Page 44 of Protecting His Treasure

Chapter Nine

The present…

“Kaede. Kaede, wake up. Pour the black oil on him.”

Kaede felt hot oil against his skin. His eyes snapped open. Gasping for air, he tried to sit up. Elder Thompson pushed him back down.

“Calm down, Kaede.”

He pushed the shifter’s hands off him. “Where am I? When am I?”

“You’re in the Frostlands,” the Elder told him. “You, uh, you just took the test. Calm down. Breathe in slowly. Now out slowly. Do as I say. You’re just a little disoriented.”

“You made me relive…” Kaede gulped down air.

“Slowly.”

“You made me relive the worse day of my life.”

“You had to. It’s what’s causing you to react so badly to the curse of the first full moon.”

“You made me relive that horror,” Kaede whispered while trying to regulate his breathing.

“It was so you could learn why you have this desire to hurt your mate. It’s stronger than what most shifters feel when they go through this. There has to be a root cause.”

“There is,” Kaede said, chest rising and falling rapidly.

“You mean, you figured it out?” Silas asked.

“I did.”

“But… how? You didn’t pass your test.”

Kaede’s eyes jerked to the vampire Elder. “I failed? I should be dead.”

“You should. Yet, here you are. Alive. We don’t understand.”

“Then maybe I passed.”

“No. We poured the clear oil on you. If you’d learned what was causing you to think evil of your mate and mastered it, the oil would’ve remained clear. Instead, it turned cloudy. That means you failed. That means you haven’t let go of whatever is causing you to feel this way.”

“I know what’s causing it.” A tear slipped from the corner of Kaede’s eye. “And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to let it go.”

“What is it?”

“It was a witch who banished me here.”

“We know that.”

“What you don’t know, is that the witch who banished me here wanted to utterly ruin me. Before cursing me to this plane, she took control of my dragon and she made him…”

I didn’t mean to do it.

The pain he heard in his dragon’s voice nearly broke him. “I know, dragon. She didn’t just use you. She used me too.”

Kaede took a deep breath, then confessed to the Elders. “The witch made my dragon and I kill our parents before she cursed us to this plane.”

The pity in the Elders eyes was almost too much to bear. Kaede tilted his head back and stared up at the night sky.