Page 116 of Fated Exile

Without the magical defenses, I can see right through the spell holding the facsimile together in front of me.

It isn't Delphine. There are bones beneath the tattered white outfit, a skeleton made of bits borrowed and stolen and slayed, different animals pasted together. There are garish bits of dead things sewn beneath the tattered outfit, snakeskin and rabbit feet, lizard tails and fox eyes. On top of the domed, fanged skull is a lanky black wig, and shoved into the boney eye sockets are two glass gems that reflect the sun.

Gems that look at me as the facsimile turns its bony head in my direction.

A shiver goes down my spine, and I fight the desire to step back from the thing. All around the battlefield, the vampires are disappearing into nothingness, running away and melting into the shadows. The guys approach, their hackles up, growls in their throat.

I feel Delphine's eyes on me, her presence here even if her body isn't. A voice threads through my mind, reminiscent of all my nightmares, waking and asleep.

"Did you think that you would ever be able to defeat me?"She laughs, the sound dry and crackling."Where you have no plans, I have a dozen, created while I was captured for centuries."

"What do you want?" I ask the question out loud, knowing somehow that the creature of bone, fur, flesh, and hair in front of me will be able to convey it back to therealDelphine. "Why are you coming after the pack? You're free now. Go, live your life."

"My life was taken from me!"Delphine snarls in my head, as if shewasn'tthe one who killed her own mates to secure power for herself, wasn't the one who murdered countless young girls and young women to take their life energy."I want all of it back. Everything that was taken from me. Everything that was meant to be mine. Thankfully, I've figured out how to get it."

"How?"

There's silence in the air, and inside my head. Lance's white wolf prowls around the strange bone creature, then looks out into the woods, muzzle raised as he inhales the scents on the wind. He stalks out into the darkness, searching for an enemy to pursue.

None comes.

And after a long moment, even the bones in front of us crumble into ash, falling to a grotesque pile at my feet, the tattered dress and wig settling gently on top of them.

* * *

I should be relieved.

Technically, we beat back a vampire attack and lost no lives in the process.

Certainly the warriors are relieved. I can feel it through my alpha connection with them. Roarke and I have sent them out to patrol beyond the borders, with strict instructions to kill any vampires on sight. They're jubilant—especially since our new recruits are slowly swelling their ranks, and promising them mates of their own to be bound to.

I'm not so thrilled. Neither is Roarke, based on the pensive expression narrowing his summer blue eyes as we stalk into the dining room, each of us with a drink or a snack clutched in one or both hands. I find the top shelf bottle of gin that Cat hid in one of the top cabinets, one she has to use a stepladder to reach, and pour myself a heavy gin and tonic with a twist of lime and a splash of blackberry liqueur.

If I'm going down, I'd like to do it in style.

"I don't understand what's going on." Lance grabs a beer, opens the bottle top with his bare hands, and takes a swig that drains half the alcohol from it. "That battle just then... it was ridiculous in every sense of the word. I killed over a dozen vampires yet I feel like I did nothing. And what the fuck was that thing Delilah burned?"

Finn grabs a glass, fills it with straight whiskey, and muses, "The more important question is, what did Delphine want with our fur and blood? Because as far as I can tell that's all that she got from this battle today."

"She's been feinting at us all this time." Kieran sounds frustrated, tearing into the beef jerky he's holding like he's imagining that it's flesh. He grabs a bottle of beer, pries the cap off on the edge of the table, and washes the beef down with it. "I swear I hear her laughing at us in my dreams. Whatever she wants from us, it's too complicated to achieve with a direct attack."

"Magic. There's some kind of spell she's working her way up towards." I sit down at the table and tilt the legs of my chair back, wobbling on the back two and balancing my gin and tonic in my left palm. "Another curse, if I had to guess. Maybe she wants to drain our power. Then she'll take the whole pack down, and... turn the territory into some kind of vampire haven?"

"But why?" Bastian sounds innocently confused by all this. "What does she get from having a bunch of bloodsuckers around? Other than, I guess, getting immortal friends for life."

"There has to be more to it." Lance sounds contemplative as he drains his second beer. "Delilah, your aunt Kerry said that Delphine wanted you for something when you were little, and your mother died protecting you from her by taking you to your dad for safekeeping. What could she possibly want from an infant?"

"Power." Kerry is the one who answers, slipping down the stairs in her day clothes with her hair up in a tight ponytail, her expression no-nonsense. "Power and control. It's all Delphine has ever wanted since the day she discovered there was a limit to the power she was born with, and her pack turned their backs on her for trying to gain more. She wanted Delilah's spark, but she isn't going to get it."

Worrying my lower lip between my teeth, I venture to guess aloud, "Her plans must have changed after we were mated, though. She sent that vampire to watch us, but I wonder why she would send just one unless he was only there to observe. To see what happened. And now that the curse is lifting, and the pack is gaining power... she'll have to look elsewhere to get the energy she was draining with the curse."

"Obviously she's going to use our bonds to you to drain your power, Delilah," Finn says, making it sound so matter-of-fact and obvious that I don't know why it hasn't occurred to me before. "She gathered our blood and fur so that she can get to you through us. Just like destroying the previous mate bonds through death gave her power, and killing her own mates gave her power, I'm sure something about using our bonds to her advantage will give her power too. She may not be able to use the same curse she has for centuries, but she can always build a new one."

She can. If reading those oily, darkness-filled books on curses taught me anything, it's that there isn't a limit to the terrible deeds a witch or a hybrid can do with magic. There's only a limit to how much of her soul she's willing to sell, and how far she's willing to go for power.

Delphine has already shown that she'll go as far as is possible.

Which means I have to stop her before she takes my mates' blood and fur, uses it in some terrible spell, and casts a curse I can't lift.

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