Reclaimed (Shadow Beast Shifters, #2)(91)

I took off, sprinting toward the entrance, crossing that soft meadow before I skidded out of the stone archway. I stared across the barren, empty land, my knees near-buckling under me.

They were gone. The desert lands empty.

My scream was long and guttural, and I called the creatures to me, but there was no response. “How?” I sobbed. “How did she command them?”

Shadow was there, as he always was. “She’s been siphoning your energy. I’ve been so focused on you that I missed the obvious signs. She kept touching you, and I thought she was trying to break the ice, but it was betrayal.” He was pissed. So fucking pissed that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a forest fire of his making rage across this land. If there was anything left to burn, that was. “They’re too far away for you to reach them. We have to follow.”

Siphoning. My. Energy.

That was why I’d felt so drained the closer we’d gotten to the Nexus. Fuck that bitch. I was going to rip her hair out when I caught up with her.

Dannie appeared in the archway but didn’t step out into The Grey Lands. “You must go after her. If she destroys the last of the creatures here, the Nexus will fall.”

Shadow spat out. “Bet that was Cristell’s plan all along. She is so narrow-minded, thinking that she’ll be the strongest once this land is gone.”

“We have to follow her!” I demanded. “I won’t let my creatures be used to win this war.” I took a step forward, but my legs crumbled under me. I almost hit the ground, but Shadow was too fast for that; he caught me, hauling me up into his arms.

“What’s happening?” I asked, the weakness in my legs extending to the rest of me as I hung limply against him.

“You have bonded thousands of creatures to you,” Dannie said in a rush. “And now they’re being stolen away. Stolen away to destroy. Which will destroy you. You must catch up to her now.”

Shadow threw his head back and roared, his expression a combination of fury and fear. I’d never seen that look on his face before, and as much as I hated to see it now because it meant I was dying, there was something about seeing the man you loved lose his shit like this.

I’d have been turned on if I wasn’t actively dying.

Wasn’t that always the way.





45





Shadow held me tightly, and with my avenging Angel above, her weapons out as she flapped those powerful wings, we were racing across the land. Just the three of us and our mists.

Dannie had to stay with the Nexus, keeping it powered as long as possible. Once again, we would be on our own, trying to save the damn world.

“Mera!” Shadow snapped, attempting to keep me conscious.

At some point, it registered that I was actively dying. After all of the years expecting it, this was the moment it happened, and I found… I was not ready to go. Not when I’d finally discovered my true purpose. I also needed more orgasms with this sexy beast of a god.

“I have to save my creatures,” I managed to choke out.

They were already hurting them. There was no other explanation, and it was slowly killing me. That was the risk when one bonded a few thousand beings to their energy.

“Stay with me, Sunshine,” Shadow growled. “And I promise we’ll save your pets.”

“Shadowshine,” I slurred, my head cloudy as the exhaustion pressed down on me like a cloying material designed to snuff my life out. “Told you we’d have a couple…” I coughed a few times, my lungs seizing. “Name.”

“Quiet. You are ordered to keep breathing and nothing else.”

When we arrived at the ice city, it was to find it completely empty. Not just empty, but as dead and desolate as the rest of the land.

“Illusion,” Shadow raged. “That was always her specialty.”

“That bitch had it all planned,” Angel spat out, and she was as furious as the rest of us. “We have to catch her.”

“We will,” Shadow rumbled.

He was moving again, knowing exactly where Ixana was heading. Using his powers, he jumped all of us in a burst of misty smoke, straight into The Concordes.

The time for stealth was apparently long gone.

We ended up over Trinity, and from here, Midnight and Inky carried us toward the royal compound. My bond to the mist was basically the only thing keeping me alive. Well that and the way Shadow was losing his shit, shouting orders at me to keep fucking breathing.

As we closed in on my creatures, a small surge of my energy returned, allowing me to lift my head. “They’re here, but how did she move them all so fast?” I asked in a breathless whisper.

Shadow’s flaming face, a very Anubis-looking face, twisted toward me. Now that I’d seen his beast side, he appeared to be much more relaxed about letting it free.

“I have no idea,” he bit out, “but it’s clear her plan all along was to usurp the creatures from us. Whether it’s to join forces with Cristell, or to try to best her so that Ixana is the next queen, I don’t know.”

My anger bloomed as more of my strength returned. “I think she’s working with her. That’s why she had the staff and stone. And my creatures…” My chest tightened. “She’s destroying them. We have to hurry.”

I was just managing to function, but as my creatures were killed off, I would be too. The smart thing would be to release them, but I honestly didn’t know how to.