She chanced an old question to her mate. “What happened to Brax?”
Kai tensed, glanced at her once, and then back at the sky. “I don’t know.”
Earlier, he’d said the rogue had just “gotten tired” and she assumed that meant Kai had taken the chance with his sluggish movements to kill him.
But according to reporters, that wasn’t the case.
Apparently, the rogue had just lost his mind. Completely broke down on the stone and clawed himself to death. A downfall so horrible to watch that people had to look away. Some thought the pressure of the fight had become too much for him to take, or he truly didn’t want to become alpha. Isla wondered if it had something to do with the witch’s wearing enchantment, but that pondering didn’t last long the more she observed Kai.
Isla sat up, and the act of her pulling away from him made him frown. “What happened?”
A look, a mix of fear and pain and confusion, crossed his features. He wouldn’t turn to face her. “You were dying, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
Isla swallowed, feeling her heart beat faster in her chest. “What happened?”
Kai appeared to gather his thoughts by counting each of the stars. “You know how they teach us to mind-link after we learn to shift?” Isla nodded, though she knew teaching methods differed between instructors, between packs. She’d been taught to go about it like seeking a doorway that only existed and was left open as wolves. They could shut each other out if they wanted. “It was like that, but…I could go further. I went further.” Kai adjusted in his spot, but he didn’t sit up. He placed his hands on his stomach, remaining focused on the sky, and with every following word he spoke, sounded more troubled. “It moved so fast. I wasn’t in the arena anymore. Just in this mess of his…thoughts, his feelings, and these moments, like pictures, like…memories, I don’t know…but he couldn’t get me out. I could see everything—places he’d been, people he knew, had interacted with, and now, when I think about it, maybe I saw that witch. Maybe I should’ve stayed. But you were dying, and I needed to find you. I needed the fight to be over. So, I…”
Isla did her best to mask that she was shaking. If anything, she’d blame it on the cold that had settled in the air, not on the fact that this scared her. Only because she didn’t understand. Because she questioned reality again. “You what?”
Kai grimaced, closing his eyes as if he were reliving the moment before he snapped them open. “I let the power guide me, and I tore it all apart. I tore him apart—from the inside.” The words were so quiet like he hadn’t wanted to speak them.
Even without the bond there, she could see how he felt. It practically radiated from him. Disturbed and shattered. He grew distant. Isla wished she had something encouraging to say, but she was still trying to wrap her mind around it. When the silence between them became too long, too much, she reached out and brushed his face.
Kai barely reacted to the gesture. His eyes, which had become glassy, remained upwards. “I have never heard anyone scream like that, felt anything so horrible, and I know he was a rogue, and he was trying to kill me, and in the end, I won, but I feel sick. And I can’t stop thinking about it.” He clenched his teeth. “It’s not normal, it’s not right, I can’t explain why I can do it…and you know what the worst part is?” A pause. He opened and closed his mouth, shook his head, unsure what he wanted to say or how to say it. “I don’t know if I can stop myself from doing it again.”
Isla had never seen him so broken, so bare, so vulnerable. So terrified. And of himself.
She leaned down and kissed his temple before hugging him so tightly that her muscles strained, just as they had when she’d embraced him in the tunnels. Again, she was fearful he’d fade away, only this time, not into an illusion.
“It’s getting worse,” Kai said through a hard breath. He slid an arm around her, accepting her warmth. “Something’s wrong with me.”
“No,” Isla said firmly. “Nothing’s wrong with you. It’s just different.” She lifted herself to look at his face again. “Do you think you should talk to someone?”
Finally, he met her eyes, and something about seeing her face made him relax. “Like who?”
“A healer or one of the priestesses? An Elder?”
“No,” Kai breathed, his gaze going to the stars again. Isla was about to pry for what he was thinking when he said, “While Raana was healing you, or even when she was helping me find you, I swear her magic called to me. To whatever this is.”
Isla blinked. “You think it’s magic?”
“I don’t know what to think, but I’m not a witch. It’s just this—thing,” he said. “But I don’t want anyone to know. Not until I figure it out.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Isla pressed, and when he met her eyes again, she smiled. “You could never hurt me. You will never scare me. I’m with you until the end and wherever we drift after, and if you have a problem with that, then talk to Fate because she’s why you can apparently never get rid of me.”
Kai hummed a small chuckle, his fingers tracing small circles over her skin. He brought his lips to her forehead in a gentle, grateful kiss before leaning his head back on the blanket again. “I suppose there are far worse fates than being destined to someone who doesn’t know how to stay on her side of the bed.”
Isla narrowed her eyes, holding back her retort as she climbed fully on top of him, smothering his large frame the best she could with her body, trapping him. A silent affirmation she wasn’t going anywhere. “Or being fated to someone who’d be better off living in an eternal winter of Tethys with how cold he keeps the damn place.”
A wider grin crossed his mouth as he studied her face and brushed back her hair, mussed from their lovemaking. “What was it you promised? With me to and through eternity?”
Isla nodded, remembering when she’d first told him she loved him what felt like a lifetime ago. She laid a kiss on his jaw. “To and through eternity.”
