Falling into the White (The Ancients Series) (30 page)

“It’s not unheard of. There are pairings that are soul-shares. It just doesn’t present in the ways of old anymore for most, because it the ability was dying out. It has been recovered.’

“She speaks the truth. The day of her bonding, she came home glowing like an angel sent from heaven. It was all around her, and astounding to look upon.” My mom offered up, awe still coating her words as she spoke of it.

“Even if that is the case,” my father began, “we have no way of knowing the scope of what’s going on. Let’s face it, Mikael didn’t start out on any of our good sides, considering what happened with Ashley. Now we had the royals come into our house, look in our faces, and give condolences for a boy they killed, as if they had no responsibility in it.” My father shook his head. “None of this will stand. Jack was a son to me, and they are after my daughter. I won’t sit back and do nothing, but I will not allow you to delve blindingly into something none of us understands, Jess.”

“Fortunately, for me, you don’t get a say in what I do now. I have the blessing of the white wolves, and I will take my place. Let this be the first of my actions as white wolf ruler. I will find Mikael, and get him back, because I do know his heart. I don’t need you to believe that. I believe it, and that is enough.”

“Jessica!” My father was shaking, as he tried to resist my command, and it was indeed a command. “I will find Mikael. I will not force you to help, but I will not have you getting in my way, dad. If they hurt him, they hurt me. That should be enough for you to want to get him back safely.”

“You’re right.” His head hung low, and as I looked around, I noticed everyone else was down on their knees. They had all bowed before me when I acknowledged my place as ruler.

“Please, don’t bow before me. Just find a way to help me. I need Mikael. I need him whole and intact, and with me. I need our bond to remain that way too. So, help me find him before they do something to attack that. And when we do find him, hopefully we find his father and brother, so we can get justice for Jack and for Tom.”

“How far away is Evan?” My father asked as he turned to Asi.

“It will take him a few hours to get back here once they get the jet ready.”

“Well, we can’t sit around and wait for him to get here. We need someone to check out De’ Lune’s and see if they’ve gone there, though I doubt it.”

“I’ll send my men to scour the places we’ve been finding Zach’s trail. Somehow I doubt they’d go to any of those places, but we need to cover all our bases.” Avery left the room then to get in touch with his pack.

“Asi, I never did find out where Antoine and Malachai were staying while they were here. I had assumed a hotel or something, since they were in such a hurry to get back home. If you know, now would be a good time to let us in on those locations.” My father was eyeing Asi suspiciously too, I realized. He didn’t trust any of the Ancients at this point. I couldn’t say that I blamed him.

Asi gave him the address for the house the family had been renting, and my dad organized a group to check on the house and the club. Then he looked at me, worried, before he asked his next question. “Jess, we need to check Mikael’s place too.” I just nodded, knowing it was possible that they took him there, or that there was a clue as to where they’d take him.

“While they look, I’m going to need your help, mom.” I took her hand and started leading her out of the kitchen, and up the stairs to the bedroom there. Somehow, my old room didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore. No more than it would any other guest who came to stay. “I have to figure out how to get to Mikael in a vision the way I did with Jack last night.” I was explaining to her, but another voice answered back.

“Jess, how do you plan on doing that? I mean, you just said yourself, last night was the first time you had any control, and what you saw…” Ashley’s voice grew strained. “What if you see Mikael, in trouble?”

“We don’t have a whole lot of options in front of us, right now. I need to sleep, to talk to the white wolves. Maybe they can guide me.”

“How in the hell are you possibly going to doze off with all this going on around you?” Ashley asked, truly stumped.

“My mom’s going to help with that.”

“What? How?”

“Remember all those times when you spent the night, and my mom yelled at us for getting to loud, and then next thing you know, we were down for the count? Tired, head hitting the pillows, done with the giggle-fest, off to dreamland?”

“Yeah, so?”

“That was my mom’s influence when she got tired of listening to us.”

“No way!” Ashley looked at my mom as we entered my room, and I plopped down on the bed. “That’s sneaky, and I’m not sure I approve, Eileen!”

“Honestly, I didn’t know you’d ever figured it out, Jess. I thought for sure I’d never hear the end of it when you did.” She looked at Ashley then, “and I’m sorry, but you girls can seriously test the limits of a parent’s patience with the things you talked about. Werewolf hearing is sometimes not a blessing.”

“Okay, point taken.” Ashley agreed as her face reddened a bit

“I didn’t figure it out until recently, and I’m not giving you any crap about it, because I’m hoping it will be helpful now.” My mother took a seat in the Papasan chair in the corner, while I fell back on the bed, and tried to relax. Ashley sat at the end of the bed, just looking back and forth between my mom and I. “That’s annoying, you know?”

“Well, I was wondering if she’s knocking me out too.”

“I can be very selective,” my mother told her, “but you might want to sit at the desk anyway, so you don’t accidently bump into Jess and bring her around.”

AWAY

The world was grayed out and foggy as I searched for the white wolves. I had no clue how to get to them though. They had always pulled me in randomly. I kept thinking of Mikael, desperate to find him as I searched for a way into the white wolves. I ended up screaming out my frustrations into the soupy fog that surrounded me. That’s when I heard a voice, faintly, coming from somewhere in the background, where I couldn’t see.

“Focus on one. You can’t be in two places. Either chose the wolves or go to Mikael.” I knew the voice, and while I couldn’t see the witch who was in the background giving me guidance, I knew it was her.

“I’m not sure how. It isn’t working. I’m just stuck in this in between place.”

“My sister is preparing to do her worst to Mikael. You need to get there first. The wolves can’t tell you anything you don’t already know. Just focus, as you did when you thought something was wrong Jack. It will come to you. More importantly, you will go to Mikael, and be able to see what needs seeing.” The auburn haired witch was visible through the fog momentarily, and then she was fading back out, as if she had only been a figment to begin with.

I closed my eyes, focusing on Mikael, picturing his face, his scent, the way he touched me, his smile as he watched me from across the room, and the way he sat across from me so blissfully as we played with the puppies. “Please, take me to Mikael,” I whispered as I opened my eyes. The fog had thinned, moving off into the background as it often did in my visions. I wasn’t sure where I was. The building didn’t seem to be one that was in use. There were construction materials lying about everywhere, and fencing. No, not fencing, cages. There were cages all around me. I seemed to be in a center run with little rooms on either side. Some had caged frontages while others were still unfinished. It was sort of like the shelter where Mikael and I had played with the puppies, only this space was much larger. I continued looking around, trying to get my bearings until I heard voices just up and around the bend in the hall. I stayed back in the shadows as I peered around the corner. There was a woman with raven-black hair there, and she was focused in front of her at something I couldn’t see. Antoine stood next to her with a cruel smile on his face.

“What do you think? Will she come?”

“She’ll come, but there’s something…” the woman’s voice trailed off as she focused harder on whatever was in front of her.

“I’m hungry,” a familiar male voice announced. “You guys haven’t exactly been bringing me the best of meals out there in those grubby ass caves.” Zach came into view, walking towards me. “You promised I would be with Jessica by now. Can we get this show on the road already? I don’t even know what she sees in that loser. Seriously, he’s building a hotel for mutts here.” I wished I could become corporeal just long enough to ring Zach’s mangy neck, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I barely got out of the way before he passed right through me. He did, in fact pass through my left arm as he walked by. I watched him shiver as he did, so he had to feel something, but he kept going. “I’m looking for food,” he said out loud, as he muttered, “creepy damn place,” under his breath.

I took it as a good sign that he couldn’t see me, and I carefully rounded the corner, sticking to the wall as I got closer to where the raven-haired woman and Antoine stood. I needed to see what they were looking at. As I got closer, I noticed the woman’s attention venturing over to where I was, so I stopped, and chanced a glance over to the left, at what they’d been staring at. There, in the center of an open room that was still being worked on, was a cage that had my heartbeat quickening at first glance. It was nearly identical to the one Marcus had put me in when he kidnapped and tortured me. Someone was in the cage, and just coming to a sitting position, although he quickly learned that he wouldn’t be able to sit all the way up. Touching the bars burned, just as it had when Marcus put me inside them. The bars must have been treated with wolf’s bane too. I kept watching, until the person in the cage finally lifted his head, and glanced right over at me.

My heart was caught in my throat as I looked into Mikael’s bright emerald eyes. There was a flair of recognition as he noticed me, and then he turned his eyes to the two people standing before him. “Father,” he spat. “Sophia…” He was letting me know who we were dealing with here. I had thought that the witch who had visited me so often in my dreams, and twice in person, had been Estella Sophia Marquez, but she had been lying in order to gain my attention in the beginning. This must have been the true witch known as Sophia to so many. That made sense since she’d worked for Antoine before to break his bond with his first mate. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, father?”

“I had to take matters into my own hands, because you wouldn’t get the ball rolling fast enough with the girl.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, I needed you bonded with her weeks ago, and you couldn’t just take her from your brother with brute strength, or find some easier way to make her fall madly in love with you.” Antoine was rolling his eyes as he spoke

“It was clear after seeing Jessica and Evan together that they would make a true bond. That’s why you were needed. We threw you in the mix, to muck things up with them, and keep her from the true bond. It’s part of what has made the white wolves so powerful in past generations. Those who never found their true mates were more susceptible to influence.”

“Really? And what makes you think I wasn’t her true mate?”

Sophia laughed, as did Antoine. “Were you blind when you were around them?”

“Of course I wasn’t, but he was the first person she’d ever dated, and my brother is nothing if not charming. I didn’t see it, but maybe we were looking from different angles.” Mikael glanced in my direction discreetly again, but his eyes grew wide as I heard footfalls behind me. It was Zach coming back again.

“Oh, good, he’s awake. Can we get this over with now, so that Jessica can be mine?” When Zach walked right past me without acknowledging my presence Mikael gave me a questioning look, then focused on his father again.

“You’ve been working with this tool? To give Jessica to him?”

“Yes, well, you always have to have contingency plans. If breaking the bond between the two of you wouldn’t work to kill her, then I had to be able to give her to someone else and try again, or at least weaken her with an ill-matched mating.”

“I don’t get it. You wanted me to bond with her, so you could try to kill her by breaking the bond? What kind of sense does that make? You met her before she came into power.”

“Yes, yes, I know, and at first I thought she would be controllable, once mated with Evan. It wasn’t until Sophia showed up and told me how much stronger she would be with a true mate that I had to change tactics, and throw your hat in the ring. That damn Marcus almost took care of the problem before it started. If only he hadn’t been such an incompetent fool.”

The witch closed in on the cage, and threw something on Mikael. It must have burned like hell, because he screamed out in surprise. I could hear the flesh of his arms sizzle as a growl erupted from him, and I felt an ache deep inside myself. I could do nothing, but watch though. Sophia was chanting something as she circled the cage Mikael was in, but when she got back around to where she started she stopped cold, and really looked at him. “Show me your eyes,” she hissed at him. Mikael flipped her off, and then continued trying to knock the rest of the burning fluid free of his other arm. “SHOW ME YOUR EYES!” She screamed at him then. I’m not sure why he looked up, if it was because of her tone, or if she used some form of power to force it, but he glared right up at her, and she backed away slowly. “Perfect.” She was laughing. “They were playing you for a fool, Antoine, my dear.”

“What are you talking about, Sophia?”

“First, there was all that talk of how I went to visit and warn the girl. I told you I never did it. And now, they’ve been telling you that they will not bond until the solstice, but it’s in his eyes. They’ve already bonded.”

Mikael sent a worried glance over towards me. I just shook my head, and put my finger to my lips. I wanted to speak to him, but I couldn’t take the chance that someone else would hear it. Sophia had already seemed to sense a presence here, even if she dismissed it once. I didn’t think I’d get that lucky if she heard a strange voice too. I continued watching as Sophia started sorting through some supplies she had laid out on a counter behind her.