Page 18 of Celestial Alphas

“We are never over. We began in the stars, and we never end. We are endless starlight,” he vows, letting me drop to the ground. He crouches down. “You’re dying again. I felt it every time.”

I flinch. Every time? I know the exact number of times I’ve died. I’ve counted, and it’s a lot. If he was feeling them with me…no wonder his Nexus is crazy. Mine is too. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes bleed back to blue until Finnegan is staring at me, his chest moving fast. “What have I fucking told you about fighting alone? We are in this together, no more working alone, Sun! Where the fuck does it get you?” He cups my face. “My Nexus could have killed you. It’s not sane!” He breathes heavily. “I’m sorry for everything, but if this is to punish me, fucking hell, I deserve it but never you. Don’t you dare risk yourself for me and don’t come near my Nexus when I’m like that.”

“He doesn’t want me dead,” I mutter. “And we have a lot in common.”

He shakes his head like I’m mad. I likely am. Finnegan helps me stand and I wince from moving. “I’m so fucking mad at you, but first, I’m getting you back to Starlight and a healer. Then I’m shouting at you for thinking you have to do this all alone when you don’t anymore. I’m yours, for fuck’s sake, and we do this together. Sun?—”

I scream as three things slice into my back and I taste my blood in my mouth. My eyes widen as I realise they went deep, and I turn around, watching as Hollis grabs the Vian that attacked me, using his telekinetic powers to snap his neck, and drops him to the ground. Finnegan’s roar echoes in my ear as time slows down around me, as the pain swamps my senses, and I barely feel Finnegan catch me as I stumble into his arms. MoreVian come out of the burning forest and straight into their path. Annie runs around them as Onyx, Hollis and Alek take out the Vian, but three more corner her. No one is close enough.

No one can stop them from touching her. I scream for her as I climb to my feet to speed over with my powers, ripping myself from Finnegan. Even as drained as I feel, I can do it. I barely get halfway before I collapse, hearing Finnegan shouting after me. Suddenly, Kosma jumps out of nowhere and blocks her, throwing himself in front like a wall, and the Vian don’t hesitate. The second they lay their hands on him, two on his arms and one on his neck, they start draining him. Annie screams in pain. The pain of losing a mate.

Hollis throws three Vian into the air, turning to see Annie and picking Annie up with his powers and flinging her across the ground, straight towards me. But he’s not quick enough to stop Kosma from being killed. He’s dead within a minute. Alek shoots all three of them and goes to Kosma, looking down and then at me. He shakes his head to tell me he is dead, but I know. Annie’s scream of pure pain is haunting, deafening, and I can’t do anything but hold her in the dirt and ash as she loses her only mate.

I barely notice myself falling backwards, but I see Alek running to me. I see only him and how scared he is. He actually cares about me. I’ve died so, so many times, but never has anyone looked at me like they can’t lose me. Not until him. Not until now—just before I pass out and pray to the Gods I don’t die in front of them.

Chapter

Nine

ALEKSANDER

“She’s dead.”

My bloodstained boots dig into the mud of the forest floor as I feel her die in my arms. Gwenieve, my brilliant and beautiful mate, her heart just stopped. The mate bond, something that has been like an electrical wire, alive and buzzing in my chest from the moment she rejected me, stills for the first time. Over the years, it was faint and sometimes flickered, but it’s grown stronger since she was brought back to Starlight. Now, it goes cold and dead, just like her. I’ve lost my mate. I’ve lost the only woman in the world born for me. I look down at her, the paleness of her skin as I hold her in my arms, in a blue dress the very colour of the night sky. Her warm blood is pouring through my fingers as I hold her close to me, and time freezes.

“NO!” My roar echoes off the trees, off the very stars who dare to try to take her back. I’ve known what it’s like to be scared, but nothing compares to the pure terror I feel as I realise that she isn’t breathing and it’s not a nightmare. It’s real. Carefully, I put her down on the ground, and I start resuscitating her. Finnegan stands over my shoulder, silent but shaking. Onyx and Hollis are silent, both watching, too, but I can’t focus on them.Annie’s cries, for both Gwen and her mate, fill the silence of the forest as I pump her heart, as I blow into her mouth and into her lungs to get her to fucking breathe. “No, you don’t get to leave us! Wake up!” I carry on, even when time ticks on and it feels hopeless. “Have my life, my Nexus, anything! Wake up and tell me you hate me. Tell me to fuck off and kiss me like I’m nothing to you. I’ll take anything, but open those pretty eyes, Gwen. WAKE UP!”

Sweat pours down my face, and I don’t know if it’s sweat or tears that drop onto my hands as I finally stop. She’s gone. She’s actually dead. Finn shoves me to the side and continues after me. “Don’t fucking stop, we will get her back!”

“Wait!” Onyx yanks Finnegan back off her, and he shoves Onyx, who growls right back at him. If we start fighting between each other again, it’s a dishonour to her. Our mate brought us together, and we have fucked up so much of our relationship with her from the moment we met, and this is just making it worse. We should know better; we can be better, and I want to prove that to her. I wanted to, but now she is gone, and everything is gone right alongside her. I was fooling myself that I wasn’t half in love with her the second she sat down at the dinner table with a look of pure hate on her face, even in the room of all the mates she rejected. It was brave, brilliant and sexy and everything I wanted in a woman. In a mate. My Nexus was addicted from the beginning too.

Onyx cocks his head to the side and looks at her. “Just wait. She told me something at the trial, and I don’t think she is really gone.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Hollis questions.

“Like you give a fuck. Why are you even here?” Finnegan shouts at Hollis. “I’m surprised you’re not fucking cheering. Isn’t this what you wanted?”

I stare at her body, her broken and fragile body on the forest floor. I never got to tell her everything. I never got to fix anything between us, and we didn’t get a chance. She died thinking that I thought she was a monster, but I think she’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. She’s the strongest, that’s for damn sure. I lean down on my knees and kiss her forehead, stroking her hair to the side.

The air stills in an unnatural way that makes my skin crawl. The ground turns grey around Gwen, everything dying, colour draining into nothing. It’s like she is the beginning of a power grid that spreads around us in a circle, spreading wide. It goes around my knees, never touching me, and I watch in silence as a star bursts to life in the centre of her chest, right under her skin. It’s a dark five-pointed star, and it glows brighter and brighter until I have to look away, right before disappearing, and she gasps. Gwen sits up, gasping for air, and when I look, it’s not all Gwen. It’s her Nexus.

“How the fuck?” Hollis’s shocked shout is pretty much what we are all thinking. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like her. She can’t die. Or she can die, but she comes back. It’s why she wasn’t scared when she was hurt, because she knew she and her Nexus couldn’t die anyway. The trial, all of it, was nothing to her. How many times has she died? I want—need—to know everything about her and how this miracle is possible.

Her skin is void of all colour and light, drained of all warmth and everything that made her alive. Her grey, empty of warmth, eyes meet mine, and it hurts to hold her gaze for more than a second. She reaches up, digging her nails into my chest, inches away from my heart. I flinch from the pain, feeling my blood spread down my chest and her nails.“Bow.”My Nexus rarely gives me an order, and I don’t hesitate before listening to him. I bow my head, and she retracts her nails. The air is so cold as I speak. “I’m sorry. We won’t let her down again. We fucked up.”

Her Nexus looks at Finnegan next and then to Onyx before turning to Hollis. She snarls at him, and he is smart enough to look worried she might attack him. “Can we have Gwen back?” I ask. I thought she might refuse, but she turns to me, leans up, and kisses my cheek. Her lips feel like ice, pressing against me, right before she shifts back. Gwen passes out in my arms, and I catch her, picking her up as I stand. Finnegan checks her pulse, and Hollis heads for Annie, who is plastered to a nearby tree, and she looks scared as she asks, “Is she okay?”

“Yes,” Onyx answers. “I will get your mate’s body to return to his family in Starlight. It’s your choice what we tell them about what really happened.”

Annie snuffles, taking Hollis’s offered arm. I doubt she could walk herself to the cars. “We tell them he died saving me and nothing else. Not for me…but for his parents.”

Onyx nods and heads to get the body, and I turn in the direction of the cars. “I’m taking our mate home.”

“They still want her for murder,” Finnegan points out. I eye him and he rolls his eyes. “And me.”

“Onyx has to talk to his father, and I’ll see what I can do with my connections. Either way, she is staying near me.” I look at her one more time. I nearly lost my mate, and that should never have happened or happen again. “Or it won’t be her they need to fear. If anyone tries to take Gwen from me…I’m killing them all.”

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