One day, I thought. One day he would grow up to be nothing but the fiercest protector. As the shriek of an airborne demon cut through the conference room, Edward hauled Lizzie into his arms and tried to cover her ears.
“Why is this happening?” I heard somebody ask.
I had a fairly good idea in my head. The image of Max squeezing the life out of Hugh came rushing back at me. When I relived the events of the arena in my nightmares, it was muted by the fact that I was injured and half-delirious. But even in that state the brutality of it stifled my breathing.
The Dark Trinity was nothing if not vindictive. And Agatha wanted revenge for her brother. She cared little that it was their fault we had been in that situation in the first place. It had never occurred to her that they were in any danger. How could they be when their magic was the most powerful in the supernatural world? It was just a bit unfortunate that Alistair and Shayla’s mating had produced two boys with the killing instinct of shifters and invulnerability to magic once they ascended.
None of that mattered to Agatha. She would get her revenge and destroy the Reserve. I kept my mouth shut as the question lingered in the conference room. It would do them no good to find meaning in the madness.
They were terrified. If things went completely south, like Kate, some of them would fight until their dying breath.
“Do you have any connection to the pack link at all?” I asked Laila.
She shook her head. “None of us do. It’s gone.”
“Then how do you communicate?”
She bit her bottom lip. “I can’t do it. I’m human.” Her eyes grew moist, and I knew she was worried about Hank. “But the shifters have their own ways to communicate. Scent and sound.”
I was about to suggest they attempt to use that to convey their safety to the soldiers when a boom rocked the Reserve. It shook the ground and I had to latch on to Laila’s shoulder to stay upright.
All eyes lifted to the centre of the portal in front of us. Something enormous and glowing a fiery red emerged from the heart of the portal. I squinted and thought I saw a figure ringed in purple light rise into the air. When she spoke, her voice wasn’t the deep, throaty thing I had despised from the first moment I met her. It was the voice of the thing inside my head that egged me to perform blood-magic sacrifices. My insides became chilled with apprehension.
“I gave you the chance to fulfil your promise,” it said. “Now watch your pitiful animals die.” Around me the shifters cringed. The voice seemed to be laced with some kind of magic that was painful for them to hear. But somehow, I knew those words were meant for me. I heard them as a whisper inside my mind at first. And then my sight was dragged into the chamber where the pools of my magic and the mating link resided.
A thread of ancient, ethereal magic sliced through my chest. I gasped and my knees buckled. Laila caught me, her eyes swimming with concern. But I had no wherewithal for anything happening outside of my body, because inside, the misty smoke grabbed hold of the mating link and tried to crush it.
38
My eyes rolled back in my head. The floor rushed up to meet me. Arms reached out on either side of me. “Make some room!” I heard Laila shout. I fell on my ass into a seated position. Dragging my knees to my chest, I let my head drop and took a gasping breath. I felt like I’d just been electrocuted. A roar went up in the Reserve by the portal. At the same time, the blood barrier snapped back at the thing trying to invade my body. I’d set the trap at the beginning, as a safeguard against a magic user trying to remove the barrier while I was unconscious. The blood barrier grew spines and thorns, spinning like the teeth of a chainsaw. It cut through the mist and forced it to disperse.
“Sophie?” Her hand cupped my cheek. She lifted my face and inhaled. “Your eyes!”
My eyes. Out of them I now saw the world in a filter of beaten gold. My senses were dialled up so high I could scent the small creatures burrowing into the earth below us to get away from the monsters. I smelt the fear bathing the shifters in the room. I heard the sound of a heartbeat that was logically too far away.
Max’s heart beat too slowly. He felt the rage, as though it was slathered in a layer of soundproofing. Somehow, through his eyes, I saw what he had been doing. He’d been visiting Durin as a way to blunt the riotous emotions that might cause him to go against my will. And now it would hinder him when the Reserve needed him most. When would I ever stop being a liability?
Clawing at my backpack, I unzipped the front flap and drew out the foldable knife. Flicking it open, I carved a line across my palm, opening up by skin and bleeding in an instant. “Sophie!” Laila exclaimed. Around me, the shifters moved away, their fear suddenly spiking.
“Be quiet!” I snapped. The ice in my voice was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Ears flattened and bellies were displayed. Laila’s eyes grew wide.
Ignoring them, I grabbed the remaining health elixir vials and poured them against my bleeding hand. Swiping the mixture of liquid with my
