Page 230 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Her collar was almost unbearable now. She hoped it would sear through her, boil her insides, sear?—

Blood splattered her back, her leathers. She didn’t turn, didn’t care enough to see if it was her blood and guts being feasted upon as the howl of a vicious predator dying scraped every inch of her flesh. Then the screams of females. Their bones crunching, being gnawed upon until the shrills eventually died away.

Then it was silent.

Not even the stadium breathed.

A low rumbling coursed across the grass.

Silas ran a hand through his half-shaved hair, over the scar and rune marks down his neck, and cursed.

Alora’s hearing narrowed. Her touch, too. It didn’t feel like she clung to Garrik’s blood-soaked tunic and ripped apart flesh. It felt like … like bark.

So so slowly, Alora pulled away from Garrik’s neck.

But that wasn’t pale, cold skin. And the grain of the wood wasn’t blood trailing down his body.

“Wh-what?” Alora sobbed, scratching her hands down jagged bark. Shaking her head in disbelief, she stumbled backward, cushioned by something warm and soft and breathing.

Garrik wasn’t there?He wasn’t there?

Ladomyr’s dark laugh billowed over the crowd—and they laughed too. His eyes locked onto the wooden stake Erissa’s shoulder leaned against. The wooden stake where her mate was chained.

Alive. Breathing. Unconscious.

It wasn’t real?Alora snapped her gaze to Silas, who ground his teeth, and as if in answer to a question she hadn’t asked, nodded.

“How?” Alora breathed to no one. But it didn’t take long for her to realize …

Aiden. Garrik. Both hallucinations.

Ladomyr’s sick, twisted game conjured by poison the moment the females released it in her veins.

Silas had known. Had helped her again—or tried to when the thing behind her?—

A sound of strangled relief choked from her throat but was short-lived. She almost plummeted to the meadow when whatever she’d backed into moved.

Trembling as the hairs on her neck stood, Alora turned to meet the russet eyes of the golden wolf from the Cullings.

The urge to run should’ve been there, but something true and honest cloaked those eyes. Time seemed to sputter as she searched them and raised a quivering hand to brush that golden neck. Looking into the flaxen flecks, wondering who this male was before he was Made into Ladomyr’s beast. So, she asked, wondering why he had saved her life, “Who are?—”

“Alora?” A female voice. Gravelly and stern. Breezing around the wolf and over the bear mauled near their feet.

She knew that voice. Hated it once. Wanted nothing more than to sink Soulstryker into her neck as she slept.

The wolf whipped its head over its shoulder, releasing a half-hearted snarl of warning before it fractured to silence. The beast lowered its head, sniffing the air between them as it backed away. And in its wake, with the comforting smell of celosia flowers and a taste of iron on the mountain breeze …

Stood Jade.

In the center of bloodshed. Holding the severed head of the half-feline female.

“Jade,” Alora breathed. Nothing could stop her. She limped forward as Jade did until fiery red hair was buried in her neck and their arms clung around one another. “You’re alive,” Alora sob-laughed, repeating it as the hallucinated ordeal and misery of being separated was barely contained.

“Like there was any doubt.” Jade laughed, and Alora seared that sound to memory, how the sound felt against her neck.

They pulled away, wincing. Alora scanned her sister, who appeared as terrible as Alora felt, cradling a shoulder popped from its socket. Alora cringed at Jade’s busted lip, the bruises, and badly wrapped fingers, imagining them at odd angles, and the numerous talon-hewn slashes in her armor revealing deep, dripping wounds.

Jade registered her exploration and winced. “A griffin. Three females,” was all she offered, then nodded her chin to Alora’s bruising neck and face.

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