Chapter 33

33

SKYE

I dropped into the seat beside Tate with a sigh, the pulse pounding in my skull making my head hurt. Across from me, Dimitri stood up and let Lulu get back to her seat, but I didn’t miss the hand that ghosted across her hip for a second as she slipped by him.

“Well, that’s a lot worse than I thought,” I muttered darkly, running a hand through my hair.

“He talked to you?” Nikolai asked quietly, his expression thoughtful and concerned as he studied me.

I nodded, still working through what Linden and Elias had spilled.

Tate grabbed my wrist. “Maren?”

At least not all the news had been bad.

I gave Tate a small smile. “She’s okay. For now.”

“For now?” Her eyes narrowed. “What the hell does that even mean?”

“She’s at a facility in New York, inside Norwood’s boundaries. Apparently it’s heavily guarded, but Linden and Elias don’t think he’ll hurt the younger girls.” I bit my lip.

“They’re too valuable,” Lulu muttered darkly.

“Valuable?” Tate repeated, worry creeping into her voice.

“The auction?” Dimitri asked.

We both nodded again, but I knew Tate needed more information, even if I hated to give it to her.

“The girls and women that have been taken? Damien’s planning to auction them off. But they’re not abusing them.” I flinched. “No one wants damaged goods.”

She hissed out a breath beside me. “I’ll fucking kill him. All of them.”

“We can take it down,” Nikolai growled. “I’ll have the men coming land in New York instead and tear their way through his pack until we find the women and the children. We’ll free them all.”

“He’ll see you coming and kill them,” I replied softly with a shake of my head. “The only way to stop this and free them is if we can kill Damien. We have to take him out of the equation.”

“And Trace,” Tate muttered. “You know he’ll just take his father’s place. He hates you and Remy as much as Damien does.”

“Then we’ll kill them all.” Natasha’s eyes glittered as she coldly announced exactly the conclusion we were all coming to.

“We need a plan,” I said calmly. I looked at Nikolai. “How much longer until we land?”

“We’re over Washington now,” he answered. “We’ll start our final descent in a few minutes.”

“I should go sit down,” Natasha said absently. She turned and headed back for her seat.

My pulse thrummed in my blood. It felt like I was going to burst apart any second. This close to home, and yet still having to wait, was its own special form of torture.

“We should land in the next twenty minutes or so.”

Relief surged through me like a tidal wave, washing away the anxiety and fear that had been festering for days.

Our problems wouldn’t stop when we landed. In a lot of ways, they would just begin.

But I felt stronger knowing I had Remy at my side and my pack at my back. That made the world a little less scary.

“You’re nervous,” Nikolai stated beside me, his gray eyes assessing me.

I turned and looked at him. “I’m anxious and excited and overwhelmed and...” I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, and I’m nervous.”

“But you’re not scared,” he said firmly, frowning.

“Scared?”

“Of what’s to come when we land.”

My jaw tightened. “No. I’m not scared. I want my friends back and my family safe.” I gave him a pointed look. “All of my family.”

His lips pulled up into a soft smile that reached his eyes.

“So, you admit we’re family?” Dimitri asked, nudging my foot with his.

I glared at my sort-of brother. “I admit Nikolai and Natasha are my family.”

Tate snorted beside me and Lulu started laughing.

“I’m the one who saved you, little sister,” he retorted.

“Kidnapped,” I corrected curtly. “You kidnapped me.”

His mouth dropped open. “You’re seriously deluded.”

“Well, they fight like siblings,” Nikolai muttered, shaking his head. He glanced up as Alexei came down the aisle.

“We’re making our final approach,” he told Nikolai before turning and flashing me a smile. “You’ll be home in about fifteen minutes, printsessa .”

Nikolai stood and followed him back to the front of the plane, taking his seat beside Natasha again.

Warmth spread in my chest, suffusing through my blood and seeping into my bones. I exhaled, trying to keep from squirming around in my seat.

Tate leaned her head against my shoulder, her eyes staring down at the ground outside the window.

I glanced over, momentarily overwhelmed by emotion when I saw the trees and the tiny houses below.

The next fifteen minutes were going to be slow torture. I needed a distraction before my wolf and I lost it.

“You said earth elemental,” I said suddenly, looking at Lulu.

She glanced up at me in surprise. “That’s right. That’s what my people are.”

“But just earth? Is that specific or something?” I frowned, trying to focus on her as the plane turned.

Tate sat up, also needing the distraction as the view outside her window turned to clouds and sky.

“There are four elements,” Lulu answered. “Earth, fire, air, and water.”

“Spirit,” Dimitri murmured.

Her gaze flicked to him before turning to me. “Yes, and spirit. But spirit is not very common.”

“So, that’s how you do what you do?” Tate asked, gesturing with her hand. “How you make the magic stuff happen?”

Lulu nodded. “That’s why we’re called elementals.” She glared at Dimitri. “Not witches .”

He smirked, but stayed quiet.

“There’s a difference?” I asked slowly.

Dimitri groaned. “You had to ask, didn’t you?”

Lulu elbowed him. “Witches are something that were made up by idiotic parents who wanted to keep their unruly kids in line centuries ago. They’re a fairytale. Totally made up for stories and television and movies.”

“Good to know,” Tate mumbled, biting her lower lip to keep from smiling.

“Elementals can control an element found in nature,” Lulu added. “Like I told you before. We siphon magic from the element we’re bonded to. It’s why my people were able to create wolf-shifters. Wolves are earth creatures.”

“So, that’s why shifters are wolves,” I said slowly.

“No, that’s why you’re a wolf-shifter,” Lulu corrected. “You could have just as easily been a bear.”

I almost choked on my own spit. “A bear?”

“Sure. There’s bear shifters, mostly in Siberia and eastern Russia. I think there’s some around the Arctic Circle, too.”

Tate and I must have had the same wide-eyed expression of shock because Dimitri started laughing.

“I told you,” he said to Lulu, “the North American packs are a fucking mess. They don’t even think there’s other kinds of shifters out there.”

“There’s more?” I cut in, the pitch of my voice raising slightly. I looked at Tate. “Did you know this?”

She shook her head mutely.

“It depends on the elemental and the region,” Lulu added. “Wolves are found on almost every continent, and earth is a common element. Wait—how did you guys think there came to be so many packs all over the world?”

“That wasn’t from your people?” I blinked slowly.

Lulu laughed, her shoulders shaking. “Of course not. I mean, the Romani created the first wolf-shifters, but other elementals in different regions created their own packs as well. The concept of a shifter wasn’t completely unknown before then.”

“Why?”

“Why not ?” she countered with a shrug. “Creating shifters became a way that elementals could protect themselves. They created their own armies and lines of defense from other elementals.”

Lulu snorted as another thought came to her. “If you think shifters fight dirty, you can’t imagine the shit elementals pull. That’s why there aren’t a lot of us left. Most have been killed throughout the years, the spirit ones in particular.”

“Why them?” Tate asked.

“Think of the Earth as a resource that can be divided up. The more earth elementals there are, the smaller the piece is that you can access. That means that the power you can siphon or access is less. If you eliminate other elementals in your faction, that gives you a larger piece to draw from. Make sense?”

We both nodded slowly.

“Spirit is a super potent element. It’s... everything . Spirit elementals went at it like no other faction. They tore each other apart because their element was like a damn drug. There were hardly any spirit elementals by the time they stopped fighting, and those that were left were batshit crazy from the power trip. At some point, the other four elementals got together and bound their abilities. It was the only way to stop them from draining the life out of every living thing on the planet.” Lulu leaned back in her chair.

“And now there’s no spirit elementals?” I tilted my head, trying to imagine a battle between magical beings.

It probably would be the same thing as normal humans trying to wrap their heads around what shifters were currently doing. We were fighting our own wars in the same world they lived in, completely unaware.

Lulu and Dimitri exchanged a look.

“There are still some,” she finally said, almost hesitantly, “but they’re mostly in hiding now. The ones that made it through the binding unnoticed hid themselves amongst humans. But there’s still a few out there.”

The heavy silence that settled around us told me there was more to that story than she was letting on.

I settled back in my seat, determined not to press her for details. I knew what it was like to not want to share your life and secrets with people you had just met.

But I also didn’t like the way Lulu was now staring blankly out the window. She had been so full of life and animation while she explained everything, but now she was just... gone.

“Are there any more besides wolves and bears?” I blurted out.

She blinked slowly, like she was waking up. “Um, yeah. Cats are pretty popular. You know, jaguars in the Amazon, panthers in Asia, lions in Africa. I think there may be a few cougars left in North America. Those are also earth-based ones.”

“Do the other elements have shifters, too?” Tate questioned curiously.

She nodded. “The first shifters, like, ever came from eastern Asia. They’re fire elements. They created dragons.”

“Dr-dragons?” I stuttered. “Actual dragons?”

“They’re extinct now,” Dimitri added. “No one has seen one in like half a century or more. It’s hard to hide a sixty-foot wingspan from radars.”

“The only water ones I know of are dolphins. Those are mostly found in the Pacific islands.” Lulu frowned, thinking. “Air is birds, obviously. Eagles and hawks, mostly.”

I was so busy thinking about freaking dragons that I wasn’t prepared when the wheels touched down on the runway. The plane bounced, jolting me. The roar inside the cabin became deafening as the flaps lifted to slow our speed.

Tate’s fingers clamped around my wrist and squeezed. “Skye.”

I followed her gaze out the window to where a group of people were waiting at the end of the runway.

My heart beat so hard, so fast, that I got dizzy.

“Breathe, Skye,” Dimitri told me.

I sucked in a deep breath as the plane slowly rolled to a gentle stop and the cabin lights came on. I unbuckled my seat belt and stood up, Tate right behind me.

I moved down the aisle until Nikolai stepped out in front of me.

“Wait, love,” he said.

My eyes narrowed. “For what? I’m not waiting. Move.”

“Skye—”

“Move, or I’ll move you myself,” I growled, my wolf ready to mow down anyone who got in our way. I could feel Tate crowding behind me, so I knew she would help me fight past him if needed.

He sighed softly, hiding a smile. “They need to bring the stairs over to the door unless you plan on dropping fifty feet to the ground.”

Oh.

Well, shit.

That made sense.

But still, I wanted to scream.

It took an eternity for the stairs to be wheeled over to the side of the plane, and longer still for the door to open.

As soon as it did, Nikolai stepped out of my way. I made it to the door when Alexei stopped me.

“I need to make sure it is safe, printsessa .”

“I promise you the bigger threat will be me if you don’t get out of my way,” I replied evenly.

“Let her go,” Nikolai called.

Alexei sighed and moved back. “Go on then.”

The stairs could have been a slide for as fast as I ran down them. As soon as my feet hit the tarmac, my eyes scanned the crowd of people until they landed on the only person I needed.

I broke into a run that would have made an Olympic athlete proud. Everything blurred by as I pushed myself to run faster, closing the distance between us. I could hear Tate behind me, running just a few steps back.

Remy was still a few feet away when I launched myself at him. He caught me easily, barely rocking backward at the force of my impact.

His strong arms banded around me while I wrapped my arms and legs around his torso, my face buried against his neck where I had claimed him only a few weeks earlier.

Home.

I was home.