Page 19 of Rituals & Runes

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Kaden and Dr. Peyton led me forward down a series of white, tiled floor hallways lined with many doors. Every so often, the doctor would pause, and allow me to peek into an entryway.

What I witnessed left me gasping for air. Made my heat fade away. My heart pounded in my chest, and a heavy sadness and shock reverberated through me to the very core of my being.

Shifters laying on beds, moaning, their skin grey, their eyes yellow and sunken. Some of them coughed up fluids, others lay in a muted state, with only a machine supporting them.

I covered my chest with a trembling hand, unable to believe my own pack had committed such a heinous crime as to curse them like this.

At the end of the hall, Dr. Peyton stopped at Kaden’s command. The Alpha took the doctor’s shoulder. “Thank you. I’ll take it from here.”

Kaden’s warm, firm hand wrapped around mine and he led me into a room with a single bed next to a window. A man dressed in pajamas who resembled Kaden lay under the blanket and stared at flakes of falling snow landing on the pine tree that stood nearby. On sitting up to see who had entered, he coughed until his chest shook and he wheezed instead of breathing. Kaden handed him an inhaler which the man used then he turned toward us.

He opened his mouth but Kaden silenced him with a hand swipe through the air. “Don’t talk, Jace. This is Aila, a visitor. I was only giving her a tour of the place. Please, lay down.”

Jace simply blinked at us and a feeble smile curved up on his lips.

When we stood in the hall again, I stared down it at the rows of rooms, sick and dying people filling the building. It seemed never ending. All of them faced a cruel end.

I grasped my temples and squeezed my eyes shut. “I’ve had enough.”

Kaden led me back outside into the December, snowy air. “That man is my last living relative, besides my Uncle Dan.”

I jerked my head back in surprise. “Dan is your uncle? I thought he was your father, you look so much alike. Was Jace your brother?”

Kaden stepped closer to me, his hands grasping my hips. Through gritted teeth, he whispered, “Yes, my only brother left. The night I found you, my other brother had been taken by the curse.”

Tears sprang into my eyes. I bit my trembling upper lip to slow the pain coursing through me. I still couldn’t believe my pack had done something so evil. Frozen by the shock of what I’d seen, I stared at Kaden, reeling from the pain of him losing his family, his pack to this disease.

His grip tensed, pressing the top of the jeans into my skin. “You know what the worst part is, Aila? Once we get the curse, we can’t shift to heal ourselves. We’re stuck in our human bodies, doomed to die a slow, agonizing death.”

Gazing into his eyes, I placed my hands on top of his, caressing them as I would pet his wolves’ paws. His emerald green eyes reflected conflicted pain. The moment felt so vulnerable, intimate, him baring his soul to me, sharing that which had hurt him most.

I recalled how moment by moment, he’d gained my trust by protecting me, defending me against everyone he loved, against those he had been charged to lead and protect. He’d torn down my walls, brick by brick, bringing me closer to him, making me acutely aware of how I couldn’t live without him.

And how much my heart pined to help him.

“Kaden, I want to help. I want to end their suffering. If I could do it tonight, I would, but is there possibly any way to sacrifice myself without dying?”

He eased up his hold and he stared off into the distance over my shoulder. “Only one person knows the answer to that. I will take you to her.”

We drove again in comfortable but heavy silence. The burned images of the sick burned in my memory would haunt me for the rest of my life. I sat crossed-legged, my palm drawing circles on my thigh. Of course, I wanted someone to help me find a way out of this. Besides finding an answer, the way those men attacked us in the woods, then someone poisoning Bently, had me seriously worried.

And pissed. I would help him get to the bottom of this and fight whoever I had to when defending my mate. Kaden didn’t look at me but held his full lips in a tight line, and his brilliant green eyes focused on the twists of the road ending where a single cabin sat surrounded by holly bushes at the end of a cobblestone driveway.

Once again, he guided me until we sat on the couch of one of the pack council's women—the Seer Hailey.

Kaden explained the situation and what we were there for.

I sat cross-legged across from Hailey with Kaden at my side and took a deep breath. “Do you think there’s any way to make some sort of sacrifice without me dying?”

Hailey clasped her hands over her lap. “It’s very nice to meet you. You look exactly like what I saw in the vision, and your lily scent—“She inhaled deeply. “You are the cure for our curse. It must be your soul. It’s so big and bright, like a brilliant star in the night sky. When that gets released from your body, I’m sure it will be like healing star dust falling over the pack. In other words, it appeared quite clear that the sacrifice would have to be big and deep enough to make a distinct mark over our pack. Meaning, you would have to trade in your life for the life of many.”

I didn’t have to touch Kaden to sense the tension that suddenly gripped his body though his face remained stoic and neutral. It shouldn’t seem possible since we hadn’t claimed and mated one another, but deep down hints of his emotions seeped into me.

And a distinct message came through: he did not want me to die.

I rubbed my hand in a circle on my thigh. “I’m a vet tech. Animals can lose a significant amount of blood before dying. What if I were hooked up to an IV and had most of my blood removed to the point of almost death?”

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