“I wasn’t sure if blocking your abilities was even possible, but if so, it was going to require a massive amount of energy to accomplish it.” Regret flashes in his eyes. “The three of them already suffered the loss of their mate; they couldn’t stand by and watch you die, too.”
Silent tears stream down my face.
He pushes to his feet and starts pacing in the confines of the circle that Bo, Slade, and Cinjin are keeping him trapped within. “Without your parents, your pack’s alpha would have been responsible for you. And Ash... he was a cruel man before we were cursed, and has only gotten worse in his mission to set us free. You, the first female alpha? Either you’d be a threat to him and he’d kill you, or he’d turn you into a weapon to pull off what he’s always wanted.”
Stopping abruptly, he defends, “Annika hated this place anyway, and she was the only family you had left. So I burned the place down to hide the evidence of the bodies so they’d think Amelia was still pregnant at the time, and no one would even think to look for the baby. It offered the distraction necessary for your sister to take you and run, to give you both a shot at having a life far away from here.”
“But Ash knows about me now. What good would running do?”
Quietly, Kaige says, “Because Annika was right to a degree. Sabrina destroys everything she touches, but in exactly the ways necessary for us to thrive to our worst potential. Not only does she break cages to set our other halves free, she blew up our lives, our perspectives, the things that were pulling us under, and saved us from drowning in our misery. Sheisthe key to setting us free, which is what Ash has been after this entire time; hence his experimenting with creating the lycan drug.”
‘You take her back to that place, she’ll kill us all.’
“But we can’t live without our wolves; we’re too intertwined. So if I set them free,reallyfree, we would all die... right?”
“The only true freedom from suffering is in death,” Xander declares with a sad smile. “If you don’t escape from this place, Ashwilluse you to free us, and your body won’t survive it.”
Us. Notthem. But his eyes are still...
“You’re wrong.” Kaige’s fingers tighten on my hip, his presence gradually growing in his vehemence as if he’s feeding off of Xander’s restless energy. “Sabrina would never go down as a martyr for the likes of us.”
Xander gives him a pitying stare, slightly shaking his head. “Acheron wouldn’t give her a choice. Martyr or sacrificial lamb, her fate’s inevitable.”
“Really, Xander, if I wanted to kill myself, I’d have done it by now.” Whirling around, I almost smack right into Ash’s chest. I might have been distracted, but it should have been impossible for him to sneak up on every single one of us. “I resent that claim. If anything, I tried harder than anyone to ensure Sabrina had more freedom than the rest of us.”
Reid has the back of my shirt in his jaws in a split second, pulling me away from Ash. It buys time for the others to reach us, Damian’s dad forgotten as the lesser threat for the moment as they become an immovable, volatile wall surrounding me on all sides. I have to crane my neck to see around Boden, just in time to see Kaige shifting and tackling Ash to the ground. Snarling, he bares his teeth, snapping his jaws, but Ash only rolls his eyes, unperturbed at the display, and carries on with his monologue.
“Annika never would have been able to leave unless I’d allowed her to.Someonehad to ensure Adrian would cross her path that night so she’d have a head start before her mates discovered that she was missing.” A cruel smile curves the corner of his lips. “Sabrina’s my greatest creation. Do you really think I would ever let her go?”
Snapping a hand out, he wraps it around Kaige’s throat, swiping his legs out from under him as he rolls the two of them. Getting to his feet in a seamless transition, he leans against the open doorway. As Bo launches at him, a dark haze coats Ash’s skin. When his jaws latch around Ash’s throat, he immediately releases him with a pained howl before stumbling back, chuffing and trying to shake the taste of something foul from his tongue.
Casually, Ash continues as if nothing even happened. “Countless of our brethren gave their lives to unlock your true potential, Sabrina. I wouldn’t let their sacrifice be in vain by being so irresponsible as to lose track of you.”
Swallowing my horror, I force confidence into my voice that I don’t remotely feel, but it manages to come out steady. “What are you talking about?”
Umber eyes alight with excitement. “Every day I visited your mother, easing her morning sickness and soothing her beast, and each day I’d funnel a little more energy into you while you grew.”
However Acheron Wilder manages to lessen his presence, he gives up on maintaining the illusion now that he has no reason to hide the truth. Suddenly, the tranquil eye of the storm we’d found ourselves in passes, and with it comes a torrent of energy that steals the air from my lungs.
“It’s taken centuries to put all the pieces together-” with a devilish grin, he reaches into his pocket, withdrawing a jagged shard of a coral-colored gemstone the same shade as my eyes “- but I finally figured out how you did it, Aurelia. Now, you’re going to help me fix your mistake, and set all of the demons you betrayed free.”
***
