Page 148 of The Blood Queen

I didn’t see the details… only the colors. Red pooling on the gray stones. Black and white, working together. And the red smoke that floated… faded into the air. Along with the rush of silence. The end of the storm.

The end of… everything.

CHAPTER 40

Grayson

I sat on the floor, cradling Noa in my arms. She wouldn’t stop trembling. Her tears moistened my chest. Her grief was tearing into my soul.

Bedisa… however you need me, I’ll hold you here…

I had no warmth to offer her. My body was ice cold. My arms barely moved. I’d wrapped a blanket to warm her and cover my nakedness out of courtesy to Angel—although the Blackfish Alpha did not shift. The massive white wolf was a restless predator with a courageous heart. But I couldn’t see her shifting back into human form with nothing to wear but one of Amal’s dresses. Even for a Blackfish, parading around in the gown of the dead was too macabre.

I heard Mace and Fallon through the pack bond before they roared into the destroyed throne room. An army raced behind. Soldiers from every pack.

The mental warning I sent snapped them into silence. Slowly, carefully, the men spread out to line the stone walls, those closest to the blood scenting it and glancing at me. My shoulder still bled where the alpha tattoo refused to be obliterated. I’d forced the dislocated joints back into alignment when the wolf took control. The pain in Amal’s magic all but blinded him, stripping away his strength… until Noa placed her palm on my chest. Murmured her promise about this life and the next.

He had crawled, and somewhere along the light, he’d broken free from the chains that crushed him. Taken control with a ferocity I would never forget.

Nothing remained of the blood queen. Between Angel’s wolf and mine, we’d won the alpha challenge. Felt the death tremor, while the queen met a vampire’s end with the ribbon of red smoke. I didn’t need Set to confirm it, although she materialized long enough to nod before she disappeared.

These facts I conveyed through the pack bond. My voice was ragged. My chest heaved with each breath. Mace knelt at my side, placed his palm against the blood and surged healing strength. A Sentinel Falls man offered to lend me his clothes.

Fallon dropped to her knees beside me, gently taking Noa in her arms, smoothing her hair with a woman’s touch. All I wanted was to leave this hell forever. Dress and take my mate far, far away from this cursed place.

In the distance, a male’s voice rose, a mournful baritone, singing the lament for those we lost. I had no strength to join him, but I was grateful.

Dressed in clothes that did not quite fit, I carried my mate through the stone halls, past the army that collapsed, Mace said, the moment Amal died. The hybrids, the few that remained, lay lifeless, bodies sprawled, contorted… but at peace. At last.

The wintry sun glimmered in a world of white. We walked, hundreds of wolves, men, exhausted and bloody. Wounded but determined. I did not know how long the procession stretched behind me. If we looked like a vanquished army or the victors from some ancient, barbaric war.

But what consumed me was my mate. How she had soared like a bird of prey, an arrow of vengeance streaking through the sky.

A phoenix, rising from the fires that burned at her feet.

Many wolves fought the hard battles and won. Others lay dead, and yet she fought. She continued like a heartbeat in the air, like the wind and the stars that burned in the distant sky.

Fighting against fate… our destin noir.

Carrying the promise in her heart.

The words she’d once uttered to me.

We do not believe in fate. Fate believes in us, and we are never the same.

CHAPTER 41

Noa

I sat on the end of the dock outside my Azul house. Spring warmed the air. Soon, I’d hear the mating croak from the frogs hiding in the reeds. See the fireflies at dusk, flickering through the shrubs. I swung my bare feet, skimming my toes inches above the clear lake water. Beneath the surface, watergrass waved. Minnows darted. Sunlight raced across the ripples with diamond-bright sparkles.

To my left, Burn snored in his sleep, a low, comforting sound. My fingers stroked his warm pelt. The velvet of his ears. When I sensed movement, I turned my head to stare at my mom. She was sitting on the dock beside me, young, radiant. The way I pictured her on those lonely nights, when all I had were the old photographs from when I’d been five.

The first time I sensed her presence, I told myself it was a hallucination. A relapse from when I’d burned myself out. It had taken some convincing on her part before I accepted it as real.

In my mind, I said, You look happy.

I am. She swung her feet, kicking water that didn’t move. This was an illusion, or something magical, a gift on a different level of existence. Where I saw her, talked to her, felt her presence. But she was not substantial enough to affect this world. To kick water and send it splashing.

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