Chapter 152
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AURORA
I was so cold.
Everything hurt.
All I could see was a blazing field of white.
I moaned and blinked. My mouth tasted like blood. I tried to move and cried out in pain.
My eyes finally came back into focus, and I looked up.
I lay at the bottom of a cliff in the snow. It was morning. There was blood splattered all around me. I coughed and then cried out. It felt like my ribs were broken.
I blinked up at the cliff, to the tower that loomed above. Had I… fallen? I should be dead.
My fingers closed around something, and a wave of relief washed over me. The pearl pendant was in my hand. But how?
Flashes of memory came back to me. Cold and blood. My memories being stolen. That moment with Dane…
Dane!
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I tried to breathe again. Other memories came rushing back, patchy and jumbled. The Nameless taking me.
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Dane, finding me like he promised he would. Dane making some kind of deal—a deal I thought the Nameless would never take in a thousand years. But he had. And as the shadows swept from me and closed over him, he had shoved the pearl into my hand.
And then the Nameless had shoved me off the tower, and I had
fallen over the cliff.
If my ribs didn’t ache so badly, I would have cried out in despair.
Snow crunched. A shadow loomed overhead. A man’s voice said, “There you are, my dear. I’ve been looking for you.”
*****
Time passed in a blur after Winston found me. He nursed me back to health, at least in body. My mind was still lost. My heart broken. We stayed in a hidden cave on High Alpine land.
Dane had done what I begged him not to. Somehow, he had gotten the Nameless to take him instead of me.
Then the Nameless had pushed me out of the tower. I should have died.
Maybe I had, for a minute.
Maybe Holden had, too. And stayed dead. Because I seemed to
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be free of whatever bond he had put on me.
Free, just in time to lose Dane again.
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Winston was the one who told me that Dane had descended down to the High Alpine pack house and taken control of most of the pack.
They might not have gone to him—I was still their Luna—but Lilliana had taken one look at the incredibly sexy, powerful Alpha offering to hand them the whole world and jumped to join him.
Of course, she had. If my cousin had two weaknesses, they were power and handsome men.
Only a handful of wolves were still under my command, and most of them were far, far away on missions for my grandmother.
But she was dead now, and I didn’t know if they’d follow me.
There was only one thing to do. When I was recovered, I said, “We’re going back to Georgia, and you’re coming with me. I won’t abandon my children or the Blue Ridge Pack.”
What I didn’t say, but what I knew, was that I also had to return to that stone and retrieve the relic at last. With Dane as his weapon, the Nameless was about to sweep across the world in a wave of fire and blood. We had to be ready.
As I left my family’s ancestral homeland, I looked back over the
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Dane, I promised, I’ll find you again. Just like you found me. No matter what it takes, or how long I have to search to find a way.
*****
TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER
Aurora DeVere the Luna–heir of High Alpine was dead.
Aurora Montague, Luna of Broken Ridge–the combined packs of Blue Ridge and Broken Forest–was on the rise.
When I took over Dane’s packs, it only seemed right that I take his name, as well. To honor his sacrifice.
I stood in the war room, looking over maps. The shadow packs had swept over Europe since Dane became their Alpha, taking over all but a few strongholds that were left.
And now…
Trajan, my beta, entered the room. “Luna. They’ve landed. They’ll be here in a few hours.”
I snapped my gaze up to meet his. “Dane?”
“Yes. He’s leading them. Not one of his generals, though a few are with him.”
I nodded. My face was calm, but butterflies danced low in my
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He was here. Back in the States for the first time since he’d traded himself to the Nameless. That creature that had fooled us into unlocking its cage and now sat in its lair deep underground…somewhere.
I had a coven of witches and my best wolf/witch half–bloods working on where, but so far, it was nowhere to be found.
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Once I did find it, I would crush the Nameless once and for all and get my husband back. Our situation was desperate. Wolves all over the world were falling to the shadow. I couldn’t let that be our fate.
For tonight, I had to let Dane come here. Had to negotiate with him and his shadow wolves.
I had to see if there was anything left of him to save
“All right,” I said to the other wolves gathered in the war room. I didn’t have to raise my voice to get their attention–I never did. “Everyone get ready to host a ball for the most dangerous wolves in the world.”
