Page 74

Ferol, please, Raiden implores. Don’t let him suffer.

I can feel their pain. It matches my own, my soul and heart aching. Despite my best efforts, these men have come to mean everything to me. They found me at my darkest, and even though this should never work, it does. I don’t want to lose Emrys.

I’ve already lost so much.

“Please don’t let me lose someone else I care for,” I beg, tightening my hold on his face. “I lost my life, my love, and my daughter. Please do not let me lose my mate. Fight. Come back to me. Fight one last time, and I promise from now on, I will fight every battle for you.”

I can still feel that red haze, but I try wading through it, reaching for his mind with my own as I speak until I’m snapped back to reality when my name is screamed in my head in warning. I realise why. My mother is heading towards us.

“Daughter, let me end this one’s suffering.” My mother’s hand lifts as I throw Emrys behind me and get to my knees, blocking her path to him. I can come back from the dead, but he can’t.

Throwing my hand out protectively in front of him, I narrow my eyes on my mother. “If you try to kill him, I will kill you, understand?”

“Look at him. He is gone. He will kill us all! Whatever happens next, this cannot be avoided. Right now, we are on the same side. This court will die if that creature lives.” She makes it seem like she’s helping me, but the truth is, she wants me to suffer like she is and to show her people they still need her.

The fool. She wasn’t strong enough to protect her mate, but I am.

I lift my hand and blast her with fire, throwing her through the air with the force. She hits the ashen body of her mate, and it crumples to dust and blackness below her twisting form.

“He is mine! They are mine!” I roar at her before turning and gripping Emrys’s cheeks, digging my nails in until that slow, sluggish black goo leaves him. “Come back to me now!”

I blast that same fire, same power, into his mind. I don’t try to part the haze, instead burning it to a crisp. I take his hunger into me and share it between us. I make the pain, death, and starvation he has lived with since being brought back against his will my own. What is more pain for me? Nothing. I’ll gladly take it if it means he stays.

I drain it from him into me, shuddering and struggling under the weight, but then the others help, sharing the neuro load and taking it into themselves. The burden lessens, and when I open my eyes, the red in Emrys’s slowly retreats as he blinks.

“Ferol?” he croaks.

“It’s me. I’m here.” Relief floods me as I throw my arms around him, unable to resist. His hand strokes up and down my back as he buries his head in my shoulder. I feel the others draw closer, protecting us and adding in their presence and warmth as he lifts his head.

“There’s a scar.” He rubs my chest, and I glance down at it. “How?”

“I guess it’s from when I took your pain into me.” I shrug, uncaring.

“I’m sorry,” he says, but I cover his lips.

“It is a privilege to wear the proof of your life on my skin.” Pressing my forehead to his, I breathe.

Not to break up the love fest, but we are surrounded, Raiden says.

We should get moving, Torrin cautions.

Nodding, I take Emrys’s hand and stand, looking at my mother as she gets to her feet, the ashes of her fallen lover covering her. The blue ice that once protected her is now little more than water sliding across her skin. “Be a better leader or not. I guess that’s for your court to decide.”

What they choose to do is their decision. Death at my hand would be too easy for her. It’s better for her to live and suffer with the knowledge of her defeat while those she believed were lesser control her fate.

It is a life worse than death for her, trapped in a place struggling to survive, just like I did.

She is no longer a queen. She is simply another monster.

She frowns, and without another word, we head towards the door. At the open exit, I turn back to my mother in front of her court.

“Oh, and Mother, you can come after me for revenge, but you will lose. I am stronger than you and more powerful. You know that now, and so does the world. You are not the great Draven anymore. I am.”

With that final statement, I hold my head high and leave her and this cold place behind.

It was never my home, but I am beginning to realise I will never be alone again. My mates and I are the monsters this world fears.

And fear us it should.