Page 116 of Savage Blood
That must have been what Reese tried to tell me at the bonfire. Her mind was just so fragmented that her words all seemed like ramblings.
It’s not fully protected. You have a key to the gate.
Barric’s defenses weren’t impenetrable. The piece of Infernal Sol was the key to getting beyond the walls.
I touched the sun tattoo below my ribs. The thing that was killing me was also the thing I needed to beat Barric. How freaking poetic.
“If anyone else kills Roman, the enchantment will not break,” Reese continued. “It will transfer to Barric, and he and the amulet will be permanently connected. No one will be able to remove the amulet, not even Barric.”
Fane scoffed. “Why wouldn’t Barric want that in the first place? He seems dead set on keeping the amulet.”
“Because even Barric realizes he’ll go insane if he never takes the necklace off,” Reese said. “A time might come when he no longer cares, though.”
I certainly didn’t care much about my sanity when that thing had ahold of me.
“You have to do it soon, Tate.” Logan moved across theroom and knelt in front of me. “I know you want to help Roman, but he chose to follow Barric in the first place. And shifters will pay the price.”
“We can’t wait any longer,” Ari murmured, his lips set in a somber line.
Fane stiffened, and his attention fell on the still-fading lines across my skin. This sickness still poisoned my body, and if Ididmanage to take the amulet, there was a good chance it would consume me whole.
It might cure me.
But it would also take me into the darkness I fought so hard to climb out of.
Fane wanted Saint to heal me once and for all. And for that to happen, we’d have to force the fated mate bond to grow—fast.
Saint and I would have to claim each other.
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
As my bootssank into the plush carpet that ran down the hall, I lifted my trembling hand to the wood—and hesitated. My heart tapped out a frantic beat, and a fine layer of sweat slicked my nape.
Was I really about to do this?
The door jerked open, and a female wolf shifter’s bloodshot brown eyes widened.
“Sadie?”
The woman from Blackwater Falls, who most definitely carried a giant torch for Saint, blinked, her lips parting. “Oh, um, hi, Tate.”
Saint appeared behind her in his room at Silver Ridge, worry lines forming across his face. “Is everything okay, Tate? Do you need?—”
“Everything’s fine.”Liar!“I just wanted to talk to you about something, but I can come back.”
Sadie shook her head and wiped at the remnants of tears staining her face even as she offered a sweet smile, one that didn’t reach hereyes.
“We’re done,” she said. “I was just leaving.”
I blocked her path into the hall. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”
Of course, the worst-case scenario materialized in my mind. Did a loved one from Blackwater Falls go missing and become another one of Barric’s victims? And somehow, it was my fault because my stupid visions were usually too late to help.
She peered at Saint over her shoulder, whose gaze fell to the glossy hardwood floor. “No, nothing happened.”
The pain circling Sadie’s words tightened my chest, and I smelled the sadness pouring out of her as she slipped by and vanished down the hall. I entered Saint’s room, closed the door, and studied him.
