toll gate

Caius Winters

His heir.

It was like the beast had known just what to say to stab his sword of treachery deep into my chest.

My lips trembled and I tried to ignore the way blood roared and flushed in my ears.

“Five nights. That’s all I’m giving you. Up until Triel’s funeral, Caius. Your decision will determine whether or not you attend,” the commander shouted over his shoulder, with one leg already braced on his carriage door.

Triel’s funeral was in five nights? Something 

“This is your last chance to make this betrayal up to her, Caius. You have always been a smart prince meant for greater things than being that fool’s errand boy.”

I reared back like he had just struck me in the face as his words bruised what little ego I’d managed to scrap together to come here.

“I am no one’s errand boy.” I snapped before I could stop myself, realizing I had given the old wolf the exact reaction he wanted when his thin lips curved into a wicked smile that slashed across his face.

Damn it! Damn him for doing this to me!

Dante and his pack took care of me when he was nowhere to be found!

How could he make me choose between the two people I loved most in this world?

“Good. You will choose family then. Your real family.” He muttered, before his head disappeared into the dark mouth of the carriage and the neigh of his horses rose up into the night.

I cringed back, unable to stop my heart from racing as I watched him leave, counting almost two hundred of his wolf hounds as they swished past in the trees.

Their speed made goosepimples flare on my arms before I drew the hood lower over my face with a heavy sigh.

“Fuck…fuck!” I bellowed, making the thick mist shift when I wound my arm back to slam my fist into a tree, the pain burning some clarity into my mind.

I needed to act quick, but first, I had to get the hell out of here before more than the mist started to cloud my mind.

Heavy crunching noises from my footfalls began to sound entirely too loud in my ears and more than once, I got the feeling I had passed the same gnarly tree twice.

Was I going in bleeping circles?

“No…no, no, not now, man, damn it, focus!” I groaned wearily, the weight of the night’s events sitting on my shoulders like a tower and making my muscles form ungly knots under my skin.

Or was that the mist?

There was something ominous in The Darkness tonight that followed me long after I had watched the commander and his troops leave, the trot of their carriage fading to silence.

“Kill him. Kill him, killll for your thronee,” the hiss of the voices as they scratched at my ears made me clap my hands over it.

It was beginning. The longer I stayed the worse it would get.

I would have been faster in my wolf form, but recovery from the cursed mist would be a bitch.

“I’ve got to get back to the fortress.” I gritted the words through clenched teeth just as a wave of white hot pain stabbed into my side and I glanced down in horror.

A gaping hole had formed beside my ribs. Almost like something large had bitten a chunk out of me.

“What the fuck?” 

What the fucking fuck?!

When had this happened? 

What other parts of my body had been infected? My hands made quick work of the limbs beneath my coat and I was horrified to realize I could no longer stand up straight.

A giant, pulsing knot had formed on the flesh of my back, its gooey squishiness when my fingers closed around it made a burst of insanity zap at my brain.

No! Goddess, no! I couldn't die like this! Out here with only vultures to pick on my bones and the sad-looking trees to remember me!

“I will not die alone and miserable like you, father!” I cursed at the mist, whirling on my feet before another dirt oath opened up…the right one—and I followed it.

How did Laziel manage to stay hours on end in a cursed mist like this without turning into one of the blood-thirsty crazies?

Despite knowing it could drive my wolf mad, I was shifting before I knew it, my hind legs digging into the dirt as I tore through the path.

Trees whizzed past at lightning speed on either side of me, seeming to fill with shadows that watched me malevolently.

I could see the distant whirl of the fluorescent search lights through the fog before I prayed to the goddess that it wasn't yet another hallucination.

The loud blaring of the gate horns made my stomach drop from between my legs and I ground my teeth, ignoring the stab of pain hitting me from all sides as I barreled even faster toward the huge blessed iron fence.

The curfew. How could I have forgotten the curfew?!

If I got locked out of the castle in The Darkness I would be bone and ash by the time they lowered the drawbridge!

My heartbeat echoed furiously in my ears as my vision blurred and focused on the lowering iron that blocked off my view of the crowded square.

“Shit, shit, i’m not gonna make it.” I rasped, my thighs burning like they had been set on fire as the listlessness began to set in, erasing every rational thought in my head.

It had started to happen almost too slowly for me to notice.

But it was now getting harder for me to hold on to any rational thought.

So close… I was so close to the gates that I could feel the air shifting around the heavy iron doors as they slammed shut.

It would be a tight squeeze if I was going to make it….come on.

I sucked in a large breath, diving forward with all the reserve of energy I could muster and hoping for what felt like an eternity, that I would open my eyes on the right side of the gates.