Chapter 5 The Hearthrown Alphas

LYS

“Gianna!” I screamed as my sister struck me again.

Her claws tore through my cheeks, hot as heated knives. They melted my skin, letting out a bitter smell of seared flesh as she dragged them through. “Bloody shift!”

My face healed again as I mentally wrestled with Rhea to lie low. I had barely gotten her under control back in that ward.

We were now at the Bronson Caves. In the past hour, my sister had knocked me out, and snuck me out of the hospital. When I opened my eyes, my head was pressed to hard rocky earth instead of goose-down pillows.

“What did I ever do to you, Gianna?” Nervous sweat streamed down my temples, my cheeks sticky with tears and snort as I stared at the woman who was my only sister.

She pulled out a gun from her Lana Marks clutch, training it on my face. My stomach lurched.

“What you did to me, you say?” She barked a harsh laugh, snorting and hastily wiping her nose. “You’re so conceited you cannot see what a goddamn pain in the ass you are?”

She moved one step closer.

“You never stop pushing me. Pushing me to my bloody breaking point just like you’re doing now. Why is it so hard to shift? At least you get to live. But you just have to be so freaking stubborn and make me kill you!”

My heart missed a beat, Kill?

“You got that right.” She nodded enthusiastically as she watched realization dawn on me. “These are silver bullets. If that does not do the job, wolfsbane would. I will pawn all my stuff to get a goddamn mistletoe if I have to.” Her hand started to tremble, and she tightened her grip on the gun till her knuckles turned white. “So please Lys, fucking shift.”

We held each other’s gaze in the tense silence as her body started to tremble as much as mine would have if it was not practically lifeless, propped against the wall of the cave.

She seemed to realize I would not shift. Smirking bitterly, she unlatched the gun with a snap. “See you never.”

My vision blurred.

But at that very second, the earth started to tremble. My gaze bounded around me, frightened, quite certain I must be hallucinating.

Gianna dropped to the floor with a scream, shielding her head with both hands. A crack appeared on the floor, like a fault line, running fast like a ripped fabric. The walls of the cave around us groaned, heaving against itself. Still, the ground continued to vibrate violently.

The first chunk of rock shook loose, and a rain of limestone dust followed. Another chunk of rock hit the ground with a heavy thud, and the next one narrowly missed my legs.

I screamed as I coughed, the metallic smell was choking, the powdery particles of limestone burned their way into my lungs. Through the hazy rain of white dust, I saw Gianna jump to her feet and take to her heels.

“Gianna!” I screamed after her, still coughing.

She moved ungainly, staggering at every new tremor from the earth. Thump! The first rock blocked my view, and then more fell, all around me, as I coughed till I feared I was now spitting out clumps of my own lungs.

Somehow, the rocks continued to miss me, but I was now sitting in a well of darkness, propped against a wall with stones around my mid-rift like a sack of potatoes.

My screams echoed back to me. A hollow reminder that no one was coming to rescue me. The mouth of the cave was completely sealed now.

Twice, I stopped Rhea from shifting in my distress. Grandma never lied or exaggerated. If she said I would be stuck in wolf form if I shifted, she was right.

I was dizzy at that point, likely dehydrated, when I heard a hiss. My body tensed. I strained my ears in the darkness, but heard nothing except my pounding heart.

“Goddess,” I muttered, unable even to turn my head. “One more chance.”

I’ll throw myself at the Hearthrown Alphas’ feet if I manage to make it out of this. Twelve months of living was better than a long life in this state. Helpless and useless.

Even if I survived this, Gianna would not back down. The more out of reach Fentone became for her, the worse her ire would become.

If she could pull a silver-bullet-loaded gun at me just now, she would not hesitate to inject wolfsbane into my bloodstream while I slept.

Hiss!

My head contracted as the skin on my face cramped into a hard mask. Something was slithering on the floor in my direction. I could hear the movement clearly in the damp darkness clinging to me like a heavy blanket.

My lips trembled, and a whimper escaped me.

But I bit down hard on my bottom lip as sweat crawled down the back of my neck, soaking into my shirt.

That was no doubt a snake, and from the sound it made against the rock, a big one. The sound of my heartbeats drowned out everything else, and my eyes grew wider than my sockets could contain.

Hiss!

It was less than three feet away at this point. My bladder contracted and relaxed, but I was too terrified to feel embarrassed. The air held unmistakable evidence that I had really peed myself.

If I stayed still, it would not notice me.

Out of nowhere, a light breeze blew somewhere around my chin. I was confused for a second. And then, to my horror, I realized it must be on my body, because it was now breathing in my face.

I shut my eyes tight, waiting. Waiting for the strike and pain and venom.

Almost instantly, I was aware of a faint wash of light, burning through my closed eyelids. I pried my eyes apart a slit to confirm it was not a trick.

It wasn’t.

Someone was out there, clearing the mouth of the cave.

I opened my lips to call out for help, but quickly snapped my mouth shut again. There was a snake on my body. If I screamed, I was dead meat. Even now. I had an eerie feeling it was watching me.

Slowly, I turned my eyes and found myself staring at the royal head of a mammoth cobra. Poised for attack. Air rushed into my lungs, and my lips parted to scream.

“That’s the dumbest thing you could do, fairy.” The unfamiliar male voice that echoed through the cave sounded nothing human.

But I was too scared to turn, too terrified to look away even one second from this staring contest between me and the cobra.

A gloved hand appeared. Swift as a sword.

It plucked the cobra from me and tore its head off. Bits of flesh and blood sprayed all over one wall of the cave.

The snake must have bitten me already because I was now hallucinating. That voice. Tearing a cobra apart with bare hands. None of it could be real.

But then the hand tossed the cobra’s corpse to the floor, and the sound of its body smacking against the rock shook something loose in my brain. This was reality.

Whatever creature was powerful enough to kill a cobra with its bare hands would crush me like a grape.

I screamed.

My eyes jumped to the mouth of the cave. Open and bright now. My gaze fell on the most horrible sight I had ever seen in all my twenty-six years.

These were the monster gods.