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This couldn’t be happening.
Where the fuck are you?
Her chest hurt. Goddess, her chesthurt, a pit yawning open within her heart.
She found herself beyond the lower city’s limits, evading the debris of the dismantling forest, dodging small rocks, leaves, and twigs until she crossed the threshold into the sodden brush, a little relief from the pounding rain. Still, here, the gale pushed and pulled her, and thunder blasted across the darkened skies, that beating hammer relentless against the fabric of the world. Isla swore as the earth shook with it, nearly brought her to her knees.
“What the—” Her breath wrenched from her when she came across shreds of fabric. A gray shirt soaked to the point it was near-black, and equally dark pants.
Kai’s.
The bond went taut and loose with every inhale, exhale, inhale, and near sob. What the hell happened?
He couldn’t be dying. He couldn’t.He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t.
Keep moving.
She battled to her feet, trekking across mud.
“Kai!” she screamed again, her throat raw.
A strike of pain shot up her ankle from where it caught and twisted within the muck. She finally went down with a small cry, mud splattering over her face, hands, clothes, and neck. Darkness crept in, the cold of night seeping into her bones. Deeper, deeper. Threatening to swallow her in its hopelessness, grief, and growing emptiness.
Keep.Moving.
Isla fought to her knees, getting to her feet, not bothering to nurse her ankle.
Then she froze.
Red eyes stared at her from within the crypt of gnarled trees ahead, and it slammed into her as certain as death itself what a fool she was. She hadn’t brought a weapon.
But…she knew those eyes. That red though menacing was not the bright hue of ferocious monsters but the chilling shade of blood.
She didn’t know if it was rain or tears rolling down her cheeks. “Kai?” Isla’s breath was a sawing, painful sound—her whisper lost in the storm’s raucousness.
In response, a wolf emerged from the brush, the height of two towering men, a snarl across its maw, its dark, red-streaked fur nearly blending into the night. Its large paws tread the earth as if it were lord over all things. And in answer, all things bowed.
“K—Kai?”
Despite the fact he stood before her, Isla could barely feel him, like hehaddrawn away, been blocked from her…been replaced by something else entirely.
An unconscious, instinctual terror gripped her heart, flowering from somewhere deep inside. Fear…of him.
She shoved it away, locked it in some prison inside herself becausenever. She would never be afraid of him, even as that power, his power, in that unseeable and tangible way, slithered along her body and dug beneath her skin. Asking…deciding.
A physical pinch. Only slight, but enough of a burn to make her wince.
At her recoil, Kai’s wolf halted, its growl creating a puff of white before its snout. Even the rain flecking off his fur seemed to be chased away, escaping him. Whimpering, the wolf dropped onto its haunches, hackles raised as it pawed at its face.
Gradually, Isla sensed a new flood of pain, but it wasn’t hers.
Just as she steadied on her feet to run to him, Kai was human again. On his knees, his head hung as the droplets sluiced down his bare body, his muscles and markings seeming to pulse with power and energy.
Isla bound forward, dropping to her knees and spluttering the mud around them. “What’s wrong?” She reached to take his face in her hands, but he flinched away. “Kai?”
“You have to get away from me.”He panted hard through gritted teeth. “I—I can’t…” His body locked up as if fighting against something she couldn’t see. He shook his head, water wicking off his curls. Isla risked another reach forward, her touch ghosting over his thigh, and she was grateful when some of his tenseness eased. “Isla, please.” Agony rasped his voice.
Despite the iciness of his skin, his lumerosi burned, and Isla could still feel it. Something emanating from him, pushing against her.
