Page 29 of Ascension of the Pack

‘My parents never did anything to you!’ I snarled.

‘They raisedyou!’ she spat back. ‘You who believe the wolves shouldbesomething! Youshould be cringing in the shadows, grateful the rest of us let you into the Other. How dare you try to rise above your station without The Order’s say so? You arenothing,Lucy Barrett, and it’s time that you recognised that.’ She didn’t even try to disguise the disgust and malice in her tone.

Steady,Esme counselled softly, lending me her calm. Her anger swam beneath the surface, but for now she’d battened down the hatches and I needed to do the same.

It was hard to wrest my emotions back under control but I needed to keep a level head. I leaned on Esme’s restraint, pulling it around me like a cloak, and with it came clarity.

I had no doubt that Geneve was trying to screw with my mind as much as I was trying to screw with hers. I’d deal with the situation with my dad later when we all got out of this situation alive and were free to help him. I refused to contemplate any other outcome, despite Ben’s dire warnings.

I looked at the plants around me and pictured Daniella in her cell. ‘And Daniella?’ I asked. ‘What the hell did she do to you? Why take her?’ Keep Geneve talking, keep her doing her bad-guy monologue, and maybe I could get the orb to work while she was ranting.

I eased my hand into the bag on my hip and touched the orb but nothing happened. I pulled my piping magic toit but again nothing happened. It felt inanimate, nothing more than cold, hard glass. If I’d risked everything for a hunk of boiled sand, I was going to be seriously pissed.

‘Daniella? Why, she did nothing to me,’ Geneve snorted. ‘Sheis none of your business.’

I frowned. ‘She’smywolf.’

The woman smiled. ‘She’ll be an ex-wolf soon. Power games are so much fun, aren’t they?’ I had no idea what she was talking about.

She smiled at my confusion. ‘You still don’t get it, do you? Poor confused Lucy. Ha! I don’t know why I ever thought you were a threat.’ Her eyes focused on my bag, and my hand inside it. ‘You can’t get it to work, can you? I let you take it to see if you’d light it up, but if you can’t then your usefulness is truly at an end. Not that you had much to start with.’

Charming. Her comments about lighting things up though had given me an idea. Geneve hoarded plants, surely the urge to protect them would be strong? If I set them on fire, maybe she would get distracted. We really needed her to be distracted, or things were going to get dire.

Terrance,I said urgently,some fire would be good! Let’s burn some of herplants!

Gladly, my Queen.

Flames leapt out from my fingers, broiling the nearest plant.

I expected her to get a hose pipe, or a bucket of water orsomethingto save her precious hoard, instead her face twisted into a mask of incandescent rage. In a blink, Geneve shifted from human to dragon. She was emerald-green, and if she hadn’t been the vile person that she was, I would have said she was beautiful.

She screeched her fury at me, making us cover our ears, then flapped her strong wings and rose effortlessly above us. Next to me, Tarkers let out a low whine; he was right – this wasn’t good. I had miscalculated. Werewolves were flammable and her breath was fiery.

But I had Terrance and I was a natural-born elemental. Even without Terrance, I might be able to absorb her flame, though for obvious reasons it wasn’t a hypothesis I wanted to test.

I could pipe her and completely control her, but I hesitated as thoughts of the guilt that had been riding me since I’d killed Rain gave me pause. I’d been questioning my humanity and my morality since I’d torn out the foul man’s trachea. Just because he was evil, didn’t mean I needed to be too. If I piped Geneve to kill her, would I descend deeper into that darkness? And would I survive if I did?

I hesitated, and that hesitation cost me everything.

Geneve gave a triumphant scream. As she opened her mouth, hot, inescapable fire roared towards me. Its heat singed my very lungs, but Esme and I braced ourselves.

Ready, Terrance?I asked.

Always,he assured me, though his tone was serious and focused and there was none of his usual jocularity. It wasn’t going to be easy to absorb all the flames rolling towards us, but we were as ready as we’d ever be.

We planted our feet akimbo and waited. First it felt like everything was happening in slow motion – then everything that followed happened far too fast.

With a strangled cry, brave, impulsive Xander leapt in front of me and took the full brunt of the flames. They struck him with a whumpf and I screamed as he burned.

Chapter 18

‘XANDER!’ I screamed his name but it was too late to do anything else, too late to save him. Just too late.

The flames hit him and he was there one moment and gone the next. His skin bubbled and blackened and his flesh melted off his bones, then even his bones crumbled and fell to the ground as ash.

All that was left of Xander – devoted, hopeful, helpful young Xander – was a pile of ash.

Agony ripped through both Esme and me. We were his alpha and we had hurt him more than Beckett Frost ever had. We had completely failed him. Then rage gripped us, an anger so fierce and total that it felt like our vision was tinged with red.

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