Chapter 386

I just stare at my mate, my mouth hanging open and my eyes going wide as I suddenly realize why his features were so familiar.

because…

Suddenly, his familiar face makes sense. My mind flashes to the meeting at Midwinter, when the Atalaxians declared war – to Ben’s mate, and the flare of connection between us –

Because – I mean, this isn’t him – but his face…

They’re nearly identical. Which means…this man…a Prince of Atalaxia…

“Yes,” he murmurs, smirking as he sees my recognition before turning away from me now and keeping a hand tight on the back of my neck like a wayward pup. “You’ll be quite the prize, Princess.”

He shoves, then, hard and I go stumbling forward towards –

Towards a little electric cart or something that’s right in front of me. I blink at it, wondering how of all absurd things…that got here. And what –

But then I gasp, realizing that he’s taking me away. That I’m being taken somewhere else. And that if I want to go home –

I groan, closing my eyes, again calling on that dark power, demanding to return to the battlefield, to my true mate and my brother and my uncle –

But nothing happens. Of course it doesn’t. The cuffs on my wrist hum with power.

The man laughs, grabbing my arm and hauling me towards the vehicle.

“Don’t be an idiot, Ariel,” he murmurs, shoving me hard towards the seat. I stumble forward, my hands hitting the side of the cart hard, my knees barking as they hit the lower edge. “Stop trying that. It doesn’t work.”

My mate moves behind me, grabbing me below the arms and lifting me, shoving hard to get me into the cart.

“No!” I shout, spinning, glaring up at him. “I’m not going anywhere with you! I’m –“

But suddenly, fast, a vial is in his hands. He pops it open, leaning towards me, aiming for my mouth, a frustrated sneer on his lips.

I scream and shove him away –

“Drink, Luna,” he snarls, leaning close, using his body to pin me to the bottom of the vehicle and tilting the vial against my lips. “God damn it, drink, or I’ll beat you, and make you drink!”

To illustrate his point he cuffs me, hard, across the head. I gasp in pain, which flares across my skull, and as I do he takes advantage, tilting the potion into my mouth.

I cough against it, trying to spit it out.

But it’s heady, strong stuff.

My vision immediately begins to fade as I look up into my mate’s beautiful face.

Because as much as I hate him, and still wish to make him burst into flames and reduce him to ash…

God, heavens, but he’s beautiful.

“That’s my girl,” my mate murmurs, patting me hard against the cheek as my body goes limp.

As my consciousness fades, the last thing I remember is being lifted into the vehicle and slumped over the seat.

And then I’m gone, completely lost to this world too. This new world, wherever that may be.

“Midnight!” Jesse calls out to the girl trotting eagerly before him. Jesse, in turn, is exhausted, trudging up yet another tall hill.

She doesn’t respond.

He groans, loud and frustrated, before he stops and putting his hands on his hips. “Mids!”

Midnight turns, frowning at him. “What?”

“You said that your house was ‘just over the that hill’ like, eight hours ago,” he says, shaking his head at her, exhausted and thirsty and hungry. “Do you like…have a different conception of what ‘just’ means? Or ‘that’? Or ‘hill’?”

Midnight grins at him. “Oh Jesse, you’re so funny,” she sighs, turning back around and continuing to hike. “Seriously, it’s just over this hill.”

“Oh my god,” Jesse mumbles, scraping his hand down his face. “Does that mean…eight more hours? Over a mountain? Beneath a mountain?”

“No!” Midnight laughs, turning to beam at him, ridiculously energetic after such a long trek. “Seriously, Jesse, just one more hill I promise.”

“You promised that four hours ago,” he mutters, sighing and beginning to walk after her again, shaking his head and knowing that he has no other choice. Again, what else would he do? Just…sit down here and rot?

He considers it for a quiet second, wondering if a peaceful death staring into the darkness of this world might be better…

But no. Midnight would never leave him alone. She’d probably…drag him or something. Bother him back to life.

Jesse sighs, indulging in some good old fashioned self pity, his mind wandering to Daphne, the beautiful girl he left all alone and bleeding. Will her face scar, after Midnight swiped her claws across it? But no – Rafe won’t let that happen. Surely, he’ll get her to Ella, who will patch her up and to his mom, who will make her comfortable…

Jesse’s wolf howls to think again over what she must have done in the moments after he was taken from her room. How scared she must have been, must still be. Do they even know where he is? How could they -

His head snaps to the left, hearing the soft sputter of an engine of some kind.

Jesse pauses in his steps, frowning, peering. And then he turns, quickening his pace, heading after it.

“Jesse!”

He ignores Midnight’s frustrated call, his eyes focused on the top of another rounded hill that promises a better view. Jesse breaks into a tired jog, determined to follow the sound – the first new thing he’s heard in this world in hours.

Midnight calls after him again but he doesn’t pay attention, instead cresting the hill and frowning as he peers far, far into the distance.

But in the darkness beneath the moons…shit, but he can’t see far.

Midnight crests the hill at his side, panting a little, and he glances down to see her glaring up at him. “What, so you’ve got energy now? For this hill? You’ve been dragging all day! Honestly, Jesse, you’re not very impressive –“

“What was that noise?” Jesse asks, again peering out into the darkness. Is that…are those tire tracks? There in the dirt and the dust?

“It was nothing,” Midnight says, petulant.

Jesse turns to her, frowning down at the girl who has her arms crossed over her chest, determinedly not looking at him.

“You know I have five siblings, right?” he asks.

She turns her head to look up at him again, still frowning.

“And four cousins?”

Her face turns to confusion now. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It means that I know when you’re lying,” he says, smiling a little, leaning down close to grin into her face.

“You don’t!”

“I do!”

“That’s impossible!” She lashes out a hand and hits him on the arm. “Only I know when I’m lying! They’re my lies!”

Something about this logic makes Jesse burst into a grin. “No,” he sighs. “I have magic. I can tell. Now seriously what the hell was that noise?” He stands straight and gestures out to the tracks.

“I’m not telling you,” she snaps, her lips all tight in anger.

“See? Told you I knew you were lying.”

Midnight gasps a little, her eyes going wide when she realizes what she admitted. Jesse laughs – he can’t help it. This poor girl has spent way too much time alone, and he has spent way too much time messing with his cousins and his siblings.

“Mids,” Jesse sighs, crossing his own arms and shaking his head at her. “Come on, just tell me.”

“No!”

“I’m your mate, you have to.”

She gasps a little with delight, looking up at him. “Does that mean you know it’s true? That you accept our bond?”

“Midnight,” Jesse sighs, turning his head a little and looking down at her. “Come on. It’s…complicated, all right? But yeah, of course I know you’re my mate, my wolf knows it. Of course he does. I’m not denying that anymore.”

The smile that leaps onto her face – it’s so sunny and lovely that his heart breaks for her again and he has to look away.

“What are the tracks, Midnight? What was that noise?”

“I don’t know,” she groans, frustrated and not wanting to answer. She grabs at his sleeve and tries hard to tug him away from the sight of the tracks, from the questions he’s asking. Jesse pulls his arm away from her, not wanting the touch – still not sure about the corruption that has seized her wolf and how it spreads. “Can you just come with me? My house –“

“Just across that last hill, right,” he says, dry. But then he takes a page from Seraphina’s book and sits down hard on his butt, leaning back on his hands.

“What are you doing?” Midnight asks, spinning to look at him, her frown returned.

“I’m not going to your house until you tell me what those tracks are from,” Jesse says, the corners of his lips turning up.

“Jesse!” The name bursts from her lips as she turns red with frustration. “Just go!”

“No way!”

Midnight growls and grabs for him, but Jesse just hooks his foot behind her ankle and pulls, knocking her off balance and sending her to the ground too. She snarls, pushing back her riot of curls and glaring at him from beneath it.

Jesse can’t help smiling – the girl is weird but…very earnest. And funny.

“I’m not leaving here,” he says, slowly shaking his head, “until you tell me what that noise was and what left those tracks.”

“But you’ll die if you stay out here all alone!”

“Then I’ll be dead!” he shoots back. “And it will be your fault and your weird Papa will be all pissed off!”

Midnight gasps, horrified at the idea, and then stares at him. “Don’t call Papa weird,” she says, shaking her head vehemently and setting her curls bouncing. “He will smite you.”

Jesse looks right back at her, not giving an inch, thinking that it is…a little too easy to manipulate this poor girl. But he’s also secretly glad for that, because she did kidnap him from his girlfriend’s bed and he needs some leverage in this world where she and the God of Darkness clearly have all the power.

“Fine,” Midnight snarls, leaning forward, picking up on the game. “But if I tell you, you’ll come?”

“Yes,” Jesse says, nodding once. “I promise.”

Midnight sighs and leans forward, glancing anxiously towards the tracks, and begins.