Page 145 of Devoured

But it wasn’t supposed to go this far. The vows were supposed to be it.

My pulse reaches a frantic crescendo as I turn toward Vanessa, imploring her to look at me, but when she does—an apology shines bright in her eyes. An apology, and months of longing. Of something more.

I want to scream. Rage. Burn this rite to the ground. What is she doing? We were meant to stop Cora at the vows and attack. She was meant to stop.

She lifts her hand to Sin’s lips, and he bites. He draws blood. She gasps as his tongue laves the wound, and red washes over my vision. Anger pounds hard in my chest. “What the hell?” I growl under my breath to Evie.

She ignores me.

Vanessa falls against Sin’s chest as their binds tighten.

“You may take his hand, Vanessa,” Cora says with wicked delight, “and bite.”

This is it. One more bite, and they’re forever. It won’t matter what I tell her, won’t even matter if she changes her mind. There is no going back after the Mating Rite.

I’ve been screwed over. They’ve betrayed me. But why? Why this? I seize Evie’s wrist and force her to face me, not caring who’s watching. Not caring about anything other than the explanation I’m owed.

She begins to say, “There was no other way—” when the door to the castle slams open.

A crack. A pop.

As if the center of the Earth has imploded—as if the sky itself has opened—and hundreds of soldiers pour onto the field.

They don’t look like the traditional soldiers of the seven werewolf courts. They aren’t equipped with fangs or claws or armor. Rather, their eyes glow in brilliant hues of silver and metallics and—and blue. Blue like the Oracle.

Blue like Lyra, who leads them all now. Blue like Lyra, who vanished with only a splatter of blood in her wake and has reappeared as if she hasn’t been gone at all.

She stands between two guards who wear woven spider silk embellished with emerald leaves while tails—long, forked tails—swish behind them.

My stomach plummets and sweat coats my hands. I glance at Evie for an explanation, at Vanessa too—but Vanessa shifts away from Sin, panic wide in her purple eyes, and Evie’s knees buckle. She would collapse if Kaax didn’t wrap a firm hand around her upper arm and keep her hoisted up.

No no no.

My pulse stutters to an abrupt, painful halt. The world begins to tilt in a bloody haze around me. Cora smiles wider, as if she’s just won. Cora looks as if she’s been planning this moment for months.

This wasn’t our plan at all—and those aren’t werewolves who bow to Cora now. They aren’t courtiers or pack mates. They’re too powerful. Rippling with strength and something more. Something divine.

They’re fucking faeries. And they’re supposed to be extinct.

48

VANESSA

I CAN’T STOP STARING AT LYRA.

It doesn’t make sense. How she’s here. Why she’s here. Who she’s with. I don’t understand any of it, but I want to weep because she’s alive. My lungs squeeze, and my eyes water with unshed tears. I recall her screams so vividly that I can still hear them. I thought they killed her, but they didn’t. Why?

“So glad you could make it,” Cora says.

Lyra lifts her chin, her sapphire eyes glinting. She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t look at anyone but the Wolf Queen. “Did you doubt I would return, Your Majesty?”

“Of course not. All my pets come back to me eventually. I’m only pleased that you were so successful.” Cora smiles and beckons Lyra forth with curled fingers.

She approaches with gentle footsteps, as lithe and graceful as ever, while the soldiers behind her march in perfect synchronicity.

Those soldiers are different. They’re strange.

Their ears gather at sharp points, half hidden beneath curtains of lustrous hair, their noses sitting high and pert above full lips. Their eyes gleam in shades of cold metallic hues that I’ve never seen before. That, even in a werewolf court, shouldn’t exist.