Page 20 of Fated Exile

My bed is warm around me, the sheets twisted in my legs. I've slept for at least a couple of hours, though the sky outside my window is still dark. I should feel drowsy or tired, yanked out of the middle of dreaming, but instead I'm fully awake and alert.

There's somewhere I must go.

I feel that deep inside. It's as if a string connects to the center of my chest and is being tugged on relentlessly. Vivia may not have spoken to me in my dream, but there's an urge she left behind inside me:come.

Shivering, I throw the quilts off my bed and pace to the door. The house is quiet and dark as I walk down the hallway. All I hear is the sound of the air conditioner running, and the low hum of the dishwasher, which Cat programs to go off in the middle of the night.

Distantly, outside the window, the sound of a werewolf howl greets my ears. But it isn't a call of alarm or distress. Tuning in, I catch yips and yelps of communication. The land is quiet and peaceful, and our newly awakened border protections are at rest. Warriors are patrolling to make sure no vamps get through, and calling back and forth to each other to give the all-clear. There's no sign that the hybrid Delphine has returned.

Still, the tug on my chest is insistent. I pass by the closed door of the guest bedroom and decide not to wake Cat. At the front door, my purse beckons; inside, my phone rests, its battery probably drained since I forgot to charge it. My tennis shoes are on the shoe rack beneath my purse. But I glide past both, out the front door, and down the porch steps without stopping to grab anything, the tug like a siren call I can't resist.

The cooling night air hits my skin as I take the first few steps down the road. Seized by instinct and impulse, I shift into my wolf, letting her muscular fur-covered form flow through me. I barely even have to think about becoming her, and a moment later I'm gliding across the ground on four paws instead of two feet.

Though the Mating Circle is miles away, somehow I leap and bound across the distance in record time. Despite the long day and very little sleep, I make it there in minutes. As I skid to a stop beneath the great, solemn pillars, the wind rushes through my white fur and a strange feeling pricks across my skin.

Shifting back to my human form, I step through the entrance to the Mating Circle. I can't shake the sense that something is wrong. Though I don't feel or hear the vampires, and my newly-strengthened connection to the land tells me nothing is wrong, I find myself on edge.

The reason becomes clear when I stumble on a hard ridge beneath my feet. Wincing, I hiss and hop on my left foot, twisting around to look at the ball of my right. A trickle of blood drips from my bare skin—falling to the sacred stones of the Mating Circle beneath me, and slipping into a new, razor-thin crack.

Crouching, I run my hand across the stones, worry drawing my brows together. There wasn't a crack here when we left mere hours ago. Though I can still feel the power of the pack's center running through the sacred ground, there's a trembling flaw breaking through it.

Tracing the line of the crack, I get to my feet and follow it to the center of the Mating Circle, where the pack flame stands on its ancient pedestal. The crack I cut my foot on runs here, where it meets five or six other razor-thin cracks that fan out towards the edges of the Mating Circle. Some end at the feet of the elder statues, while others rush towards the pillars and climb their lengths.

This, then, is what woke me in the middle of dreaming. A terrible foreboding echoes through my chest at the sight of the pack's central power source run through with so many glaring flaws. As I walk the length of one of the new cracks, tracing its origin, a slight tremor shifts the ground beneath me. The previously millimeter-thin crack widens to a centimeter or more, the dark ground it exposes cold and ominous.

"This shouldn't be happening," I murmur, casting my eyes up towards the cold, dead torch that held the pack flame only days ago, when I walked up to it and passed my hand over its heat. "We drove the vampires out. The hybrid ran away—to do what, I don't know, very far from here. I've tapped into the land's resources, and... I can feel our pack's strength. We're weakened, but coming together. So why?"

"Because the strength of the pack is incomplete, and in denial." The voice, ringing out across the night air, draws my attention instantly. "The only way to fix the Mating Circle and keep the pack from falling to ruin is to lift the curse. And the only way to lift the curse is to undo what was begun centuries ago, by healing the rift between the pack's past and its future."

Standing behind me, her back straight and feet firmly planted in the ground, is Elder Vivia. Only this time she's no silent, see-through spirit. She's very real and present here—if a little wispy at her edges. The crinkles at the corners of her eyes, silver-white of her long braided hair, and wrinkle stretching across her forehead tell her age. But her blue eyes are bright, and the twist of her mouth speaks of humor, while her stance tells the story of strength and virtue.

"Vivia." My throat grows dry at the sight of her here. "You were in my dreams."

"I was."

"And yesterday?"

"Again—yes. Though I was a shadow of myself then." She takes several steps forward and stands before me, her bright eyes studying my face. If it weren't for the glowing light at the edges of her hair and shoulders, I would have no idea she isn't solid and alive. "It took blood to wake me up enough that I can stand before you now and give you the advice the pack desperately needs."

"Blood?" Frowning, I glance around the Mating Circle, but I spot no sign of John deLance. "I don't understand. The Stone Pack alpha said he wouldn't give us his blood. Even after the battle we fought together... well, he claimed it would cost him his pack's strength, though I'm not sure I believe him."

"That doesn't matter." Vivia slashes her hand through the air, her lips tightening with impatience. "No other pack's alpha would have woken me, or any of the other elders who watch over this territory."

"Then how? Who?" I ask, even as a niggling sensation inside me whispers that I know.

"It was your blood, Delilah." Vivia reaches out and places a hand on my shoulder. I freeze at the weight of it, so much more real and warmer than expected. "Your blood is what I needed to pierce the veil between the living and the dead and come to you as I am now, strong and capable of speech. All so I can tell you what you need to hear: that you are the key to lifting the curse Delphine cast on this pack centuries ago, and you're currently fucking it all up."

Ten

Delilah

"Pardon my language." Her lips twist up in a smile that's anything but apologetic. "I've been wanting to say that forweeksnow. Months or years, really. Sometimes I wish I'd been assigned to watch over a less...misguidedpack of werewolves."

"Fucking it up?" I stare at her, frowning, my brows drawn together so tightly that I practically feel a headache coming on. "I don't understand. Roarke was going to put in a bid for alpha, then we were going to use his blood to get your help—"

"It was never the blood of analphathat you needed." She sighs, withdrawing her hand from my shoulder so she can pace back and forth in front of me, twiddling with the end of her long silver-white braid. "What's needed to wake the elders is either the lifeblood of a werewolf as they fall in battle, or the blood of the pack's central strength."

Her eyes fall to my foot, which has healed after my very stupid run-in with the sharp edge of the Mating Circle stones. "You woke me withyourblood because you, Delilah, are the pack's beating heart, the very center of its hope for a future and its connection to the past.

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