I catch myself looking around the ground for signs of little mounds of dirt. But they weren’t stupid about it and made the trap obvious in any way.
Isaac’s fingers slide away from mine as he steps forward.
“First,” he says, folding his hands in front level with his waist line, “I need to get something out of the way.” He holds out one hand palm up. “Alexandra? Will you step to the front please?”
Oh great! He’s starting with my sister. I’m all for getting the hardest out of the way first, but I would’ve liked a little advanced warning. I shut my eyes and breathe in an unsteady breath.
Alex pushes her way through the crowd, taking awkward steps through the grass and into the empty space between us and them; the shackles restricting the length of her strides.
I swallow six lumps in my throat.
She stops and looks across at us, waiting with one raised eyebrow; her hands are fixed closely together near her pelvis because of the shackles on her wrists.
When Isaac doesn’t say anything, I gradually step up next to him and look to him at my side. I’m about to nudge him with my elbow when I hear his voice in my head:
“It’s not her….”
“What? She already walked through it?” I start to crane my neck, looking every which way for evidence of trap lines, but Isaac grabs my wrist. “Don’t do that,” he says harshly. “You’ll make it obvious.”
“Oh….” I blink away my folly and try to look natural, but I can tell by how stiff my face is right now that I look anything but natural.
Isaac clears his throat.
“As you all know,” he begins, “Alexandra is Adria’s sister. Yes, she is of the Vargas bloodline and she did…,” he glances at Alex briefly and I can tell he’s still seriously distrusting of her despite not being the Dark Praverian, “…she did cause a lot of problems for Adria months ago—nearly killed her, in fact—,” there was poison in that statement. I look to and from both of them nervously as he goes on, “but like Rachel, Alexandra is to be given a chance to prove herself and she’ll not be treated as a traitor by anyone in this pack.”
Some faces are staring back at us awkwardly and I realize that I’m sort of doing the same thing. This announcement has pretty much already been established when Alex first got here. It was never made into a ceremony like this, but...Isaac better come up with something else, fast.
“I thought it was her…,” he says absently, still not looking at me.
“Well, it’s not,” I say, “so you better speed this up or move onto something else before you make it obvious.”
Xavier steps out of the crowd now and stands beside Alex, his short blond hair naturally a little messy in the front, which apparently helps with his sex appeal. He has dark blue eyes that always appear hooded, and a facial bone structure that could land him any six-figure modeling contract if he didn’t think male models were such pussies.
“She can stay in my room,” he says with a deep, dimpled grin.
That familiar grin always reminds me that he’s Daisy’s twin.
“Ummm, no?” Rachel says, also stepping out of the crowd, “She’s staying with me.” She snarls at Xavier, but Xavier smiles back at her with charm and confidence.
“Maybe you should ask her,” he says.
“What is happening?” I say quietly, trying to keep a straight face as I watch.
Nathan laughs behind me and says under his breath, “You’re witnessing what Xavier is famous for?”
“Being a man-slut?” I say, mortified.
I’m glaring at my sister now with warning, but she’s not even looking at me.
She snarls at Xavier. “Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?” A look of unbelieving disgust warps her face.
“I’m the guy you’re going to sleep with before this week is over.”
Nathan and Isaac both can hardly contain their laughter. I’m still trying to make myself believe I’m actually standing here listening to this. Seriously? Did he really just say that?
Alex crosses her arms—always awkwardly because of the chains—and steps right up to Xavier with a heavily wrinkled nose. “Wow. You really have me seriously fu—.”
“Alex?” I say, waving a hand at her to calm down, but I only have her attention for about two seconds before she’s back in Xavier’s sexy grinning face.
“You keep telling yourself that, okay?” she retorts, popping out one hip.
“Oh, I will,” he says confidently and then he leans towards her slowly and touches his lips along the side of her jaw. Alex doesn’t move, but for a second a flicker of confusion flits across her eyes.
I think Cecilia’s eyeballs are about to drop out of her head.
Alex just stands there looking at Xavier as he pulls away and walks casually back to the front of the crowd.
“Oh man…,” Nathan whispers, “he’s got her.”
My head snaps around and beams of anger shoot from my eyes at him. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I snap. “Alex isn’t easy like the girls Xavier’s used to.”
“Nathan,” Isaac says also with laughter in his voice, “I think you should’ve said Alex has Xavier.”
Nathan brings his hand up and rubs his chin in thought. “Y’know, I think you’re right, bro. Adria’s sister looks like she wants to pop his eyes out with a fork—no one’s ever refused him like that before. She didn’t even giggle.”
“Can we get on with this?” I say as the resentment starts to boil closer to the surface. I won’t have someone like Xavier using my sister for sex and tossing her aside like trash. And it really gets under my skin that Isaac and Nathan seem to be getting a kick out of this.
But that problem is for later….
I have been so dumbfounded by the exchange between Alex and Xavier that it takes me a few minutes to realize that two more—Xavier and Rachel—have just been marked off the list.
“It’s not Rachel…,” I say aloud, but in a quiet whisper more to myself. I can’t believe it. I wanted it to be her, at least, up until she and Alex latched onto each other’s company. “It’s not her….”
I raise my chin slowly to see the other faces in the crowd. There are several, but it’s already been narrowed down to mostly people I care for, but can live with being the one. Alex and Zia were the two I feared the most and now that they have been ruled out I feel like I can breathe a little easier.
Alex takes it upon herself to walk back to stand with the crowd, assuming Isaac is finished making her the center of attention.
But then something strange catches my eye in a sort of morbid slow-motion, the kind that as you watch you start to see something traumatic being set in motion and you have no time to react to it. Zia smiles a chilling smile across the space between us and she slowly curls her fingers around the chain dangling between Alex’s wrists. In all of a few seconds, Alex’s body is hurled into the air above Zia’s white-blond head and bashed against the ground face-first. Several people scatter outward, tripping over one another as they scramble for safe distance. Isaac’s sister, Phoebe, suddenly drops to her knees before she can get out of Zia’s path and she reaches up, clawing at her throat as if being choked to death.
Isaac, me and Nathan start to run forward towards them, but our feet come out from under us and we soar backwards through the air as if snatched in mid-run by the backs of our shirts. I land hard on my butt, feeling my left wrist twist painfully underneath my leg.
“You can’t!” Harry screams at us and then I’m being dragged across the dirt and grass by my other wrist. “She’ll kill you!”
I don’t know how Harry did it, but it’s obvious now he was the one who stopped the three of us from running toward Zia to help the others.
“Stay out of the trap!” he yells. “She can’t hurt you outside of it!”
Nathan and Isaac are already on their feet again, looking to and from Zia and Harry, wondering what to do and starting to feel like they could care less about Harry’s demand and go for Zia anyway. They remain still; Isaac in so much shock he doesn’t run to help me up like he normally would and I’m in so much shock I can’t get up by myself. I sit on the ground with my back arched forward, my hands holding up my weight.
Phoebe’s curly raven-black hair is twisted around her face. Her dark eyes are bulging from their sockets as she gasps for air and claws at her throat as if trying to pry away invisible hands she thinks are choking her. Her black claws protrude from her fingertips, but she can’t do anything. She can’t transform and she can’t move.
Zia drags Alex across the ground on her stomach to the edge of the trap line, knowing that it’s there but she can’t cross it.
Xavier bursts through the crowd that has gathered away from the trap and runs toward Zia, eyes swirling black. With my keen senses, I can hear his ribs breaking with every thrust of his feet. He’s starting to shift form, but the second he crosses the trap line and into Zia’s realm, it’s like he runs head-on into a brick wall. His body slams into the invisible barrier that Zia created and then he’s sent flying through the air. His back hits the light pole near the pond with so much force that it snaps in half and crashes into the water; sparks spew and sizzle and pop until the light blinks out completely, leaving the landscape bathed in an eerie blue smoking haze.
Phoebe falls forward, gasping for air. I watch helplessly as the veins in her face come to the surface and implode underneath the skin creating pools of blood around her eyes.
“You’re killing her!” Isaac roars.
He starts to move forward again, but Nathan grabs him by the arm and stops him.
I see Daisy standing near the crowd with Camilla clutched to her side, their faces streaked with tears. Daisy’s probably the strongest one here, but she knows not to shift. I know Harry has drilled this moment into her head over and over again so that when the time came she would know to do nothing. It would be suicide.
To the amazement of everyone, Zia’s true identity begins to unravel before us. Her short hair grows longer and starkly whiter—I never imagined it could be whiter than it was. The tips of her silky strands seem to shimmer in the darkness, moving unnaturally around her shoulders as though alive. Her eyes glow the brightest pearl-white I have ever seen.
Sebastian is still on the ground, like me, staring at Zia in such shock that he looks frozen in horror.
Zia cracks her neck and cocks her head to one side, looking down at Phoebe’s struggling body.
“A sister for a sister, Isaac?” she says venomously and a terrifying grin spreads across her perfect white face. She reaches out her free hand in front of her and crushes it into a fist. Phoebe’s neck caves in on itself and her body stops moving in a gruesome instant. She slumps over onto the ground, dead.
An eerie silence falls over us all.
I can’t look at Isaac because I literally can’t move, but I can feel him, the wrath coming to the surface in a sort of delayed reaction caused by shock. I feel the beast inside as well as inside of Nathan, on the very fringes of control.