Val Westover Burns Novels & Stories

His back arched, and his eyes flew open, wild and unfocused. "Liam!" I stopped the compressions, cradling his face. "Stay with me. Look at me!" He blinked, struggling to focus. His voice came out as a rasp. "Ava..." "We have to move. Now." I helped him sit up, though his whole body shook. The burns on his back had reopened, fresh blood seeping through his hospital gown. Derek had Victoria's phone now, his blood-stained fingers swiping through it. "August seventh," he muttered. "Her contacts... there's a date... August seventh, 2003."

Without thinking about his actions he held her hand tight and pulled her to his chest, hugging her tight as she finally cried. “Do- Domi-nic Hale’s grandfather was a hunter.” Skye started while hiccupping and sobbing, whilst clutching onto the Alpha and Hakan felt his whole body freeze and his blood run cold when he heard the words following her sentence, “a Legacy Wolf hunter.”

Don Bryant, who was standing nearby, asked anxiously, "Is there really nothing else that can be done to save Oliver, Cynthia?" I shook my head, replying calmly, "There's nothing that can be done, Don Bryant. You see, once someone is tainted by a black witch, the damage is irreversible. It's only a matter of time before his life force is completely drained. Your best course is to begin making funeral arrangements for Oliver now, Don Bryant." Having said that, I took William's hand and walked away, deliberately ignoring the heart-rending cries of despair that erupted from Oliver behind us. …

"And about driving me home." My hands clenched the wheel a little tighter. "Winter, whatever happened is history. Let's just act like it never did. We go our separate ways. It's better for both of us." She turned to face me, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears, and in a move that caught me off guard, she climbed right into my lap. "Jeffrey, ever since that night at the concert, you're all I can think about," Winter confessed, her voice trembling with emotion. "I can't help it, I think I'm falling for you."

But there was some sick, cosmic irony in this world that kept letting me live, kept forcing me to move forward. I thought about Ben as I walked. About the man I had known before The Burning. He had been stationed out west, somewhere in California. Smart, quiet, the kind of guy who didn’t say much but somehow managed to make you feel safe just by being there. We hadn’t been close, not yet. But there had been something there, something unspoken, something that could have been… more. And then the bombs fell, and everything burned.

The next day, the headlines screamed with the news. "Newly Instated Beta Becky Andrus Found Burned to Death—Tortured Beyond Recognition." The pack was in an uproar. When the enforcers arrived at the scene, all they found was a charred, mangled corpse—so thoroughly burned it was impossible to tell if it had once been human or wolf. The forensic report was even more horrifying. Becky hadn’t just been burned alive. She had been injected with wolfsbane—enough to paralyze her, but not enough to kill. Then doused in gasoline. Just when the fire had started to consume her, someone had put it out with an extinguisher… only to start the process again.

"For you. Always for you." Behind them, the Tidewater Inn—the place that had given her sanctuary, purpose, and a reason to stop running—continued to burn. Firefighters shouted orders, water arced through the air in silvery streams, and Maya felt the foundation of her new life cracking beneath the weight of smoke and flame. "It was arson." Chief Morrison appeared beside them, his face grim in the firelight. "Accelerant in multiple locations. East wing, kitchen, basement. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing."

“How about Saturday the fifteenth? You’ll know everything there is to know by then. Fancy a glass of wine?” We ended up watching a horror movie, laughing at the alleged werewolf’s transformation, and bingeing on ice cream. Neither of us ever over-indulged in alcohol which was perhaps just as well. Both of us needed a clear head for our daily routines, her more than me. Not all shifters are capable of properly healing themselves and I should know. Burns are especially traumatic and that was how the Alpha and Luna met their end at the hands of an unknown arsonist. I’d been out of town at the time, with Alex. He’d bought me a bracelet which I subsequently dumped. Goddess knows where Fran was.