you for a few more hours.”

  “She’ll understand,” Nash said. “I’ll return for her as soon as I can.” A faint smile traced his lips. “I can never stay away for long.”

  Rylie nodded, and he took to the air, quickly vanishing among the clouds.

  Even though he was gone, the creeping sensation at the back of her neck told her that she wasn’t alone yet, either.

  Golden eyes glimmered in the shadows, staring at her from the edge of the forest. Rylie could just make out the shape of a hulking animal against the darkness of the trees.

  Abel was there after all.

  He padded across the grass to stand in front of her, and Rylie reached out a hand, inviting him to smell her as he always used to do. But he stayed just out of reach.

  “Nash was just here,” she said. “Were you listening?”

  The wolf melted into a man.

  It was the first time that Rylie had seen Abel’s human face for days, and the similarities to Seth made her breath catch. He was taller and broader. He was more scarred, and angrier than Seth had ever been. But they were brothers. The resemblance went beyond the superficial features, down to his expressions and the way he held himself.

  He was filthy from long days in the forest. He had a week’s worth of beard growth on his jaw. And there was something strangely animalistic about his eyes—as if that part of him hadn’t shifted back.

  “I’m not going to talk about it,” Abel said abruptly. The words were halting, jerky. He had howled for so long that he seemed to have forgotten how to speak like a human.

  “You mean, leaving the sanctuary?”

  “Yeah. That. And the other thing.”

  He didn’t want to talk about Seth.

  She hugged herself tighter. Her shoulders ached. “Okay.”

  “I don’t want to know how it happened.”

  “Okay,” she said again. She didn’t want Abel to know anyway. Once he knew, he would hate her for what she had done to Seth, and she didn’t think she could stand to lose both of them. She would never find air again.

  And then he was there, engulfing her hand in one of his. It wasn’t enough contact. Rylie stepped in close and leaned her head against his chest. His heart drummed under her ear. She wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed him close. It made her feel as good to be with him as it made her feel guilty.

  Rylie was the reason Abel’s brother was gone. Rylie was the reason that he couldn’t stand to be human anymore. Rylie had tried to stop being Alpha, had been selfish, had made Seth pay for her choices. And Abel didn’t know. It was wrong to hold him close when she was the reason for all of the pain.

  He moved to put his arms around her, but she stepped back before he could.

  Abel’s eyes sparked with anger. “What’s the problem?”

  She didn’t know what to say. She searched for words and found none.

  “I don’t know,” she said lamely. It was a poor excuse, and he wasn’t convinced. She could see it in the way he held his shoulders, like he was ready to drop to all fours and flee into the forest again.

  “Yeah, I was listening to Nash. We’re not leaving the sanctuary,” Abel said. “We’ll take a stand here. We’ll do what we gotta do. But no matter what Nash says, no matter what’s going on outside in the world, we’re not leaving our home.” The muscles in his chest flexed to hard lines of tension. “We’ve lost enough already.”

  He might not have been there to help her grieve, but he was there to make the decisions she couldn’t. He was still Alpha.

  Rylie felt something inside her chest unclench.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  Seven

  Elise was trying—and failing—to draw runes on a notebook in Abraxas’s office when the rush came. Infernal magic pulsed over her, making the hair on her arms stand on end and the back of her neck prickle.

  Alert.

  The wards smashed down on Elise.

  She had thought that shooting the House’s walls hurt, but it was nothing like feeling a security breach. Elise collapsed against the desk. She could see the notebook grow in her vision, blurring as it came too close for her to focus on it, and knew that her cheek must have been pressed to the surface—but she couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t feel anything but the agony.

  Elise heard the jangling of the gates opening. She felt the groan of spells stretched to their limit.

  Something has broken through the wards.

  The feeling of being run over by a train began to fade as Elise staggered into the hallway, the taste of whiskey sour in the back of her throat. The sound of jangling chains echoed from the floor above. She braced a hand against the wall to support herself as she drew the Beretta, thumbing the safety off.

  Ace appeared around the corner. His claws scrabbled against the floor as he ran.

  Elise kneeled to catch him, and he snarled at her hands on his neck, twisting and snapping. She hung onto his collar.

  “Who freed you?” she asked as he thrashed, trying to jerk out of her grip.

  The moment she asked the question, she remembered where he had been chained—in Belphegor’s room.

  Her stomach lurched.

  One fist wrapped in his chain, the other on the gun, she rushed to the foyer and took the stairs two at a time. Ace remained at her heels, snarling and drooling.

  The door to Belphegor’s playroom hung open.

  Elise stepped inside to find that the master switch had been flipped. That was what she had felt—not an intrusion into the wards, but someone who wasn’t blood-bound to the wards opening the gates. The chains had been ripped out of the wall. The wards that she had used to surround Belphegor in flames had been broken, the tiles underneath broken as if by a sledgehammer.

  Belphegor was free.

  Elise closed the gates again before heading downstairs. Very few things felt as satisfying as flipping the master switch to secure the property—it rippled over her skin and warmed her deep in her belly, sort of like the way she used to feel while cleaning her swords after a difficult battle. The ultimate in comfort.

 
; Jerica was already outside at the front gate, watching it lower with her mouth gaping.

  “Why was this open?” she called as Elise stalked toward her.

  Jerica wasn’t alone. Elise caught sight of Gerard behind the nightmare and remembered how he had come to her shortly before Belphegor’s escape. How long had he been wandering around the compound? Had he been alone, or supervised? Where had he gone after leaving her office?

  She dropped Ace’s chain and advanced on him, grabbing his shirt in her fist. “Was it you?” The dog growled between their legs, hackles lifted, ears back against his skull.

  “Hey!” Jerica said sharply. “Put Gerard down!”

  Elise jerked the slave’s face close to hers. His breath smelled like fermented sugar. “Did you help him escape, Gerard?”

  “Who’s ‘him?’” he asked.

  “Belphegor,” Elise hissed.

  “Oh, shit,” Jerica said. She grabbed Elise’s arm, trying to pry her fingers free. “Look, if you think one of the slaves helped Belphegor escape—I don’t know what that says about you, but it’s not good.”

  Jerica was right. Why would one of the humans help Belphegor escape? The demon had scared them so shitless that they hadn’t bothered to lock any of the cages.

  Elise released Gerard’s shirt. He smoothed it down as if she had wrinkled a fancy suit, although it was impossible to tell if the tattered tee was indeed rumpled. “He has to be here,” Elise said, only fractionally calmer than before. “Find Neuma. We need to sweep the property before he can figure out how to get through the wards.”

  “I’ll get my friends,” Gerard said.

  Before Elise could ask him whom he was talking about, he was gone, rushing toward the house that she had left. It was only then that she noticed he was armed—someone had given him a cleaver much like Jerica’s, probably taken from Abraxas’s kitchen.

  “Friends?” Elise asked.

  “The other four slaves that Gerard coaxed out,” Jerica said.

  The idea of a bunch of humans running loose made Elise’s head ache. “No. They need to stay in the house.”

  “This property’s got to be about a hundred acres, and that’s just what’s on the surface, not counting the mine,” Jerica said, breaking into a jog. She called over her shoulder, “We’ll need all the help we can get.”