Everything was so fucked up. My brothers were god knows where and my mother was knocked out due to her bond. We already had every person out looking for them, and an amber alert had been broadcasted on the radio, yet nothing. It was like they had just vanished. At the same time, I am stuck here, wasting time that could be spent searching for my brothers.
“Ryker has burns to over sixty-five percent of his body. The only thing that keeps him alive right now is the machine he is hooked to. His lungs are burned, we have vacuumed them twice now, and his wolf genes are too weak at the moment to heal him. It is hard to say when or if he will wake up.”
Ace suddenly walked off, and I felt his heartache at the news of his brother, yet all I could think of right now was my own brothers. Ryden was completely defenseless since he was a baby and at the mercy of a psycho, and Rayan wasn’t much better off. He still hadn’t shifted, so he was also defenseless against Josie and god knows who else.
Aamon came over with Tyson, and I listened to the doctor talk to them too. When he left, Aamon turned to me.
“How is Avery?” I asked.
“Fine, for now. She overloaded herself. Her magic isn’t at full strength right now.”
“But the baby is okay?”
“Yes, our daughter is fine. It’s why she was visiting her father, but she felt I needed help. Misting is dangerous while pregnant, and then using her magic drained her.”
“You’re having a girl?”
“Yeah, hopefully, this one makes it.”
“This one?”
“We don’t like to get our hopes up, and this isn’t her first pregnancy. Avery is a hybrid witch. She is half-succubus and half priestess, her pregnancies have trouble going to term, her power too strong for them, but this baby seems to be holding on.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She is half-succubus. It would be fine if she were just a witch like her mother, but being half-succubus, her body powers up off magic. She feeds on it. We think this baby has made it nearly to term because it is more demon than a witch, so her energy hasn’t been feeding off it like it has the others, which killed them. Although now she is growing weaker, the baby is draining her.”
“So, she can’t use her magic?”
“She can, but it isn’t particularly safe.”
A few of Tyson’s warriors made their way down the corridor, and we all turned to face them when we wandered over to them.
“Anything?” I asked, but they shook their heads.
“They weren’t searching. They went to Alpha Jamie’s pack,” Tyson said, and my shoulders sagged.
“What did you find? Was she telling the truth?” Tyson asked just as three gurneys were rushed down the hallway by paramedics toward the pack doctor’s ward.
Chapter eighty
Rayan
Two days later.
“Shh… shh…” I hugged Ryden close; he wouldn’t stop crying, and he was once again hungry.
“You have to be quiet,” I whispered to him, trying to muffle the noises he made by tucking him closer to my chest.
“Does that thing ever shut up?” the woman with evil eyes snapped, glaring over at us.
“Shut it up,” she said, pointing a long narrow finger at me. Josie glanced at us nervously before rummaging through the bags she’d brought from some small convenience store. We had run out of formula already. I pushed my thumb in his mouth, and he made hungry sucking noises gnawing on it with his gums.
I missed home. I had been trying to mind-link mom and dad but couldn’t reach them. I tried Lucy and my uncle’s but nothing. I had no idea where we were as I looked around the dark wine cellar.
“I need to go get more formula,” Josie said, and I went to get up and follow her. I liked our chances better with her than I did this crazy witch. Last night, I watched her skin some poor creature as she made something in her cauldron. She didn’t even kill it first; its tortured cries would forever haunt me, and I was glad Ryden was too young to remember this.
“No, you wait here,” Beryl snapped. Her wild eyes pinned me where I stood, clutching Ryden in my arms. I shielded him away from her glaring eyes when her nasty eyes went to him, squirming in my arms. He was heavy, and I had been holding him for two days, too scared to place him down in case that witch did something to him.