Page 28 of Eternal

Her alphas…

She lifted her gaze to them and panting heavily took in their stance, the murderous look in their eyes, the destroyed expressions on their faces. She had been in their house. In their bed. They had been inside her body. They had undertaken a deadly seeding ritual to impregnate her because they knew she didn’t want them to choose between her and their pack.

Her hand flew to her belly. She was carrying their babies. And she had their enemy's blood in her. But she soon realized their anger was directed at her father.

“You triggered her vampire blood when you sent the St. James’ omega to her.” Ashton was so mad he could barely talk. That wasn’t a question, it was a full-on accusation.

“I did,” her father said hopelessly. “I didn’t know,” he said softly, looking at Farren.

She detected the change in the atmosphere a split second before it could alter and take a dangerous turn. Both Ashton and Duncan looked as if there were going to strangle her father with their bare hands. Her father stood up from the seat.

“Wait,” she said, coming to stand between the three men. “Why did you do it, dad?

“When your uncle Semus’ attempts to poison the shifters, to make them unable to shift and reduce them to nothing more than ordinary wolves failed, he turned his attention into strengthening vampire armies and invented a way to kill a wolf-shifter with one strike. They are ready and they are coming. And they will pounce without the code of decency. Their weaponry will annihilate the entire species of wolf shifter. One bullet is all it will take. There is no way you can win the war against the Remnants. Not without Farren.”

“Whatever it is you’re thinking, old man, if it involves Farren and the vampires, it’s never going to happen.”

She still wanted to hear her dad out.

“How?” Her question set off their growls, but she had to know. “How can I defeat the vampires?”

“You’re not,” Ashton said with a dark finality.

“Farren is your only hope,” Harold said softly.

“We’re not sending her to our war, Kinsley. Not even over our dead bodies.”

“How, Dad. Tell me how.”

“In her attempt for Wulfric to choose her, Isidora tried spell after spell, in the end, all she ended up doing was making herself poisonous to him. Just like how you’re poisonous to the alphas now, you will be poisonous to the vampires as well because of the vampire blood that flows from Isidora to you. But where the harm you will inflict on the alphas will take time to turn to poison, the same is not true for the vampires. Their current king, Jarius, is Zadimus with a new identity. If you got as close to him as to blow in his face, you will have infected him, and since Jarius feeds his army from his veins, you will weaken them and they will self-incinerate.”

“What about the twins I’m carrying?” She didn’t dare breathe. Was she poisoning her own children?

“At the level of inception, the alphas’ blood is at its strongest and will create a cocoon for the twins. They will be born purebreed shifters. They will be born strong and healthy. True alphas.”

Relief washed over her for a moment. She didn’t need to ask her father what would happen once they were born. She already knew she would be poisonous to them too. Her heart swelled with sorrow.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know my daughter had fallen in love. You must believe me. I would never have done what I did if I knew it was going to destroy my daughter this way,” her father pleaded. He grew more and more agitated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Dad,” Farren whispered with her hand on his arm. She knew what she had to do.

She could save them. She could save their species. Her babies.

Her beloved alphas. This had been her destiny all along. But they couldn’t be together.

And now she would exist with her broken, irreparable heart in the shadows of the world.

Chapter Twelve

Ashton stared out the window at the dark forest beyond. The urge to shift and run, something both he and his brother did to clear their heads, didn’t appeal to them at all.

The day had passed in a surreal fog. They were still repeating Kinsley’s words in their heads and still had a hard time believing it.

“There is a way,” Kinsley said softly, and Ashton spun around. “But you must believe me I didn’t know my Farren had fallen in love with you. But I can fix this now.”

“Explain,” Duncan said.

“In Isidora’s grimoire, which I have in my possession. She wrote about finding a herb in the Forest of Goian that when consumed changed the pattern of the poison against the wolf-shifters but not the vampires. She never took the herb herself because she wanted to show her husband that she loved only him. I have a friend and he will come with me to the forest. And he will return here with instructions on how Farren should take it. As you know the forest is harmless to mortals.”

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