Kalina ~ Book Four

Fraser's blood filled Sylvie’s mouth, and she couldn't swallow. Her vampire heritage meant blood was palatable, barely, but this was…. Disgusting. A sour taint curdled on her tongue, and she retched, ripping her head back to vomit on the ground: nothing but bile and his crimson blood.

“I knew it,” she rasped, spitting the saliva that filled her mouth again. She wiped a hand across her lips, but the taste remained. It was so vulgar it made her eyes water.

“You know nothing,” Fraser snarled back, cradling his arm as it healed slowly before her eyes.

“You’re a demon,” she shouted back, wiping her eyes as they filled with tears. Why was she crying?

Fraser growled and shoved her as she tried to approach again, the motion forcing her a half-dozen steps back.

“I’m not a demon!” He seemed to grow in front of her, his features morphing, skin gaining the fine golden hairs of a lion, his hair forming a shaggy mane, and his eyes gleaming, but his shift stopped there.

Still upright.

Still mostly a man.

Sylvie’s lips parted, and her breathing stopped. “Lycan.”

He said nothing, only cracking his joints with a few quick tensing movements.

She was wrong about him. He was a fucking Lycan, just like she was. She used to be. A cursed one. But why…

And what about-

“But your mate…”

He shook his head. “I never had a mate.”

“But you said-”

“I said it was complicated.”

No. She couldn't have been this wrong. He couldn't have been innocent. Oh, God, she was an idiot.

“But what about the shifter the cop mentioned that night-”

“Ronnie was my girlfriend. She was human.” Fraser's Lycan receded until it was just the man staring back at her, the anger gone.

Hers wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t directed at him anymore.

“We fought, and I shifted by mistake. I was young. Stupid. She was horrified by me. I’m not a demon, but I am a monster. I was too busy drowning my sorrows in whiskey to notice the screams.”

Sylvie swallowed the lump forming in her throat and palmed her chest, the marks singing. Fraser’s lycan heritage explained far more than Sylvie wanted to admit. It took the fury from her so instantly that she almost fell to her knees.

Lycans were cursed by the Fates never to have a mate.

“Why are you a Lycan?”

He shrugged, and his face scrunched a fraction. Confusion. Genuine. He was so easy to read Sylvie almost punched herself for her conclusions.

“I was born like this.”

“And your brother?”

His brows scrunched closer. “Will? He’s a lion shifter. Normal.”

Sylvie tried to steady her breathing. “When’s the last time you saw him shift?”

Fraser's expression hardened slightly as if he understood her questioning and didn't like the accusation. But he answered honestly. “I can’t remember. We were kids.”

It wasn’t Fraser. Oh, god. It wasn’t him. She had to get back.

Now.

“I-I’m-”

“Don’t apologise,” he said sharply. “Tell me the truth. Who are you? Why did you attack us?”

She shook her head and reached for his arm to splice back. He pulled away. “The truth,” he demanded.

“I need to get us back. I’ll tell you once we’re back in our bodies.”

He scowled but lifted his hand for her to take, and she did, snatching it up and lacing their fingers together. She tried not to note the blissful surge of pleasure up her arms from his touch and closed her eyes.

Home. Home. Home. Please take me home.

Her other hand gripped the seed of Adreisai in her pocket so hard her fingers ached.

A hand brushed her hair away from her cheek, and her body swayed as if she were falling, falling, falling.

The dust settled, and she peeled her lids open, glad for the warmth of the morning sun, until the bite of steel kissed her throat, and a cold metal dug into her ribs.

Her bike was in front of her, along with the furious faces of her family. Rowan. Elias. Kerensa. Magnus and Kora. She almost broke when she couldn't see Kian, but the strength from his mark settled her fears. He was okay. Safe.

A wall of heat behind her shifted, and she stilled, turning her attention to whoever held her.

“Hello, Will,” she purred, keeping her body relaxed. She’d survived her throat cut a few times now. She liked her odds.

“Shut your mouth.”

“Where’s your brother.”

“Indisposed,” he hissed into her ear. From this close, she could hardly tell the difference between their scents, the realisation filling her with unbridled shame.

She buried it, though. He didn't need to know her mistake. “And your mate?” He turned a fraction, and she spied Claudine's body sprawled on the steps.

Despite everything, she couldn't help the way her heart spiked or how she craned her neck despite the metal slicing it to see if her chest still rose and fell.

It did.

“What do you want from me, demon spawn?”

“If you knew what I was, why shoot me with that light bullet?”

The bullets only worked on the possessed, and he wasn’t that. He noticed her realisation and made a satisfied noise in his throat.

“The truth is, you made a mistake, didn't you, Sylvie Hart?”

She clenched her teeth and exhaled, hoping Fraser was unconscious somewhere, too. For some reason, she didn't want him to find out about her like that, not when he was the only one who treated her like an ordinary person.

Oh, how she wished to be ordinary right then.

The knife sliced a few layers of skin, and her blood beaded, the drops sizzling against the blade. Iron. Any marks would scar.

“You knew all along, didn't you, pet?” Sylvie asked, letting him swing her back towards the crowd watching them and waiting for an opening. If Will were any good, he wouldn't give them one.

“Did you use the Vampires too? As a scapegoat for your plans?”

“My plans?” Will laughed. “You haven't got it yet? You really are stupid.”

She swore at him but didn't show her hand yet. She didn't want him to see how easily she could evade his grip, and she still needed more information.

“So you aren’t possessed.”

“Are we going to go over this again and again? My brother and I are not possessed, so your fancy bullets won’t work on us.”

A hiss echoed behind them, and Sylvie closed her eyes for a fraction. Fray was alive. In pain but alive,e and now he was going to hear everything his evil bastard of a brother was going to say.

“Fray is a lycan.”

“Gold star. His father was only possessed when he sired him, making a new type of shifter.”

“Old, actually,” Sylvie quipped. The ‘essence’ of a demon could explain why the fates cursed him, but what about Will and Claudine? “Lycan’s predate shifters.”

The pressure in her side pulled away before slamming into her ribs with bruising force. She leaned back to avoid curling into the iron blade at her throat and suppressed her groan. Gods, this all felt too familiar.

“But me… My father was a pure demon.”

Frasers weak, “What?” resounded in the space.

Everything finally clicked into place, and Sylvie’s blood ran cold. The world faded away to shades of Grey. Grey. Holy fucking shit.

“I know who you are,” she rasped. “I know.”

Ten years on, the methods of her madness lived on: the cruelty, the lust for power, the secret plans and final showdown. The white-blond hair and steel-coloured eyes. Her grey man. The colour that invaded every prophecy.

“Lazuli.”

“Don’t speak that name.”

“She was your sister, wasn’t she?”

Her mate marks stiffened with awareness. She didn't have to look up to know Elias and Rowan were shocked. Enraged. How deeply all of them had fallen into a game they hadn't known they were playing. All along, they thought it was the Vampires, but this… this.

“Did you feel it when I killed her, Will? When my lycan ripped her hands from her body and watched her bleed out. Did she even know who you were? Or are you just one of many of your father's offspring?”

She kept her eyes off her mother as she said it, guilt swirling at the cruelty she spoke. Even if she was on her side, Lazuli was still her sister. Half-sister.

The knife deepened so intensely that she waited for her skin to split open under the force; it didn't, but her breathing cut off, and she fought the black spots threatening her consciousness. The vicious growls of people in front of her drew her back and eased the pressure on her throat. If he were to kill her now, her mates would leave nothing of him.

Now, all that stood between them was his self-preservation and her family's love for her. If she didn't move soon, it would stay a stalemate unless he called all the possessed hiding in the packhouse to come out and slaughter them all. They could all be circling them as they spoke.

“I’m glad I never had to woo you. I would have slit your throat weeks ago if I hadn't found my mate.” The way he said mate made her skin crawl. “And Fraser, the golden older brother, stepped in as if he had known the plan all along, his demon essence enough to trigger the wraith. I must admit that took me by surprise.”

“Takes a big man to admit that,” Sylvie choked out, both appealing to his masculinity and letting her voice drip with sarcasm. He either ignored it or missed it.

“Why did you get a mate at all?” she asked. “You’re not even a full shifter.”

She could sense more than see the smile that pulled his lips open, his nose pulling a drag from her hair. “Demons aren’t all monsters.”

Bullshit. She bit back the word, but it flooded her mind until Will spoke again.

“We’re disowned. Fate's very own children— abandoned and refused mates, and why, because we were in the pursuit of pleasure? We wouldn't bow to them? But to answer your question, my gifts are illusions.”

He turned her again to see Claudine's sprawled body. “This little slut has no mate. I can scent them, you see, the bonds, and I killed that bear while he slept and took his scent just long enough to bind her to me.”

A choked sound escaped from behind them as Fraser said, “What are you saying?”

“No hard feelings, brother, but demons play the long game, and this one has been a decade in the making.”

Sylvie risked a glance at her mates, but Will dragged her closer to the pack house.

“What do you want? Huh? Revenge?” Sylvie’s energy dwindled, along with her Vīs, which she used most of with her fight with Fray. She needed to make her move. It was now or never.

“Your sister was an abusive bitch, and I enjoyed cleaving her hands from her body.”

The knife shook. “You shut up.”

“She bled out so fast.”

She grabbed his wrist, leaning back to give herself enough space to take a deep breath. Her marks tingled in understanding. They were ready. “I should have made her suffer for longer. Carved her to pieces.”

With that, she twisted his wrist until it snapped, and the knife fell tip-first into the dirt. She dropped to avoid the gun in her ribs, and the responding gunfire going off beside her head made her ears ring. Blood dripped from her ears, and she dragged herself away as Will pulled up a strange wavering mirage around himself. Another illusion?

Nothing reached her ears but the throbbing thrum of her heart. She blinked, trying to read Will’s lips as he held up the Animae dimidium meae, offering a conspiratory smile, then dropped it. She followed the fall and winced as it blinked out of existence. She had missed that part of the game and played right into their hands again.

She could see Claudine stirring from her position and Fray chained to a concrete pillar beside the steps, his leg brushing against the plants she had saved from death all those weeks ago.

Will faded in and out of Sylvie’s vision, in and out of existence on the earthen plane.

Sylvie shook her head. He wasn’t going to escape so easily. She reached to the plants behind him and wrenched, throwing the last of her strength into forming a spear that shot straight into his unguarded back and staggered him, the sharp plant sticking through his back and out again under his heart. With a snarl, he raised the gun to her head that had hung dormant at his side and pulled the trigger.