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The words were a bludgeon to Isla’s skull. She turned her head. “What?”
The general pursed her lips. “Do you wish you fought the bond harder?”
Isla shook away the nagging in the back of her mind. “No. Kai is my one choice, and even if this is what it costs to have him, I’d choose him again and again. I’ll get stronger. I’ll get better. We both will, and we’ll have each other when we do it. But the road to being okay is hard.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Ameera scoffed, eyes going distant as she thought. Then her features softened in the wake of gentle wind as if it had blown her mask away. Her hand went to the chain around her neck. “Did I ever tell you why I became a warrior?"
Isla shook her head.
Ameera swallowed. “For my sister.”
Isla jerked her head back. “You have a sister?”
“Had.”
The word was like a strike of lightning.
“I—I’m sorry.”
Ameera gave a meekthank you, her eyes glossing as she fiddled with that pendant. “She died a long time ago. I was nine. We don’t know what the sickness was, but she was seventeen when my parents first found her unconscious in her room. The healers couldn’t figure out what it was. She was dead before her eighteenth birthday.”
Isla’s heart cracked. She had no idea. No one had ever mentioned it.
“She wanted to be a warrior more than anything,” Ameera continued. “Honestly, I think she would’ve pulled what you did and rejected her mating bond if anything got in her way.” She held her necklace’s pendant delicately against the back of her hand. Isla caught the crescent, the crossed swords crowned by a letter. “This was hers.”
“H?”
“Hama.” Her voice broke, and she pressed the pendant back to her chest. “After she died, my parents kind of shut down. They didn’t know how to deal with their grief, let alone help me learn to process mine. I was grateful for the boys, then. They kept my head above water.” She laughed bitterly, silver lining her lids as she gazed up at the stars, the moon. “I know right now she’d be telling me not to be so stubborn—which is ironic because she was a bull who’d stop at nothing until she got her way—and I don't want my parents to feel like they lost both their daughters, but I’m so…angry.” She gritted out her last words, her fists clenching at her sides. “I don’t stand by anything my father did. I hate the way my mom wants me to turn around and blame Kai for everything. I hate how they still think they can control me. I hate myself for using those as reasons for not talking to them, and I hate that I can’t stop feeling like this.” Her nostrils flared, and she dropped her eyes to the sand.
The road to okay was damn brutal indeed.
Isla reached out to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, debating if a hug would’ve been more than Ameera bargained for.
Isla hadn’t noticed something slithering through the waves, hadn’t noticed it snake onto the sand until it snapped around her leg and dragged her into the water.
CHAPTER33
ISLA
Stars shone in Isla’s vision as the back of her head slammed onto the sand, a momentary blackness blanketing her thoughts until the icy ocean water bit into her shoulders, weighing down her clothes.
“Isla!”
Ameera.
Isla’s ears hollowed around the sound of tearing cloth, an imposing wolf sweeping into the corner of her eye as she blinked. And blinked. A wave crested. Crashed. Her breath sharpened as her head went under next, the salt water burning her throat and nose. Choking her.
You need to move.
Ameera’s lumerosi burned bright as she dove beyond her, into the sea, trying to sever what felt like a tentacle’s grip around her calf. It tightened its hold,squeezedso much that Isla thought her limb would be ripped off entirely.
Move!
She felt a tug at the core from that darker part of her while that voice in her head bellowed.
Distant, so distant, but there. As if, somehow, Kai had charged the breadth of land and water and sunk his power into every void between them.
Move!
