Chapter 52: True North 2
ÉTIENNE
"In due time."
"When is due time though?" The question came out barely above a whisper. Like she was afraid of pushing too hard but she still couldn’t stop herself from asking.
I crossed back to her and took her hands in mine. Her fingers felt cold despite the warmth of the room.
"You’re my fiancée." I squeezed gently. "I don’t know where this worry is coming from. There’s nothing you have to fear. You’re the one that I love."
Why? Why did that suddenly feel like a lie when it had been the truth before? I’d told it so many times over the years that the knot in my stomach made me feel sick because of the implication that came with it.
But it could not be a lie. My heart could not suddenly shift the other way without my permission? I would not allow it.
"You’re the one who’s going to be the mother of my children."
Her breath caught. "You promise?"
"It’s true."
And maybe it could still be. Maybe if I said it enough times and believed it hard enough, I could make it reality through sheer force of will. Maybe the mate bond with Margaux was just biology. An accident of fate that meant nothing in the face of actual choice and commitment.
Maybe I was full of shit.
A knock interrupted whatever spiral I’d been about to fall into.
Séverine wiped at her face quickly. Her fingers brushed away tears that had finally started to fall. I turned toward the door and kept my voice steady.
"Open."
The door swung inward. Céline stood in the hallway with her hands clasped in front of her white dress. Her eyes moved between Séverine and me with sharp intelligence that missed nothing.
"Oh." She tilted her head slightly. "Did I walk in on something?"
"No." I released Séverine’s hands and put distance between us that probably looked more guilty than reassuring. "Why are you here?"
"Father wants to see you." Her gaze lingered on Séverine’s face. On the redness around her eyes that betrayed recent tears. "He’s having a better morning. He is asking for you specifically."
I nodded. "Sure."
The word had barely left my mouth when pain exploded through my chest.
It wasn’t mine. The knowledge came immediate and certain. This was borrowed agony. Shared suffering that traveled through a connection I’d been denying existed.
Margaux.
My wolf screamed in my skull. The sound was deafening. Overwhelming every other thought until nothing remained except the absolute certainty that she was dying.
My eyes snapped to the window. We were on the third floor. Maybe forty feet to the ground below. The garden spread out beneath in carefully manicured sections. And somewhere in that maze of flowers and hedges, Margaux’s life was bleeding out in real time.
I could feel it. The pressure around her throat. The way her lungs burned for air they couldn’t get. The terror that came from being attacked by something.
The distance between my study and the garden’s heart was too far. The stairs would take too long. Every second I wasted was another second closer to her death.
She is going to die.
The thought arrived with absolute conviction. The certainty was born from the bond I’d been pretending didn’t exist.
"What are you—"
Séverine’s voice reached me from very far away. White noise beneath the roaring in my ears. My wolf had taken over. Instinct overriding conscious thought. Survival imperative that cared nothing for witnesses or consequences or maintaining the careful facade I’d built.
I ran.
My feet hit the floor hard enough to jar my spine. Then I was moving toward the window with speed that felt both too fast and too slow. Time stretched and compressed. Each step took forever while simultaneously happening in the space between heartbeats.
"Étienne—"
Céline’s shout joined Séverine’s. Their voices blended into meaningless sound that couldn’t penetrate the single-minded focus driving me forward.
The window rushed toward me. Glass reflected morning light in patterns that would have been beautiful if I’d had the capacity to notice. But all I saw was the barrier between me and Margaux. Between her dying and me getting there in time to stop it.
I didn’t slow down.
My shoulder hit first. The impact sent shockwaves through bones and muscle. Then the glass gave way with a sound like the world breaking.
Shards exploded outward. They caught sunlight as they fell and turned into a shower of diamonds that sparkled and cut in equal measure. I felt them slice through fabric and skin. I felt the warm rush of blood that followed.
But none of it mattered.
The ground quickly approached. Three stories high, about forty feet. Enough to kill a typical wolf if they landed poorly, and enough to break bones even if they landed properly.
But I wasn’t a normal in any sense. Whatever the trafficking ring had done to me, whatever cocktails of drugs and experiments they’d subjected me to in those years before Dorian had found me, they’d changed fundamental things about my body. Made me stronger. Faster. More resilient than pack genetics alone could explain.
I twisted midair. My body knew how to fall even if my conscious mind had stopped directing movement. Years of surviving impossible situations had taught me how to take impacts that should have killed me.
My feet hit earth. The shock traveled up through my legs and into my spine with enough force to make my teeth clack together. I dropped into a crouch immediately and let my momentum carry me forward into a roll that dispersed the energy across my back and shoulders instead of letting it concentrate in joints that would shatter.
I came up running.
The garden blurred past. Hedges and flower beds and ornamental trees that I’d spent years cultivating became obstacles to navigate rather than beauty to appreciate. My feet found purchase on stone paths without needing to look down. Muscle memory guided me through turns I’d walked a thousand times.
The bond pulled me forward like a compass needle pointing toward true north.
Toward Margaux and the suffocating darkness that was closing around her consciousness like a fist.
I burst through the final hedge that separated the outer gardens from the heart where the forget-me-nots grew.
The scene registered in fragments. A sentinel’s body was on the ground. His head... several feet from his shoulders. There was also blood everywhere. Too much blood painting flowers that were never supposed to see violence.
Then I saw her.