Chapter Twenty-Four
Nikolai heard and felt nothing but his own grief. Immersed deep within himself and his heart-piercing loss, he jumped when something cold and wet touched his cheek. He looked up into the electric gold eyes of Duchess, the snow-white hart wolf. She nuzzled Sienna.
The wolf’s mate, Luca, full black and fierce, stood on Nikolai’s left. Her brothers, Hugo and Kai, stood to his right. For the first time, they did not bare their teeth in menacing show or warning. Rather, they looked on him with what he could only surmise was empathy. Strange, these beasts of the forest were more than animals. He’d always known it. And Sienna had always told him so. An eerie tingle prickled over his skin as if the air itself had changed, whispering of magic and mystery, something he could not detect with his acute vampire senses.
Duchess turned to leave but caught his gaze over her shoulder. Then Nikolai heard an echoing voice in his head. A lovely, melodious feminine voice.
“Nikolai. Bring Sienna. Follow me.”
He stared at her in disbelief as she trotted ahead. When he didn’t move, the biggest of her brothers, Hugo, stood at his side and snuffed. The beast was the largest of the four, his size and demeanor intimidating. Yet he seemed to be trying to encourage Nikolai, not intimidate. Duchess stopped on the path again and swiveled her head toward him. The voice came again.
“If you love Sienna, then stand with her and follow me.”
No mistake. The voice was somehow that of the she-wolf. But in his head.
He lifted to his feet, hefting Sienna close, her lifeless body heavy in his arms and her sweet head lolling against his chest. He did not understand where they were going or what they wanted, but it was apparent he was now receiving a guardians’ escort as the two brothers flanked him and Luca walked behind, watching the woods for danger.
“Faster, lieutenant. While Sienna’s spirit still hovers nearby.”
Nikolai was thrown off balance by her words. But when she started to lope through the woods, he kept pace, even while his own body sagged with fatigue from the long journey and from his gut-wrenching loss. But he did not falter. Soon enough, the five of them were at a full run, still slower than Nikolai could move with his supernatural abilities, but fast.
They wound away from her cottage, which puzzled him. He thought perhaps they wanted to see her home, where they’d always protected her. Instead, they led him deeper into Silvane Forest, farther into the heart of the wood where only black oaks grew in dense abundance. Thick-trunked giants sprouted everywhere, their gnarled roots jutting out of the earth. The charcoal branches were nearly naked now, the ground carpeted in black and silver leaves.
An unknown force shook Nikolai to the core. He stopped running, sensing a vibration in the air. No, not just the air. In the earth, too. A rhythmic tempo pulsed all around him, as if the forest had its own heartbeat.
“What is this place?” he asked Duchess, who had circled back next to him.
Her golden eyes were fire-bright. She crossed over into an open circle within a round of black oaks that was somehow filled with soft-tufted, spring-green grass on the verge of winter. Impossible.
Duchess walked forward, as did her brothers and her mate. The white she-wolf began breathing heavily, puffing out great white breaths as if she were choking on her own breath. She crouched on the ground, whining. Nikolai took a step forward, thinking she was injured and needed aid. Then the other three followed suit, growling rather than whining as their bodies trembled unnaturally.
“What—”
Before he could finish his thought, Duchess shimmered in a way that looked like a vampire did when they moved in a blur. Her white coat vibrated, and she opened her mouth as if to howl but no sound came out. Then a succession of cracking rippled down her body. Within a blink the wolf was gone and in her place crouched a woman. She paused, sucking in a lungful of air, then quietly stood to her full height and stared at him—a stunning vision with wispy white hair down to her naked thighs and sharp predator’s eyes. Black-inked tattoos contrasted with her pale skin, sweeping in sharp lines and a swirling pattern just beneath her collarbone and over her shoulders, sliding down her sides to her hips.
Nikolai stepped back, his heart hammering at a brutal pace. She was human? How was that possible? He could hardly wrap his mind around what he was actually seeing. Then, in another moment, where her mate and two brothers stood within the circle, were now three very large men. Luca was a dark-skinned male equal to Nikolai in height. His unearthly blue eyes glinted star-bright in the dark. The brothers were both bronze-skinned and packed with muscle like Luca. Hugo was the tallest, with broad shoulders and rippling with lean muscle. As a wolf, his glare was the most ferocious. This was the same in his human form. Hugo and Kai had long hair falling down their backs, but Luca had short-cropped black hair to his scalp.
They bore jagged and swirling tattoos like Duchess, though they appeared more violent in their making. The men bore interlacing knots across their torsos and backs and down their arms and legs, similar but not the same. Whereas the ink Duchess wore looked as if the wind had smattered it prettily with a few sharp edges, the men’s ink appeared as if a storm had cut it into their skin with beauty but also violence.
Nikolai pulled Sienna tighter in her arms, these beasts in men form seeming far more dangerous than they did as wolves. When he could find his speech all he could ask was, “How?” He continued to back slowly away out of the meadow, even as the rhythmic tempo vibrating out of the earth seemed to soothe him.
“Please.” The woman stepped forward with a hand in the air, seemingly unaffected by her nude form. “Don’t be afraid, Nikolai.”
He scoffed, narrowing his gaze. “What are you?”
“We are hart wolves. As we’ve always been. I am Allora Godrick. This is my mate, Bron. And my brothers, Connell”—she gestured toward the smaller of the two, then toward the larger, severe one—“and Dane.” She walked up to Nikolai, a subtle power humming on her skin, but not as strong as the constant throbbing pulse all around them.
He flinched away when she reached out with her hand. “Don’t touch me,” he warned. Though he sensed no fear, his instincts were to fight against what he couldn’t understand.
“Please, lieutenant.” She eased her hand forward and he kept still this time.
When she laid her hand upon his shoulder, a surge of calm and reassurance swept through him. She held magic in her touch, and perhaps it was trickery, but something told him it wasn’t. There was no danger here, despite having never seen a hart wolf transform into a human before in his life. As far as he knew, no one knew this even possible.
“We will have time to talk afterward. But now you must bring Sienna forward.”
The sensation of others hovering close drew his gaze to the surrounding shadows. Within the dark appeared one pair after another of glowing, gold eyes. Hart wolves, dozens of them, surrounded the ring wherein he stood holding Sienna. He turned in a slow circle, sensing their heavy presence, though not one growled or launched forward with aggression. They merely watched in a kind of reverence.
“Nikolai. Bring her forward.”
“To where?” he asked her, seeing only a plot of strangely fertile grass in the round.
She touched his arm again. He flinched as the pulse swept through him, and immediately a large slab of smooth black stone appeared at the center of the clearing. Or perhaps it was already there, only he couldn’t see it. He could also now observe a perimeter of standing monoliths made of the same shiny, smooth stone.
“The hartstone,” he whispered.
“Yes. And she wants you to lay Sienna upon her.”
“She wants—?”
“Time is running out.” Allora clutched his wrist with a tight hold, gravity in her voice. “Put her on the stone. Now.”
He felt no malevolence from the pulsing halo around the hartstone. Rather, he sensed something else. The same magic that murmured and sighed through these woods far and away pounded out a bone-rattling pulse this close to the hartstone. He didn’t know why or how, but he felt a tug on his very soul, pulling him toward the stone, assuring him this was right.
He strode forward in five long steps and set Sienna gently upon the black slab, realizing on the surface it wasn’t black at all, but iridescent. As he lay her body down, a ripple of luminescent light pinged outward. The liquid wave of light began to tremble, rippling faster. Nikolai’s breath whooshed out of him as an unseen force dragged him a safe distance and released him on his feet. He stumbled to catch his bearings.
Allora and the others stood on either side of him, watching as the pulse intensified. Nikolai clasped his hands over his ears, as did the others, the throbbing beat increasing. The luminescent light waved off the stone, piercing the darkness and shining out on the black oaks, their sable trunks shining like silver beacons.
The wool blanket wrapping Sienna evaporated. Her arms fell outward into a cross as her burnt body levitated off the stone, higher and higher till she was even with the lower boughs of the trees. Tendrils of her red hair floated like seaweed waving in an unseen ocean. The hartstone’s light rose from the stone slowly, then like lightning pierced straight into Sienna.
Sienna’s arms flexed straight out, her back and neck arched, her mouth open toward the sky in a soundless scream. Her body glowed from the inside, brightening to a blinding white. Then multicolored flames burst upon her skin and licked up out of her body, burning away the blackened, charred decay, transforming it with a pearlescent glow.
Nikolai watched in awe as every inch of her body was covered in flames of red, orange, blue, green, and gold, purging away the scars and bruises and bites, the injuries that had caused her death. Nikolai fell to his knees, removing his hands from his ears, as her body lowered to the hartstone, the thumping pulse fading.
Once she lay upon the flat surface, the heartbeat of the stone dimmed to a distant echo. Sienna’s chest rose and fell. She lifted an arm to her throat and sat up. Nikolai lurched to his feet but couldn’t move forward, paralyzed with fear that this was all a dream. If so, he prayed he’d never wake up.
Sienna pushed herself up and stood off the stone with a stumble. Nikolai was there in a flash before she could fall, his hands on her bare waist. She looked up into his eyes. The same spark of beauty shone there, but now the green was flecked with bright gold. A star-bright aura haloed her skin, as if the cosmos had fallen to this spot and filled her body with its radiance. He could feel its heat vibrating up his hands and arms. He trembled as he continued to hold her, trying to convince himself this was real.
She lifted a hand to his jaw and smiled, speaking in a broken whisper. “I thought I’d lost you.”
Clutching her to him with frantic speed, he let out a choked laugh. “You thought you lost me?” He buried his face into her hair, her smell of lavender-in-the-woods tinged with a third scent—fire. But not the sickening smell of charred flesh. The smell of wildfire when it devours a forest, warning all creatures that it is dangerous and wields power, demanding all onlookers to bow in awe. Nikolai reveled in her smell, the softness of her skin, wrapping her so tight he feared he might crush her. His hand slid down her back and braced her close.
“Sienna. There’s something you should know.”
“What is it?” she asked, her face still buried in the crook of his neck.
He stepped away, though it nearly ripped out his heart to do so, and turned, half expecting them to be back in wolf form. Sienna peered around him slowly. He took her hand and walked alongside her.
Allora walked forward and met them, her smile the kind one might bestow on a long-lost friend finally come home. In fact, that is precisely who Sienna was. She had left this realm, her spirit journeying elsewhere. And now, she was back. Transformed, though Nikolai could not yet detect precisely how.
“This is Allora Godrick,” he said. “You know her as…Duchess.”
Sienna gasped and jumped, squeezing his hand on instinct. Her gaze moved from Allora to Nikolai, a slight frown pinching her brow.
“It can’t be.”
“I know it’s hard to believe,” said Allora, stepping forward. “But it’s true. I am your friend, the one you call Duchess.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sienna, shaking her head, taking in the sight of the other three behind her. “So you were human all along?”
“We are hart wolves first. Humans second.” She seemed at a loss for words to explain, then gestured toward the others behind her. “You know my brothers,” said Allora. “This is Connell. And Dane. And my mate, Bron.”
They all nodded a greeting, not stepping forward to clasp her hand, which was a relief to Nikolai. He knew in his heart of hearts that they meant her no harm. Rather the opposite. But his innate need to shelter her from all men still twisted in his gut. Especially after what the last ones had done to her.
Dane flicked his gaze to Nikolai, a tilted smile cracking his stern expression, as if he knew the torture Nikolai suffered. “Perhaps we’d best have this conversation tomorrow.” He glanced up at the starry sky. “It will be snowing soon.”
Nikolai tested the air with his senses, finding no smell of the weighty pressure before a storm or snowfall. “Are you sure?”
“Quite,” said Dane. He stepped back toward the shadows. With a crackle of energy and a rippling pulse of power, he transformed into his husky brown wolf and fled into the woods. His brother nodded at Sienna again and, without saying a word, followed his brother. The many hart wolves that lurked in the dark and had watched Sienna’s awakening now whisked away as well. Only the swift padding of their feet could be heard as they retreated into the woods.
Luca shook his head back and forth, then he too shifted into the black wolf with a crackle of electricity. He did not venture away but waited for Allora.
Allora lay a hand upon Sienna’s crown. Sierra shied away a little, leaning toward Nikolai. Allora brushed her hand down to the tips of a lock of Sienna’s copper hair. “I am so grateful the hartstone has bestowed her gift upon you.”
Sienna frowned, looking back where it still beat a constant pulse. “I am, too. But it changed me somehow.” She gazed at her hands. “I feel something new burning inside of me. Not painful at all. But…different.”
“We will discover what that might be tomorrow,” said Allora. “Tonight, I believe your lover wants you to rest. He has also had a long, difficult journey.” She smiled at Nikolai. And in her eyes he saw empathy for his tragic journey, not the physical but the emotional one that had nearly crippled him. Killed him.
He gave her a thankful nod.
Allora smiled, then turned toward Luca. She caressed Luca’s muzzle. He licked her hand. She started to run away with Luca chasing after her. With a tinkling laugh, she shifted into the white she-wolf, the two of them disappearing into the shadowy night together.
Nikolai swept Sienna into his arms, his own muscles sore with fatigue from carrying her so far already, though he didn’t give a damn. He’d let his arms break in half before he let her go again.
“Nikolai, I can walk,” she said, clasping her hands around his shoulders.
“Enough. My own beast is going to claw right out of my skin unless I get you indoors and safe.”
“Then take me home.” She pressed a kiss to his neck and burrowed her head against him.
Nikolai’s stomach flipped end over end at her gentle affection. Not an hour before, he thought he’d lost her forever. But the beating, living hartstone of Silvane Forest brought her back. He wasn’t sure what it had done to her in the process. But like Allora said, they’d figure that out tomorrow. Right now, he wanted to be alone with the woman he adored, worshipped, cherished…and loved.