Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Lifting my hand to his mouth, he pressed a soft kiss on my palm and then just held it there, breathing me in. “So what now?” he asked after a beat. “We have to wait until sunrise before we set foot in that school of course, but five people died and dozens more were put in the infirmary. Plus, the only thing anyone knows about what happened to you is that you went missing.
“You have to go back in there with a show of force so powerful, it smashes any more thoughts of rebellion.” Nyx glanced at the castle in the distance. “It’s not like before when you lived in a secluded temple surrounded by bodyguards. Now you have to live, eat, and sleep right next to your enemies, and you can’t have them thinking that all they have to do to get rid of you is wait another month.”
I swallowed hard, knowing he was right... and knowing what I have to do. “I have a show of force, Nyx. A big one. An effective one. One that’ll work better than violence, punishment, or appealing to their imaginary better natures. I wanted using it to be a last resort because it’s a precious and finite weapon. Once we’re out, we’re out.”
“Daze, what are you talking about?”
I stood up, wobbling slightly, but eventually got steady on my feet. “It’ll be easier if I show you.”
NYX AND I WERE A SILENT duo trekking through the woods.
As I leaned on him as we went, my strength leeching out of me like the weird, stinky poultice cracking and littering the forest floor.
“In Incepe Din, there are a lot of people there—mostly women—who ran behind its high metal walls to escape horrors and abuse you can’t imagine,” I began. “Obsessively violent stalkers. Abusive exes. Wars. Oppressive regimes. And a lot of them have someone on the outside who wants them back by any means necessary.”
Nyx hummed. “Like the alpha council wanted you back when you ran. The guys and I weren’t there to see it, but we got letters from our family about the secret police swarming the streets day and night—ruthlessly tracking down even the merest suspected sighting of you. Anyone who was thought to be hiding you was taken in for questioning and never seen again.”
“What?” I cried. “No! I didn’t know that. My goodness, they’re vile. Why do people need me to convince them the council are horrible people when they don’t even deny it?”
“It’s actually frightening all the corruption and oppression that we’ve accepted as normal.” He shuddered. “It’s weird how things don’t seem wrong until you have a kid and you realize all those normal, acceptable things will be happening to her.”
My grip tightened around his arm. Nyx was right about how the veil suddenly rips off of you when you become a parent.
He was so scarily right.
Nyx shook himself. “Sorry, I interrupted you. You were talking about the people who live in that leech’s bunker.”
It took me a minute to put aside my fears for Hope and refocus. “Yes, Incepe Din. So, just like me, a lot of the people there have very powerful enemies who’ll do terrible damage if they ever find out where they’re hiding. Because of that, the community has a stockpile of weapons that they’re ready to use if that day ever comes.” I carefully guided Nyx through the maze of wolf traps he couldn’t see. “After Lucia heard my story, she gave me their entire arsenal of”—we stepped through a break in the trees—“this.”
Nyx set one foot in the garden and snarled, fangs bursting free. He released me and shot back—his wolf ripping through his skin in an instant.
“Nyx! Nyx,” I cried. “It’s okay. It’s what I brought you to see.”
“It’s not okay!” he replied in a series of barks, snarls, gruffs, and howls. “The earth is crying out. It’s screaming! What is that stuff? It’s not natural.”
“No, it isn’t.” I dropped down, kneeling beside the darkly glowing bloodred mushroom. Or at least, it looked like a mushroom with a little rounded umbrella top and a soft, wiggly stem, but unlike other mushrooms, this one made no attempt to hide that it was dangerous. The very air around it was thin, like even it was trying to get away. “I call it the vocal cord killer,” I told the wolf lurking in the trees, circling the little hidden clearing as though he was looking for a weak spot.
“I could come up with a better name for it, but it gets the point across.” I gently touched the thing and shivered. “Of course you don’t like it. Your alpha senses are screaming at you that this thing is not your friend.”
I heard his bones crack and pop as he shifted back to human form. Nyx slowly stepped out—naked as the day he was born. “What is it?” he croaked. “How can it grow in the earth but take nothing from it. The ground isn’t feeding it and the rain isn’t touching it. How?”