Chapter 14 Strings

Odessa

Evan's hand moved before he did.

I felt it through the bond first, a sudden jerk, like someone yanking a fishing line. His fingers uncurled from mine. His shoulders squared. His chin lifted. Every muscle in his body shifted into a posture I had never seen on him, rigid and obedient, the stance of a puppet on a stage.

"Evan?"

He didn't look at me. His eyes had gone flat and silver, the same frost-on-glass color as his uncle's.

"Evan, look at me."

"I can't," he said.

It was his voice, but it was coming from very far away. Underneath it, I could feel him screaming, a wild, caged thing slamming against the inside of his own skull. Odessa. I can't stop it. I can't stop it.

"Beautiful," Silas murmured. "Twenty-four years of preparation, and it works on the first pull."

"Let him go!" Alpha Grayson lunged, and Silas flicked two fingers. My father-in-law dropped like his strings had been cut. Sorrel wolves surged forward, and Evan turned his head toward them with that terrible, empty grace.

"No," I whispered. "Evan, don't."

He moved.

I have fought in exactly one fight in my life, in the sixth grade, and I lost. I have never seen violence that looked like what Evan did next. He didn't shift. He didn't even snarl. He simply walked through the front line of his own pack, and wolves who had followed him since boyhood flew apart on either side of him like leaves in a gust. Nobody got a hand on him. Nobody dared.

Because he wasn't trying to kill them. I could feel it. He was fighting every step, dragging against the thread with everything he had, pulling his strikes so hard it was tearing him apart. They were bruises, not wounds. Broken wrists, not broken necks.

That's my husband, I thought, and something fierce rose up in my throat. Even now.

"Josh!" I yelled. "Don't hurt him! Keep them back!"

My brother, already half-shifted, skidded to a halt, snarled, and spun to herd the Sorrel wolves away. Mia was beside him, sword out, shouting orders I couldn't hear.

The path was clear. Evan walked straight toward me.

"Odessa." His mouth shaped my name, and a tear ran down his cheek. "Run."

"No."

"Please."

"I said no."

His hand closed around my throat.

Not tight. God, not tight. It was the lightest grip imaginable, the way you'd hold something you were afraid of breaking. But he was shaking, and I could feel the thread dragging his arm tighter by the second, and in his eyes I saw the man I'd married eight hours ago looking out at me through a locked window.

"Silas," I said, without taking my eyes off Evan. "You said the key turns the lock."

"I did."

"Then what happens when the lock won't open?"

His smile slipped. Just a fraction.

I closed my eyes.

Evan

I was drowning in a body that didn't belong to me.

That's the only way I can describe it. I could see everything. I could hear everything. I felt the rough bark of my own hand against her throat, her pulse beating against my palm. But every time I tried to let go, something cold and bright wrapped around my will and squeezed.

Let go. Let go. Let GO.

Nothing. My hand stayed where it was.

And in front of me, Odessa closed her eyes, and her whole body went still and soft, and I thought, She's giving up. She's choosing not to fight me.

Terror, like nothing I've ever felt.

"Odessa," I said. "Please. Don't."

"Shh," she whispered.

Silver light spilled from her skin, slowly this time, not the violent flare from the courtyard. It rose like dawn. It poured over her shoulders and down her arms, and where it touched my hand, the cold thread around my will began to sing.

I felt her in my chest. Not through the bond, not like before. Inside me. Her voice, her warmth, her heartbeat, laid over mine like a second skin.

Hold on to me, she said. Don't fight the thread. Fight what it's pulling you toward.

I can't.

Yes, you can. Tell me one true thing.

What?

Evan Sorrel, tell me one true thing, right now, and don't you dare lie.

I almost laughed. God help me, even like this, even strangled by my own hand, she was still giving me orders.

I love you, I said.

The thread snapped.

Not all of it. Just one strand, thin as a hair. But it was enough. My fingers loosened from her neck, and my knees buckled, and I fell forward into her arms while she caught me and held on with everything she had.

"That's it," she said into my hair. "That's it. I've got you."

"It's still in me," I gasped. "Odessa, there are hundreds of them. He wove them through everything. My bones, my..."

"I know. I can see them."

"Then pull them."

"If I pull them all, it'll kill you."

"Then pull the ones that matter."

She went quiet. I felt her searching, delicate as a woman picking a lock. Her silver fingers moved through my chest, and I could feel every strand of Silas's work as it shivered under her touch.

"Oh," she whispered. "Oh, Evan. I found it."

"What?"

"The one he doesn't want me to touch."

Across the courtyard, Silas's calm finally cracked.

"Stop," he said, and for the first time there was a tremor in his voice. "Child, you don't understand what you're touching."

"Tell me then."

"It's not a lock." His eyes were wild. "It's a seal. It's holding something closed. If you pull it, you'll..."

She pulled.

I felt something huge, old and patient and furious, roll over in the dark under my ribs.

My wolf, who had been quiet through all of this, opened his eyes.

Finally, he said, in a voice that was not mine.

Silver and gold light exploded out of both of us. Every window in the Sorrel estate shattered at once. And through the glare, as the thing inside me rose to its feet, I heard Silas Sorrel, the man who had spent four hundred years planning this night, scream a single word.

"No!"

Odessa's hand found mine.

I looked down, and my skin was no longer entirely my own. It was moving, shifting, patterned with fine gold lines like fire running through paper. And at the very center of my chest, where my heart should have been, I felt a second heartbeat answering hers.

"Evan," she breathed. "What are you?"

I looked up at my wife, through eyes I no longer recognized, and told her the truth.

"I don't know yet."