Page 34 of Shadebound
She huffed something that might’ve been a laugh, or a sob, or both. And when she opened her eyes again, they were still wet—but focussed on me. No longer hazy and locked on the memories of her lost love.
I gave her one more second. Then I looked up, catching the flicker of glowing eyes between the trees. My wolves were arriving, boots and feet crunching frost and leaves, low voices murmuring as they saw what we had.
“Go deal with things.” Maya wiped a hand over her eyes. “I’m okay here. My crisis is at a low stage, not high.” She blew out a breath. “Connor didn’t come to the swim, but that’s normal for him. He only came a few times because he liked swimming alone more. I don’t really know if he had any friends here.”
I stood slowly, nodding as I turned back to the siren’s corpse.
The others spread out around us. Saphira crouched beside the body, not touching, just looking. Her long hair fell over one eye as she examined the wounds, her fingers hovering above the skin.
I moved closer, stepping into the clearing and squinting down at the body. The guy looked vaguely familiar. I didn’t know him, but I recognised the face. Someone from a different class. One of those quiet, background types you saw in the hallways but never talked to. It made sense if he was a loner, if Maya barely knew him too. Most sirens stuck together.
Connor’s skin was pale, stretched too thin over his bones. The absence of blood made everything seem starker, emptier. Like whatever had taken him had drained more than just his body.
Behind me, the wolves were muttering in low, angry voices that overlapped. Because we all knew this wasn’t random. This wasn’tjusta murder. It was a message. One we were running out of time to understand.
“Same markings. Same stench as the previous bodies,” Saphira muttered, crouching near the corpse, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “I’ll tell the others.”
She meant the other shifters. The dragons. The sirens. The rest of whoever had been dumped into Mors alongside us. Everyone had carved out their own corners. Their own makeshift alliances. Their own simmering hostilities.
We didn’t like sharing territory with other packs. Wolves weren’t built for it. Our instincts itched, restless, when we crossed scents with something not our own. But we didn’t have a choice anymore.
To be fair, I could tolerate most of them. Even the sirens, when they weren’t being too pretentious. It was the dragons I couldn’t stand. All ego and heat and superiority. Walking furnace nightmares.
I’d lost count of the number of times I’d got into a fight with the motherfuckers who shared my dorm just because they breathed a little too loud near me. And I had no clue howSaphira could tolerate them well enough to be friends. Let alone more.
She knelt lower beside the body, fingertips brushing the air just above his midnight hair. “He smells of dark magic. Like rot and decay and...” She tilted her head, golden eyes glowing. “He reeks of the shadebound girl, Alpha. It’s just like how she stank earlier.”
I could feel the darkness too. Like a film crawling over my senses. It clung to everything—the trees, the leaves, the corpse. The magic tasted thick, bitter, wrong. It reeked of something ancient. Something hungry.
But it was nothing like Jinx, and I didn’t appreciate Saphira’s tone.
“Definitely not natural.” My eyes narrowed. “Definitely something dark. But it’s not shadebound magic. At least not Jinx.”
“How do you know?” Saphira pushed. “Her kind love all this freaky shit. They get their rocks off to dead bodies and—”
I growled at her, and she instantly backed up, getting to her feet and offering me a soft smile.
“Well, I meant no offence, Zayden. I was just pointing out what I can smell.” She smiled harder, but I had no energy in me to respond.
I liked her well enough, but it was mostly out of pity. There were barely any panther shifters left, and there were no others in Mors. I’d only allowed her into my pack so she wasn’t alone, but that didn’t mean I liked her enough to put up with her shit talking Jinx.
“And we both know youcan’tsmell Jinx,” Maya piped up, voice rough. “It’s not her magic. And even if it were, she only just got here. How do you explain the murders over the last few weeks?” She looked up at me, her face grim, lips pressed in a thin line. “You think something is coming through the portal?That seashell necklace on his neck is a protection charm. But it doesn’t work on dead things, and those monsters are all dead.”
“I don’t know.” But part of me thought yes. Something was shifting. Something was slipping through. Maybe not or monsters. But somethingworse. Things without shape. Things that fed on fear.
But if it was a monster, then who the fuck had killed Bells? And how come they’d done it the same way?
Surely a monster could not plan things like this?
“I can make a meeting with Hightower in the morning.” I ran a hand over my face, head throbbing as I looked at Connor’s seashell necklace and wondered if he’d known about a threat worth protecting himself over. “Not that it will do much good.”
We’d reported every body. Every shadow. Every shriek in the night.
Hightower didn’t care.
She said it was suicide. Wild animals. Rogue students. She said she’d investigate, but she never did.
Behind me, someone muttered. One of the newer wolves—Rhett, with thick brows, and shaggy dark hair—snorted under his breath. “Honestly, after what Draconis did in the arena? Maybe sheisthe one doing it. I wouldn’t be surprised she floated out here to kill as a warmup for her arrival. She looked like she enjoyed killing.”
