Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Niamh’s voice came again.
Elijah, grieve later, brother. We have a world to save.
Her words were gentle but stern.
Grieve later.
His mind reeled and a sob of agony caught in his throat.
So he tore his gaze from his parents to Echo who’d reached them first. Their eyes met. Her sorrow was clear. But so was her strength.
If it were her, she would pull her shit together to do what needed to be done.
Elijah channeled his mate’s fierceness, tightened his hands into fists at his sides, and marched in the same direction as Thea and Rose.
To meet Niamh in front of the terrifying gate that had opened to another world.
To Faerie.
As they grew closer, he knew they too must feel the pulsating energy. It was like a powerful wave, pushing at their shins, threatening to take them under.
It was as loud as a crashing wave too.
“We have to close it before the other side realizes it’s open!” Niamh shouted, her hair whipping around her face with the force of the gate’s energy.
“Is she dead?” Rose shouted back.
Niamh nodded, her expression mournful. “This was the only way! I saw a thousand paths, and this was the only way!”
“What do we need to do?” Thea yelled.
“She took blood from us all to open the gate!”
“Will our blood close it?” Elijah shouted, his eyes stinging against what felt like hurricane-force winds.
Niamh shook her head. “The light! The golden light we all have within us! It’s stronger once united! Pure energy! Enough energy to heal the fracture between universes!”
Thea looked panicked. “I don’t have it anymore!”
“You do!” Niamh seemed so sure. “I promise, you do!”
“I’m still fae?”
“You’re something new!” Niamh smiled, reaching out for Thea.
Clearly shaken by the revelation, Thea accepted Niamh’s hand. Elijah numbly stretched for Rose’s and then took Thea’s other, the four of them united.
“Call on that golden light!” Niamh cried. “Whatever it takes! Pain, grief, rage … call on the light! We don’t have much time now!”
Determined, Elijah faced the gate, staring into the world beyond, to the ethereal forest beckoning in the distance. Alien plants and flowers of a vividity his brain could hardly process. It looked beautiful.
Beautiful, but deadly.
He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to see his parents in his mind’s eye. His devastated mum beside his beloved father who had died to protect the people he loved. Grief tore through Elijah and he felt Echo’s too. The loss of her birth mother, a woman she’d barely gotten to know. The guilt of bringing her into this mess. Of bringing Elijah’s parents into it. Her pain for her mate. For him.
The death at his back.
The mourning wolves and the decimation of an entire coven.
He used it.
He used the blood-soaked ground as fuel.
He pictured his father’s face.
And the light exploded out of him.
Niamh’s came next, joining his.
Then Rose’s collided with both.
Thea let out a shriek of frustration.
“You can do it, Thea!” Niamh shouted. “You have it in you!”
“I don’t!”
“You do! Do it for Mhairi! Do it for Brodie! Do it for the three other members of your pack who lost their lives today!”
With a scream of pure grief, Thea unleashed herself. Her eyes bled gold and the light poured out of her, streaming toward the others. As it impacted the ball of energy they created, streaks of that light split from the ball and blasted into the fractured seams of their world.
It crackled like the fiercest electricity, and just like that, it sewed the world back together, the forest beyond disappearing until there was nothing but blue sky and the city of Edinburgh in the distance.
And silence.
Niamh’s hair settled into place around her shoulders.
Elijah blinked, slowly letting go of his companions’ hands.
“Well done, family,” Niamh whispered wearily. “We just saved the bloody world.”
38
As much as relief and overwhelming pride shuddered through Echo as she watched Elijah, Niamh, Rose, and Thea close the gate to Faerie, grief lingered like a suffocating shadow in the background, waiting for its chance to smother her.
After Elijah pulled the three women to him, hugging and kissing their cheeks as they wiped away tears of exhaustion, he turned to Echo. She stumbled toward him as the others reached for their respective mates. He immediately hauled her into his arms, pressing a hard kiss to her mouth before peppering frantic, weary little kisses across her jaw and then burying her against him. Echo nuzzled his throat, not out of hunger or passion.
She offered only comfort and drew the same from him.
“I love you,” he whispered, his voice trembling.
“I love you too.”
“My dad …”
Her grip on him tightened. “I know.”
Together they turned. Echo slipped her hand into his, bolstering him as Elijah hesitantly moved toward his father still sprawled on the ground. Nancy had calmed somewhat, but when she looked up at her son with ragged grief, Echo heard Elijah’s low animalistic sound of agony she would never forget.