Filed to story: Fated To The Alpha Novel (Alpha Ezra & Katya) >>
Eziah also stared at Casen, and I had no idea what to think of anything anymore. I just wanted this s**t over so I could go home to my mates. However, I wasn’t sure the sickly feeling in my stomach was caused by all this drama, or Kyan, maybe a mix of both. Yet as I shifted back, the first thing I did was double over and threw up next to the tree. I clutched my stomach as pain rippled through me.
“Jonah?” Eziah called out to me, and I shook my head and gasped. I felt like something was crushing my chest, and I found it difficult to breathe.
“I will take you to her?” The man said. Casen shoved him forward with a snarl. The man got to his feet, and those with him shifted back. I tried to catch my breath. Everything suddenly ached. Adulling throb resided behind my eyes, and I staggered, clutching a nearby tree trunk.
“Can your friend walk?” the leader said. I waved him off and forced myself upright. Turning, vertigo washed over, and I suddenly saw double before everything went black.
**************
Kyan POV
A few hours earlier,
Marabella struggled to contain the shadows. We had created a dome shield so they couldn’t escape while I tried to coach her to pull them back in. Her hands glowed a smokey gray as the shadows engulfed her.
“Just draw on it,” I told her, walking around the dome of my magic to see her better through the transparent shield I created. “Kyan, I can’t,” she cried as frustration set in.
“You did it before. Just focus on them and try to pull them back, feel for their energy and will it to draw toward you,” Sweat beaded on her forehead as she concentrated. The dome surrounding her filling with mystical mist. “Kyan!” She shrieked as panic set in before she unleashed them completely.
“Ella, I need you to calm down. Don’t panic, just breathe,” I told her. Kaif’s unease settled over me as we watched the shield obscure her and go completely dark. Black as coal when I heard her cough.
“Ella?” I called to her, all I got was a shuddering rasp of a response. Kaif shoved forward with me, reinforcing the shield. It shudders as the darkness swirling inside tried to break out, her own power mingling with it, and she made the same choking noise.
“Kyan, this shield won’t hold much longer,” Kaif warned when pain sliced through my neck; Kaif quivered inside me as the bond to her faltered. “Ella?” I rasped out. Kaif, in a panic, dropped the shield.
“Kaif, no,” I screamed as the shadows burst free. Kaif recognized his mistake threw my hands out, trying to pull them, and I let go of control, letting him take over. His hands glowed a silvery blue as he tried to place the surrounding shield again. It was like grasping air in your hand, near impossible as they swirled like a tornado above.
Marabella gasps, and he turns his head toward her to see her clutching her neck. As if she had been choked. She crawled to her hands and knees, and her eyes blazed white for a second.
“She hasn’t let go of them,” I murmur to Kaif, and we glanced up. The shadows were swirling above but not unleashing. Marabella raised her hand, and I could see the black tendrils around her throat from where the shadows had tried to k**l her.
Marabella gritted her teeth before she screamed, trying to draw them back and thunder and lightning suddenly cracked across the sky. A storm came out of nowhere, and the winds picked up, blowing her hair across her face.
“They’re fighting her,” Kaif whispered.
“What?”
“The shadows. They don’t want to go back to her, so they are fighting to break free of her,”
“You are making no sense,” I tell him as I watch, horrified. “They belong to the Octavian bloodline Kyan, now out they want to go home,”
“But?” He glanced at Marabella when she fell backward as if the rope to her shadows suddenly snapped or gave way. Kaif looked up to see them suddenly whisking with alarming speed directly at her. It all happened so fast, and I screamed in h****r as they flew toward her just as she sat up.
She shakes her head, her eyes returning to normal, and Kaif moved as the shadows rushed toward her. He tossed himself in front of her, and he tensed as they smashed into him. So cold and loud. I could hear the d***g screams of those trapped there writhe through my soul. Icy cold, and Kaif jolted as he took it, absorbed it. He gasped and stumbled forward, and I peered out his eyes to see Marabella cup her mouth with her hand as he steadied himself on his feet.
“Thank g*d,” I murmured to Kaif, but I got no answer. I pushed on the barrier separating us, but he seem locked in place; the barrier was rock solid.
“Kaif, give me back control,” I said, pushing on it when his back arched before he collapsed. Darkness swallowed me, and yet I could hear my own heart beating, the sound hollow before flickers of light. No memory flashed through me, only they weren’t mine. The shadows were angry, and at first, I didn’t understand what was happening as I watched. I was a bystander.
A woman stood by a cradle humming when the door opened, and I looked over at it. I recognized this room. It was one upstairs in the house only different, like I was transported back in time. Their clothes were not suited to this time period either. The woman was wearing a puffy dress with shoulder pads, her hair curled down her back. Whereas the man had brown pants and a white shirt, and suspenders.
The man says something to her, but the woman doesn’t turn. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I could hear the tune she hummed, which I thought was peculiar. Her voice clear, rings loudly on echo.
“Do you know what creates a monster?” She murmurs as she leans into the cradle. I looked at the man, who seemed confused.
“Another monster,” she says before turning with the baby in her arms. Little black tufts of hair showed on his little head.
“Monsters create Monsters, Kaif. I won’t let you make him one,” she whispers, looking down at the baby in her arms. She brushes her finger down his nose and black tentacles rush under her skin, making it ripple.
“Mummy won’t let him ruin you, isn’t that right sweet boy?” she says, her lips turning up in a snarl. She raised him above her head, and the man I now knew was an ancestor, one that contained Kaif, rushed forward, hands out. His eyes were on the baby in her arms.
“I won’t let you turn him against me. I won’t allow him to be a monster,” she sneered, her eyes turning black. The man shifts, and Kaif rushed forward just as she went to throw the baby. Kaif’s hand snaked out just in time to grab the bundle of fabric while his fist connected with the side of her head. He clutched the baby to him while the woman went sprawling before smashing her head on the corner of the dresser.
I watched as he soothed the screaming baby, and my eyes moved to the woman. Blood started pooling around her and across the floor. Kaif looked down as the trail reached his feet. He jerked, startled, before glancing over his shoulder to see her bleeding on the floor. He appeared to scream, before placing the baby in the cradle and rushing toward her.
Clutching her and trying to wake her. Her body was floppy in his arms. The memory fizzles, and I am tossed into another one and another, the same cycle repeating as I watched them all try to k**l his child. Then, those he didn’t k**l tried again and again until he was forced to k**l them.
I closed my eyes, unable to witness the horrors each woman tried to do to their own young as the shadows overtook them all. Changing them and destroying them. I couldn’t take it, feeling sick to my stomach when Kaif growled menacingly, and I opened my eyes to see Kaif was now standing. He growls at Marabella, who looks at him horrified.
“Kaif?” she whispers, but he wasn’t seeing her. He was seeing someone else. His last mate, as she tried to d***n their 4-year-old son in the bath, thought he broke the curse with her. He had marked her the night before his burning anger vibrated through him, and I tried to shove through the barrier.
Screamed to him, it wasn’t her. Marabella scrambled backward on her hands and feet, trying to escape him. Kaif slashed the air, narrowly missing her face with his claws, and she shrieked before scrambling to her feet.
He growled before giving chase as she shifted. My surroundings blurred as she raced toward the forest, everything turning into a blur as Kaif chased her. Kora darted among the trees, and a sense of
Deja vu washed over me.
The trees zipped by in a blur as we chased her. Kora darted between the tombstones and along the track, trying to remain on the narrow path, but Kaif was faster, and she diverted away from it. Marabella was forced to flee into the thick brush, but it was no good as Kaif lunged forward. Her loud scream infuriated her more and Kaif commanded her to shift back.
“Shift,” he yelled into her face as Kora squirmed in his arms, trying to break free. Her body tensed in his arms. Her body shudders and her ribs crack as he squeezes while she tries to fight his command.
Eventually her bones snap, and she is forced to shift in his arms.
His grip never lessens and Mara’s scream rattling off words that would disable me if we’re used on just me, but a monster like Kaif. One that held the power he has, and filled with rage he felt, they had no effect. The shadows of our ancestors weren’t the Octavian bloodline at all but his mate’s ghostly shadows. Now I know why they refused to return to her. They knew he would protect her, and instead of k*****g their offspring, they wanted to k**l the source, which was Mara. His mates wanted revenge, and using Kaif, they would get it. Ending the bloodlines, ending our mate.
Kaif laughs and squeezes her. She thrashes, gasping while she tries to break free. I scream, shoving forward as he aims to rip out her throat to k**l her.
“Kaif No!” I screamed before smashing my hands against the barrier that separated us. He jolts. His teeth, missing their mark, and instead of k*****g her, he marks her. His teeth slashed and tore through not only her neck but also her chest and shoulder blade. She screams loudly, and blood runs down her body before she goes limp in his arms just as I smashed through the barrier.
Her head falls forward. I scoop her. Marabella’s body is all floppy, and I notice I am in Kaif’s body, not my own. I sniff her, and her head rolls back in his furry arms. Blood drenched her, and her marking looked more like a bear had mauled her. Blood oozed out of her, dripping off our arms, and the color drained from her face. Her heart rate slowed to a deadly beat as I looked on, horrified at what he had done.
I shake her, but she doesn’t wake when I notice the markings around her neck, thick lines etched into her skin from the shadows, and I look around when I feel Kaif surge to life and stir within me. “What have I done?” he gasps as the shadows evaporate and fizzle. An icy feeling seeps out of me and down our arms, forcing me to shift back into my human form. I grit my teeth, not wanting to drop her as the shadows leave me and seep back into her.
“The ruins! Get her to the ruins,” Kaif screams at me. I look up the hill before I take off running.
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New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
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