Chapter 71: Chapter 71

Elijah

Even though he didn’t want to leave Lily behind, Elijah couldn’t stop smiling. His mouth pushed at his cheeks, her emboldened heartbeat echoing alongside his and reverberating through his chest. Every ache and pain in his body vanished, leaving behind only light and buoyant, radiant joy.

She hadn’t left him. She hadn’t run.

She loved him.

Elijah curled his lips inward, desperately trying to get a hold of himself as he prowled between the cells. He stayed in the shadows, pressing his back to the walls whenever footsteps neared. Without his sword he felt naked, but the raw power of his flames gave him strength. He could do this. He could save Lily and the witch, and end Red Ripper’s tyranny once and for all.

For the first time ever, he tucked his hair behind his ears. He told himself it was so that he could hear better, but the heady thump of his heart and the rush of heated blood through his veins told him otherwise.

Lily took him as he was. He didn’t have to hide anymore. He twisted her mother’s garnet ring around his finger, needing the feel of her radiant sunlight to brush against his burning soul.

“It should have been impossible,” barked a loud, arrogant voice.

Elijah tucked himself into an indentation in the cell wall, holding his breath as two pairs of footsteps grew in volume along with the voices they carried.

“To find the veil and step through it takes balls,” laughed another, more cheerful voice – this one sounded higher-pitched, more feminine. “Fair play to him, I say.”

Elijah’s eyebrows pinched together. Were they talking about him?

“Fair play?” parroted the arrogant man beside her. Elijah could just picture him: a bulbous torso with legs bowed under the weight of carrying his inflated head and chest. “Do you know how many good Red Ripper wolves are dead because of this infiltrator, Nemi?”

A rustle of fabric made it sound like Nemi shrugged. “They shouldn’t have been caught off guard. We are the most fearsome pack in Eldda, after all.” Another shrug. “I don’t care who this Alpha is, he shouldn’t have been able to tear through our ranks like that.”

Fear slithered down Elijah’s spine. They weren’t talking about him – so they had to be talking about Atticus. In all his joy at finding Lily, and finding her more than willing to return home with him – and what a thought that was, though it was one Elijah had to quash quickly to stay focused – he’d half-forgotten that another Alpha stalked these grounds.

He lingered half a minute longer, hoping Nemi and her puff-chested companion might let something else of use slip, but as their civil comments became barbed insults directed at one another he pressed on. He didn’t have long to find Eryne and get back to Lily – especially with Atticus on the prowl.

The object of their desires was one and the same. Elijah felt maybe ten percent better about it now he knew that Lily wanted him just as much as he wanted her. The more he considered it, the lower that percentage fell. Nine. Eight. Seven…

He clenched his jaw, focusing his thoughts on the witch. What had Lily said? Black hair, yellow eyes, tattered clothes. He nodded to himself.

Elijah pressed himself onto his toes and looked through the cell window. His gut twisted at the state of the man inside: clumps of hair ripped from his head, his jaw hanging slack, his body so thin that his bones jutted out of his shoulders. But he was not the witch, and as much as Elijah wanted to help everyone escape Red Ripper, Lily had seemed certain that Eryne was the best way to do that.

His girl came first. If he hadn’t lost control of his flames, she might never have ended up here in the first place.

But as his search continued and Elijah found nobody matching the description Lily had given him, Elijah’s heart started to wear down. He’d checked every cell, and in his haste he thought he might have missed one, but he didn’t have time to check them all again. With every passing second there became more and more chance that someone had noticed the gaping, burnt hole where Lily and the eleve’s cell door had once been.

He broke into a jog, darting from building to building to remain hidden. He’d seen a few groups of wolves marching towards what Elijah presumed was Red Ripper’s pack house, and their focus had been wholly intent on their destination – and not on searching for nimble faelen wolves ducking behind cells.

Anxiety gnawed at him. The sun crossed further over the sky.

Elijah knew he was out of time. He didn’t want to disappoint Lily, and the knowledge that he had done so in not finding the witch carved his heart from his chest. But there was nothing more he could do. Eryne was nowhere to be found, and he had lingered for far too long already.

He was walking back towards Lily’s cell when he saw her. Black hair, long and ropey and tangled, bare feet, and as she turned to look up at the broad man who half-carried, half-dragged her away from the pack house, Elijah saw her wide, terrified yellow eyes.

“On your feet, witch,” hissed her captor. “Your job is done. Be glad you’re going back to your cell. You might even get dinner tonight if you behave,” he snarled.

Elijah made to follow her, pressing down visions of Lily being treated like that before they could consume him. Hope surged in him anew. He could grab the witch as soon as that brute left her in her cell.

But then he saw Atticus, casually swiping a hand through his honeyed hair and grinning like he hadn’t a care in the world. Elijah hated him so fiercely in that moment that it took everything in him to resist shooting a fireball at his swollen head.

Dread pooled in his stomach, seeping down into his bones and spreading throughout his entire body. He froze, his grey eyes widening at the sight of the man he so detested walking beside a crow-faced man with feathery black hair, speaking somewhat amicably as they strolled – strolled – towards the cells.

Towards Lily’s cell.

Elijah gave up all hope of following Eryne in that instant, ducking under a low-hanging roof to watch where his enemy was headed. Lily came first. Ever since he’d felt the pull of the mate bond, ever since he’d first felt her presence, he’d known his body would shatter and reform to put her in the place where his heart had once been.

He stayed just far enough behind them that he wouldn’t be seen. Snippets of conversation brushed over him, but Elijah struggled to make sense of even the simplest of words while he was strangled by the need to reach Lily first.

“I am excited to take this next step with you, Morvand,” said Atticus, looking so proud of himself that Elijah wanted to kick his legs out from under him.

“This will be a prosperous time for Blood Moon and Red Ripper,” said the crow-like man at his side.

They reached Lily’s cell and came to a halt, eyeing the devastation his flames had wrought in confusion.

“If she’s gone, our deal no longer stands,” growled Atticus, stepping closer to the cell.

Please be gone, Lily, Elijah begged.

“She’s there.” Morvand sounded bored. “She has very little in the way of intelligence. Besides,” he purred, ”we’ve trained her too well to run. She responds so nicely to our commands now.”

Elijah bristled at the insult and the implication. Lily was the smartest person he knew, and the idea of her being treated as an animal in need of training… It ate him alive. A muscle feathered in his jaw. He had to make this right.

What was almost worse than the fury over Morvand’s jibe was the realisation that Lily hadn’t run. Elijah’s stomach swooped, his insides plummeting like he’d just stepped off a cliff.  She hadn’t saved herself. It was an agonising kind of joy, knowing that she had waited for him. He had failed her again. There was no coming back from this. Unless –

Elijah searched desperately for a way to run in and grab her before they could. He crept closer, half tempted to burn them both and run with her in his arms. But Lily would hate him for that. He brushed his hair back over his ears, reality settling heavy about his shoulders. He was no more free than she was. He was chained to her, body and soul. Her freedom was his, and without hers he was trapped in writhing, binding anguish.

Atticus gestured for Morvand to walk into the cell ahead of him. “As much as I’m looking forward to working with you, I don’t trust you. I’m not getting trapped in there with her.”

Elijah thought he could survive anything if only he had Lily by his side. He had been so desperate to see her that he would have run into any danger just to stand at her side, to have even the slimmest chance of protecting her.

He could feel his chance slipping away. Do something, his heart screamed. Do anything!

Elijah ran.

He did not care if he was caught.

He could think only of Lily.

Atticus was every bit as cruel as Red Ripper. If they worked together to break her further –

No. Don’t think. Run.

Elijah reached the edge of Lily’s cell just as Morvand threw a handful of glittering powder over Lily and Atticus. They disappeared in an instant, Lily’s eyes finding Elijah’s through the sparkling purple dust and latching on to his as her beautiful, broken form faded away.

The fear in her wide brown eyes broke his heart all over again.