Page 68 of Wolf Trial

Arms came around me then, and I struggled with the dregs of my strength, my arms flopping at my sides in a sad attempt at defending myself. That helplessness made a scream force its way through my gritted teeth, as unbearable as the pain carving apart my insides.

“Easy, killer,” Lainsz’s rough voice came close by my ear. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

My wretched laugh was impossible to contain, all my scepticism pouring free while my defences were down. I was no safer with Lainsz than I was with Beaufort.

“What have you done?” The hag screamed, her horrible voice so loud it shook the air, made my ears ache with pressure until they popped. “What have you done?”

“Killed him.” I didn’t recognise the stone cold voice. “He deserved to die. Lunova is better off without a treacherous liar like him.”

The hag screeched.

“He would have killed us,” the cold voice yelled, so loud that the ice broke, fear and rage like an explosion. Rogue—that was Rogue’s voice. “I trusted him, and he would have killed us.”

Lainsz drew me away, until Rogue and Beaufort blurred into smaller shapes. “Don’t fight me so much,” he snapped. “I’m saving your life, you ungrateful nightmare.”

Fuck you, I wanted to snarl, but I didn’t have the energy. I was… so cold.

The hag’s laugh echoed around my head. “He should have killed you. I wish he’d slaughtered everyone in that school. It was for me. A fresh body, a new life, new power. All for me.”

Beaufort was dead. The relief of it made me weaker, or maybe that was feeling arms around me, knowing I was protected. Even if he was the least trustworthy of the pack, at least Lainsz would receive opposition if he tried to kill me. I couldn’t say the same of my friends now they knew the truth about me.

“Don’t even think about passing out,” Lainsz snapped, stopping when we were hidden in deep shadow, the clearing a blur beyond the trees. Were Leander and Verne still trying to take down the hag. Were they okay? Panic gripped my lungs, draining the last of my strength.

“Get her!” someone roared, or maybe the voice was inside my head, within the bond. I couldn’t tell up from down anymore, the blur of my vision extending to all of my senses.

Sounds distorted into monstrous voices, even the tentative chirp of a crow grotesque as it fluttered to a lower branch. At least I hoped it was a crow; it was little more than a black smear.

“Shit,” Lainsz spat with enough venom that I flinched, expecting him to remind me how much he hated me and wished I’d died when Rev, Oona, and Maveline pushed me to my death. “Run, fuckers! That thing’s escaping!”

His shout made pain and dizziness rock my head. The ice had spread to my entire body now; I couldn’t feel my hands, feet, or face.

“You win,” I slurred, my head lolling onto Lainsz’s warm chest against my will. “I’m dying. You’ve got your wish.”

“Oh, no you don’t, killer,” he snapped, shaking me until pain knifed through both of my wounds, shocking and bright enough to blot out my vision. Instead of blurs, I saw white. The pain turned as hot as a brand, cutting the ice. “You’re going to die at my hand, not because some prick with a cannibal grandmother stabbed you. Verne! Hurry the fuck up. Your mate is poisoned.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Again.”

“Adios, motherfucker,” I said weakly, my eyes falling shut. “I hope your life is as miserable as you made mine.”

“Don’t talk about dying,” Lainsz argued. “You’re not allowed to die here. You’re gonna survive and be your regular insufferable self for years. Decades even. A whole lifetime of you torturing me with your presence in Verne and Leander’s lives.”

“Not insufferable,” I slurred. “Just scared.”

“You are not making this easy for me,” Lainsz bit out through clenched teeth, jostling me again. Pain was a hot knife, burning through skin and muscle, branding the impression of his hatred on my bones.

“Just let me die,” I muttered, the ice finding its way through scorching pain, sapping so much life from me that my pain began to fade.

I could barely see now, even when I managed to prize my eyes open. It was mostly blackness, with only enough shapes and colour for me to see wolves. Three wolves in the clearing. Two pale, one brown with distinct black markings on its legs. As if it had been burned the way my pain burned me before the ice had crushed it to nothing.

It would’ve been nice to die with friends, with people who loved me and accepted me the way none of my family ever had. It would’ve been nice to die with something good to burn out thoughts of my gran thinking so little of me, caring so little, that she was happy to sell me.

But that was forefront in my mind as I faded away. I thought of Gran, and the father who walked away, and I wondered if they’d even care that I died here in a world I didn’t know, surrounded by strangers.

Doubt it.

“Verne! Leander!” someone screamed, guttural and afraid and so loud, it grabbed my soul where I drifted away and forced me to stay, just long enough to hear that voice.

But darkness swept in like clouds of fog on a dark moor, and obscured whatever the voice said next.

CHAPTER 40