Ashes To Ashes (Wolf Guard Book 2) (28 page)

Epilogue

"We should call Katherine." Arya eyed me carefully as she spoke. "She got through to him last time."

Let him break.

"What do you think, Sasha? Should we call her?"

Leave him to rot in there.

"We could try it at least, see if he remembers her." She turned those green eyes on me again, perhaps looking for something more than the numb kind of fury that seemed to hover over my expression and turn it so cold.

I turned back to the window, the amber glow of morning spreading life on a landscape still clinging to ashen frost. Women walked the far wall, talking in hushed whispers among themselves, hiding their voices from beasts with big ears. Perhaps they wondered where one of their members had gone - what had happened to the pale, blonde female. Maybe they speculated on the three bedraggled figures that had carried two limp forms, a return journey in the early hours of the morning so few days ago. Or possibly their thoughts turned only to their brand new Alpha, and just what had taken him away.

I took him away.

"You need to tell me what you're thinking, what you're planning to do."

I sighed with my back still turned, wishing she'd just leave me alone. I found the constant presence of people a drain on fragile patience. "I'm not going to do anything."

She coughed quietly. "You can't just leave him there, Sasha. It's not right."

That fine thread of patience snapped just a little. "I can do whatever the hell I want. He's mine, and that means It's my decision."

She shuffled her feet, a soft swishing by the door. "You'll regret this, I know you will. It's not meant to be this way."

I laughed, letting that coldness seep through my voice. "No. It wasn't meant to be this way, but this is what I've been left with."

Bitter.

Is this bitterness? Is that what I feel? I know it's not pain - never that. I know how anger grows, its mutating path of destruction. I know how sadness falls, its suffocating flow of unbearable depletion. I flit between both emotions, as if the empath were broken and felt only these two. Some vicious circle of doom that only brings more anger and sadness, in greater quantities than the last pass around.

"I know you're angry - it's okay to be angry, but don't let it turn you into this person."

I understood where she was coming from, I could even take the advice she threw at me - only from this girl that knew such anger herself. But how do I stop something that I don't want to stop? "I can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved."

"Are you talking about Lane, or yourself?"

Smart woman.

I don't even know the answer to that one.

I gave her a noncommittal shrug and allowed the conversation to wither away, a debate I had no solution to. Surely this isn't what she wanted - fate. I couldn't imagine the lesson she was trying to teach me. Hadn't I lost enough already? At what point is it okay to give up and waste away? Stop fighting the hurdles she throws my way, stop taking the beatings she doles out while smiling...just stop. Perhaps that's all she's asking for; a bitter end to my muddied life.

Arya huffed from the doorway, "this is bullshit."

I managed a tilt of my head in question.

"You're annoying me."

I snorted rather roughly.

"I feel like I'm talking to myself." She huffed again. "Your choices are simple: you can kill him, forgive him or walk away. It's not the choices you don't understand, it's the answer."

Heavy thuds came from the end of the long hallway, a large body that made its way to the office.

"It's all about choices, Sasha. And they're yours to make. In the end, the only thing that matters is what will make you happy, what you can live with. Ignore everything else - it's bullshit."

I gave a slight nod in acknowledgment, allowing her some response for breaking it down to its simplest terms.

That heavy tread stopped beside Arya at the door.

"Feeding time?" She asked.

A grunt came in answer. "I feel like a zoo keeper." Conall's lilting voice thawed that chill the tiniest amount.

Arya huffed a small laugh and hummed. "I'd imagine so." She took a step back as I turned to see the large Irishman holding a tray of raw meat. "Carver and I are going back with the guard," she swept her eyes to me. "Charlie needs to stay here for a while, figure out some things."

Yes, that wolf certainly needed to sort out a lot of his issues. I nodded at her retreating figure, "he can stay as long as he likes."

She turned with a tiny smile and left to find her mate, a man I'm sure was waiting not so patiently for her return.

"What do yer say, little pirate? Want tae feed the beast wit' me?" He scrubbed a hand over his stomach as he spoke, a wince twitching on his face. "Bastard Faery been repeating on me fer days."

I screwed my face up and grimaced at him, truly disgusted that he seemed so unconcerned his wolf had eaten the female. Although, I'd never rubbish his stories again.

I looked to the tray in his hands, blood dripping from the edge, and nodded at his question. "I can do that."

He waited for me to follow him out of the office, walking the long road to the basement, my boots tapping a rhythm on the wooden flooring. The switch from light and airy to dank and dirty was so completely absolute it seemed a different place. Like I'd been taken from the house and dropped into some prison of torture, a fitting surround for the beast I housed inside. My tapping shoes became scuffling scrapes as wood changed to dirt.

"Yer want tae be alone, little pirate?"

I shook my head, "no. I'm okay with you staying."

He opened the steel door and let me enter first, shutting it tight behind him. The rumbling growl filled the room as soon as my scent breached the air. The cell was partitioned in two, heavy metal bars that caged a twenty foot square and sectioned off in the middle - a single cell made double by the solid steel wall in the centre. Black chains ran the length of the metal, wrapped heavily around each bar, melted to each individual pole and impossible to break for a wolf.

"He always knows when yer comin'."

He did indeed. No matter his state of mind, he always knew who entered his cell. I passed the first empty cage and walked steadily to the second, a shadow crossed the wall as he crept out of hiding to follow. I took the tray from Conall and motioned for him to remain, then stood in the light from the single bulb, swaying over my head.

"Hello, Lane."

He growled low at the sound of my voice.

"I have your food." I waved a steak in the air, wafting the smell to obscure my own.

Bright eyes flashed in the dark. Another low growl rolled around the room. A gleam of white teeth that bared as he faced me. His hair still hung over his face, his skin covered in dirt, his claws still tainted red with blood.

I threw the steak at the bars, aiming it to land just a few inches from the metal that separated us.

"W..wit...witch."
A hiss floated on the stale air.

I sighed, "yes. I'm the witch."

But not your witch. Not yours anymore.

He sunk his claws into the steak, dragging in backwards into the shadows, leaving a trail of blood in a swerving line. An animal forced to be human.

"You want another one?"

He growled out his answer.

I took another steak from the tray and flicked it into the cell. "You're staying in here, Lane. Won't be getting out while I'm still here."

He dragged the meat under cover of dark, completely unconcerned at my words - or lacking the ability to understand.

"You'll never be free again."

His growl turned to a higher pitch, something almost like anguish.

I smiled.
Yes, he understands.

The click of the lock to the steel door broke my concentration, loud footsteps that scuffed against the dusty floor. Lane's growl turned thunderous.

"
Fe...feed...feeder."

My smile twisted to glee. "That's right, wolf. Feeder."

Conall grunted a greeting behind me, "pretty boy."

A snort came in response, "Irish."

It was almost friendly. As if the night that had nearly killed them both - Ty from his wounds and Conall from the pure amount of energy that he'd allowed to be taken from him in order for Ty to heal - had turned their relationship into something resembling friendship. Almost, but not quite.

It had taken a long couple of days for Ty to wake. His features so dead I'd assumed it too late when Conall had taken his body from me. Slightly too distracted by the reaper I’d made of myself. I'd missed the draw of energy, Conall's staggering wolf that fell on the faery in exhaustion - pure force of will allowing his teeth to eat through her bones, and the wolf's resulting collapse to the floor beside the slowly healing feeder.

My heart had become something else. A little bit riddled with holes, a little bit patched up in relief, a little bit torn when it came to the Alpha.

Ty turned his blue eyes to me and frowned. "Come on, Sash. Give him the rest and leave him be."

I clenched my teeth and threw the remaining meat at the bars, staring straight faced as Lane rushed the metal to thud against the cell wall, backing away at the singe of his flesh on the chains.

"It's alright, I'm finished anyway."

I turned my back on the wolf. Ignoring the howl that followed. A call from within to the man in the cage that resembled nothing I'd come to know.

A bitter end to a beautiful dream
.

A traitorous watery drop ran a single path down my face, a break in the visage I presented.

I rubbed it away with a trembling hand, ruining the tracks of my tears.

Coming Soon.

Sasha nearly lost everything.

Lane did lose everything.

When the path to forgiveness is so heavily barred in thorns, is it easier to forget where you started?

Charlie lives only to chair the guard.

With that responsibility taken away from him, how will he deal with the growing presence inside him and the appearance of the woman mean to be his?

DUST TO DUST

Wolf Guard book 3.

Find me on Facebook -
https://www.facebook.com/Roxanneleeauthor/

Join my mailing list - Email -
[email protected]