Filed to story: The Alphas Contract Novel by Taylor West
Being pulled over a cliff was not what I had in mind.
“Put them on.” She demands
“Who are you?”
She glances at her male friend who nods.
“I’m Indy.” She mutters
“Brax. You’re a Witch?”
“Half. I prefer my Wolf half. I’m useless at most of the other stuff.”
“Do you know Silas?” I ask
She pauses to stare at me. Her golden eyes like saucers. “Yes. You know Silas?”
“Yes. He is why I’m here.”
A smile spreads across her face. “Is he okay? Is he safe? Has he got away from Thalia? He must have, she is here and he is…”
*Somewhere else.” I mutter
“But he is okay?”
“You wanted him to get away?” I press
She bobs her head. “This place, it’s cursed. Do you know how long I have been waiting for an outsider to see it for what it is? You are the first in a decade.”
The guy nods in agreement
“You will have to excuse my friend. He had his tongue ripped out by Thalia a few years back. He goes by the name Orion but he can’t speak. He links me” She gives him a smile and he smiles back.
“If you dislike it here. Why haven’t you left?” I quiz
“The river. We can’t get past it.”
“What are you talking about? I was just in it.”
“And you are lucky.” She folds her arms up and sits on a rock. “Thalia comes and goes as she pleases, just like Serkan. They can cross it no problem, but anyone else.” She shakes her head. “We will meet death unless we have permission. You are the first that has tried to get across and the only one that has been successful. I don’t know how, but you are lucky and even luckier that I came out when I did. That river, it speeds up at night. The water becomes your enemy. Going faster and faste until it’s a blur. Look if you don’t believe me.”
I nod my head glancing at the water, “I see that.”
“Can you help us?” She asks. “Can you help us get away from this place?”
“If you tell me what this place is and how I can get in. I might consider it.”
“Why would you want to get in?” She frowns in confusion. “I mean Thalia is why you are here, right? But you can just leave. Just walk away.” She lowers her hood. “People don’t get to leave here. Silas…. this was a chance for him, though he didn’t know it and I am so happy he is alive.”
“I came to get Silas’s son.”
Orion straightens his spine as Indy looks at him, her eyebrows knitting together. “It didn’t break.”
“Are you talking about her spell?” I ask
She nods her head at me. “There is no easy way to say this. Silas doesn’t have a son. He never has.”
I drop the shorts before I finish pulling them on. “What are you talking about?”
She closes her eyes as I roll mine and yank the shorts up.
*What do you mean Silas doesn’t have a son? He has twins, one died.”
“No. It’s a spell. I’ve been trying to break it for a few years. To bring him back. She has made him see things that just aren’t there.”
“Scars?”
She bobs her head.
“A house fire, the death of a child?”
“Yes. All of it.” She looks heartbroken and her soul flickers like mad as she talks about him.
*Shit. She’s not his mate. You are.”
A single tear trickles down her face as she nods and Orion pulls her in for a hug.
“If they were sleeping together, it would have killed you.”
Indy shakes her head, “Serkan didn’t like that Silas and I were fated and wanted it stopped. Everything about his life with her is in his head, none of it is real. She doesn’t let him touch her. She just needs him for something. I don’t know what. I do know that he didn’t return after the latest run. I heard rumours that he was going after someone special, but I didn’t know who. The delay in him returning has sent Thalia into overdrive. She is angry. More people are getting hurt each day. I thought if he was away, it would break the spell. He would remember his life with me.”
“Has she hurt you?” I press
“Not yet, but I know it’s coming. I just need to get across that river, find Silas and we can be free.”
“What about Serkan?” Not a single word out of her mouth was a lie. She is the most truthful person that I have ever come across.
“He is more of a nut job than Thalia. The two of them together. No one inside those gates can think for themselves.”
“Accept you and Orion?”
“I figured out how to put a protection spell on us when things started changing. It’s about the only Witchy thing I have managed. We just have to play along when we are inside, that’s all.”
“When did things start changing?”
“Maybe three ish years ago. Everything has always been hidden for as long as I can remember, but things started going south in the last few years. Something changed and I don’t know what it is.”
I frown as I guess that it would have been around the time Neah got her abilities unbound. “Well you are here, so how did you get out?”
Orion points down to the back of the cave.
*There is a tunnel. Orion and I have been working on it for some time.”
“And this takes you inside the walls?” I ask, looking down into the pitch blackness. Even with my heightened sight, not everything was clear
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
She nods and makes her way into the darkness. She pulls something from her back pocket. As the flame appears, I see that it’s a cigarette lighter. She holds the flame over a torch. The ball of fire quickly igniting.
“I know you won’t tell me anything, but please can you just tell me if he is okay.” Her golden eyes plead with me.
“He is okay.” I confirm and she lets out a sigh of relief. “Though I don’t know how he is going to handle the news that his children never existed. But I will tell you this, he has mentioned you. Not by name, he referred to you as a teenager that won’t accept their Witch side.”
She gives me a small smile and her soul lights up again. “He never did like how I shut away one side of me. But I am not a teenager. I’m twenty five.”
*Speaking of you means you are in his head somewhere even if you are buried deep below the surface.”
“Do you really think so?”
I nod. “Now I need you to help me knock the wicked witch off of her perch.”
Neah
It’s always dark. No matter how much I try, there is not even a slither of light. I want to move, but I can’t.
Everything hurts yet I can’t complain to anyone but Nyx. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with us either, and apart from calling me an incubator, she is no help.
I hear the others as they come to visit me. Whispers rattling around the room. Some were scared about the state am in, others were hard to read.
Dane is and will always be my favourite. His voice is calming, his presence momentarily takes away my pain. He had only brought the boys to see me once. I didn’t blame him, I probably looked like I was dead.
I knew it had to be something to do with my pregnancy. I heard what Mallory told Dane. I wondered if she was right. Maybe the years of abuse hadn’t allowed me to develop properly. Or maybe it really was Hybrids that I was carrying.
Twin girls that hovered somewhere in between a Lycan and a Wolf, but then that were true, why were other half breeds not considered Hybrids?
Lying in the darkness had questions fading in and out of my mind. I was alive yet somehow I am trapped in my own body.
‘It could be worse.’ Nyx sighs. ‘We could be dead.”