what had happened when both of them had died on us had been a struggle, but between Rini, Damien, Ryder, and Ciarán, we had been able to piece everything together.
Risa had turned on us, unable to accept the demise of Faction Opal and the new order of the rebellion, and had searched out fringe members of the Council’s team. When she had found forward scouts watching our movements, she had struck a deal that worked for her and utilized our mating ceremony, knowing we had wanted the privacy of being far from the hotel for our special day.
Stupid. So damn foolish. We’d been so blinded by our certainty of Stepanov needing his showboating, needing his glory, that we hadn’t worried about dissent from other sources, let alone within our own walls. In a way, the scouts and their friends were lucky we had killed them ourselves—Stepanov would have tortured them for an eternity when he found out they had attempted to go behind his back and destroy the intricate war he had plotted to grandstand in front of his followers.
There was no doubt in my mind he planned to try and kill Nix himself, wanting the glory and bragging rights of destroying a phoenix when he returned home the victor. That someone else had attempted to sabotage his efforts was easily a death sentence. He and the other council members had killed for less.
Nix had literally drained herself to save Molly after Risa had butchered her in the snow, but I wondered if she would have done it if she had known what the costs were.
What none of them had realized was that when Molly was wounded, Nix had obtained a wound of her own. While not mortal in her human form, the injury to her abdomen would have been significant in a form the size of her Phoenix. When she shifted and laid herself across Molly’s chest, her power clinging to Molly’s last flicker of life, her blood had literally poured from her own wound and into Molly’s. We had realized her blood had power, even more so in her alter’s form, but none of us had ever risked an amount as large as what she had transferred into my sister.
When combined with the amount of magic she had used, it appeared she had somehow caught my sister’s soul before it could leave her body and forced it to resurrect the same way she would have resurrected, though she hadn’t been strong enough to heal Molly’s body and had needed Ryder’s intervention.
I curled my hand into a fist, breathing deeply through the pain that rode me, through the anger that encouraged me to slam my fists into the walls and demolish the world around me. But my sister slept behind the door, and I couldn’t release that rage here no matter how much my mind begged for the release.
I had been too slow. Too focused on other threats. Too focused on my own damn need to claim Nix as my own. Molly had stepped before a blade of ice meant for my mate, and I had nearly lost her as well. How many more were we going to lose?
I swallowed hard against the bile that rose in my throat. Even though we had reassured Joshua that Nix would return to us, that we simply had to care for her body, the fear had remained, a specter in the backs of our souls, tugging at our bond with her.
None of us knew how many times she could truly regenerate—even Gaspard had had no idea. It wasn’t as though it was something that had ever been studied, and Nix’s powers had already been pushed to the limit before she had ever moved to Alaska and become aware of what she was. Could we really promise each other she would return every time we failed at our duties as her mates?
She had six of us. Six!
Six males who failed her on the day we’d been prepared to swear to protect her for eternity. I bit the inside of my mouth, the tang of copper flooding my tongue as I fought the urge to scream. My baby sister had been the one to step between her and a blade while the rest of us were distracted. Even then I’d failed to notice she had been injured, failed to get Ryder to her quickly, failed to convince her to lower the barrier so Ryder could heal her before she gave too much. Failed, failed,