Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MIKO

I went for a walk down the corridor in an attempt to clear my head.

Instead, I reached the emergency room just as the pink smoke billowed across the furniture, passing over rotting corpses, doing what Dawn did every morning.

But with a twist.

It filled the bodies, reanimating them, most of them clearly felled zombies with things stuck in their heads to end brain activity.

Dawn was changing the rules.

The first corpse that got to its feet was a woman, a screwdriver sticking out of her left eye, maggots crawling over her face. Her hospital scrubs were caked in filth. She bared her rotten teeth, a phlegmy laugh oozing out of her.

"Think you are safe. Think you understand," Dawn spoke. "You are wrong. I evolve. I evolve. I evolve."

Yeah, we got the picture. Things were falling apart, the nightmare expanding.

The other corpses got up, facing me, the rotting stink now hitting me with an unpleasant burn to the back of my throat.

The others arrived, skidding to a stop around me.

Dawn cackled.

"This cannot be happening," Basil whispered behind me. "This isn't possible."

Keep up, I wanted to say. Don't you know we're royally fucked?

"You will never be free," Dawn said. "You will never succeed. Now is the time to die, chosen wolf. You lose."

I hated to admit it, but the dickhead might have a point. But fuck it.

I jumped into the fray, my fist going right through the woman's head, gore exploding in my face. The others roared, joining me. Together we wiped out the reanimated biters, making short work of Dawn's newest trick.

"Shit," I rasped after it was done, inspecting the bloodbath around me.

Pink smoke continued to roll across the floor. I raked a hand through my hair.

How was I supposed to make the journey back to London, get through the Faery gates, somehow catch a flight to the Forest of the Lost, and then find my love?

Shit. Shit.

Fuck!

I broke, the tears coming hot and fast, my hands shaking. Fireworks of grief popped off in my chest, sending me staggering backward. I couldn't take it, I couldn't fight it, sorrow bursting out of me.

I'd not experienced anything like this since losing my family.

Sobs ripped out of me in loud howls. I collapsed, defeated, the flood defenses obliterated. The smoke of Dawn recoiled from me as I wailed for Orion, for the loss of hope, for landing on a decision seconds ago.

I had to die to make this stop. I wasn't afraid of death, but I was afraid of what I'd lose. But I already had. This was me going through the grieving process, letting things go.

No more fighting. No more clinging to hope.

What about my mate? How could I leave him in Faery with a knife in his belly?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I roared for him, screaming my lungs out for failing him.

My pack gathered around me, huddling together, holding me through this outpouring.

It kept going, an endless earthquake with no respite on the horizon.

"We're here, sir." Paige spoke so gently it added to the turmoil.

This was it. The end. No more dreaming, the path ahead clearer than ever.

James stroked my back, Paige held my hands, Cate patted my knee. They were my family, my everything as much as Orion. Here with me through the good and the bad times, the last ones standing, always fighting, never giving up.

They believed in me, and I believed in them. They all deserved peace.

I would give it to them.

Cate grasped my knee, squeezing it tightly. I sniffled, rising strength choking off my sobs.

"What—"

Pink tendrils snaked into her nostrils, her eyes changing color, her mouth hanging open.

"Cate?" James said. "What's… Oh no."

My stomach rolled as her grip on my knee intensified.

Shit.

James took hold of his wife's shoulders, staring directly into the Dawn-infested eyes. "You can't have her. You won't have her."

Cate cocked her head, releasing my knee. She pushed James so hard he slid across the floor, crashing into a pile of dead bodies.

I jumped to my feet as Cate stood to meet me.

"You heard him," I growled. "Get out of her."

Dawn rolled Cate's neck, tension popping. "Hello again, chosen wolf. I see you continue to have luck on your side."

"Get the fuck out of my wife!" James bellowed.

I held him back for his own safety. He struggled against me; the guy incredibly strong.

I was stronger.

"Don't get too close," I warned.

"Let go of me!" he cried, desperately trying to fight me off. "Get out of her! Get out of her!"

Dawn moaned, Cate's possessed hands cradling her stomach. "Wolf with a baby. Two in one body."

James froze. "W-What did…" he couldn't finish, the shock turning his limbs to jelly. I stopped him from falling.

"It's all right," I told him. "It's all right."

Like hell was it alright. Dawn was inside a pregnant Cate, and the news had come to James in the worst possible way.

"Get. Out. Of. Her." My beta found his strength again, shrugging me off. "You won't have my wife or my child."

"Damn right," I added, moving to his side.

Dawn guffawed. "I?—"

Cate gagged and hunched over, puking up black goo. It splattered on the floor as it drained from her body, forcing her to her knees.

James darted for her, cradling her through the violent vomiting until she was spent.

Dawn still hadn't mastered taking over supernaturals, it seemed. But it would at some point.

Not on my watch.

A partially rotted skull on the reception desk I hadn't notice before came to life under Dawn's touch.

The mouth moved, the pink eyes exuding anger. "I will have you all. If I cannot have your bodies in life, I will have them in death. I will feed and feed and eat and eat and evolve and become and you will?—"

Trev picked up the skull and smashed it on the ground, stomping his big troll feet on it for good measure.

"Nice work," Arlo said.

Trev wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "Can't take any more of its shit."

My hands still shook from my breakdown, but I managed to remain steady, the worst of it over.

James and Cate held each other in silence. Everyone else kept their heads turned to give them a semblance of privacy. Fuck Dawn for taking Cate's news away from her. She wanted to tell James at the right time, not when some entity blurted out.

This was another responsibility for me to take on. Not in the parental sense, but in giving the child and their parents a future. One I really wanted them all to have.

So, this was it. This had to end today.

Hissing sounded outside. The boarded-up doors rattled, the wood splintering under the force of the speedie horde.

Damn it.

"Time to go," Andrew said.

"Follow me." Paige took the lead, hurrying back the way we came, our survival modes activated.