Page 252 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

Nova ripped sideways, taking Nate’s throat with her.

“No!” Kierse yelled.

Maura screamed. Kierse’s knees buckled. She sank to the ground in horror as she watched Nate’s throat give way. He shifted back to his human form as he lay bleeding, the light flickering out of his eyes.

Maura crawled toward her husband, slipping in his blood as she reached for him. “No, Nate! Nate!” she wailed. “You can’t go. You can’t go!”

“Gen,” Kierse gasped as she watched one of her oldest friends bleed out. Her voice broke as she asked, “Please.”

“I can’t.” A soft sob escaped her throat. “I…I can’t heal something that severe.”

Nate went limp in Maura’s arms. “Our baby! Nate, you have to be here for our baby! You can’t leave me.” The rest of her words were lost to her hysterical tears.

“Oh God,” Kierse gasped. Graves fell to his knees, wrapping his arms around Kierse, holding her as she cried and the world went blurry at the edges.

Nova laughed as she shifted once more. “This is yourwarning,” she declared to the room. “Go up against the Men of Valor again, and you’re all dead.”

She turned and strode from the room, taking the trolls with her.

The screams turned to moans of fear and pain and terror. Ronan held Gen to his chest as he stared in horror at his alpha, dead on the concrete floor. Corey found Ethan and held him as he cried into his boyfriend’s shoulder. Kierse was numb as she watched Maura mourn. The pain was somewhere down deep, a place she had to keep hidden to survive this moment. Because she couldn’t imagine a world without Nathaniel O’Connor’s quick smile and jaunty personality in it. She couldn’t imagine life without him.

A worse realization settled over her. This was just the beginning.

A second monster war was rising.

Interlude

Lorcan was in a safehouse in Midtown.

It was a last-resort location, one of a few he and the Druids used when they had business in the city and needed to recuperate. Sometimes the rituals and spells were draining enough that it wasn’t safe to return to Brooklyn. He knew the map of every one of them in the city, and he’d sabotaged enough of the Druid’s equipment and files on his way out that Niamh wouldn’t be able to ferret him out here before he moved on.

He’d cleaned out his office, packed up the most important things he’d collected during his long reign as the leader of the Druids, and then taken a small force along with him as he’d left. They were now spread out around the city in some of the other safehouses. Not an army, but enough to make Niamh think before moving against him.

With Declan gone, he’d had to tap Maureen as his second. She was busy organizing the followers who had come with him, doing the work that he couldn’t manage alone. She was formidable, but the loss of Declan was harsh.

“All the Druids are relocated, sir,” Maureen said.

“Excellent,” Lorcan said as he closed his laptop and turned to face her.

“Has there been a civil war among our kind before?”

“Yes,” Lorcan said simply. “But not for a very longtime.”

The last schism had put him on the Oak Throne. He wasn’t going to give it up this easy. Niamh had been on his side then. Now she, too, was corrupted.

His own robin.

He clenched his fist around the wren necklace in his palm. Kierse’s necklace.

He needed to give it back to her. It was the last thing she had of her parents, but now it was one of the last things he had of her. The threads of their binding, and a necklace.

And the binding itself.

He could sense her presence, only blocks away from his current location. He could go to her at any moment.

He’d thought about it. Had stalked her through the Manhattan streets. Had known that she felt him drawing nearer, but still not close enough to prompt her attention. Several times he’d seen her turn in his direction as if she’d known precisely where he was standing. He’d willed her to face him.

Holding her powers had been a last resort, something that he’d been compelled to do by Graves’s own audacity. He’d known he could win her in time, but he couldn’t keep the bastard from killing her now. He’d done it for her own safety.

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