Page 254 of A Warrior's Fate

Isla started, the movement of her hands making her mother wince. She apologized before asking, “What?”

“She wants him,” Apolla said, just over a whisper. “She needs him to break it.”

“Break what?”

Apolla gave a sudden cry, and Isla’s hand slipped as her mother struggled to keep her own in place. Her skin became an impossibly paler shade.

She wasn’t healing fast enough.

Isla met Apolla’s eyes, no longer the blue they shared, but that dark hue. She’d been changed by whatever the witch had done.

“What do I do?” Isla said through a choked breath, and in an instant, she’d become a child again, looking to her mother for help. She suddenly became all too aware of the scent of blood and death, the past and the imminent. She took stock of the wound, of their surroundings. If she could get her above to a healer…but if she moved her too much, she’d hurt more. Lose too much blood. “I—I can’t move you.” She was shaking. She couldn’t get her hands to stop damn shaking.

Or was that her mother? She was getting colder. Weaker.

Focus.

Apolla’s eyes were closing.

“Mom.” Isla’s voice was frantic. “Mom!”

Apolla slumped against the rock wall, eyes shut, but Isla forced herself to remain calm, to hone in on her heart. The beat was steady but sluggish. She checked the wound beneath her bloodied hands. It was healing. But slowly. Too slow.

Isla looked around. The path they’d come in was a way up, but even getting her through the tunnels here would be difficult. She’d need to shift. She wouldn’t be strong enough, fast enough in her human form to carry her while she was unconscious.

And she needed help. Now. Quickly.

Isla leaped back into their smaller passage, found her wolf, and ran.

Her blood was screaming in her ears as she moved as fast as her paws would take her. She alternated between her wolf and human forms with expert precision as the pass’s mouth narrowed and widened. All thought had eddied away besides the ten years lost, and so much rage that she could scream. They hadn’t found her. They’d stopped looking. And she’d been alive. Sebastian and her father were right there above them. When they found out…

Isla had been so lost in thought and had the scent of acrid blood so stained on her senses that she missed the metallic stench of one more familiar. Her paws had trekked through something warm and wet and sticky before they collided with something firm. She regained her footing and glanced down.

Renoir.

Horrified, she studied the guard bled out on the ground, deep gashes in his stomach.

From claws.

Isla turned. There was a larger pool of blood further down, trailing up to where she stood. Where he’d died.

He’d tried to get out. To get away. From what? From who?

All she felt was a sharpness and a searing pain before she got the answer.

CHAPTER 54

Isla was watching Kai.

It took a moment for her to register it through the ringing in her ears and the initial fuzziness in her vision, but she was staring down into the arena, illuminated by the moon and raging firelight, filled with its spectators all focused on the center stone. She lifted onto her elbow where she’d been laying on her side and touched her hand to the rock in front of her, outlining one of the few small windows peering in. Along the phases of the moon, deep red painted the floor as two wolves circled each other. One gray with lightless eyes, and the other flaring crimson with a coat of shadow black; both matted with blood.

Isla gasped as the gray one lunged, sharp canines bared as it went for the throat of his opponent.

“Kai.” Her throat was raw. She spoke as if he could hear her.

There was a harsh tugging at the bond, a slamming against that mental wall, as Kai maneuvered out of Brax’s way. Then they became a blur as they battled, a melee of claws and teeth. Equal in size, equally quick. That shouldn’t have been happening. This fight shouldn’t have been going this long. Brax was a rogue. Kai was an alpha.

Something must’ve been wrong. Something he was trying to tell her.

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