Chapter 40

Chapter 40

KELLOS

T raitor…

Kellos woke slowly. His eyelids were like lead weights, fighting to stay closed. The painless comfort of sleep awaited him, and he wanted to return to that blissful realm.

What time was it? He wondered, looking around his room. It was dark, his room pitch black and empty. No Med Witch in sight. Late then, he reasoned. Groaning, he forced himself to sit up in bed. His joints hurt. Everything hurt.

After this latest bout of pneumonia, it was finally time to admit he was too old to keep up with the others. He would need to abdicate his role on the council, and soon. He was too old, too weak to keep making the trek to the palace every other day in the middle of the night. And the stress of his position was slowly killing him. But Sam and the others hadn’t settled on a permanent replacement yet. Silas was a little too young, a little too rash to be a permanent representative. The Shifters needed someone with more experience, more foresight.

Looking around the dark room, Kellos frowned. What had woken him up? Had there been a noise? Something moving?—

Traitor …

Kellos blinked. Was that a voice? Where had that come from? The room was empty; he was sure of it. And… It didn’t sound like a voice, not really. It was more like a thought… something loud inside his own mind.

Traitor…

Kellos winced. It was louder this time. A sound rattling in his skull. He shook his head, trying to dislodge the voice.

It sounded…

It sounded like his voice.

Get up.

His legs stiffened, and reflexively he stood, lurching from the bed and to his feet. The muscles in his legs quaked and shook from the effort, and the pain in his joints flared into an inferno.

Something was wrong, something was very wrong. Kellos’s heart was pounding like a drum. He had to get to someone, had to get some help. Where was his sister? Maybe she could?—

Walk.

He was nothing but a puppet. Kellos hissed in fear and horror as his body disobeyed his own commands to stumble forward.

No, no, no.

He needed to yell for help, needed his pride of Lions to hear him and come to his aid. Needed them to know something was very wrong.

Walk.

He stumbled forward, his atrophied legs barely able to hold his weight. Something inexplicable pulled him forward, yanked him toward the bathroom.

Even in the dark, he could see the fear in his eyes as he looked in the bathroom mirror. Abject terror.

Something roared in his mind, and he fought against it with what little strength he had, but it was like fighting the tide. He had no defenses against this, no walls to protect him from this force. The world around him darkened and swayed, as a body no longer his own jerked and twisted, caught between obeying commands not his own and collapsing under his own weight.

He’d been too sick for too long. He shouldn’t be standing like this, shouldn’t be …

Traitor.

Rage filled his mind. Rage… at himself. He was a traitor, wasn’t he? He’d joined the Witches on their stupid council, he’d abandoned his own kind, he’d betrayed them, betrayed them all. They had a chance to take the throne, and he’d thrown it all away. He’d gone to the Witches like a kitten, mewing for its mother, begging for a saucer of milk. He was a traitor to his own kind, a worthless, irredeemable traitor?—

No… No, that's not right. Kellos shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He was no traitor. His spot on the council was a win for Shifters everywhere. Already they had seen some remarkable changes in the city, shifts in the poverty, shifts in the regulations that favored one faction over all others?—

TRAITOR.

The voice screamed inside his head so loud that Kellos briefly lost consciousness, waking a few seconds later on the cold tile floor of the bathroom. Goddess, he hurt. His body, his mind, everything hurt.

Get up, traitor.

Kellos moaned as his body obeyed the command, forcing him upright despite the agony in his atrophied muscles and swollen joints.

Find the others.

What others? Kellos didn’t understand, and for a moment his mind was his own, that icy grip gone and his legs nearly collapsing without that voice urging them to stand.

Find the other traitors. Find the others who sold us out.

His body lurched forward again, and an image filled his mind. Silas, Ben. Sam. The other powerful shifters who supported him, who offered him advice, and worked to hold their faction together.

No , Kellos thought, but he was slipping away, slipping into darkness as the voice filled his mind, pushing him further and further from consciousness. The world in his view narrowed to pinpoints, then vanished entirely as he disappeared into the dark.

Find the traitors.

Hunt them.

Kellos hadn’t shifted in months, preferring the pain of his human body to that of his Shifter form. But as the voice filled him and pushed him deep into the darkness, his body began to shift and morph. Commanded, no longer in control of his own body, Kellos felt himself shift into his Lion skin.

It was the last thing he felt before everything went black.

Hunt them.

Hurt them.

Kill them.

---

Regina was just getting up for work when Kellos found her.

Ever since his joint inflammation had become severe enough to affect his mobility, she had taken to sleeping on Kellos’s couch, wanting to be nearby in case her brother needed anything in the middle of the night. It wasn’t much of an imposition for her, which she consistently reminded Kellos every time he complained about her staying over. After all, her bakery was just down the street from her brother’s house—closer, even, than her own place.

Her day started before dawn, and like clockwork, she awoke, ready to get started. She didn’t notice anything amiss as she got ready, sorting out her clothing and brushing her teeth in the downstairs bathroom.

She was in the kitchen, putting together a simple lunch for Kellos to enjoy later, when she heard the growling.

A Lioness is first and foremost a huntress. Keen eyes, sharp hearing, and lethal reflexes. Regina was no exception. There was a reason the Shifters had sent her and her pride to the palace the night of the Blood Moon. They were predators—far deadlier than their male counterparts.

And it is remarkably hard to sneak up on a predator.

The moment she heard the growling, Regina spun around, putting the kitchen counter at her back.

The house was dark. But not still. Something crept in the shadows, something big.

“Brother?” Regina called into the dark.

There was no answer but that growl, guttural and dangerous. A warning and a threat.

When he pounced, he did so without so much as a sound. Six hundred pounds of Lion came from the shadows at Regina, claws extended, and fangs bared.

She barely had time to grab the knife from the counter before he was on her.