soon. I feel very cold even though there is a fire in my room. My eyes get bigger as the weirdest thing happens; the fire jumps right inside me, but it doesn’t hurt. Instead it makes the pain go away and whispers for me to let my life go. So I do. I just let myself float away, my wolf friend whining sadly as I let her go. The fire spirit stops her, holding onto her, and I know in my heart, my wolf’s spirit is a gift she can only give me once.
Fire settles in my soul and she demands a life for a life. Looking around from this strange land of in-between, I find the energy of the evil man who took my life. Fire seems pleased. I watch, but I am not scared as she rips the wolf spirit from him, and bids him return to the Mother Wolf.
That night, Fire and I made Doherty human…
I lifted my gaze to Doherty’s, I’d never realised it was him.
“You didn’t die as you should have. But now you will, and I will take that fire from your soul and wield it as my own. You, dear girl, are going to make me immortal.”
“No. I'm not.”
He sneered as I struggled to my feet. “Ah, but you have no choi…”
“Ember!” Zander yelled. A blur of movement and I snapped my hand out catching the blade he threw in my direction. “Connor!” he shouted, his arm blurring with movement.
I couldn’t see what he had thrown Connor; I was already moving. The guards weren’t ready for the speed of our attack. In unison, Zander and I shoved our blades in through the weak section of their armour beneath their right ear. I grunted and twisted the knife, going down with my victim as he struggled and his knees collapsed.
This hadn’t exactly been the plan Zander and I had come up with, but it would still work. I glanced at Connor, hoping he would forgive me for hatching my own plan with Zander, but most of all for killing Reed...
Chapter 26
Connor
* * *
I caught the handle of the blade Zander threw my way. His body moved fluidly alongside Ember’s. It was hard to concentrate on my task as worry for her surfaced, but they had the guards covered; all I had to do was end Doherty and we had a chance of getting out of this room.
Reed’s death was a vicious pain in my chest. I bellowed as my heart was torn apart, my brother—gone. My breath exploded in ragged pants. And Ember… I could see she believed it was her fault, but I knew better. The warden had killed him, not Ember, no matter what she believed.
The knife weighed a ton in my grasp. Ember was our way into the science wing. But first… I spun on my heel...this fucker had ruined so many lives.
“No!” yelled Doherty, his eyes wide. He didn’t stand a chance against me. He’d revealed his weakness. He was human. I didn’t know how Ember had done it, how her gift, her fire, worked, but he blamed her for losing his wolf. Not only that, he truly believed killing Ember would make him immortal, which explained his obsession. A pained grunt left his mouth as I thrust the knife right through his perfect fucking designer suit and between his ribs. I pulled it out and gave freedom to all my pent up rage, stabbing the bastard’s chest over and over until his bloodied corpse finally sagged. I stepped back, letting it fall in a heap to the floor. That yellow metal disk he had threatened Ember with glowed as it rolled away across the floor and under a chair.
Ignoring the blood coating my hands and arms, I searched for my soulmate. I had hoped my escape plan would be in motion before the start of the final, but I couldn’t get to Drake to ask what had gone wrong...not yet. Zander and I had planned on getting to Ember before they needed to fight. I glanced down at my brother’s body. I’d failed them both.
Gunshots reverberated through the air and screams echoed in the balcony. I snarled with satisfaction. Thank the Mother! The escape was in motion, and unless security figured out where the new programming for the bots was coming from, there was no stopping it.
Outside the viewing room a bot hovered. It fired into the balcony while shedding its mini bots. In turn, those mini bots zeroed