The All Consuming: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 4) (3 page)

My unborn son is here, trapped in this empty stone palace. I need to know he’s all right. Need to hold him. Maybe after that I’ll be able to help Aaron—

***

My son was torn from me before he was ready to be born.

Opiyel leads me out of the hall, down a corridor and into a small room. The walls are paneled mahogany stained black. A single window set high in the wall is the room’s only source of light. There’s a crib in the middle of the room. A strange blue light emanates from the crib.
 

I pause on the threshold, nervous and afraid.
 

Opiyel’s cool breath chills my neck.
 

The Dog God hovers behind me, scenting my fear.
 

“Your son awaits,” Opiyel says, his voice full of malevolent intent.

I take a heavy step into the room.
 

The blue light in the crib dims, then brightens as I approach. I hear a long breath, then a tiny wail that sets my heart racing and then I’m leaping across the room, desperate to hold my son—

I lean over the wooden crib.
 

It’s lined in black silk.
 

There, swaddled in a black blanket, is a tiny child with arctic blue eyes.

Aaron’s eyes.
 

The thought hits like a blow. The mark Aaron left on my shoulder starts to sting, a reminder that our union has power even here.
 

At first I’m too stunned to move. The child’s cries quiet and the silence of Opiyel’s stone palace settles around my throat like a garrote. My son peers up at me, almost expectantly. Like he’s waiting for something. But I don’t know what to do, and for an instant I’m possessed of the crazed idea that this isn’t my son, it can’t be, I didn’t deliver him in this land or the other. It must be a cruel trick of the Dog God’s. Then as I watch the child’s face begins to change. His brow deepens and his teeth grow long and sharp and his chin sharpens until suddenly I’m looking down at a small wolf pup with beautiful silver-black fur.
 

“He looks like his father,” I say out loud, and then I reach down, slip my hands under my son and lift him to my chest.
 

He’s light as air.
 

The wolf pup sniffs in my direction. His features soften. His eyes close, and then he nuzzles against my skin, his downy soft fur tickling my chest, and a feeling of such immense love and loss strikes that for a second all I can do is squeeze my unborn child as tears slip down my cheeks—

“Anything,” I whisper to Opiyel. “I’ll do anything.”

“I know, my queen.”

My wolf pup growls when he hears Opiyel’s voice.

Opiyel laughs quietly. “He hasn’t taken to me.”

Something in Opiyel’s voice makes me say, “Don’t harm him. Please. I beg you.”

Opiyel doesn’t answer, and suddenly I know he intends to murder the child after he’s fathered one of his own. Aaron’s son is still alive only because the Dog God needs the child to make me bend to his will. A bolt of hatred flashes through me, so powerful it makes my muscles tense. The wolf pup growls agains, louder this time, and bears his sharp teeth. The effort exhausts him, and soon he’s asleep nuzzled against me.

I’m staring down at my son, trying to burn the memory of how he feels into my heart. Time has no meaning in the Bloodless Land. I have no idea how long I’ve been trapped in the Dog God’s palace. I remember steering Aaron’s bike off the road, the feeling of freedom as I took to the air, the rocks approaching so fast—

And that’s all.
 

My old life doesn’t feel real anymore. Nothing feels real, and I know that’s the power of this land draining me of everything I once was. Soon the hunger will begin, fueled by this new emptiness, and I’ll be compelled to hunt at the Dog God’s side, entering the Warm Land to steal spirits, the life-force of those who died and are doomed to live imprisoned in this one.
 

Then something horrible happens.
 

Something that chills my heart.

As I watch my son the blue light surrounding him flickers and fades, and for a moment I can see
through
him. He becomes a ghostly image.
 

“He’s dying,” I say, my voice choked.

“He’s not really living. Not yet. What you see is his life force. An illusion. He was never born in the Warm Land. And he cannot exist for long in this one without my blessing.”

“You bastard,” I whisper.

“Careful now, my queen.”

Something stirs in me. She’s weak. Afraid. But my creature is there, gathering strength. The thought of freeing her and challenging the Dog God and tearing him apart makes me shiver with blood-lust.
 

My son’s light brightens.
 

He feels her power. She gives him hope. Strength.

Behind me, so close I feel him brush against my shoulder, the Dog God snarls. “Keep her locked away, you fool. Keep that animal caged.”

A thin smile spreads across my face.
 

He’s afraid of her.
 

“I am my own keeper,” I say, echoing the words Opiyel spoke when we first met.
 

Opiyel seizes my arm and tugs me around to face him directly. My son’s eyes shoot open. He’s in his human form again, tiny and precious. It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to lash out at Opiyel. But I know doing so will put my son in even greater danger—
 

“Not here, my bride. Not in the Bloodless Land. Here
I
am your keeper.” Opiyel glances at my child. His lips curl in disgust. “You promised me your hand in return for your freedom from the cage. Then you traded your son for the lives of your friends in the Warm Land. You asked. I provided. Yet you still begrudge what is rightfully mine. I will have what is mine, Lily. And if it’s not granted willingly, I
will
take it from you. This is
my
land. Best remember that. For your wellbeing. And the wellbeing of those you hold dear.”

***

I’m standing naked on a round, raised stone dais in the center of the sandy courtyard between the palace and the Cliff of Cages. My ankles are chained and secured to an iron spike. The Dog God’s palace rises behind me, a hundred tall towers ringed with a wall of stone. The windows in the palace are black, like empty eyes glaring down at me. I shudder, thinking of those cold rooms and empty halls and a life spent bound to the hideous creature who haunts them.
 

In a cold room in that stone palace my unborn son’s life is fading. I look out at the endless expanse of desert. The overcast sky. The choking sand. Even if I could flee with my son, where would I go? What would sustain us?
 

No. Fleeing is not enough.
 

We’d still be trapped in Opiyel’s realm.
 

The Dog God must die.
 

Ahead of me the Cliff of Cages rises a thousand feet into the sky, casting a long shadow beneath its bulk. I’m close enough to hear the tortured howls and hisses and roars of the Pureblood animals caged inside.

I scan the top row of cages. There must be a hundred of them. Somewhere up there my brother, The One Without Value, is whispering in my bloodmate’s ear. Has Vuk told Aaron what he did to me? How he possessed Connor Lerrick’s body, entered the warm world many years ago, hunted me down and took me for his unwilling mate?

The thought makes my chest tighten.

Aaron is a loyal wolf. But the truth will crush him.
 

Which is precisely why the Dog God put the two together. So Vuk could harm my bloodmate with words just as surely as being caged harms his wolf.

I walk until the chain becomes tight and the metal shackle bites into my skin so hard it cuts. I wait for the warm feeling of blood tricking down my ankle, and when it doesn’t arrive I glance down. I’ve cut myself, but the wound doesn’t bleed. Blood is life, and there is no blood in this lifeless world.

I bite my lip, stifling a scream.
 

It’s my wedding day.

My dying son behind me. My caged and tortured bloodmate ahead.
 

Dogs begin emerging from shadows and crevices between the boulders stacked along the Cliff of Cages. Thin, scraggly, quick-eyed beasts with matted and torn fur dusted with sand and large ears and rows of sharp black teeth. The dogs slink toward me, their heads low, shoulders down. They pour from the shadows like liquid death, then I hear them barking behind me and turn to see more loping in from the sand dunes, so many they look like a living tide—
 

I pull and strain against my shackles.
 

All it gets me is another wound.

The dogs snarl and spit and bite at one another in their haste to reach me. They scent my life force. My attachment to the warm land. It’s what they feed on.

My legs weaken. I’m close to collapsing when the first few dogs arrive at the dais. They circle me, barking and yelping, their eyes glowing black and red. The braver ones lean their thick necks over the edge and bite at me, their teeth snapping closed on empty air, flinging spittle, forcing me into the center of the dais.

Panic rises in my throat. I wrestle with the urge to fling myself to the dogs. Only thoughts of the people I care about stop me.
 

Soon the dogs have me completely surrounded.

Their barking rises into a deafening crescendo, then slowly fades. The dogs settle on their hindquarters. Silence descends over the courtyard.
 

Then I hear a long, plaintive howl from high overhead.
 

The hair on my arms stands on end.
 

My skin warms.

The despair that settled over me moments ago lifts, and my heart rises with the wolf’s howl. His howl is hope. Courage. Strength.
 

Opiyel’s dogs shift restlessly. Eye one another. A few bite and worry at their own limbs. They sense something—

The howl rises again. Louder this time.
 

I feel my wildborn animal stir. She’s weak.
 

But she’s answering her bloodmate’s call.

My claws lengthen. Only a half inch, but enough to maim.

Maybe even murder.

Longing swells in my chest.

Maybe he’s stronger than I imagined. Maybe the One We Answer To rules as apex alpha in this land as well as the warm—

Then the howl abruptly quiets.
 

The rabid dogs chuff and growl.

Aaron’s howl stopped so quickly for a moment I’m convinced he’s been murdered. Maybe Opiyel loosed my brother on him.
 

The hope vanishes, replaced by dread foreboding.
 

The dog pack begins stirring. They shuffle to the side until a long, straight path emerges, leading directly to the gates of the Dog God’s palace.

The gates swing open.

Opiyel strides into his dog pack, his Doberman snout lifted high.

He’s wearing his black satin robes and a crown of rusted black metal. HIs stride is imperious. Regal. The dogs whimper and lower their heads as he passes. He’s carrying something.
 

My breath catches. I tear at the shackles once more, enraged and desperate and filled with bottomless loathing.
 

The Dog God is carrying my swaddled, infant son.

The Purebloods trapped in the Cliff of Cages burst into a tremendous wall of furious sound when they see Opiyel.

Opiyel makes it halfway to the dais before lifting my son in his arms. Several dozen rabid dogs break from the pack to nip and yelp at Opiyel’s feet, begging their master to feed them.
 

The caged Purebloods quiet instantly.
 

They scent who my son is.
 

Child of a Risen and a primal Pureblood alpha.

Opiyel pauses. Stares at the Cliff of Cages, then at me. He’s considering something. A flicker of doubt clouds his eyes. Then he storms forward, leaps onto the dais and says, “Kneel to me now, my queen. Or your child feeds my hounds.”

I can’t help myself. The bastard has my
son
.
 

My beautiful baby boy.
 

My kneels buckle.
 

M
IA
AND
I are hiding from the afternoon sun in the scant shade offered by a saguaro cactus when a hot breeze carries an unfamiliar scent to our noses.
 

Mia puts her finger to her cracked and parched lips.
 

Silence
.

It’s been our ally these last few days.
 

Silence and the night shadows we stalk through.
 

We’re traveling south. Toward the Pyramid of the Sun and the traitor Shiori and, hopefully, my sister Pimniq. The thought of finding my sister alive is all that sustains me.
 

I glance at Mia, suddenly feeling guilty.
 

Mia has also sustained me.
 

Her indomitable spirit. Her honed survival instincts. We haven’t been intimate with one another since that first night in the canyon, but each day brings a new closeness. I only wish we’d met in a different time. A different place. My heart feels…closed off. Walled in with grief.
 

I lift my head and smell the air.
 

The unfamiliar scent is gone.
 

My neck aches from lying for hours on rocky soil. My mouth is so dry it’s a struggle simply to swallow. The water that ran cool through the canyons vanished long ago. The time I spent swimming with Mia feels like a dream.

“What was it?” I whisper.

Mia’s eyes flash. “Stricken. What else?”

“It didn’t scent like Stricken. It scented…like your kind.”

Mia shrugs.

“If it was a Pureblood maybe he knows something. Maybe he can help us.”

“Not all Purebloods are friends,” Mia scoffs. “Last thing we need is another weak-assed, half-starved mongrel trailing at out heels. We travel faster when it’s just the two of us. And besides, handsome, I like having you all to myself.”