“Once in a lifetime, someone will grab onto your heart, dig in deep, and grasp with all their might. They will have the power to strengthen it, to crush it, or to keep it beating when it threatens to stop. Once in a lifetime, love will seep into you, filling every empty place, warming every cold spot, and illuminating all the dark spaces that threaten to engulf you. Once in a lifetime, one person will have the ability to bring you back from the edge of insanity just by reminding you that they chose you; that they love you.” ~Cypher
“Something has got to give,” Peri shouted to Alston.
The battle against the warlocks had been going on for nearly two days. Vasile and Peri had organized a rotation between the fae, elves, and wolves, to fight in waves so that everyone would get a chance at rest. The problem was for every ten warlocks they knocked out, five were waking up. They continued to fight without killing as Vasile had instructed, but frustration levels were running high and exhaustion was beginning to take over.
“CYPHER!” Peri yelled across the trampled battle field. Trees had been knocked over and plants crushed and destroyed as feet and bodies pounded into the ground. She called on her power and drew into her the magic of all the supernatural creatures around her. “How much longer will you fight a battle you cannot win?”
Cypher paused from his fight with Decebel and looked over at her. His eyes burned red with madness and rage. His body was tight with the need to destroy. He stared at the fae who was bathed in light. He felt her goodness pulsating off of her and he wondered why she was fighting him. He hadn’t come here to fight the fae, or the wolves, or the elves for that matter. He had come to kill the trolls.
“Until my enemy comes out from hiding,” he answered calmly. His head whipped back around to Vasile and he pulled the sword back, ready to slash out at the Alpha.
Peri’s hand swung out just as Alston and Adam’s did and they all pushed power into the Warlock King, staying his sword from completing the arc.
“You have no enemy here Cypher, King of the Warlocks. You have been at peace with the trolls for centuries. You have no cause to declare war on them.” The battle around Peri came to a halt as they all began to realize that Cypher was no longer fighting and that there was a powerful, glowing fae in their midst.
“I have every cause! They took the life of one of my own; they murdered her.” The words were right, but there was no passion, no conviction behind them in his voice.
“That crime has been dealt with and the debt paid for by the lives of those who committed the crime. You would not condemn a whole race as evil just for the actions of a few. You agreed to this with the troll King. Why would you change your mind now, especially when you have found your mate? Why go to war now with your mate in danger from your brother?” Peri was trying to get him to think about his actions, to push past this intense desire to destroy and to contemplate why it is he wants to destroy.
Cypher’s eyes flashed briefly to their usual yellow color as he spoke. “Mate,” the word tasted foreign on his tongue, and yet he knew it to be true in his heart. He had a mate.
“Yes,” Peri told him. “Lilly, your mate.”
Lilly, he thought, that’s her name. That’s my mate’s name. He shook his head as he squeezed his eyes closed. He felt a haze trying to wrap around his mind and push the thoughts of her from him but he latched onto them like a rabid dog latches on to its prey. He had a mate, but now he was going after the trolls. That wasn’t right, was it? Did he want to go to war with the trolls? He knew the answer was no, but something inside of him was driving him to attack, to kill.
“Fight it, Cypher,” Vasile said as he phased back to his human form. “Fight the spell your brother has put on you.”
Peri, Alston, and Adam all lowered their hands as they watched Cypher lower his sword.
One by one, the wolves all phased back and watched as the king’s eyes flashed from red to yellow over and over as he struggled to regain control of his own mind.
“You have to fight it, Cypher. Your brother has our mates,” Decebel snarled as he stood up from where he had just been standing in his wolf form. His eyes still glowed bright and his canines were still too long to belong in a human mouth, evidence of how close his wolf still was to the surface.
“What?” Cypher snapped, and this time his eyes stayed yellow a little longer and when they flashed back to red, it was much duller.
“Sally told me as well,” Costin spoke up.
Vasile nodded as his lips tightened into a straight line. “Alina said the same thing. Lorelle came.”
“Lorelle?” Peri’s voice carried from her where she stood, still in her fae glory. The light around her brightened and her eyes began to pulse with power. “My sister has taken the girls?” The warlocks that had been standing close to her slowly began to back away, as well as a few of the elves. Peri’s eyes snapped over to Cypher. “Okay you have to pull your crap together because your bastard of a brother has my girls and that is not cool. So you can either get a clue and fight the rest of that spell off or I will zap your ass with so much power that you’ll walk around asking everyone if they’re your mamma.”
“I’m with Peri on this,” Adam said from behind Cypher. “We don’t have time to be goofing off with a bunch of cursed warlocks, not if my mate is in the hands of a deranged psycho.”
Sorin stepped from around Vasile and met Peri’s eyes. “Why didn’t Elle come and tell us? Why didn’t she flash?”
Peri felt a small pang of guilt in her gut as she thought about Elle. “I bound her power so that she couldn’t flash.”
Sorin let out a low growl. “You kept her from me.”
Peri took a step towards him, headless of his nude form. “I did not keep her from you. You kept her from you when you stuck her on a plane bound for the Americas. I kept her from getting her butt into trouble. I wanted to know that the females were staying all together when I wasn’t around and I didn’t want any of those girls talking Elle into doing something stupid, as we all know they are prone to do. I wasn’t trying to put her in danger. I was trying to keep her safe. You remember this, Sorin. She was mine before she was yours and I will always consider her mine.”
Sorin’s glowing eyes held Peri’s, neither of them willing to back down.
“ENOUGH!” Vasile barked. “Sorin, your mate is going to be fine, just like all of our mates. Peri, don’t challenge my wolves when we are in a crisis. Cypher, have you gotten yourself together?”
Cypher had been listening to the exchange and fighting the curse as he reminded himself over and over of Lilly, her smile, her laughter, her southern accent, and sharp wit—his mate. He felt the effects of the curse flow off of him like water on a slick roof and suddenly he could think clearly again.
“I’m good,” he told the Alpha.
Vasile nodded. “What about your people?” He motioned to the other warlocks.
Cypher drew on the magic that flowed in his blood, his birthright, and pushed it out into the spirit of his people. He helped them fight off the black magic and regain their own power over their minds. Slowly the warlocks began to look around as if being woken from a deep sleep. Their eyes were wide and mouths drooping open at seeing where they were and the state of the forest around them.
Fane stepped up to his father and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I can’t feel Jacquelyn,” he told him.
“I know. I can’t feel your mother either. Somehow the mate bonds have been closed off.” Vasile glanced around to meet the eyes of each of his wolves and then Decebel’s. “We need to get back to the mansion.” He turned to Peri and looked at her as if to say, your call.
“I believe a reunion is in order with my dear bat mess crazy sister,” she told him with a sickly sweet tone that dripped with disgust at the mention of her sister.
“Tell her, 'hi', for me,” Adam said, “and by 'tell her hi', I mean slap the crap out of her.”
“Consider it done,” Peri told him and then flashed.
“Vasile,” Cypher’s voice broke through the murmuring of the warlocks, “I will meet you at your mansion, if that is alright?”
“He has your mate too, Cypher,” Vasile said in answer.
In a matter of minutes the wolves had all phased back and were once again on the run headed back to the Romanian mansion. Cypher ran with them after having told Gerick to take the rest of their people home and have the healers tend to them. The fae agreed to help and told Vasile that they would be there as soon as they had heard from Peri. Thalion had also agreed to help in rescuing the females and offered any aide his people could give.
Vasile ran side by side with his wolves, a desperation driving him that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. His mate, along with others that he cared deeply for, had been taken, right from under his nose. And now that the battle with the warlocks had been averted, he felt the full weight of the news falling on him. His mate, his Mina, was beyond his reach, not only physically, but mentally as well, and it was driving his wolf mad.
Decebel pushed himself as hard as he could. His wolf reveled in the burn of his muscles as he ran, the flexing of tendons, and tightening of ligaments as his paws hit the ground in jarring force. He ran as though the hounds of hell were on his heels. And if he could have ran even faster, he would have. It was his fault. It was his fault she had been taken. If he had just kept her here, by his side, where she belonged, no matter the pain of the bond being broken, she would be safe. But now she was in the hands of a mad man, beyond his aide if she needed him and pregnant with their child. How had he let this happen? He felt his heartbeat pounding in his chest and his lungs burned with exhaustion as he drug air into them. The pain of the separation and the breaking of their bond was a constant reminder of what he had done, a constant thorn in his side of the decision he had made without talking to his mate. Was this his punishment? Was he to be chastised for wanting to protect his daughter and mate? The questions and fears continued to fester like an infected wound inside of him. It refused to heal and with each step his anger grew. He was tired of their women being in danger. He was tired of trying to hold himself together when all he wanted was to crawl into the arms of his female and weep for their loss, whether it was him or their child. He was so very tired and yet he didn’t have the luxury of giving into the exhaustion that racked his body.
Fane glanced over at Decebel as they ran, and noticed the huge dark wolf was running at a full sprint. They had a very long ways to run, but he understood the Alpha’s need to push himself. Jacque had sounded fine when he had been talking to her and she had told him that they had been taken. She was nervous, but she sounded more angry than scared. It was for those reasons that he had not completely lost his cool, but now that the adrenaline from the battle was dropping, a new surge of adrenaline was beginning to pump into his veins and it was fueled by fear and rage. How many times would evil attempt to take their mates from them? How many times would they endure seeing the women they loved hurt? He would like to say that he wasn’t at his breaking point, not yet. But he didn’t know if he could tell that to himself and still be honest. He had been at his breaking point only days ago and when he had finally given in to the need to sate the wolf and man’s rage, he had begun to heal. Now here he stood again, worried for his mate’s safety and wellbeing and unable to do a damn thing about it. So, like Decebel, he ran as hard and as fast as he could. He ran as though she stood just out of his reach and if he could just push himself a little harder he would have her in his arms again, safe, where she belonged.
Costin reached for Sally again, and again, and again, as he ran. She had been there in his mind and then even when she had closed the bond he could feel her, like white noise in the background. She was always there, until now. There was nothing. He felt empty, devoid of anything good, as if he had no mate at all. The thought was like a knife to his heart, twisting in the organ, preventing it from beating. The pain radiated out to his limbs and he stumbled briefly before he once again felt his legs regain their rhythm as he ran with his pack. He could never go back to a life without Sally. She was his light, his warmth, his healer, and she had restored all the places inside of him that he hadn’t even realized had been broken. He tried again in vain to feel her and again he felt his heart wrench. His wolf was on the verge of taking over at the thought of losing their mate and he had to fight to keep control. He couldn’t find her if he lost control. He wouldn’t be able to help her and so he latched onto that knowledge and ran as hard as he could. They would get their females back, and they would destroy the one who took them, just as they had destroyed the evil that came before him.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Peri sung into the forest close to the veil of the fae realm. She could sense her sister and could feel the anger that radiated off of her and the madness that had begun to ooze into her mind snaking around her thoughts and emotions. She had given evil a foothold and now it wanted the whole freaking mountain. “Come now, Lorelle, since when have you ever been a coward? Face me like the powerful fae you are.”
“Not as powerful as you,” her voice carried from beyond the trees and Peri waited to see if she would emerge.
“Those are your words, not mine,” Peri pointed out.
“Truth, nonetheless.” Lorelle stepped from the shelter of the trees and eyed her sister warily.
“What games have you been playing Lorelle? It seems you have taken up with some new playmates lately and I have to say that I do not approve. They seem to be poster children for 'how to turn into a twisted, evil nit-wit overnight'.”
Lorelle laughed and Peri noticed that even her laughter had changed. It was no longer a happy sound, but more of the sound that came just before a crazy witch stabbed you with her fork.
“Perizada, always clever with words, always talking but never saying anything,” Lorelle cooed. “I have grown tired of living in your shadow. I want my own power, in my own right, not because we share the same blood.”
Peri’s brow creased as she stared at the woman who she had grown up with and now hardly recognized. “Do you realize how ridiculous you sound? We all possess the power we have because of where we come from, whether it is great power or a little. You cannot bleed yourself dry to rid yourself of our bloodline and then fill yourself back up again. Whether I live or die, Lorelle, you will always have the same power in you that flows in me.”
“NO!” she shrieked. “I will only have the power you allow me to have. You have taken any power that I could have had and kept it as your own. You have always made sure that I was one step behind you and I’m tired of looking at your backside.”
Peri was beginning to realize that there would be no reasoning with her sister. She had deluded herself into thinking that Peri had stolen her power or kept her power from her. What Lorelle didn’t realize was that she was very powerful, but her power had yet to reach its full potential because of Lorelle’s spirit. She desired that power simply for the sake of having it, not for the good that she could use it for. She no longer remembered the things they learned when they joined the council. The rules and laws that came with great power can be given and can be taken away. But no amount of words would bring the truth to light for her sister. She had allowed too much wickedness into her.
“Where are the females, Lorelle?” She decided to go with a direct approach, though Peri had a feeling that it would take a little bit of taunting to get the truth from her proud sister.
“Females? Whatever are you talking about sister?”
Peri rolled her eyes and leaned casually against a tree, as if she had all the time in the world, which in fact she definitely did not.
“Okay I’ll jog your memory, six or so she-wolves, one of which is knocked up, a fae and a human all hanging out in the great state of Texas. Ring any bells yet?”
Lorelle simply stared at her.
“Okay, how about the mates of said females that would pretty much rip your head off of your body, fight over who got the bones, and then spit you out just for thinking about taking their mates? Remembering anything now?”
“Peri, do you really think I would waste my time with some worthless females that belong to the worthless wolves?” Lorelle picked at her nails as if they were more interesting than the conversation at hand.
“I think that you seem to like to waste your time with the likes of Reyaz and if I’m guessing correct, I’d bet you’ve become his lackey. I thought you wanted power? And yet you would choose to work for him as a beck and call girl, running his errands, collecting his prey instead of sitting on the high council of the fae? Have I summed it up pretty good for you? Maybe you should change your name to Renfield.” Peri saw Lorelle’s jaw tighten and her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She was fighting it as hard as she could, but she was losing. The need to put Peri in her place was so very strong and so very tempting.
“I’ve accepted that for now, Reyaz will be more powerful and therefore is calling the shots. But it will not always be so, and though I’m not known for my patience, for this I can wait. I’ll see you soon sister, though I don’t know if you will be seeing me.”
“Dammit all!” Peri yelled as her sister disappeared. She thought she had her, thought she had pushed her far enough that she would tell her where the women were, just to prove to Peri that she had been powerful enough to capture them all by herself. She had underestimated her sister's desire to see Peri in a grave, because no doubt Reyaz had promised just that, if Lorelle cooperated with him.
“I really want to say that things couldn’t get worse, but then I’m sure something worse would happen, like me growing a horn out of my butt or all of the males running off getting themselves turned to stone or something. Then I’d have to run off to save them looking like a freaking fairy hornet,” Peri laughed under her breath at her description and knew that Jen would appreciate it. Now if only she could get them back so she could tell Jen about her ludicrous thoughts.
“Now all I have to do is face a room full of raging wolves, piece of freaking cake,” she muttered as she flashed to the Romanian mansion.