“Of all the things to pay attention to,” Kaleb grumbles, rubbing at his eyes.
Donovan stares at Kaleb like he’s never seen him before, then exhales, and says, “Okay. No more talking about killing the bastard.”
“You agree with me?” Kaleb inquires, suspicion darkening his gaze.
“You’re right. Callie can kill the asshole herself,” he replies, crossing his arms over his chest. “I plan to teach her how.”
“You. Are. Missing. The. Point,” Kaleb snarls, ready for round two of yelling at him, when the ground shakes, and a fury so powerful it makes me dizzy crashes through me.
“Callie,” I gasp, using one clawed hand to throw the broken door into the basement, while furiously sprinting up the stair with the guys right behind me. Felix vanishes, hopefully to Callie’s side.
“There was proof!” Callie screams from the other side of the house, while we quickly dodge bits of debris that fall from the collapsing ceiling. “All along he had proof!”
“Callie, darling, please come to me,” Mildred begs, her words carrying over the sounds of glass items crashing to the floor. “I promise we’ll get justice, but first we need to get out of this house.”
“I could’ve made it stop,” she wails, and then there’s the distinct smell of smoke and the harsh crackle of fire. “He was right all along.”
“No. No, he wasn’t,” Mildred insists, when we barrel through the door.
Callie is standing in a fiery ring around the desk with a leather bound journal in her hand. Her face drips with tears and her grey eyes burn with an anguish and rage that nearly cripples me. It’s not supposed to be like this. I’m supposed to know what she’s feeling, not be consumed by it.
The shift nearly takes over me, and I’m barely able to hold my human form—my wolf evident in the fur that covers my body, the amber of my eyes, my sharp claws, and even sharper teeth. Knowing only that I need to get to her, to save my mate, I push forward, preparing to face the flames while already gagging on smoke.
“All of you, get out of here!” Mildred orders with a sweeping wave of her hand, which has the guys flying through the wall. I’m too far away for her to reach, already burning with myreina’sflames.
The fire spreads, eating up the room with an unnatural speed, and I grunt, swallowing my pain as the fire burns my clothes, my fur, my skin. When I make it to the center, I partially shift, my fur covering and uncovering my skin in attempt to heal my burns.
Felix is begging Callie to come back to us. To stop before it’s too late. But I can feel her pain. Her rage. Her anguish. This is a storm that won’t be stopped.
Over the crackling fires, I hear Mildred chanting different spells to try to extinguish the flames, but they’re ineffective, since Callie’s own magic is too powerful to be stopped.
“Get Mildred out,” I shout to Felix, leaving it to him to figure out how.
He nods then vanishes again, off to get help.
“Reina,” I call out, pulling her into my arms as she cries and screams. Fighting against me. Against herself. Desperate to see the world destroyed under her fury. “I won’t leave you. If you burn, we burn together.”
“Every time he…he broke me into tiny pieces,” she sobs, her fists beating against my chest. “He wrote it down. Right here. Hundreds and hundreds of nights recorded with all the ways he…” She screams out, releasing the pain that won’t die inside her, the words no longer enough.
The ground shakes below us as the fires burn higher, followed by sounds of metal twisting and pipes bursting with the force of her magic.
“No!” Mildred shrieks from the other side of the flames. “I won’t leave her. I’ll never leave her. Never!”
“Connor will get her out,” Donovan insists with heavy strain. “Callie needs you alive!”
“Please, Mildred,” Kaleb begs, his voice hoarse from the smoke.
“Nooooo. I promised her,” she cries like it’s her burning in the fire. “I promised—”
Beams from the ceiling crack to the floor, and Mildred’s cries get lost in the sounds of destruction around us.
With no clothes to protect me, my back starts to blister from the heat, but the smoke swirls around us like the eye of a storm. I lift her up, holding her to me so our eyes are now level. Madness stares back. Haunted, bleeding, raw madness. Desperate, I try to get us out, march through the flames, but it’s like an invisible wall holds us inside. The only way I’m getting her out of this house is if she lets me.
“Reina, don’t let it take you,” I beg, kissing her forehead, her cheeks, her lips.
“It’s too much,” she whimpers, drooping against me, the journal trapped between our bodies. “I can still feel it all. Everything he did to me, and it hurts too much. I need it to stop. Please make it stop.”
The flames don’t touch her, burning outward, while she grows frighteningly colder in my arms. Panic fills me, because I don’t know what to do, or how to reach her. I squeeze her tighter against me, bargaining with any deity that will listen to help me save her.
