Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
She turned and strode from the room, taking the trolls with her.
The screams turned to moans of fear and pain and terror. Ronan held Gen to his chest as he stared in horror at his alpha, dead on the concrete floor. Corey found Ethan and held him as he cried into his boyfriend’s shoulder. Kierse was numb as she watched Maura mourn. The pain was somewhere down deep, a place she had to keep hidden to survive this moment. Because she couldn’t imagine a world without Nathaniel O’Connor’s quick smile and jaunty personality in it. She couldn’t imagine life without him.
A worse realization settled over her. This was just the beginning.
A second monster war was rising.
Interlude
Lorcan was in a safehouse in Midtown.
It was a last-resort location, one of a few he and the Druids used when they had business in the city and needed to recuperate. Sometimes the rituals and spells were draining enough that it wasn’t safe to return to Brooklyn. He knew the map of every one of them in the city, and he’d sabotaged enough of the Druid’s equipment and files on his way out that Niamh wouldn’t be able to ferret him out here before he moved on.
He’d cleaned out his office, packed up the most important things he’d collected during his long reign as the leader of the Druids, and then taken a small force along with him as he’d left. They were now spread out around the city in some of the other safehouses. Not an army, but enough to make Niamh think before moving against him.
With Declan gone, he’d had to tap Maureen as his second. She was busy organizing the followers who had come with him, doing the work that he couldn’t manage alone. She was formidable, but the loss of Declan was harsh.
“All the Druids are relocated, sir,” Maureen said.
“Excellent,” Lorcan said as he closed his laptop and turned to face her.
“Has there been a civil war among our kind before?”
“Yes,” Lorcan said simply. “But not for a very long time.”
The last schism had put him on the Oak Throne. He wasn’t going to give it up this easy. Niamh had been on his side then. Now she, too, was corrupted.
His own robin.
He clenched his fist around the wren necklace in his palm. Kierse’s necklace.
He needed to give it back to her. It was the last thing she had of her parents, but now it was one of the last things he had of her. The threads of their binding, and a necklace.
And the binding itself.
He could sense her presence, only blocks away from his current location. He could go to her at any moment.
He’d thought about it. Had stalked her through the Manhattan streets. Had known that she felt him drawing nearer, but still not close enough to prompt her attention. Several times he’d seen her turn in his direction as if she’d known precisely where he was standing. He’d willed her to face him.
Holding her powers had been a last resort, something that he’d been compelled to do by Graves’s own audacity. He’d known he could win her in time, but he couldn’t keep the bastard from killing her now. He’d done it for her own safety.
And still she was with him. Just like Emilie.
They’d been so young when they’d first met. Despite Graves’s taciturn nature, Lorcan had taken to Graves instantly. Graves had been haunted by his cruel past, but in Lorcan he had found something more than friendship. He’d found family. They had relied on each other, opened to one another. They were faster than friends and closer than brothers. The sun and moon following each other into perpetuity.
He remembered a day they’d been in Wicklow, seated on the banks of Glendalough Lake. Lorcan had been sketching the mountains in the distance. Graves had strode over and taken a seat next to him. He’d stretched his long figure out, holding another one of his wooden birds in his hand.
He’d been more than pensive that day. Lorcan had instinctively known that Graves needed the time to work up to talking. He was like that.
“I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
Lorcan had turned to him then. Saw the fear in Graves’s expression and dashed it all aside with a wide smile. “She’s going to say yes.”
Graves studied him, uncertain. “You think so?”
“Yes, and then we’ll be brothers in truth.” Lorcan put his arms around his closest friend. “This is all I want for you, brother.”
“That is all I want.”
Graves looked down as if he had expected worse. Not everyone agreed with his presence among the Druids, but Lorcan had known that casting him out would only bring worse harm, to Graves and to the Druids both. He’d been right.
When Emilie had been soul-bound to Tadgh, everything had changed. The binding was sacred. Graves didn’t understand. Emilie wanted to refuse. Lorcan had done all he could to explain to them, to get them to come to the other side.