Chapter 48

Forty-Eight

WESLEY

I opened my eyes to Finn standing over me, my gasp cut off as I sat up and pressed my lips to his, desperate to feel him. His touch heated near burning with its intensity, I flinched but refused to let go. A vibration echoed beneath his skin, magic spreading outward too fast to pull back, and his lips on mine demanded more.

“Finn,” I whispered, unwilling to break away, though his touch hurt, first with a raging fire, then a crisp chill that sucked energy from me. For a half second, his lips to mine, tasting him, staring into those beautiful sorrow-filled eyes, I thought it was Finn feeding on my energy as he should as my mate. But my breath puffed between us a visible icy array and that wasn’t Autumn, it was Winter.

He swallowed hard, and I pressed my forehead to his to try to give him strength as the Winter queen sucked away his magic through the curse and bloomed in dark blotches like bruises across his skin. Finn trembled.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

I silenced him with another kiss, this one long and deep, as if to show him I wanted to taste his soul through his lips. He could take as much as he needed from me, and he did, feeding at my lips, and sucking down power like a starving man.

He gasped, stealing small breaths in our kiss, and half gasps that sounded near pain. Was I hurting him?

I pulled away and watched a charge of electricity jolt him.

“Finn?”

The room around us unraveled into a weave of finely tuned magic layered over the real world. The threads turned to wriggling snakes of magical energy to attack Finn.

“What the hell?”

Finn backed away, breaking our touch and the wavering of the room stopped, though I watched him wince in pain a dozen more times as the realm continued to attack. Winter’s curse climbed up his neck and spread from his feet in a crystalizing layer of ice.

The door to the room burst open and Seb filled the doorway, his mate behind him. I threw myself at Finn, afraid for him. “Please don’t hurt him.”

“He can’t stay here,” Seb said, his expression filled with tension. “Winter is using him to invade my realm.”

“Fuck,” I cursed and turned to face Finn. “Baby, you gotta break Winter’s curse.”

“How?” He asked his eyes filled with pain, and through our bond I could feel him attacked in three different ways, his realm pulling him back, Winter’s curse draining him, and Seb’s realm trying to push him out. The rise of energy inside him continued to grow until he smoldered with the heat, his tremor scaring me more than the battle of fae magic as I worried he’d have a seizure.

Ice spread from around where he touched the floor, while his skin raged with a burning heat that sizzled against my touch. I bit back pain, trying to hold onto him and give him comfort.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Finn whispered, as the ooze of the curse climbed to cover half his face. “I feel wolves. So many wolves. Wesley?”

“I’m here,” I whispered, my skin burning against his, and tears leaking from my eyes.

“Let him go, Wesley,” Seb said, “he’s hurting you.”

Finn flinched. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…” he tried to step away and his face flashed from his youthful handsomeness to a dark wave of something inhuman.

“The beast,” Seb whispered. “Wesley, get back. He’s dangerous.”

A sense of doom trickled from Finn with an expansion of the shadows around him. He met my gaze, fear in his eyes. “Wes…”

The energy in the room shifted as a portal tore open in the room, the fabric of reality itself splitting with a sharp, echoing crack. The wolf emerged, dripping shadows, its eyes blazing.

“Weak,” the wolf snarled as it dug its claws into Finn and dragged him backward. Finn screamed and the magic burning through him transferred to the wolf, as though the wolf were taking control.

Liam let out a cry of pain, and Seb turned to him as I reached for Finn. The crackling of ice dug into the floor and crawled up Liam’s body as if to take him over. Seb put himself in front of Liam, his eyes meeting mine as Winter’s curse slammed into him and fire erupted from Seb fighting back.

A giant of a man burst through the doorway, his gaze taking in the room for a half second before he wrapped his arms around Liam and Seb.

“Oberon,” Seb said.

I’d only ever seen the man from a distance, knew of him from stories of the Volkov’s right hand, and now from glimpses into Finn’s memory, Odion full grown and filled with strength as only the oldest of wolves could have.

His gaze met mine and he murmured, “I’m sorry.” Something snapped, doom evaporated as the overwhelming noise echoing in the back of my brain vanished and with it, Finn’s terror. The fire smoldering beneath Finn’s skin, the only thing keeping him from being lost beneath Winter’s curse, vanished. His face morphed back to the frightened young man I needed to save. The crackling power of the Summer realm jolted waves of lightning bolts at the wolf and the portal.

Wards dragged Finn and the wolf into the portal. The magic gone, left with nothing but the curse, Finn bled, tears dripped from his eyes and sorrow etched across his face. He balled his hands into fists, holding them to his chest as though to keep from reaching for me, though his gaze never left mine.

Liam panted as the ice receded and Seb’s heat cracked the slither of Winter’s curse into his realm. Seb reached for me, but I shook my head, unwilling to leave Finn to this nightmare alone. He was meant to be mine, even if I had to put the bastard back together again.

The wolf ripped him through the portal, the opening closing around them, and I dove after him, hearing Seb call for me, his face stricken with fear and worry as I plunged into the dark after the man my heart ached for.

The world lurched and twisted until I feared it would spit me back on Seb’s floor, but I landed in a walloping heap on the hard forest floor, breathing heavily and swallowing back bile. Nausea roiled through my gut as I lay there trying to stop my senses from spinning and staring at the grass, heart pounding.

I turned my head and found a carved statue of myself. His gaze outward, over my head and behind him a wall of nothing but green, impassable. I studied it for a few seconds until I was certain I could roll over and not throw up my soul in an attempt to purge the rot of Winter’s touch.

A small sound of pain, like a muffled sob, echoed from somewhere nearby, and I turned my head to face away from the statue and found the sanctuary of statues stretched along the path I recalled from Finn’s dream, and Finn lying on the ground, face down, arms curled beneath his head, face hidden.

“Finn?” I whispered.

He glanced up, eyes rimmed in red, face blotched in darkness. He gasped and jolted to his feet, running toward me. I gasped a half second before he hit the barrier, seeing it ripple as he got close and watching in horror as he slammed into it and then was airborne, the magic casting him away. He landed with a thud, hard enough I feared he’d cracked his skull.

I got to my feet, stomach still in chaos, heart racing, and carefully approached the barrier. It crackled and snapped as I raised a hand to it, but I couldn’t pass through. “Finn?”

He lay on his back, breathing hard, but otherwise unmoving, too far away to see clearly. Silence stretched over the realm, the only thing I could hear beyond the low hum of the barrier around me was the sound of Finn’s sobs.

“Finn,” I called again, desperate for him to hear me. “Are you hurt?”

He said nothing for a long minute, then finally, “The wolf is right.”

“About what?” I asked.

“I’m weak.”

“You’re still here.”

“I don’t want to be.”