Page 81 of Fire Bound

“I have found that I enjoy your company quite a bit more,” Kaius admits. “It will be such a pleasure and a joy to die by your hands.” He pauses and looks around at the growing flames around us. “That is if your mate doesn’t burn us all alive first.”

“What?” I stutter. “Jaxstarted the fire?”

“Yes, it would appear the demon has harnessed the flames just in time to kill us with them,” Kaius mumbles.

Isabeau keeps her gun pointed at the necromancer as she turns her attention to me. “I tried to follow after Jax, but I got pinned by two shifters. By the time I was done with them, there were too many flames for me to get past. We all saw you fall, and I tried to get to you, but the flames slowed me down.” She gestures toward Winslow. “And this one took off after me even though she was told to stay put.”

“I thought I could help,” Winslow defends herself. “We lost enough people, and I wasn’t going to let anyone else in our family get hurt.”

Our family.

They’re my family, but they’re not my person. I need to get to him. “Where’s Jax?” I know he’s alive. I felt the mating bond snap back into place when I took my first breath back hearthside. “I need to get to him.” I turn around and stare up the cliff I had fallen from. The distance felt like eternity when I was free-falling from it, but it’s roughly fifteen stories high if I had to guess.Kaius’s magic not only returns souls to their body but repairs the body. I should be a bloody smear in the dirt right now, but I’m whole and in one piece.

“He’s still up there,” Beau explains. “With Sterling. They’re inside the flames. There’s no way to get to them without getting burned.”

I stare at the flames dancing among the trees. “This is his hellfire?” I ask.

Beau nods her head in confirmation. “If it wasn’t, I’d risk jumping the flames to get to Jax. I can heal from burns caused by regular fire, but no one can survive walking through hellfire.”

Jax’s voice floats through my mind,hellfire is an extension of me. A piece of me. It can’t hurt you because you’re a part of me.

“I can,” I announce, determination replaces the stiffness in my bones. “I can touch his hellfire.”

Kaius grins at me with a knowing look. “I knew it.” He hadn’t missed it when I’d accidentally touched him back in Seattle.

“Remington,” Winslow says my name warily. “I don’t think—”

I cut her off because I don’t have time to debate this with her. My mate is up there fighting the man we should be facing together. “Get everyone back to the lake just in case the flames can’t be controlled.”

“What about the people locked in Esme’s circle?” Isabeau asks Winslow. I have no idea what they’re talking about, but I have to trust they’ve had everything under control since I was taken.

“Like Esme said, nothing gets in or out of it until she releases the spell,” Winslow answers before looking at her dad with a skeptical look. “What about you? Where are you going?”

“Oh, don’t worry about your dear old dad. I’ll be close by,” he promises with a gleam in his eyes before looking at me. “I want to watch the show for a little while longer.”

He starts to walk away but Isabeau cocks her gun, stopping him.

“Let him go,” I instruct her.

“You’re sure?”

No, I think, but instead, I just nod my head once.

Kaius salutes us all before meandering away, cutting through the various fiery trees.

I wait for him to fully disappear before I look at the women who have become more than my brothers’ mates. “I never thought I’d have sisters,” I tell them. “But I’m really glad I can now call you mine.” I squeeze Winnie’s hand because she’s closest. “Now, go. Get everyone away from the flames.”

All your life you’re told to not touch fire. As kids, we’re dumb and ignore our parents’ warning, but we quickly learn that they were right. Like most lessons, we learn it the hard way when we get burned, but we eventually learn.

That’s why it’s daunting to be standing in front of a wall of flames that burn hotter than the depths of hell. In my gut, I know that they won’t hurt me, but the idea of literally walking through fire is something my logical brain screams at me not to do.

Up until this point, I was able to weave around the flames, but now I’ve reached a point where there is nothing but flames. Everything is burning and somewhere inside these flames is my mate.

Knowing he’s in there gives me the final push I need.

Holding my breath, I lift my hand and slowly submerge my fingers into the flames. I still expect to feel pain, but just like when he tested his hellfire on me on the plane, all I feel is warmth and a tingling sensation under my skin. I also feelhim. His energy.

Releasing the breath I was holding, I take off through the hellfire. It’s disorienting being inside of it, but I keep pushing forward as I climb the incline up to the cliffside Jax and Sterling are on.

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