Chapter 22: Colt

Chapter 22: Colt

As I watched Kiara leave, the taste of her kiss lingered on my lips. She would be all I’d think about for the next couple of days. Was it selfish of me to have wanted to mark her so soon after she’d lost her mother? I meant it when I suggested that it was just to be able to communicate telepathically because the Mythguard taking her away from me made me feel useless—like, despite all my promises to protect her, I would once again be reduced to just watching everything happen from the sidelines.

But I would respect her wishes.

I stood by the window and watched the cars pull away. Through their tinted windows, I couldn’t even see Kiara, and with each yard of mounting distance, my fated mate bond thinned like an elastic band until I knew inevitably Kiara would come crashing back into me. I just had to be patient. Turning around, I found Everett, Gavin, Aislin, and Billie looking at me with varying degrees of judgment.

“You really asked to mark her,” Aislin accused.

The hair on my arms stood up. “Because I wanted us to have the mate connection so I could keep her safe.”

“I would’ve sworn it was because you’d want to control her or know where she was at all times so you could deliver her to your nasty dad.”

“Ais,” Everett warned lowly.

“No, really. This asshole is always up to something,” she said, thrusting a finger at me. “I’m surprised she had your wrists freed and that you didn’t try to drag her back to the mine in the middle of the night.”

“I don’t want to hurt her, okay? I’m done trying to please my father. I’ll never stand by his side again. Protecting my fated mate comes before everything else. You know what I’m talking about, you have to know—Gavin, you found peace when you accepted Billie into your life. Everett must have felt some kind of zest or appreciation for life when he got with you, Aislin. The fated bond changes everything.” I shook my head, worried that I was grasping at straws, but there had to be some way I could relate to them! “When I lost Billie and Catrina, I lost a part of myself. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and I had no direction other than what my father told me to do. None of you wanted to have anything to do with me, and then I found Kiara. And sure, she didn’t want anything to do with me either, but at least then I knew what I had to do. She gave me a reason to break away from David. I know now that I have to prove myself worthy of her. That’s why I’m here. You don’t have to give me a chance. But whether or not you do, it’s not going to change what side I fight for. I fight for Kiara.”

Aislin’s face gradually scrunched up as I spoke. Everett’s brows sunk as I imagined him internally vacillating between being angry and trying to understand me. I didn’t think I could get through to them, but Gavin and Billie both seemed to soften, so I sought their eyes instead. “Billie… You know I’m not a villain.”

All this time, there had been a wall between my sister and me. She put it up to protect herself, of that I was certain. I hurt her too, like I’d hurt everyone as a reaction to losing Billie and Catrina, and she probably recognized that I manipulated her just like my father, but she had to know me well enough to realize I never did anything out of malice. My entire body sank, imploring her to dismantle that wall.

Billie rubbed her arms indecisively. “It still hurts that you tried to mark me.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I’ll never be able to take back what I’ve done.”

“Do you really mean it that you want to break away from David?”

I nodded. “Yes, I do. I’m done with him.”

“You promise?”

If only she knew how intensely my heart was pounding in my chest, begging for her to believe me. “Yes, Billie.”

The old Billie would have looked back at her companions for reassurance, but in the weeks since she had left Hexen Manor to pursue her own identity, she’d grown into a girl with confidence and certainty. She stepped forward and looked up at me, then took me in a tight embrace, reminding me of when we were just children. The alienation that plagued me felt a little less intense. I hugged her back, relieved to have her forgiveness. “Thank you,” I murmured.

“Don’t thank me yet. We still have to get through David and Lothair,” said Billie. “But we’ll get through it together. You and me.”

Just like before, when we were going to run away together. “Yeah. You and me.”

As Billie retreated, I looked to the other three, wondering if they would confront me with their personal qualms as well. They just backed away, returning to their spots on the couch in the living room. I hovered nearby, unsure of where I belonged, and ended up sitting on the very edge of the couch, looking across the room to the nearest window. The sun was on its way down through the trees.

“Sebastian will be back tomorrow morning to discuss a plan for raiding the mine in the afternoon,” Everett said, looking up from his phone. “I know it’s short notice, so it’ll just be us five. I’m not going to endanger any more of our packmates.”

“We’ll have more Mythguard operatives to help us, right?” asked Aislin.

“Yes. Although Sebastian has to answer for why so many people have died here, he says the lethality of Dalesbloom and the Inkscales merits a greater force than what they sent before. We should be well-equipped to take them on tomorrow.”

“Yeah. So many people have died… I feel almost numb to it now.” Aislin shook her head.

“I’ll never feel numb to it,” said Billie.

Aislin sympathetically reached for Billie’s hand.

“Hey, do you two remember the interior of the mine? Can you draw us a map or something?” asked Gavin.

“I remember a bit,” said Aislin.

“I can help. I spent days in there,” I offered.

Everett got up and went to the nearby kitchen, withdrawing from a drawer a pad of paper and pen. He placed it on the coffee table, and I knelt before it, recalling the layout from memory. “This is the entrance here. You know there’s a large communal space right by the entrance; that’s where everyone was fighting,” I began. “There’s a couple of tunnels branching off deeper inside. One of them leads to areas where some of my packmates and the dragons slept. The other tunnel is where I stayed, and further in is the room where my father slept and did all his work. Last I saw, he also had a crate of handguns, but at this point, he’s probably distributed them all. Then deeper in is the room where the girls and Muriel were kept prisoner. There are exposed silver veins there, so it’s the most dangerous room.”

“Does it go any deeper?” asked Everett.

“There are a few more tunnels, but they’re undeveloped and dangerous to be in. You’re at a high risk of silver exposure there.”

“Hey,” Aislin chimed in again, “what are dragons weak to?”

I tipped back on my heels and thought. “Balsam resin and gold.”

“Well, I don’t know where we’re gonna get balsam resin from, but if anybody has any gold rings, you might wanna wear ‘em.”

“Wait. Do you still have any of Muriel’s items?” I asked Gavin.

“Yeah. She actually had like a whole basket of things. It’s in my car still.”

“Go get it.”

We waited for Gavin to bring in the wicker basket full of little items the unicorn had put together during her time with the Grandbay wolves. I rooted through them, searching for anything that might resemble the sappy byproduct of the northeastern fir in question. “I thought maybe she would have carried something on her.”

“When we originally found Muriel back in the summer, she didn’t have anything.”

“Balsam,” Everett echoed. “We process balsam at the lumber mill.”

All of us sat up and zeroed in on Everett. “Do you have any unprocessed logs?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, already reading my mind.

As everyone mobilized outside, I hesitated by the box. There were medium-sized crow feathers that Muriel had collected, shaped like darts with their hollow shafts carefully carved into a needle-like point. The unicorn didn’t seem like the type to carry weapons, but I understood instantly what the purpose of these feathers was supposed to be. They wouldn’t look like weapons to the untrained eye. I grabbed a handful of them and joined everyone in the car.

The lumber mill smelled strongly of sawdust but even more so of pine when we entered the processing floor. Each of us donning vibrant safety gear, we approached a room where logs leftover from the day’s processing sat waiting, categorized by length, size, and of course, species of tree. There were the balsam logs, five of them leftover and shorn of their branches, still donning the bark swollen with pustules of resin.

“Drain and collect the resin,” I advised. “Then, using syringes, we can put the resin into these feathers.”

“What are we going to do, stab them with feathers?” scoffed Aislin.

“These are darts. All we have to do is throw them.”

Her eyes widened with revelation. “Clever Muriel.”

“Clever indeed,” murmured Everett.

We made quick work of collecting the balsam resin in metal tins from the factory. On the way home, we stopped at a pharmacy for syringes, and then back at Everett’s place, we spent hours painstakingly filling all the darts that Muriel had made—fifteen in total. “I don’t know what dragons’ tolerance of balsam resin is, but each dart holds at least two milliliters. If all of that enters the bloodstream, then I can’t imagine it’ll end well for them,” I said.

“Save them for Lothair if possible,” suggested Everett.

“Good call on the resin darts,” said Gavin, catching my eye.

Praise from Gavin was unexpected. The bridge of my nose still stung every now and then from the scar he had left me with, but I supposed he suffered the same from the scar across his eye, his eyelid hanging heavy.

All of our wounds had come from my father fostering hatred within us. But tomorrow night, we would bring an end to his reign of terror. He would pay for everything he took from us.