Page 37 of Alpha Exile

Lance manages to pull Bastian behind me, and for that I'm grateful, because the flames are filling the cavern and scorching everything in their wake. Several seconds pass before they wink out, and my hands go cold, the power gone from them.

Ahead of us is nothing but darkness, because even the lichen couldn't survive the power of my magic going out of control.

"I could've killed you," I tell Bastian, stricken and panicked. He moves towards me, but I shake my head, holding my hands out in front of me like they're dangerous things. "Stay behind me. I don't know if it's over yet."

Kieran murmurs, "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," I answer honestly.

I take a few steps forward, eyeing my reddened hands and searching within me for signs of further fire power. But whatever that episode was, it burned through all the latent magic I'd gathered inside my chest, and it's gone now. My connection to the fire flowers is dim down here in the caverns, far from the earth where they grow.

I guess that's something to be glad for.

Though it means pursuing Delphine just got that much more dangerous, as I have one fewer weapons to use to fight her. Grabbing the hilt of Gregor's dagger, I draw it and hold it close against my side, trying to figure out our next steps.

It's Bastian who says quietly, "I don't know if we should go any further. This place is starting to give me the creeps."

"We can't leave Roarke behind," Kieran protests. "He wouldn't leave any of us."

"He wouldn't," Lance agrees, his voice a deep rumble in his broad chest, "but I don't know if we're getting any closer to finding him, or if we're just wandering blindly through the dark."

It's Finn who asks, "What should we do, Delilah? Do we keep going? Do you think it's safe, or will something like that burst of fire power happen to all of us if we go further?"

I peer into the darkness, taking deep breaths, trying to sort out my feelings from the facts.

If we keep going, I'm risking not just myself, but my mates and my pack. We might get lost down here. What's worse, if what just happened is any indication, we might lose control of our magic entirely—or in my mates' case, their wolves—and wind up in some fatal accident.

But if we turn around and give up now, Delphine will have Roarke. For better or for worse.

Clearing my throat, I ask the question I've been dreading asking, because I don't think I want the answer if there is one. "Do any of you know what she was going to do with each of you? What... what she's doing to Roarke now?"

I close my eyes, willing the answer not to be what I fear most. What's worse, I don't know what she'salreadydone to them. If she touched them—if she violated them—I'll do more than just kill her. I'll skin her alive and gut her for good measure, too.

"She was going to put the Spirit Eyes into us," Bastian says, his quiet voice cutting through my fear and dread. "Apparently the vampires put them in me... wrong. There's some way to make the possession permanent."

"She wanted to steal our bodies." Lance is looking forward, into the darkness, as horror gnaws at my stomach. "Our souls would've been eaten by the ancient spirits inside the stones she carried, and she would've made us her mates. To replace the ones she killed."

"We have to get him," I whisper, staring forward down the endless tunnels that bore into the center of the mountain's beating heart. "We can't let that happen to him."

As if on cue, I see something catch light in the darkness.

A single golden thread.

My pulse soars, and even though I should be cautious, or wait for more information, I strike forward. My mates go with me, the five of us diving deep into the darkness, searching for our missing sixth member.

We have to find him in time.

Before she steals his body and destroys his soul.

Seventeen

Bastian

There are ghosts in the darkness, their slight forms glowing with unnatural light. I can feel their eyes on me, can hear wisps of their voices in the darkness as we forge on, deeper into the mountain, further into the thick, pulsing magic.

More than once I think I hear them sayturn back.

"I don't see the thread anymore," Delilah says, stopping and looking back and forth as we come to a crossroads. "Kieran, do you know which way they went? Do you see either of them?"

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