Page 260 of A Warrior's Fate

Words he never thought he’d hear her say. He had hoped, hoped that she could love him, hoped that she’d stay, but he never thought she would.

Kai pictured Isla sitting beside him at the tavern’s bar. When he realized he fell more and more in love with her every second they spent together. Remembered the image of her. Not the tear-stained face he’d walked away from, but the one from last night. That glowed in the firelight as she smiled at him, as she moved on him. Pressed against his chest, her heat enveloping, her enveloping all his senses. When all he knew was a base need and the desire to worship her with everything he had, everything he was. Beautiful and powerful and yet, soft. Her skin, her curves, her lips. Her.

That void beckoned again, that well of power, as Kai’s mind became clouded by shadows, and he suddenly felt like he was—everywhere. The light, her light, glowed and expanded out like a traced line through walls and barriers. He didn’t push back against any of the magic. He pulled at it greedily as the void grew and all became clearer, as shadow swirled and eventually parted to—

Isla.

Only her face, her closed eyes. There was blood.

Kai nearly fell over when Raana ripped her hand away, them both panting. She braced herself against the wall, brushing off Adrien’s assist, and looked Kai up and down with wide eyes. Though she didn’t speak. Because she didn’t know what to say or because Kai had interrupted before she could. “Was that real? Where was that? Where is she?”

“I don’t know where that is, but I think I can get you close,” Raana said with hesitance, fear.

His fists were clenched at his sides, his wolf an unsteady presence beneath his skin. Suffering, angry, and ready to do whatever was needed to get Isla back.

“How?”

“I’ll need you to let down your defenses. Entirely. You need to completely yield to me.”

Kai ground his teeth, nostrils flaring as if that were the craziest thing he’d ever heard.

“I cannot have you fight me on this,” she said. “So, if you want to get to her fast and alive, you need to trust me.”

Kai looked to Adrien, who nodded like he’d gone through whatever the reason was for Raana’s outstretched hand. He’d yielded to the witch and seemed fine—and he would never jeopardize Isla. This was Kai’s only chance.

So, he took Raana’s hand, but watched her this time, even when her eyes had closed. Kisses of cold traveled up his body, and he glanced down to find darkness like its own entity surrounding him. Cloaking him.

“You need to yield,” Raana said firmly, her voice straining. The grip she had on him tightened, and instinct howled for him to rip away, to figure another method of finding Isla, but this was it.

Kai let go, embraced whatever was happening, and everything dropped out from under him. All he knew was the feeling he likened to being underwater and a swirling obsidian sea of nothing and everything, everywhere. Of bone-chilling cold, but comfort. Familiar.

And it was only a blink.

Kai was unsteady on his feet when they met cold stones. His mind spun as he coughed and observed crystals embedded in walls and wooden markers. It took little for him to deduce from what he’d been told that they were in the tunnels beneath the pack. Kai wouldn’t bother asking Raana how she did it. He didn’t care. Not now.

Raana had said she could get him close, and Isla wasn’t here in front of him. The tunnel spanned in two directions.

Bringing his wolf to the surface to hone his senses, he listened to the crowd moving above them, frantic footsteps and yelling. There was the moving of metal, like a gate. They were beneath the arena. This was where Isla had been.

He sought her scent, tried to find that thread of light, a shred of their bond, but it was nothing but a flickering ember. What had happened to her?

But then—there. A familiar scent, a rise of roses but twined with something metallic, putrid.

He ran left.

Raana made some kind of sound before her footsteps echoed behind him. They faded into nothing. Even without his wolf, he was faster.

And then he found her.

“Isla!”

Both relief and disbelief washed over him before dread and grief overtook them.

Kai skidded to a stop at her body on the tunnel’s stone floor. Her skin was pallor, covered in slow healing scrapes and bruises and caked in blood. Not her own. Not one he recognized. It was a mixture of drying crimson and then something even darker. Like bak.

The smell.

It was bak.

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