Her Wolf

Chapter Eight

Tristan’s eyes flew open. He sniffed the air and smiled. Rex had abandoned his position by the door and there was someone else watching the outside. Her. Had they really been so stupid as to let Ashlee within five feet of him? He would break down the damn door to kill the bitch.

“Hello Ashlee, my love. How nice of you to come and visit with me.” He hoped he’d kept the snarl out of his voice, but really, what did it matter? She knew she was dead.

Maybe she’d come to accept the inevitable and just finish the whole excruciating process.

It would be nice to finally make the burn that accosted his body cease.

“Tristan.” He thought he heard a sigh and a sob. Something inside him twisted at the strained sound in her voice. He pushed the feeling down, ignored it. “Rex was right; you don’t even sound like yourself anymore.” Why did everyone keep saying that? As far as he could tell, he’d never felt more himself, more alive. He was powerful and strong, finally not suppressed by meaningless traditions of morality and falsehoods.

“Blah-blah-blah, darling, smallest violin and all that.” Tristan swung his hand in the air in a dismissive gesture, annoyed that there was no one in the room to witness his dramatics. What good did it do to be so fabulous if no one was around to watch him do it?

“Listen to me, Tristan.” He heard her fingers scratch at the door. “I know you must still exist, deep down inside, even if it’s hidden in the depths of your soul, but I am leaving.”

Tristan snarled and he felt his eyes turn wolf. Excellent. He would take great pleasure in tearing out her throat. “There is nowhere you can go, Ashlee, that I will not find you. I will hunt you to the ends of the earth and through time if I have to, you belong to me. You’re mine to do with as I will.”

“I believe that is true, Tristan. I know you would always find me. You did promise me forever.” The sob returned in her voice and he thought he heard her scratch the outside of the door. Why did the sound of this infuriating woman’s tears cause his gut to clench like that? Wasn’t it enough that he was trapped in this room where invisible bees stung his body every other second? When would he finally have relief?

Kill her.

I am trying, my Alpha.

But he wasn’t trying. For some reason, he fought a battle and he didn’t know why.

Or what the end result would be—even if he won.

“I am going away so I can help you. When I come back, this will all be over. Please believe me.”

Oh, he knew she spoke the truth. This would all be over soon, but it wouldn’t be because she had gone anywhere.

“Ashlee, if you leave the Institute I will burn it to the ground and kill every person here until you return. Believe me because I say that with every fiber in my body, no one here will be safe if you leave.” He threw himself against the door that blocked him from Ashlee. A scream of rage tore from his throat when it didn’t budge.

“Excuse me, Ashlee.”

Whose voice was that? Tristan sniffed the air. Parker, one of the elite dominant guards. What was Parker doing here? The man had no business being near Ashlee. He rushed the door again.

“The Aunts have requested your presence on the observation deck.”

Ashlee coughed. Was she getting sick? Why did he care?

He heard Ashlee through the door. “The observation deck?”

The roof. Why hadn’t he ever taken the girl on a tour of the building? Oh well, no time for that now that she was soon to be dead. Too bad, really.

She needs to be eliminated.

I know, my Alpha, I’m working on it.

“I will stay and guard Prince Tristan until one of the other Royals can get here.”

Parker still called him Prince Tristan. He would work that to his favor as soon as Ashlee left. Then he’d find her, finish this, stop the pain and get back to things he enjoyed, whatever they might be.

Ashlee stepped through the doors of the observation deck and sucked in her breath. It was an arboretum. Plants of all shapes lined the walls and the ceilings. Exotic flowers with colors she had never seen before, except in dreams, grew to heights above her head.

She whirled around in a momentary bliss. The whole room felt peaceful, serene and left a smile on her face.

“Out here, darling girl.”

Ashlee walked towards the sound of Clarinda’s voice. She walked the entire length of the room until she came out the door on the other side. She stepped through it and onto the roof of the Institute. Clarinda and Adeline stood in the center of a stone circle. Ashlee opened her mouth to ask what they wanted but changed her mind. They would tell her when they were ready. Tristan’s soul had given her new insight into the best way to communicate with members of their pack.

Ashlee glanced around at the view that lay out before her. She could see the whole island, the woods followed by the abandoned cottages. The leaves on the trees ranged from purple to orange, and the cold chill told Ashlee the trees would soon lose their colors and become bare in preparation for the winter. Off in the distance, she saw two islands; both appeared uninhabited with no houses or buildings visible on them. Each island couldn’t be more than a mile off the western coast of Westervelt.

“Who owns those two islands?” Ashlee pointed to the landmasses, but the Aunts didn’t even turn around to look at where she indicated.

“We do, of course. Couldn’t have anyone living or working so close to us. It would be dangerous to be discovered.”

Adeline beckoned her and Ashlee joined them inside the stone circle. Anxiety soured her stomach. Ashlee didn’t know if it was from the upcoming trip to Mexico, or because she stood in a stone circle with two women so mystically powerful, they’d managed to resist the primal urge to follow their mates to death for three decades.

“Sister and I have been discussing this problem of the witch. Truthfully, we thought we had eliminated this spell long ago when we put the wards on the island. We didn’t take into account the spell was actually here on the island and not sent into the island from abroad. Your mother could mate with your father with no problems because they did not reside here or ever set foot here together. Tristan and you performed the mating ritual here, so Tristan succumbed.” Adeline’s eyes bore into Ashlee’s hard. The older woman cocked her head to the right as if she thought of something she needed to consider.

Ashlee nodded. “So, if I fail at this, then you will need to clear the island. No one can take their mates here.”

Clarinda shook her head. “Not an option, darling girl. Don’t you understand? No, of course you don’t, how could you? We were wrong. Terribly wrong. We assumed Kendrick had the island cursed. We cleansed the land. There is no curse here anymore.

There wasn’t last night when you mated. No, no, we mistook the spell. It was never on the place. It was on the pack. The people themselves. So when Tristan mated with you, he awakened the curse that was already on him, lying dormant all these thirty years.

“But to leave the island? No, dear. This is our home. We have been here for one hundred years. Before that, the stories say our people ran into trouble at an almost constant pace. This is the first peace we have had for a century, and we will not lose it.

To remove the spell’s presence from the island was not complicated. We checked on it this morning. The others will be safe here with their mates as soon as the spell is removed from Tristan.”

Ashlee shook her head. “Why? Why will they all not suffer as Tristan did?”

Clarinda raised an eyebrow at her. “Because he’s very important, Ashlee. Or haven’t you figured that out yet either? Tristan’s fate is hinged to the pack. Where he goes, so does everyone else. We had hoped he would realize it by now. But the boy seems to have invested in self-denial and won’t let it go. Perhaps when this is over he will finally see.”

Ashlee’s head whirled. What they had just told her, it all suddenly made sense.

Michael had never fully assumed the role of Alpha. Why hadn’t he? Tristan thought he would. But he was wrong. Tristan was Alpha. Oh dear god, Tristan was their Alpha and he was caught in a spell that would not only end his life or hers but everyone’s. He was their Alpha and she was his mate.

Only he still had no idea. She’d been resolved to save him from the moment he’d been afflicted, but now she knew she’d walk through the fires of hell to bring him back if that was what he needed. She might not have known her wolf for very long but she could feel her in every pore of her body.

Tristan was their Alpha and they would be strong again.

As long as they both didn’t perish in tragedy.

Ashlee swallowed hard. “You removed the spell from the island. Can you remove it from Tristan now?” Any chance that this could just end and she wouldn’t need to go to Mexico was one she would take.

“No. We’re sorry, dear.” Adeline’s voice was so much more serious than Clarinda.

“You are not stupid, so I suspect you already know what needs to be done to save Tristan.

The witch will have to die; that much you have felt. Then a ritual cleansing spell, a very complicated, powerful undertaking will need to be done on Tristan. Even then it will take magic, strong pack-magic with the whole pack working together to fix him. Clarinda and I never had the chance to save anyone who had succumbed to the spell. Clearing an island is one thing, saving a person already inflicted, that is another matter altogether.”

“Can you do a spell that powerful?” Ashlee’s question had both the Aunts making twittering noises that must have been laughter.

“Yes, we can. But the spell will have to be done by you. You are his mate.” Clarinda explained. “And the bad news is, you are nowhere near powerful enough to even attempt the ritual. It would kill you, and then this would all be for naught.”

“Even if we had trained you since you were ten, you’d still not be strong enough,”

Adeline finished.

A sense of dread filled Ashlee. She swallowed it away.

“I will have to be strong enough.” There was no other choice. Tristan’s face as he’d writhed on the floor in the hall, the look in his eyes when he’d told her to run, all of the images from before his change filled Ashlee’s mind. He was hers to honor and protect; she could not fail him. “I have to be.”

Adeline smiled. Ashlee took a step backwards from the hardness she saw in a gesture usually saved for happiness or reassurance. “If only it were that simple.”

“We can help you,” Clarinda, always more gentle than her sister, stated. “And we admit that it suits us too. We are tired. But it will be a great burden for you. We are of two minds as to whether you can handle it.”

“Handle it?” Ashlee suddenly wanted to be somewhere else immediately. She needed to escape. “Look, my plane leaves in six hours.”

“We know that, so we will hurry.”

Ashlee heard thunder crackle in the sky. She looked up. It had been clear and beautiful only moments earlier. Lightning struck the ground in front of her and Ashlee leapt back in terror. She turned to run for the door to the arboretum. Instead she hit the ground, hard. Her hands stung beneath her and she turned on all fours to stare at the Aunts. They were both bathed in white light.

Adeline lifted her arms and the light from her body flew from her and into Ashlee.

The power hit Ashlee hard and she screamed in agony. The food in her stomach turned over and she retched on the ground.

“Stop!” She begged, pleaded, anything to make the pain stop.

“We’re sorry, Ashlee, there is no other way. Be a good girl and take care of Tristan.”

Ashlee must have passed out then, because she heard nothing else.