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“Hel!” Addie shouted.
She gripped my arm as she sat upright, a look of fury etched onto her face. Head whipping left and right, Addie scanned the room.
“Where is that bitch? Hel! You were in the middle of telling me something important. Get your ss back here and finish before I find a way to summon you out of your hell hole.” The entire time Addie screamed, she didn’t let go of me.
Where had she gone? What’d happened there?
I knew one thing. Hel was behind this again.
Addie
Hel had been aboutto tell me where I could find Maddox’s soul. If I could find it, then maybe he wouldn’t need to siphon energy from me or the world around him. That could have been the first step to ensuring his safety. That way, Hel couldn’t ask me to kill him anymore.
I refused to believe that the hole I’d fallen into had been a sheer coincidence. Hel had planned that somehow. Limbo—or whatever that place had been—wasn’t her domain. It was a godless place where spirits went to transfer to their preferred afterlife. But she was still a goddess of the dead; she had power there.
The gods were playing games with me just like Thor had warned. I wanted to scream and shout to the skies above, but I kept my frustration trapped inside my chest because the living room was filled with shifters all staring me down.
“How about that food?” I let out a nervous laugh, hoping everyone would disperse soon.
“Oh, thank fuck,” Ness said before throwing herself at me.
She hugged me tight, a bit of electrical energy crackling around her. It prickled my skin and lifted my hair.
“Why does my chest hurt?” I asked as she pulled back.
Ness’s laugh turned into a sob of relief.
I looked around, confused. So much had happened in the plane between life and death. I remembered falling through the weave of fate threads. Somehow, I felt like that should have killed me. But my hazy memory returned to me. Though I fell, someone had been there to catch me. They’d held me close while we plummeted together.
“Can you stop dying, please?” Vi asked as she took a seat on the edge of the coffee table.
“I died?” I asked. “Again?”
Vi nodded. Maddox still had a hold on me, like he couldn’t bear to break contact. I squeezed his arm in return to reassure him.
“You weren’t dead,” Ryder said. “Everyone is being dramatic. You were really close, though.”
Groaning, I ran both hands over my face. I’d drawn my friends into this mystery. There was no point in hiding what I’d learned from them. Their futures were at risk; they deserved to know. If this soul-torn shifter was going to keep tearing through fate, then we would all have to work together to stop him.
Vi’s face scrunched up as I explained what was happening. “I’ve used soul magic before. It doesn’t feel good, but it also doesn’t work like that. My soul has some holes in it now. That’s it. I’m not ripping into the world around me simply by existing.”
Hel had implied that this shifter was a victim. He wasn’t doing this on purpose. If anything, it seemed like someone else had turned him into this monster. I glanced at Maddox. That meant he would want to save this shifter. Maddox had a bleeding heart, even if he wouldn’t openly admit it.
I fell back, exhausted and conflicted. There was too much to do. The weight of the world sat on my chest, and I didn’t know if I was strong enough to carry it. I wasn’t a shifter with super strength. I was nothing more than a human with one foot in the world of the dead.
A goddess wanted me to not only stop a rogue wolf from destroying the world but kill someone that I’d grown fond of. I owed Maddox my life several times over. I couldn’t kill him. I refused. Hel wasn’t going to be happy about that. She was going to make us pay for it one way or another.
I glanced in his direction. Soon, he would meet the love of his life. As a shifter, he had a fated mate waiting for him—so long as that fate thread hadn’t been severed yet. The thought hit me in the gut. My head shot up and I took in all my friends with mate bonds.
Could their bonds be severed? What would happen to their love then? My blood turned cold. I felt the sudden urge to get up and do something, but my body had nothing left to give after nearly dying once again.
Maddox held me as I stood up, fumbling like a newborn foal. When I tipped, and Ryder moved to catch me, Maddox snarled. I dug my nails into Maddox’s skin to pull his attention back to me, because I knew this wasn’t going to end well.
“Calm down,” Ryder said in his Alpha voice.
The words didn’t work, though. Maddox yanked me into his chest and wound an arm around my middle to keep me close. Words ready on my lips, I craned my neck to look up at him.
Ryder wasn’t to be deterred, though. “Down, Maddox. She isn’t in trouble. No one here wants to hurt her.”
