Death moon curses, p.6
Death Moon Curses, page 6
Jessa, who trailed behind Connolly a few steps, locked eyes with her adopted son and smiled. The first one I might’ve ever seen on her. Aimes launched himself at her and lifted her off her feet in a tight embrace.
My eyes watered, my chest warming, and a sob caught in my throat. I missed my mom too. So much.
Aimes had barely said a word about how much he’d been worried about her, but he didn’t have to. I could feel it, same as I could see it right now.
They reluctantly pulled away from each other, Jessa wiping the smeared mascara from under her eyes, and Aimes returned to his seat next to me.
“Okay?” he whispered when he saw my tears.
I nodded, swiped them away quickly, and squeezed his hand.
Connolly and Jessa took their seats in front and to the left of us, guards I recognized from his pack sitting on either side while the others waited at the end of the row. How was I supposed to get anywhere near him while he was surrounded?
He turned his head slightly so he could look at me over his shoulder. “I imagine you now know the truth of who you are? What we are to each other?” he murmured, meeting my gaze.
“I understand a lot of things now,” I said. “And I have a lot of questions.”
“I imagined you would.”
“Can I talk with you about it after the ceremony?” I asked.
Too obvious? Could he hear the nerves in my voice? Maybe he could, but he could easily chalk it up to being apprehensive about addressing our real relationship. I could only hope that was true.
He frowned slightly, his brows knitting together, but there was no time to answer before the lights brightened on the stage. Connolly's head snapped around, and I knew I had missed my opportunity.
It wasn't like he could forget about me. We would have time after the wedding. So I hoped.
Was Annecy planning to commit the Alpha’s murder right there on stage, in front of everybody? Or were we at least going to have a chance to eat dinner first?
I couldn't believe I was actually thinking about it this way. Murderous weddings made me wish I had a leaf blower for the thoughts in my brain. No, scratch that. I wished I had a leaf blower for people.
Activity stirred on one side of the stage, and a moment later I could see why. Aimes’s sharp intake of breath rose over the mutterings and whispers around us.
When he made a move like he was about to jump out of his chair, I held him back, just barely.
“You can’t,” I whispered.
But even I could see why he wanted to.
I barely recognized Stride. He’d lost weight in only a handful of days, his once healthy, Photoshopped complexion now sallow and grayish. He was almost dragging his feet, which was a pretty far cry from the way he used to strut around with his head held high. Like nothing and no one could touch him.
Not so now. It looked like every step he took required concentration. He took a few stumbles to the left until it looked like he was going to fall off the stage if he kept going, but one of the men standing nearby—one of Annecy’s guards—stopped him in time.
“This is obscene,” Aimes muttered.
I stared at Connolly’s profile, whose stillness told me there was a lot going on under the surface that he didn't want to show. He looked like he was frozen solid.
From the other side of the stage came Annecy. A spotlight followed her progress as she strode slowly, solemnly. All around us came the expected “oohs” and “ahhs” at the sight of her. I couldn't pretend she didn't look stunning in her floor-length ivory gown, the delicate beads catching the lights and shimmering like stars. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head in a complex twist studded with pearls, and her makeup was flawless.
She came to a stop in front of Stride, who swayed a little on his feet and blinked hard like he was trying to bring her into focus. He was so thin that his tux hung awkwardly, and dark circles marred the skin beneath his eyes.
It wasn't like I hadn't wished more than once for him to suffer, but that didn't make it easy to witness.
I clearly wasn't the only one who felt that way.
“What is this?” Connolly finally leaped to his feet, thrusting an arm outward and pointing to Stride. “This is ridiculous! What have you done to him? I won’t stand for this!”
Annecy wore a neutral expression when she turned to him, but I was close enough to the stage—and familiar enough with her—to see the coldness in her eyes. “It seems our distinguished guest has concerns. Maybe he ought to be removed from the courtyard so he won’t interrupt this sacred ceremony.”
“Sacred?” He barked out a humorless laugh. “You have twisted everything, turned this into a disgusting charade.”
“As I said, Connolly, you do not need to be present.” She looked over her shoulder to where a few of her soldiers were waiting.
They immediately hopped off the stage and surrounded Connolly, who sank back into his chair with no shortage of grumbling and muttered threats. They backed away, glaring and snickering at Connolly's personal guards like they were challenging them to try to do anything about it.
“Thank you all for being here,” Annecy called out, smiling like there hadn’t been any awkwardness. “This has been a day long in the making, and I’m so pleased you could be here to witness this. I know my mate feels the same.”
When she turned to Stride with a radiant smile, I could almost believe she meant it. It almost looked like she was nothing but a wolf in the thrall of her fated mate, excited to wed and complete their bond. Like she was looking forward to a future of ruling the pack by his side.
One of the women I remembered from Annecy’s camp stepped up holding a length of silk in her hands.
“The hand fasting is a symbol of your bond,” the woman explained, her voice solemn. “Once I’ve bound your hands, I will invite you to recite the vows confirming your commitment to your fated connection.”
Stride stared at Annecy, his eyes half closed, his mouth hanging partly open. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was drooling.
“He doesn’t even know where he is,” Aimes growled. “I can't sit here and watch this.”
“You know what will happen,” I warned him, squeezing his hand as tightly as I dared. “You can’t take that kind of risk.”
“You cannot force him into this against his will,” Connolly warned, his voice just loud enough for Annecy to hear.
But he wasn’t shouting anymore. The fight had drained out of him since it was obvious he was outnumbered.
Typical bully.
Annecy didn’t say a word, didn’t even acknowledge him. She simply reached out and took Stride’s hand, raising his arm until it was parallel to the floor and placing her own underneath it, supporting it.
The woman wrapped the silk around their wrists, binding them together, her hands shaking slightly like she was afraid of messing up.
Triumph glittered in Annecy’s eyes. “As the cord binds us, so does the moon,” she recited in a strong voice. “And neither time nor tide, neither man nor wolf, shall ever break what fate has brought together. This, I vow.”
“She might get him to say that,” Aimes muttered, “but how is she going to convince him to give her his wolf mark?”
As it was, it seemed like Stride had forgotten how to talk. “As…as the cord binds…”
His speech was slurred, and he frowned like he was concentrating on making his mouth work. But he stumbled his way through it with Annecy softly prompting him whenever it seemed like he was going to trail off and maybe fall asleep.
Discomfort rumbled around me as the attendees started cluing in to how weird and wrong this was. Not that anybody would do anything about it.
We were all in this together, watching a train wreck in slow motion.
I held my breath as the silk was unwound, and one of the guards had to physically move Stride until he was standing behind Annecy, who faced all of us with her head held high. There was defiance in her steady gaze, almost like she was daring anyone to protest, as she lowered one strap of her dress.
“I can’t believe this. They’re doing it right here?” Aimes growled.
“What?” I hissed.
They were going to fuck on stage so that Stride could give her his wolf mark and complete the bond? Nobody needed to see that, least of all me.
“This cannot be,” Connolly whispered, but it seemed very much like it was.
No matter how much he wanted to deny it.
As the guards helped him undress, Stride lifted his head, looking out over the attendees with those eerily unfocused eyes of his. Annecy smoothed the other strap down her arm, the dress still clinging to her. She wanted everybody to witness this, to see with their own eyes what was about to take place. That her role in the pack was impenetrable.
And that was when a shift took place within Stride. Not his wolf, but his first show of awareness, and then scorn.
He raised his hand, placed two fingers into his mouth, and blew out a shrill whistle.
Chapter Eight
“What the hell is happening?” Aimes barked.
Guards swarmed the stage and surrounded the not-so-happy couple. Confusion erupted all around us, exclamations of surprise, of fear.
“What are you doing?” Annecy demanded. “Step back, all of you!” She whirled on Stride. “What did you do?”
A moment ago, Stride was a slobbering, half-conscious mess.
Now? He was exactly who he’d always been. A clearly Photoshopped man standing straight and tall, lifting his chin.
“Not you,” he said with a smile. “Never you.”
“We have to get out of here. Now!” Aimes whispered, clutching my hand and reaching for his mom in the aisle in front of us. “Let’s go!”
“I can’t!” I whispered back, looking meaningfully down at my sleeve, then at Connolly.
“Forget him,” Aimes hissed close to my ear. “This is all a trick. This might be our only chance to get out of here.”
Yes, but it might be my only chance to rid the world of a monster. My dad. He had killed so many and would likely kill so many more, all in the name of gaining more power.
I had spent days psyching myself up to do this, giving myself all the reasons why I was doing the world a favor, and now I was supposed to give up?
A few of the guests tried to leave their rows, but more of Annecy’s soldiers flooded the aisle, blocking the way.
“What are you doing?” Annecy shouted in a voice shrill with panic. “Go back to where you were! I didn’t summon you! You’re ruining this!”
“I summoned them,” Stride informed her, taking a giant backward step to put distance between them.
“No. No!” she shrieked, high-pitched, full of fury. “That isn’t true!”
“Isn’t it?” He laughed, and the sound chilled my blood.
He knew exactly what he was doing. It had all been an act.
“It looks like I had more to offer your soldiers than you do,” he said, then turned to one of the men standing in front of the stage and nodded.
I thought things were bad before? What a joke.
Because that single nod marked the moment when everything went to hell.
I watched in horror as one of the soldiers plunged a silver dagger into the chest of a heavily jeweled woman sitting nearby. She screamed, and soon that scream was met with others, male and female, as all hell broke loose and the massacre began.
There I was, hoping to slit Connolly’s throat and bleed him out before there was anything he could do to stop me. Aimes, though, was dragging both me and his mom away from the madness.
“Stop this!” Annecy screamed from the stage, but nobody was listening to her anymore.
They were all either trying to run away or being butchered. Some had already shifted. Some were mid-shift when they fell dead to the ground.
Connolly shouted orders at his men, but they were busy fighting off the soldiers who had surrounded them.
This was my chance. Connolly stood all alone, both he and his guards too distracted by the bloodshed.
I yanked away from Aimes’s grip.
“Harlow, no,” he shouted.
Continuing forward, I pulled the knife free and held it in my right hand, preparing to pull Connolly’s head back with the left and saw through to his spine if I had to.
If I was going to die here, I was going to take him with me.
Yet a shrill, horrified scream that ended abruptly paused my right hand, which was prepared to slice him open. I knew that scream. It was Sloane, her pretty cream dress speckled in blood as she stood between her attacker and Jenny. One of the guards had his hand around her throat and was lifting her into the air.
Over Jenny’s trembling shoulder, Aimes was hauling his mom behind him on a direct path toward me.
I had seconds to decide. To make a choice.
I charged forward and slipped the steak knife into Jenny’s clammy fingers. “Get out of here fast.”
She looked at me with glassy eyes, like she had no idea who I was, but she gripped the knife tightly.
Aimes took hold of my arm, his mom right behind him. “We have to move!”
He dragged me after him as a pained grunt sounded behind me. The man who’d been strangling Sloan lay in a heap while the two women made a break for the mansion.
Meanwhile, two of Connolly's guards managed to struggle free. They grabbed Connolly and ran him away from the chaos.
Stride now commanded his new army from the stage while Annecy continued screaming, denying what she saw in front of her. She wasn’t in control anymore. At some point, he had taken over.
Aimes pulled me and his mom along behind him, all of us bent at the waist, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible while we zigzagged through clusters of panicked people and wolves either trying to escape or in the process of being murdered. I stepped over the body of a woman covered in diamonds and blood, and I knew I would never forget the look of surprise frozen on her face.
A few people trampled each other, trying to climb the walls surrounding the courtyard. Broken, crumpled bodies lay at the base of the wall, ignored by those who stepped on them to try to gain the advantage of height. Shrieks pierced the air, horrifying screams, and all I could do was run.
And try not to get caught.
“Where do you think you're going?” One of Annecy’s soldiers grabbed my free arm and pulled hard enough that I felt the joint tear in my shoulder.
“Aimes!” It was all I could shout before a punch to my jaw snapped my head around and dazed me.
Aimes leapt on him, snarling, and broke his neck before grabbing me again. I was still seeing stars, the world spinning around me, so he threw me over his shoulder, took Jessa’s hand, and took off at a run, staying close to the wall.
I raised my head enough to take in what we were leaving behind. Everything was in ruins—blood-soaked, destroyed. Annecy barely avoided being crushed when the lighting rig crashed to the stage, sending sparks flying and plunging the entire courtyard into darkness.
But it wasn’t so dark that I couldn’t see Stride hop down from the stage. He whistled like before, and like magic, the soldiers who’d been busy slaughtering the guests fell in line. They shifted all at once and ran into the mansion.
Annecy stood out in her ivory dress, standing in front of the stage in shock. The day she had planned so meticulously had fallen apart around her, all because she had underestimated her fated mate.
Aimes kicked open a small door in the wall.
“What is this?” Jessa asked him, a spray of someone else’s blood flecking her face.
“I told you I could get us out of here,” he said, leading us both under the low stone arch. Then he turned back and swept me off my feet.
“I'm fine. Put me down,” I ordered.
Either he didn't believe me or he didn't hear me, too busy running through a tunnel behind his mom. I bounced along, which didn't exactly help the pain from the punch I’d taken.
By the time we were far enough from the mansion to feel safe, he set me on my feet but didn’t let me go, holding me by the waist.
“I should have known,” he panted out, looking over his shoulder.
Somewhere in the distance, wolves howled. Dozens of them.
Something stirred within me. Recognition. I wanted to go to them, to be with them. My kind.
My wolf was back. Now that we were beyond the mansion walls, she was back. I felt her inside me, and relief exploded inside me. So much so that my fingertips were smoking, just like the last time I’d escaped.
Until a stabbing ache in my back made me wince, and I doubled over, pressing my hand to the spot where the pain radiated from. When Aimes pulled my hand away, examining it, I found my palm coated in blood and a spreading patch of blood on the back of my dress.
Somewhere in the middle of everything, I’d been stabbed in the back. I was bleeding. A lot.
“Did they get you with silver?” Jessa asked me, her eyes wide.
“Does it burn?” Aimes demanded, shaking me a little when I didn’t answer. “Tell me, Harlow. Does it burn?”
Did it? I wasn't sure.
My thoughts were scattered, and I was too weak to stand.
The last thing I heard was the sound of my mate shouting my name before everything went black.
Chapter Nine
“Should have known better… I don't know what I was thinking… Never forgive myself…”
My tongue felt thick and awkward, but I managed to force it into action. “What are you talking about?”
I lifted my head and looked up at Aimes, who I realized was carrying me through the woods, clutching me tightly against his chest as he walked through almost impenetrable darkness.
At the sound of my voice, he came to a sudden stop and stared down at me, relief stark on his face. “Say something else.”
“Something else.”
His laughter was soft, his exhale soothing as it fanned over my cheeks. “I thought for sure you weren’t coming back to me.”
“How long was I out?”
