“Lucy,” I moaned. “No, this can’t be happening!”
The inside of the box she had been contained in was lined with sharp spikes. Each and every one of them was coated in her blood, while her body was riddled with corresponding puncture wounds. She was pale, almost blue, and based on the amount of blood filling the floor... well and truly dead.
“Oh don’t worry, she’s been dead for days,” Bridget informed me, “I just kept her blood flowing with my magic for this very purpose. Little scamp had the audacity to try and escape me, and I accidentally hit her a little too hard. You know how it is with our sort of strength.”
Rage was building in me like a tsunami, and every word that bitch spoke pushed it higher. My heart and soul had just been ripped to shreds; my best friend—my sister—had been dead in that fucking box this whole time and I’d never known.
Now my lover lay dying in my lap, and this psychopath was making jokes?
“Ding!” Bridget exclaimed, like a deranged game show host. “Full moon is up. Now, come to Mama, you delicious magical essence.”
The gold band on my wrist began glowing under the bright moonlight, and hers echoed the glow with its own dimmer version. Judging by the laughter peeling out of her, this was exactly what was supposed to happen.
I didn’t give a shit about the magic, though. I didn’t care about her plans for world domination or her intentions of enslaving the human race. All I could focus on was Lucy’s pale, bloodless corpse in the middle of the room and River’s slowly diminishing heart rate under my fingers.
Most of all, was the pain. The sheer heartbreak at losing these two people who I loved so damn hard.
All of that manifested in me like a geyser, and I screamed my frustration and fury. All of my agony and despair, my heartbreak and hopelessness poured out of me with that scream, and to my abject shock and fascination, the band around my wrist clicked off and hit the floor with a delicate sounding ping.
My magic all came snapping back into me like a rubber band that had just been released, knocking me flat on my back and leaving me gasping.
“What?” Bridget’s scream bellowed through the room, and I pushed myself back up to look at her. But then I remembered I had my magic back. I could heal River!
Frantically, my hands found his wound, and my magic rushed into him with the speed of a bullet train. There was no stopping it or holding it back this time. The second I gave the okay to heal my lover, the magic took over with a life of its own.
Numb and still wracked with agony over losing Lucy, I willingly relinquished control, taking a backseat and letting the almost sentient magic do what needed to be done to try and save River. He would be changed, there was no avoiding that now, but at least he would be alive. That was all that mattered.
Bridget’s screams and protestations reached my ears as the magic finished all it needed to do inside River’s broken form and began retreating back up my arms, leaving the feeling behind that my fingers were sinking into dense, silken fur.
“This isn’t possible!” my biological mother howled, holding her own bracelet in her hands and shaking it, like that would make it suddenly work again. “It’s not possible! You can’t... No!” As she screamed and ranted, I withdrew my red-slicked hands from River’s chest and turned my gaze on her.
Whatever she saw in my face in that second scared her.
Her skin blanched almost pure white, and she took a shaking step back before recovering her wits and casting a hasty rune portal before I could cast anything to keep her in place. In seconds, she was gone, leaving nothing behind but a glowing circle of runes and a trail of destruction.
Almost instantly, I dismissed her from my mind. I’d find her sooner or later, and she’d pay for what she had done.
Under my fingertips, River stirred. Shoving all thoughts of revenge and punishment aside, I crouched back over him, checking and finding a steady pulse in his throat. The relief that washed through me when his golden eyes opened was almost enough to choke me.
But it was short-lived.
“What have you done, Kitten?” he whispered in a hoarse, pain-filled voice. “I can’t hold him back. You need to kill me, please.”
“Wh-what? No, River, I just brought you back.” Confusion clouded my brain, and I shook my head at him. “I’m not fucking killing you. What the shit, River?”
“Then...” He trailed off, grinding his teeth together and grunting in pain. “Then wake Vali. He made me a promise.”
I sat back on my heels in shock. Vali had promised River he would kill him if he ever changed? What the hell could be that damn bad? And if he was so afraid, why didn’t he just fucking leave me?
“River,” I started, but it was too late. His body was already shifting, despite his clear efforts to hold it at bay. “Jesus fucking Christ, River. Just give in to it. This is insanity!”
He looked like he was going to disagree with me, but he was losing the fight.
Trying to get out of his way, I went to shuffle backward but slipped in his blood and smacked my elbow painfully on the floor. Hissing with pain, I took my eyes off River for the briefest second to regain my balance, but that was all it took.
When I looked back, the River I knew was gone. In his place stood an enormous, snow-white wolf with River’s beautiful, golden eyes.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, pushing myself unsteadily to my feet so I felt a little less like food. I could hardly be blamed for that reaction with a wolf the size of a donkey staring me down. “River? Are you okay? See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? You’re just a wolf. A really massive, white wolf.”
Unlike when Cole and Vali changed into dragon form, though, there was no trace of the River I knew in this beast’s eyes, and I sucked in a sharp breath of fear.
The wolf lowered his head, his lips pulled back in a growl and his eyes locked on me. Like I was the enemy...
“River—” I started once more, but cut off when his form began to ripple again, like he was about to shift back. Or that would have been the best-case scenario.
Instead, he shifted again into something else. His snow-white coat shuddered once and turned completely ink black. His form increased in size until he stood towering over me, and fangs extended throughout his mouth until it was like staring into the mouth of a shark.
Most frightening though, were his eyes. No longer were they the familiar liquid gold of my British lover. They were molten, rolling, fiery pits that made me feel like I was staring straight into the mouth of Hell itself.
This.
This was what he had been so afraid of.
“River?” I whimpered, feeling desperate. Not because I feared for my life; I couldn’t care less for that. I was desperate to see that there was some small flicker of him left inside that beast. To know that I hadn’t just condemned him to a fate so much worse than the death he’d been so close to just minutes ago.
His huge head lowered, saliva dripping from his rows of razor fangs and hitting the ground with a hiss like acid. Actually, based on the holes in the stone, it seemed like his saliva really was acid.
A low, menacing growl rumbled from deep within his chest, and I braced myself. For what, I wasn’t totally sure. To get my head ripped off, probably.
I squeezed my eyes tight shut out of reflex as his jaws extended and came close enough that I could feel his scalding breath on my face. But then... nothing.
Peeling one eye open again, I found myself standing alone in the room of horrors.
Scattered around the edges were the motionless forms of my guardians, at my feet was a sickeningly large puddle of River’s blood, but there in the middle of the room, like a broken doll, lay Lucy.