“Will they be ok?” I ask, worried about the amount of blood loss.
“Mateo is only a Beta, but he should be fine, hopefully. Maddox is stronger, Ezra’s bloodline is strong, and pure in Alpha genes. He should be alright as long as he doesn’t take on too much. I think he hasn’t shifted because Mathias will need help healing you.” She pauses for a second. “Wait, here comes the other one,” Seline coos when Mateo suddenly staggers, the nurses gripping his arms. Maddox looks at him, then turns his attention back to me on the table. Mathias pulls my daughter from me, and Seline leans closer, her face barely off the water as she squints at the picture.
“What’s that?” she mutters before the air is being pulled from my lungs, and I gasp.
“Kat?”
“Seline?” I panic, feeling myself fading. The room vibrates around me.
“It’s okay, your Gemini wolf is kicking in with Maddox healing you, but Kat, the hands don’t let them touch,” she warns when I am being sucked through a vortex at blinding speed. First, I feel the world warping around me and darkness, then lights flow over my eyelids before I hear chatter around me and the warmth returns, and the wet sensation of blood covers me.
Mathias is arguing with Maddox, and I open my eyes, taking a deep breath in. Air fills my lungs, and my baby’s cries ring in the crowded room. My head rolls to the side as I try to focus on the area around me. My vision blurs before spotting Maddox healing Mateo, who collapsed on the floor. I reach out to him.
“Maddox?” I whisper, rolling on my side and falling off the table. My body feels foreign as I try to control it, numb, like I am made out of a jelly-like substance. Maddox collapses, and Mathias grabs me under my arms, helping me get to him.
Mateo stirs, groans, and lifts Maddox’s head that is slumped on him. “Maddox,” Mateo calls, worried. Maddox’s head is floppy, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth while he pants.
“Kat,” he chokes when he sees me before reaching for me. He pulls me to him, and Mathias lets me go. Grabbing Maddox’s head, I press my lips between his eyes. He whines before my magic stirs, and a warm fuzzy feeling tickles me, making my body tingle. He lifts his head, licking my face frantically. At the same time, a wave of vertigo washes over me before settling, and I collapse back against Mateo, who is patting Maddox. Mathias, next to the nurses, looks over our babies.
“That is strange. Why are they different colors?” He mutters to himself. I push up off Mateo’s bent knees to a standing position, and I hear bones cracking as Ezra shifts behind me. Walking over to Mathias, I peer over his shoulder at my son and daughter. My daughter is small, heaps smaller than our son.
“I think she may have become distressed,” Mathias points out. He moves aside, letting me look at them. Both have Gemini markings on their necks, though my son is gold, and my daughter, hers is black.
“The markings,” I whisper, touching my own, although mine is the color of my marks, like a red and blue marking, theirs is different.
“My daughter cries, and I clutch her hands before I gasp. Black tendrils shoot up my arm, and my eyes blaze, fighting off her magic. This is bad, I grab my son’s tiny hand, and her magic instantly changes, and the veins fade away. His healing touch rushed over me, reacting to their emotions as they both cry out.
“Don’t touch her hands,” I gasp, looking at Mateo.
“What?” Ezra and Mateo speak at the same time. One of my hands glows gold, and the other writhes with black veins.
“They were both meant to be Gemini wolves, but instead of having both powers, I think it split between them.” The Moon Goddess’ words come back to me. “The hands.” She was trying to tell me something about their hands.
“Fascinating,” Mathias muses, staring at my hands.
How could this go so horribly wrong? My son is blessed with the touch of life, while my daughter is blessed with the touch of death. What will this mean for her future? She will never be able to touch anyone, and if her touch is this deadly, would her kiss be just as potent? And what about my son?
“Kat?” Ezra calls, reaching to stroke the back of her tiny hand. I slap his hand away, and he blinks at me.
“She was killing me, and our son was healing me, but her power is stronger than his,” I whisper.
“They haven’t even shifted,” Ezra observes, and I shake my head.
“Yes, but I am the Gemini wolf goddess and Queen.”
“So, what does that make them?” Mateo asks.
I look down at both of them, gold eyes peer back at me. “A God of life and the Goddess of death.” I let my words sink in, knowing I am right.
Seline tempted fate by bringing me back and blessed one child, but accidentally cursed the other.
“Don’t touch her hands. Somebody get me some mittens,” I whisper, wondering what this means for her. Does it mean she will never be a normal child? Unable to play, hold someone’s hand, or even touch another? Everything has a balance, and Seline has blessed and cursed my kids. She reset it when she brought me back.
Sage
He is letting me out of this prison. Finally, I don’t feel like I’m trapped against my will. Well, not entirely yet, but it’s close enough. And now, I will have the opportunity to slip from his clutches, as long as I keep calm and look for an escape route.
His guard will be up the moment we step outside. I quickly get changed in the clothes Zane dropped over. “I don’t want to go,” Sierra whines in my head, but she smells it too.
Nothing, not even the stench of the bleach, as potent as it is, can ever cover the scent of blood coming from under the basement door.
Honestly, I am curious about what is down there, but also insanely terrified to find out. I have enough things in my head that I’ll never be able to unsee, enough nightmares to last a thousand lifetimes. I really don’t need the skeletons he keeps in his closet added in there, or rather the basement in this case.
At first, all I could smell was bleach until I caught the faint traces of something else when he opened that door and went inside the basement to retrieve those muzzles to hand them to Kat.
Rogues, I could smell rogues, lots of them. Probably way more than I have ever met. And then, it hit me, the cloying stench of rotten blood, there is nothing worse. Not even bleach could cover up the scent of blood, not when you are so accustomed to what it smells like. Especially the way it reeks when it soaks into the floor and walls of a room and forever becomes part of it.