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Home / Werewolf / His Contract Luna Says Goodbye / Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

All Chapters of His Contract Luna Says Goodbye : Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

165 Chapters

152

ELLARIA.Nobody had said it yet.We'd been sitting in that tent for over an hour. We'd talked about Gregory and channelling and trucks full of people and chains, and the whole time there was one thing sitting in the middle of us that nobody had touched.My mother had said we. She'd said witches channel, and she'd said we do all the hard work.She'd said we.I looked down at her hands, still wrapped around mine, and then up at her face."I don't understand, Mom," I said. "How are you a witch?"Rachel went very still beside her. Catherine's eyebrows went up.My mother didn't flinch. She held my hands a little tighter and smiled at me. It was soft, and a little sad, and it made her look so much like the blurry picture I'd carried in my head for years that my throat closed."How are we witches," she corrected gently.I stared at her."The Blackwater Wolves weren't like other packs," she said. "We were wolves, yes. We shifted and we ran and we had alphas and betas like everyone else. But s

153.

ELLARIA.The path my mother and Rachel had mapped out wasn't really a path at all.It was a gap. A long, narrow stretch along the back wall where the ground dipped low and the brush grew thick, and the lights from the watchtowers didn't quite reach. They'd spent weeks memorizing it. Rachel had drawn it in the dirt for us an hour ago with a stick. There was a bent fence post, a drainage ditch that stank, and a loose board near the storage sheds that could be pulled back far enough for a person to squeeze through.Aunt Rachel. That was what my mother had called her, once the memories came back. I'd sat in that tent afterward staring at her and trying to fit the scared girl being dragged by her hair into the woman in front of me.She'd been so young. She'd been locked up in places like this ever since.I pushed that thought down before it could take me somewhere I couldn't come back from, and I focused on where I was putting my feet.We'd learned so much tonight my brain felt full.The b

154.

ELLARIA.We got out the same way we'd gotten in. It was slower this time, with more people and one of them in no condition to crawl through anything.Now we were back in the forest, in the clearing near Arren's car. The fire had burned down to orange coals, and nobody had bothered to feed it.There were more of us than there'd been a few hours ago.My mother sat on a log beside me with her shoulder pressed against mine like she was afraid I'd float away if she stopped touching me. Rachel was on her other side. Next to Rachel was the friend they'd gone back for.Her name was Celeste.I'd known that before anyone told me. The second I saw her face in the lamplight inside that camp, it had come rushing up from somewhere deep, pulled loose with everything else my mother had given back. She'd had a garden. She used to braid my hair on her front steps and hum while she did it, and she always pulled too tight, and I never told her because I liked the humming.Aunt Celeste. Aunt Rachel.That

155.

ELLARIA.Seven people did not fit in Arren's car.We made it work anyway, because there wasn't any other option. Catherine took the front passenger seat, and nobody bothered arguing with her about it. My mother, Rachel and Celeste squeezed into the back row with me, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. Katerina was crammed against the far door with the blanket still around her shoulders.Every time the car hit a bump, somebody's elbow ended up in somebody's ribs.Nobody complained.Nobody said much of anything.The drive back to the Eastern Sector was long. It had been long on the way out too, but that time we'd been chasing something. Now it felt like we were running toward something, and none of us knew what we'd find when we got there.Arren hadn't said a word since we left the clearing.He drove with both hands on the wheel. His knuckles had gone white on the leather, and they'd stayed white for the first hour. They were still white in the third. He kept his eyes on the road and h

156

ELLARIA.Arren got out of the car first.He didn't say anything. He cut the engine, pushed his door open, and stepped out onto the road, and the rest of us followed him out one by one like our bodies had decided for us.The morning was cold. The sun had come up somewhere behind us while we were still on the road, and it was crawling over the treetops now, pale and gold and far too pretty for what it was shining on.We all stood there in a line and looked up.I pressed both hands over my mouth.Up close, it was so much worse.Kade's arms were stretched out wide, tied at the wrists to the iron bars. His head hung forward, and his dark hair was stiff with dried blood. His jacket was still on him, but it had been pulled open. So had everything underneath it.Someone had flayed him.I'd been a doctor for years. I'd seen people come into the clinic torn up by rogues and crushed under fallen trees, and I'd seen the bleeding sickness turn people inside out. I knew what the human body could su

157

ARREN.The ringing came first.It was a high, flat whine sitting right in the middle of my skull, loud enough that for a while it was the only thing I knew. There was no up or down, no before and after. There was just the noise.Then the pain showed up.It came everywhere at once. It was in my shoulder and my back, my ribs and my thigh, and in places I didn't know could hurt this much. It was a hundred separate points of fire all going off together, and every single one of them had a pulse.Under all of that, sitting right in the center of my chest, was the heat.It wasn't pain exactly. It was worse than pain. It burned slow and thick, spreading outward from behind my sternum like someone had poured molten metal into my lungs and left it to set. Every breath dragged across it, so I stopped breathing deep. I took short, shallow sips of air and waited for it to stop.It didn't stop.Silver. I knew that feeling. I'd had a sliver of it in my side not long ago and dug it out with my own fi

158

ELLARIA.He didn't sit back down right away.He walked. He strolled across the dusty floor between the rubble and the pillars with his hands clasped loosely behind his back, like a man touring a garden he was proud of. He passed my cage close enough that I could smell him. He smelled like smoke and something sweet underneath it, like fruit left out too long.He didn't even look at me.He only had eyes for Arren.Arren was on the floor against his pillar with his wrists chained behind him. There was blood everywhere. It had soaked through his shirt and dried in dark patches on his trousers and pooled on the concrete underneath him. His skin had gone the color of old paper. The silver around his wrists was still smoking faintly.He was watching Gregory. He hadn't looked away once.I pressed my forehead against the bars of my cage. The metal was cold. It didn't burn me the way it burned him. I couldn't decide if that made me lucky or useless."Do you know what it's like," Gregory said, "

159.

ELLARIA.The first punch landed in Arren's stomach.I heard it. It was a thick, wet thud that I felt in my own gut, and I jerked back from the bars so hard my shoulder hit the back of the cage.Arren folded over. He was on his knees now. They'd unchained him from the pillar and dragged him out into the middle of the floor. He didn't lift his hands, and he didn't block.He didn't do anything.The second punch caught him across the jaw, and his head snapped sideways.The third one was a boot, straight into his ribs.After that I lost count.There were five of them around him at first. Then more came in and took turns, stepping up to swing and stepping back to let the next one have a go. Fists and knees and boots, over and over. Every time one of them landed, Arren's body rocked with it and then came back upright, and he knelt there and took the next one.He didn't make a sound.I flinched every time. I couldn't stop. Every hit went straight through me, and I jerked like it had landed on

160.

ELLARIA.My heart wouldn't slow down.It kept slamming against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my teeth. I watched Arren stand in that broken gap in the wall with the gray sky behind him, swaying on his feet, and I kept waiting for him to fall.He didn't fall.He walked.He came across that floor one slow, heavy step at a time, dragging his left leg a little. There was so much blood on him I couldn't tell which parts were his and which parts were Gregory's. His shirt was mostly gone. His face was swollen almost past recognizing.He came straight to my cage.He didn't go to the throne or the stairs. He didn't go to any of the thirty people standing in a stunned line by the landing. He came straight to me.He wrapped both hands around the lock on my door. His palms were already raw from the chains, and the silver hissed the second he touched it. He didn't even blink. He pulled, and the lock tore apart in his hands, and the door swung open.He reached in and got his hands under my arm

161

ELLARIA.I didn't think. I just moved."Okay," I said. I lifted both hands up in front of me, palms out, the way I'd approach a frightened animal in the woods. "Okay. I'm coming. I'm coming with you. Just don't hurt him."Gregory's eyes narrowed. "Slowly.""Slowly," I repeated. "I'm going slow. See?"I took one step toward them. Then another.He took one step back.He was dragging Tate with him. My son's toes scraped across the ash as Gregory hauled him backward, deeper into the ruined ward. His arm was still locked under Tate's chin. His claws were still resting against that soft little throat.Tate's eyes found mine over Gregory's forearm.They were so wide. They were grey-blue and wet, and he was blinking hard like he was trying not to cry, like crying might make things worse.I held his gaze.I'm here, I tried to tell him without saying it. I'm right here. I've got you."Keep coming," Gregory said.I kept coming.He kept backing up. His bad leg dragged behind him with every step,

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