“Why do you think hers is red?” I ask, staring at her glowing aura, fighting to get inside mine, wanting to merge with me completely.
“Mathias and I discussed it. He helped me go over some old books looking for answers,” she murmurs. I turn my head to look at her, and her eyes glisten with tears.
“What did you find?” I ask her.
“Not much, but there was a mention of red aura, meaning not of sound mind,” she tells me. I think of my dreams, the way my mate screams, and how she talks to herself in the dark.
“So you mean fragile like Sage?” I raise an eyebrow.
“No, Eziah. I mean fragile as in crazy, asylum crazy. Barely functioning,” she answers, and I gape.
“That’s all you found, that my mate is insane?” I gasp. I had a feeling something is terribly off with her… But I couldn’t have imagined a scenario like this even if I freaking tried.
“We aren’t sure it was the only mention we found of a red ambiance. It could be wrong, though. The person who wrote it wasn’t of sound mind himself,” she shrugs.
“What do you believe? I mean, when you feel her aura?” I ask my mother. My mother looks away and bites her lip to stop it from quivering. “Mom! Please, I can’t keep living without knowing.”
“You don’t want my answer,” my mother tells me, and Malachi growls at her. “Eziah? Just…”
I shake my head at her. “No, for once in your goddamn life, don’t hide this, don’t hide her from me,” I growl.
“She can’t be saved. You can’t save her, not from herself. Temperance is not of sound mind. She is too far gone and…”
“Temperance?” I ask.
“That is her name,” my mother tells me. I go to ask something else, but my mother waves her hand at me.
“I can’t tell you anything else. That is all I know. I don’t get to see your futures, not like everyone else’s, and after getting Marabella’s wrong from the dribs and drabs I received, I am choosing not to judge what I have received,” my mother tells me.
“Seline really messed everything up,” I mutter.
“We all did, me especially. But right now, you need to get to your sister and maybe fix her future. For now, focus on that. Marabella needs you. It is about time we put her first.” I nod.
Yet, as I glance back down at my mate’s aura floating around mine, a strange feeling overwhelms me. My mother grips my arm.
“She’s an Alpha’s daughter?” I question her. My mother chews her lip but nods her head. My eyes snap to her again. “Can we see which pack?”
“Eziah,” Mom exhales a heavy breath and looks away.
“Mom!” I whine. Only this once, that’s all I’m asking for. It can’t be too much.
My mother sighs and grits her teeth. “You know I can’t grant you a second chance, right?” she questions.
I nod my head, and my mother sighs, moving to the other fountain. “I can show what she sees right now?” my mother offers.
“You can’t pull up where she is?” I ask.
“No, I can only see what she sees, and I have tried to look, but all I see is…”
“Darkness,” I breathe out, and my mother nods sadly.
“That’s all she has known,” my mother states in a whisper.
“What about her wolf? Can you see what her wolf sees? Her wolf should have better vision.”
Mom shakes her finger in the air. “That I might be able to do,” she says before moving her fingers through the water.
A picture slowly emerges, but it isn’t much better than what I see in my dreams. I squint down, peering into her surroundings, seeing a basement. Though the picture looks pixelated.
“It’s not pixelated. She is in a cage,” Malachi snarls and it takes me a few seconds to see her tiny fingers poking out the mesh as she peers into the darkness.
“Can we hear?” I whisper to my mother and she clicks her fingers. A door opens somewhere but offers no light. The stomping sound of footsteps is loud in the room she is in.
“Nova, who is it?” I hear my mate’s voice speak for the first time as she speaks to her wolf.
A whimper is heard, and her head turns to the side. Another voice of someone also locked down there with her rings out loudly.
“Who is it?”
“Shut up! I’m trying to listen!”
“You’re on your own then!” the voice snarls in the background.
“I expect nothing less from you,” her wolf, Nova retorts.
“It’s my brother!” my mate whimpers. A growl slips out of me, and I peer into the fountain when it fizzles out.
“No!” I gasp.
“I can’t show you anymore,” my mother murmurs and I look at her. Her hands cup her mouth in horror and tears brim in her eyes.
“Why?” I ask, as confused as ever. What is she trying to hide from me?
My mother shakes her head. “You don’t want to see. I can’t show you,” I swallow, wondering what has her so upset.
“Is he- the man is he?” I hold my breath.
“She isn’t a sex slave to him if that is what you’re asking,” she mutters and I exhale.
“To him?”
“The brother, he doesn’t use her that way,” my mother answers, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t let others use her.
“At least she isn’t alone,” I mutter, recalling the other female voice in the background, yet they didn’t sound too nice, probably just trying to survive themselves.
“I’m sorry Eziah.” I look at my mother.
“She’s not alright is she?” My mother shakes her head and my stomach sinks and I suck in a deep breath.
“You’ll find her.” She places her hand on my shoulder, probably offering her support, but that doesn’t help much. In fact, it doesn’t help at all…
“And when I do, I will kill every bastard that touched her!” I snarl.
“But first you need to help your sister,” my mother says, and I nod my head.
“Yeah, I do not have control of those yet, so unless you want me to uproot the entire place, I suggest we keep digging! Besides you are darkness, can’t you raise the dead? Make him claw himself out of the earth?” Eziah keeps whining.
I roll my eyes at him and groan. “I don’t know how to do that, and I highly doubt Kyan would teach me how, apparently raising the dead when tainted by darkness is not recommended unless you want a zombie apocalypse!”