Page 121 of Fated Exile

While the fight was going on, Cat slipped wordlessly from the office where Kerry watched over my sleeping body, went into the backyard, and dug the gemstones back up. She doesn't know how she did it or why—she just knows that her body wasn't her own, and she only came to when she'd dropped them in Delphine's palm, where they landed alongside four other sets of glowing gemstones.

The hybrid thanked her, and sent her on her way. She burns with shame and horror as Niall tells me this. He smelled Cat's blood on Delphine, but when he went to help her, there wasn't a scratch on my mother.

But there was a vial, taken from the urgent care center. Something the doctors gathered for tests that later went missing. Niall thought nothing of it, because she was well by then, and it seemed like such a fluke. Besides, what would someone do with her blood?

Control her, perhaps.

Just like Delphine controlled my mates the moment she'd secured the fifth pair of gemstones. She used pieces of them, their blood and their fur, to make the battle stop. Ordering her vampires to surround them and separate them from our pack's brave warriors, she brought them with her across the border, where they all vanished into thin air.

By the time Niall has gotten to this part of the story, the fire brigade has arrived. They clean up most of the remaining flames, though Kerry's magic has doused most of them. Weary and soot-streaked, she tells me the last of the story.

"I left as soon as I heard the howls and saw what was going on, but there was nothing I could do to undo the magic. And while I was out here, throwing what spells I had at Delphine's back, somehow a fire started up here."

"It spread," Niall says succinctly, "from one apartment building in town to another, leaping across streets and over bodies of water, all the way here."

"A distraction." I barely recognize my own voice in my ears. "Something to try to divide the warriors' attention and weaken us now that... now that..."

I find I can't say it.

Even though it's the only thing I can feel with each dreadful beat of my heart, which twists and pulses behind my ribs, full of endless pain.

If I thought I wanted to plunge a dagger into Delphine's heart before, I was wrong. I wasn't ready before. I hesitated to search for her outside the borders, didn't focus hard enough on the one thing that could kill her, and attacked too quickly when I thought I had her in my sights.

Some part of me was just as afraid to face her and succeed as I was to fail.

Because I wasn't quite ready to kill her, wasn't quite ready to watch a life slip away before my eyes because of my own actions. I didn't reallywantto do it. I didn't want to kill.

Now I know what it feels like to want to kill someone.

If I had to guess, it's somewhere that would matter to the wolves.

"Come with me, Niall. Kerry, drive my mom to the urgent care in my car," I toss her my car keys, my lips twisting that they survived in my jacket pocket, which is singed but not burnt. "We're going to the Mating Circle. There's something I just realized I haven't tried."

* * *

The flame burns bright in my hands, though it doesn't singe or lick my skin. Blue and impossibly alive, it accepts being scooped into my palms as if that were the most natural thing in the world.

Even though it unnerves me, I carry the pack flame down the platform in the center of the Mating Circle. Niall watches me, his mouth tight, though he says nothing. I know he's hoping just as hard as I am that this will work.

Somewhere that matters to the pack.

And to Gregor. I don't think it's a coincidence that this statue has a dagger sheathed at his hip, even though he's raising a sword overhead.

His eyes glowed blue when Lance and I mated, just like the blue of our threads. The color of strength. The color of the pack flame.

Holding the fire in one palm, I jump up onto the platform at the base of the statue, grab onto his carved belt, and inch around to the right side. Then I raise my flame-filled hand, and pour all my anger and strength into it.

The emptiness in the back of my mind.

Every wretched beat of my heart.

How wildly angry I am that I didn't even get to face Delphine as she took the one thing that matters to me the most—the one thing thatshouldhave mattered to her, if power weren't her only interest.

All of my emotions flow into the flame, and it burns high and bright in my palm, licking the stone dagger and shooting up towards Gregor's head.

There's a grinding noise. Something creaks, and something else groans.

I look up into Gregor's bright blue eyes, because he's looking down at me, his neck twisted and his chin inclined. For a moment I swear his statue shines with color, as if his skin were alive with warmth.

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