Lily
Heat scorched Lily’s skin. She held her hands up, palms facing forward, as she edged closer.
“Elijah!” she screamed. Panic engulfed her, swelling like the tidal wave of fire filling the kitchen. “Elijah!”
A wooden beam groaned and creaked above. Moving deftly to the side, Lily dodged it as it fell. Her breath came in short gasps, fear strangling her.
Choking and coughing, Lily yanked her top off and wrapped it around her nose and mouth. Tears streamed down her soot-stained cheeks, snaking paths and dripping from her chin.
The only relief afforded to her was the steady pull of the bond. Elijah couldn’t be dead; he couldn’t be, not when she could still feel the tug of it towing her towards the kitchen. The kitchen, where the flames were coming from…
“Elijah!” The sound was muffled from behind the top, and Lily’s throat was sore from the black air spilling towards her, but still she screamed for him. “Eli! Where are you?”
Batting away flames with knife-nicked palms, Lily realised she could go no further. She needed some way to dampen the flames, but her mind got stuck on Elijah every time she tried to think of a solution. Buckets of water and blankets to suffocate the fire seemed impossible to consider when Elijah had to be in there, hurt –
She could not imagine what state he might be in. He was alive. She was sure of it, and that was what mattered. He was alive, and he would be okay. She would get him out.
Then the fire burned out. It rolled in on itself, as if sucking backwards into the source from which it had come. And, stood at its centre, was Elijah.
Lily dropped to her knees, the bliss of seeing him there, unharmed, making her head spin. He was at her side in an instant, arms lifting her and holding her to his chest. She breathed in deep, smelling his familiar basil and citrus scent, usually undercut with woodsmoke – but now, in the wake of the ravaging flames, it overpowered all else, almost entirely. He was the same, but not.
“You’re okay,” Lily breathed, pressing her face into his warm chest. “You’re alright.”
“I’m fine, Lils,” he murmured, stroking her hair. “Are you hurt?”
“No. No, I’m okay.”
His shoulders sagged. “I’m so sorry.”
“What happened?”
Lily wanted to step back, to assess the damage to their home, but her body would not – could not – move from his embrace. Her fear had been blistering, painful, and the relief of having him here, whole and well, made her hands turn to claws and she latched onto him.
Pieces of the puzzle began to slot together, though many of them did not fit. Elijah had been at the middle point of the blaze, and yet he was stood beside her without a scratch. Lily pulled back slowly, assessing him for wounds. The top slipped from her face and slithered to the floor.
“Elijah?” Her voice was croaky.
“It’s my fault.” He shivered, and refused to meet her gaze.
“Did you leave a candle burning? The oven on? I don’t understand–“
“It’s all my fault.” His shivers turned to uncontrollable shakes. “Lily, I–“
“I don’t understand!” she cried, taking a trembling step back. But, all of a sudden, she did.
Horror filled her lungs as she took in the damage to the quaint kitchen she’d come to love as her own. The table was charred, and cooling ash splintered across its corners, flaking and curling up from its surface. Blackened remains of herbs wafted smoke from the counters, which themselves had been so badly singed in places that they were now shot through with crumbling holes.
Smoke curled through the air. Lily’s lungs and throat ached, but she did not dare go to the metal sink for water, sure that touching it would burn her fingers. Dead flowers hung limply from their vases and jars. Tea towels and wash cloths were either frayed, still flickering with tiny flames, or had been reduced to a pile of black fabric.
Flashes of memory were dazzling her, snippets of ancient parchment and ragged documents filling her brain. Words like elemental and power and war were scraped across her mind like an ink-soaked quill on paper.
Her research hadn’t been enough to stop this. She’d been blinded by the mate bond, blinded by her love. The thought of loving him stung as the depth of his deception became clear. Who was the man she loved?
His eyes changed colour depending on his mood. His ears had pointed tips. Tiny things, inconsequential things, in a land of myth and magic. Things that didn’t add up, but could be swept under the carpet in the wake of a potential war – and with the mate bond smoothing over any uncertain edges in their relationship.
His mother had been brutally killed, but Elijah had never said why. She’d been the Luna; there could have been no reason great enough for a pack to kill their own Luna. It was barbaric, and unless Sea Pine had once been a far different pack to the one Lily knew today, they must have been pushed to extremes to commit such a disgusting act upon one of their own.
Elijah had been nervous in Entra. Even then, Lily had recognised his litany of twitches as nervous ticks. He’d been accepted by Anyen and Pritus especially, even when they had shown disdain to her kind. Her kind, not his.
And the fire. An elemental fire, one that had allowed the faelen to wage war on the werewolves for over a decade. It was his fault – because Elijah had started the fire. Not by leaving a candle lit or the oven on, but using some strange, dangerous elemental power that Lily did not understand.
“What are you?” she spat.
She tore her eyes from the fire damage to meet his. They were dark grey, and Lily did not recognise them.
“I’m half faelen,” he said. Resignation made his body sag.
In that moment, Lily felt no sympathy for him.
She felt nothing but disgust.