305- JAX

305- JAX
POV Jax:

That was a lie. Dolan might have been a powerful wolf, but any one of those monsters below could rip him to pieces. Of course, I wasn’t worried about him. I was worried about us.

The helicopter landed, and Dolan shoved us out. We fell to the ground and were brutally yanked up. There was a team of wolves who, like Dolan, were still normal. The massive mutant wolves were nearly twenty feet away, but I only needed to make eye contact with one to understand why Dolan hadn’t taken the serum.

The wolves were losing themselves. Maeve had never perfected it. They were going insane, and that made them even more dangerous.

We were dragged into a brick building and passed through several heavy security gates. Finally, we were taken into a large hall with glass partitions. One glance at some of the wolves locked inside and I knew they were cells.

The glass opened, and I was thrown into one cell, while London was placed in the one next to mine. The doors sealed shut, and Dolan pressed a button on the other side. “The glass is coated with invisible security bars. It can’t be broken, so make yourselves comfortable.”

“Where the hell is my mate?” I demanded.

“She’s on her way.” He smirked. “She’s been asking to see you.”

When he walked away, I turned to London. His eyes were already moving around the cell with a calculating look on his face. “Can you hear me?” I asked.

He nodded. So the cells weren’t soundproof. We could communicate, but we’d probably be overheard.

“Any ideas?”

Grimacing, he shook his head. I leaned back and closed my eyes. At least we had some time to recover. I didn’t know what Maeve had planned for us next, but I needed to be ready. Anna needed me.

Our mating bond pulsed stronger now that she was close. That gave me all the comfort I needed.

I didn’t know how much time had passed before I heard movement in the hallway. Cautiously opening my eyes, I tensed when I heard the cell door across from us open. A small woman was shoved inside, and Dolan laughed cruelly.

The woman uncurled, and for a moment, I forgot to breathe.

Anna.

Her face was a mess of blood, and her leg hung at a twisted angle.

“Anna,” I shouted, running to the window. Her head slowly lifted, but it wasn’t relief or even sadness that I saw on her face.

It was rage. True rage.

“You,” she spat, crawling to the glass. She slammed her fists against it, leaving bloody marks everywhere. “This is all your fucking fault. All you’ve done this past year is tell me how you’d save me, and now look at me! Do I look saved to you? I’m going to die, and you’re going to sit there and watch!”

She screamed, and I slowly backed away from the wall. Dolan stepped closer to peer in at me, and I returned to my spot against the wall.

“She’s not Anna,” I said to Maeve’s second. “A clever fake, but I feel Anna, and I know that horrible creature across from me is a witch glamoured to look like Anna.”

“I suspected the illusion wouldn’t last long, but I think I’ll leave her in there a bit longer to torture you.”

“Where the hell is Anna?”

“She’s being prepared. She has a big day tomorrow. All that power inside her will generate an immense amount of magic for my alpha, and you will bow to your new queen.”

Tomorrow. I had no idea what time it was now. Afternoon? Middle of the night?

“You told me I’d have the chance to say goodbye.”

Dolan nodded. “And you will. You’ll have a front-row seat while she bleeds for Maeve. You can scream your farewell then.”

Beside me, London growled. “You can’t perform the ritual. You don’t share Anna’s bloodline.”

“The witch has proven difficult to capture, so now I’ll be joining the hunt. I suspect we’ll have her within a few hours. After all, she only needs to be alive for the first minutes of the ritual. It’ll be fun to bring her down—daughter of the Elder herself. Poetic, considering it was Evalina who set Maeve on this path, and Lunessa, well… she’s quite attractive, isn’t she? I wonder if she’ll fight as hard when I’m between her legs.”

London roared as Dolan laughed and walked away. The false Anna kept tormenting me, and I fixed my eyes on anything but her until she finally went quiet. Wondering why the witch had stopped, I looked at her.

While she tormented me with my failures, she was writing on the glass with a red pen. I managed to catch a glimpse before she smeared it with her blood, just as a guard passed by.

“You couldn’t save me, and you couldn’t save our son,” the false Anna snarled. “God, I hope I get to see you die. You’re no better than my father. You’re worse! I would’ve been better off with Emerson. At least he knew how to fuck.”

I ignored her as I remembered the words she had smeared from the glass.

Thousands of paths converged into two. We don’t give up. You can’t give up either.

She was a seer, and somehow, against everything we knew, she still believed there was hope.

(...)
POV Anna:

I hadn’t seen Finn all night, not since they dragged me away. I had been taken to a completely different part of the building, three floors up, and chained to a different wall, this one with a bed.

Cozy.

Instead of resting for the ritual, I went as close to the window as I could and looked outside. It was the same side of the building, the same view of the ritual circle. No new information revealed itself, but while I tried to find a way out, I also searched for Jax.

I could feel through the bond that he was nearby. Alive. Growing stronger with each passing hour. Hope flared inside me.

When the sun rose, the door opened. Three wolves and three witches stood before me.

“Time to get ready,” one of them said, her voice dripping with excitement. She placed a white dress on the bed.

I looked at it and laughed.
“If you’re expecting this to be some kind of virginal sacrifice, I have bad news. I’ve been well loved and well fucked.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Magic doesn’t care about your virginity,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We’re going to purify you for the ritual.”

“Purify me how?”

“With magic, of course.”

I blinked at her.
“Seriously? You’ve had decades to prepare for this and you’re going to purify the Null with magic? Who exactly is in charge of your training? You should definitely fire that person.”