A Warrior’s Fate (Wolves of Morai #1)

Chapter 46

CHAPTER 46

I sla stumbled back a step—another, another—until she lost her footing over the slung-out arm of a dead bak and fell into the opposite wall. It was shock or some conscious desire that had her falling out of her shift, her hands and knees meeting the cold, blood-covered stone.

She could barely make a coherent thought. This wasn’t possible. Her mother was dead. Her father had felt her die, felt their bond break.

She had to be hallucinating. Delirious, traumatized, and exhausted. Maybe the witch had made this woman look like her somehow.

Shame mixed with the pain on the killer’s battered face, and Isla knew. This was real. It was her.

Her lip trembled. “Mom.”

“I’m sorry,” her mother said again, the words easier off her tongue a third time. Now, Isla could see how jagged her teeth had become, cracked in places. Broken.

A very, very long time…

Isla’s entire chest caved in as ten years of lost time weighed down on it. Ten years that her mother was alive , tortured—and they’d stopped looking.

Before guilt could ravage her, Isla noted the blood. So much blood. Too much .

“No.” Isla crawled over, not caring how the stone cut up her skin. She would heal, but her mother wasn’t healing. Not fast enough.

She reached for the wound, pressing on it with two hands atop Apolla’s. Her skin was cold, but it wasn’t the first time Isla had felt its chill. Her mother had touched her before, back in the house. She’d drawn on her arm, touched her head, pointed to the bak, herself.

The blood continued to leak beneath their hold. “Why isn’t it stopping?” Isla cried. “Why won’t you heal?”

“Need more time,” Apolla wheezed. “Healing is weaker now…the witch.”

Rage coiled in Isla’s gut, along with the shock they were actually speaking. Even if she’d been here all along, it felt like the last time they’d conversed was in her childhood bedroom before she’d gone to sleep the night her mother left.

Isla ground her teeth. “She did this to you.”

“Makes it easier for her. So I forget.” Isla nearly missed the free hand that came up to graze her cheek, the twisted, icy fingers covered in blood. Apolla wiped away tears Isla hadn’t realized were falling. “But I remembered you…I saw you…in him.” Her breathing became heavier, her eyes glossing over. “And it broke enough.”

The spell, or whatever it had been.

“Kai,” Isla breathed.

Apolla’s gaze hardened. “He’s in trouble.”

Isla started, the movement of her hands making her mother wince. She apologized before asking, “What?”

“She wants him,” Apolla said, just over a whisper. “She needs him. His power.”

“Kai’s power?”

Apolla gave a sudden cry, and Isla’s hand slipped as her mother struggled to keep her own in place. Her skin became an impossibly paler shade.

She wasn’t healing fast enough.

Isla met Apolla’s eyes, no longer the blue they shared, but that dark hue. She’d been changed by whatever the witch had done.

“What do I do?” Isla choked on a breath, and in an instant, she’d become a child again, looking to her mother for help. She suddenly became all too aware of the scent of blood and death, the past and the imminent. She took stock of the wound, of their surroundings. If she could get her above to a healer…but if she moved her too much, she’d hurt more. Lose too much blood. “I—I can’t move you.” She was shaking. She couldn’t get her hands to stop damn shaking.

Her mother was getting colder. Weaker.

Focus.

Apolla’s eyes slid closed.

“Mom!” Isla shouted. “Mom!”

Apolla slumped against the rock wall, but Isla forced herself to remain calmand hone in on her heart, the beat steady but sluggish. She checked the wound beneath her bloodied hands. It was healing. But slowly. Too slowly.

Isla looked around. The path they’d come in was a way up, but even getting her through the tunnels here would be difficult. She’d need to shift. She wouldn’t be strong enough, fast enough in her human form to carry her while she was unconscious.

And she needed help. Now . Quickly.

Isla leaped back into their smaller passage, found her wolf, and ran.

Her blood was screaming in her ears as she moved as fast as her paws would take her. She alternated between her wolf and human forms with expert precision as the pass’s mouth narrowed and widened. All thought had eddied away besides the ten years lost and so much rage that she could scream. They hadn’t found her. They’d stopped looking. And she’d been alive.

Her father was right above them, and Sebastian…

Goddess, Sebastian. They’d all just been together. He’d detected something off with her scent. When he found out the truth…

Isla had been so lost in thought and had the scent of acrid blood so stained on her senses that she missed the metallic stench of one more familiar. Her paws had trekked through something warm, wet, and sticky before they collided with something firm. She regained her footing and glanced down.

“Seb!”

In his human form, her brother lay in a pool of blood, his skin pallor as Isla dropped to her knees beside him. A deep gash cut down his side from claws .

This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t real. Not possible.

With a scream trapped in her throat, Isla reached down with a trembling hand, feeling like she was going to be sick while she waited for the horrific confirmation. “Please,” she begged whoever could hear. “Please don’t do this to me.”

A tear slid down her cheek as her hand splayed over his chest.

Thump.

Isla keeled over. Thank the Goddess.

Though his heartbeat was faint, he wasn’t dead yet, but like their mother, he needed help. Fast.

Isla turned. Who’d done this? There was blood further down, trailing up to where they were. Rage fueled her as she jumped to her feet. Whoever was responsible was going to face hell.

But then, all she felt was a sharpness and a searing pain before everything went dark.