Midnight Truth (Shifter Island #4) - Leia Stone Page 0,59
cuts on my skin were already healed. Did Donovan go home or to the portal in the library? If he went home, was Sariah already gone on her shift? Where the frick was Reyna?
I clawed at the dirt, trying to climb up, but the earth was soft, and it crumbled, giving way before I was more than a foot off the ground. I fell back, splashing into a puddle of water that dripped from Julian’s hands.
“Don’t do this!” I called out to the three people looking down on me.
The girl crouched down and glared at me. The silence stretched as we continued in an epic staredown until the water reached my knees.
“If you deny your right to the house of spirit and banish yourself from this realm forever, then we’ll stop,” she offered. “By your own free will, if you sign this”—she produced a piece of paper and a pen—“and renounce your house and lineage, we’ll let you leave alive.”
Wait a minute, was this … had this entire thing been to get me to agree to leave? They were trying to scare me into signing my rights to spirit away?
Anger filled my entire being. I didn’t like blackmail or torture, and there was no way in hell I was letting her family get one ounce of my grandfather’s magic—my magic.
‘I’m coming!’ Rage’s voice suddenly boomed in my mind.
Hope filled my chest, and I grinned up at the girl. “Go to hell, Jane.”
Donovan must’ve opened the portal door to the library on Alpha Island and let Rage through.
Thank you, cousin.
The water reached my stomach, and my grin turned feral. “Fair warning, my mate is coming. He’ll kill you all if I’m not out of here in three seconds.”
The girl’s expression of confidence faltered, and her gaze darted to Julian. The papers clutched in her hand shook a little.
“Sign the papers, or you can join your mom in the Realm of the Dead!” Julian growled in response.
“Wrong answer,” Rage said, his voice coming from behind Julian, and then Kian’s son was yanked backward. Jane took off running with a screech of terror, and then a familiar face loomed overhead.
Justice crouched on the edge of the pit and reached out to me. “Why does trouble always find you, sis?”
Then he pulled me up and out of the muddy hole like I weighed ten pounds.
When my feet hit the ground, I took in the scene before me.
Honor’s jaws were latched onto Jane’s ankle. She screamed in pain when he jerked his head to the side and tore through her ligaments.
Ouch.
Noble, sweet Noble, stood over Xavier, pummeling his face with blow after blow.
Donovan hid in the bushes, watching it all in wide-eyed terror.
My gaze flicked to Rage, who was pounding on Julian’s head with enough force to kill him, and Justice left me with a wink to go to the king’s side.
Holy freaking battle zone.
“Stop!” I raised both my hands as if to do magic and promptly rolled my eyes … at myself. Nevertheless, Rage, Justice, Noble, and Honor all ceased their beatdown of the high mage heirs and looked at me.
Jane started to crawl away, leaving a trail of fresh blood, but Honor blocked her, his lips pulling back into a vicious snarl. She whimpered and collapsed back into the grass, moaning in pain.
I knew then, in that moment, that my shields would defend me to the death.
“Let them go,” I said to my shields.
Noble raised his eyebrows, and Justice frowned.
“Nai,” Rage growled, “they were going to kill you. We’re merely meting out justice.”
“Literally,” Justice said, deadpanning.
“We weren’t going to kill her. We just wanted her to sign—” Jane’s words were cut off when Honor lunged for her; she buried her face in the ground.
I ignored Jane. Killing me or making me think I was about to die really didn’t make a difference to me. “I know,” I told Rage, crossing the gap between me and my mate and putting my hand on his arm. “And they deserve it.”
Rage narrowed his gaze. “But?”
“But I want to be better than them. I want to find a way to bring peace to all our people—to all my people—both my mother’s side of high mages and my father’s side of alpha heirs and the wolves. I believe we can—”
“That’s a dream,” Justice said, shaking his head. “The high mages have lied to you at every turn.”
I nodded but held Justice’s gaze. “I’m not saying we should roll over for them. But we have to start somewhere.”