The Reclamation (Shadowed Wings Book 3) Read online

  Was this all a dream? Am I still back with Lazza, hallucinating and dying? Something catches me, and booming yells bounce all around me as I pant through the pain and try to comprehend what’s happening to me. I hear the faint sound of laughter as I lose all my strength, and my hands fall powerless from my throat.

  I can’t breathe.

  I struggle silently to pull air into my lungs, but it’s useless. The shouting all around me fades to white noise, and just when I’m about to give in to whatever is happening to me, a blinding light flashes, and I’m suddenly being sucked out of the arms of whoever has me and thrown into a never-ending darkness that sets every nerve ending inside of me alight with pain. A silhouette of a man’s body, somehow bathed in both shadows and light, burns itself into my mind, and then as quick as a sharp inhale, everything in and around me just...stops.

  2

  My heart beats steadily in my chest, and my breaths are even and quiet. I lie breathing in and out, worried that one wrong move will invite back the pain. I know I passed out again, because the light teasing the other side of my closed eyelids is bright. I can tell it’s daytime instead of nighttime like it was the last time I came to, and that means, once again, that my body called it quits and shut down.

  If I never pass out again for the rest of my life, I’ll be a happy fucking camper. I’m starting to be really not cool with taking involuntary little naps and waking up in strange places. It has not worked out well for me so far, and my body needs to get on board with staying awake and alert. It’s time to toughen up.

  I peel my lids back and immediately regret it. Fuck, it’s bright. I thought we were in a cave; why the hell is it so damn sunny in here? I try again, slower this time. A headache is already starting to pound steadily at my temples, and I feel like the living embodiment of a dust-filled mummy. Minus the cozy wrapped bandages though, because it seems I’m once again sans clothing. I’m getting pretty sick of that happening too.

  The blanket covering me is gray and a little scratchy. It looks worn, and I hold it to my chest as I work to sit up. I’m weak as shit, and it makes me wonder even more how long I’ve been out. I’m lying on another blanket that isn’t providing any cushion between my ass and the rocky floor of the cave it appears I’m still in. My whole body is stiff and sore, but I’ll take that any day of the week over the pain I felt before.

  A fire that’s on its last leg is barely smoking next to me, and I look up to find a large hole in the top of the cave that’s to blame for the painful brightness going on all around me. I have no clue where I am right now. I can’t tell if this is the same cave I woke up in to find Ryn and Zeph arguing—at least I think that happened and isn’t just a figment of my imagination.

  I look around, but no winged assholes are here to greet me. I freeze when my search lands on a prone figure lying on the ground.

  Treno.

  I try to stand up, but my body doesn’t seem overly interested in cooperating with me. I end up seal crawling toward him instead, and thank fuck he’s less than a handful of feet away from me, because by the time I get to him, I feel like I just jogged a lap around the globe. What the hell is wrong with me? I lean my forehead against Treno’s blanket clad body and work to pull oxygen into my lungs. I can feel his chest rise and fall steadily, and a flicker of relief moves through me.

  I get my shit together and lift my head to take him in. The first thing I see is a pink line across his throat. I reach out to touch it, but it’s smooth, like it’s an echo of a wound. I pull my hand back and run my fingers over my own neck. There’s a raised line across my throat in exactly the same place. Goose bumps rise on my arms, and I jerkily pull my hand away, not ready to deal with the reminder of what happened to me.

  I focus back on Treno, his long white hair matted and tangled, and a sheen of sweat layers his skin. He looks sick. I reach out my palm to his forehead, expecting to find his skin burning beneath my touch, but he’s cool and clammy instead. I scoot up closer to his head and run my fingers down his cheek. He doesn’t respond to my touch at all.

  My first instinct is to try and wake him up, but I stop myself. I’m not sure what’s wrong with him, and if he needs the sleep, I’ll feel like a dick for stealing him away from it. The other issue is that I’m terrified if he does open his eyes to find me, I won’t see relief or happiness in his two-toned gaze, but betrayal and anger instead. I’m not ready for that.

  I go full Little Mermaid and just stare at him, while occasionally smoothing some hair back from his face as an excuse to touch him. I fight the urge to start singing “Part of Your World” and instead start monologuing in my head about what the fuck I’m going to say to him when he wakes up.

  I have a shit ton of explaining to do. I try not to think about what will happen if he refuses to listen to me, or worse, pulls a Loa and tries to take me out. I hope he’ll give me a chance to try and make my omissions right with him. I go round and round in my mind with all the different ways I can explain it all to him, but it all feels flat.

  How do you make betrayal right?

  Somehow, “Sorry I lied to you. If I had known you were going to end up my mate, maybe I...would have done the exact same thing because you were Avowed and I didn’t want to end up in a dungeon or dead,” isn’t exactly the begging for forgiveness Treno will probably expect.

  The air pressure above me changes, and I immediately move to cover Treno from whatever is about to swoop down from above. I can feel Pigeon slamming against the walls of steel I encaged her in, and I try to ignore the broken pieces rattling around inside of me because of it. Like a missile, tan skin and black wings slam to the ground fifteen feet away. Dust plumes up to make the landing even more dramatic, and Zeph walks arrogantly through the cloud, his gaze landing immediately on mine. He takes in my protective positioning around Treno and growls his disapproval. He looks good. Healed. There’s no blood weeping down his side, or bruises. And the line on his neck that was there before is gone.

  Another missile, this one tan-skinned with white and gray wings, slams down to the dirt and rock cave floor. Ryn straightens up, some kind of animal that looks to be a mix between a teenage mutant ninja goat and a llama slung over his strong shoulder. He drops it to the ground as soon as he sees me and comes right for me.

  I cringe back, trying to protect Treno and also myself, and Ryn freezes mere feet away from me. I watch as the relief I didn’t notice before bleeds from his gray eyes to be replaced with hurt. He’s healed too. There are hints of bruises still on his face, but he doesn’t look a sixth as bad as he did before. He shoots a look at Zeph, and I’m surprised to see fury flash through his eyes as he does. When his stare lands back on me, the anger is gone, and all that’s left is an aching uncertainty.

  “I wouldn’t hurt you, Falon,” he states evenly. “I wouldn’t hurt your mate either,” he adds when my shaky arms continue to cage Treno in protectively.

  “Wouldn’t you?” I state simply, my voice cracking from disuse. I’m not sure if I’m asking or challenging.

  Fuck, I feel tired.

  Ryn takes a deep breath and crouches. The sigh he releases as he gets closer to eye level with me sounds sorrowful and resigned. It tugs at the tatters of my trust, reminding me of how their omissions and lies shredded me like I was nothing.

  “I was wrong, Falon. I don’t expect this statement to earn me an immediate pardon; I just need you to know that I’m aware of how badly this all went. I should have trusted my instincts and been straight with you. I will never let anything come between our bond again, I vow it.”

  Ryn puts his fist over his heart and bows his head, and I’m not sure how to respond. His words call to the part of me that knows anger will get me nowhere. I can see and feel his sincerity, and yet I’m still so fucking pissed. I can’t help thinking about what it felt like to watch Lazza torture him. I thought he was going to die, and it pummeled everything inside of me to stand helplessly by and watch it.

  But all of this is so complicat
ed. I have the painful perspective of what it felt like to possibly lose him, and I also acutely feel the damage of what his secrets and exclusions have done to me; I don’t know what to do with either. We stare at each other for a moment, I suspect neither one of us having the slightest clue about what to do or say now. Luckily, the raging asshole in Zeph rears its head and saves us from having to figure it out.

  “We did what we had to do. No point apologizing for it,” Zeph grumbles as he sets a pouch that looks like it’s filled with berries on the floor of the cave. He pulls off another larger bag that has round watermelon looking things in it, but they just so happen to be pink instead of the green I’m used to.

  I want to get up and slug him across his dour face, but I’m too tired to move. “Totally,” I snark. “You were clearly just in the mood to redecorate that day you threw a tantrum and destroyed everything in my room. You didn’t stare at my clothes longingly and realize that just maybe you’d made a massive mistake. I must have been imagining that though, because you were just doing what you had to do, right? No biggie?”

  Zeph glares at me, but I don’t buy that his cream-filled center is comprised of only heartless asshole. I’ve seen things that prove otherwise. He’s still annoying as fuck though, and I don’t have the energy to engage right now. My arms give out, and my efforts to protect Treno result in me just half lying on him and listening to him breathe. It’s comforting in a weird way, which is good because I can’t move.

  “You need to eat,” Ryn declares, and he stands up and moves over to the llama-goat.

  He pulls out a long knife and starts doing things that turn the animal from dead carcass into future dinner. Surprisingly, I’m not revolted by the sight of him skinning, draining, and removing and cleaning things. He moves fluidly and with purpose, and I can’t help but recognize almost a soothing poetry to his sure actions. Or maybe I’m just so hungry that I couldn’t take my eyes off of the meat even if I wanted to.

  A massive hand places a pile of what look like black berries in front of me, and I look over to see Zeph moving away. I watch him for a beat as he pulls out a long sharp-looking dagger thing and starts peeling the pink not-watermelons. I pop a blackberry in my mouth as I watch him, wishing I could peel back his gruff exterior the same way he’s peeling the fruit in his hands.

  Juice fills my mouth as I start to chew the berry, and I quickly realize that these couldn’t be further from the blackberries I know and love. I spit out the rancid fruit and simultaneously gag and try to wipe my tongue with the blanket still around me.

  “What the fuck?” I demand as Ryn comes striding over, a concerned look on his face. Zeph just looks offended by my reaction to his offering, but what else is new? “That tastes like raw rotten fish!” I declare, looking at them and the pile of fish berries like they’ve each betrayed me.

  Fucking nasty!

  “They’re grot fruit. They’ll help you heal faster and get back on your wings quicker,” Ryn explains, as if somehow knowing the name of the nasty, treacherous berries will make them more palatable.

  I try and fail not to flinch at the mention of wings. What I’m going to do about Pigeon is filed nicely in the I have no fucking clue cabinet in my brain. It’s right next to what to do about three mates and how to recover when you find out your entire life is a lie.

  I shove the pile of berries away from me with a shiver and warily eye the fruit Zeph’s peeling. With my luck, it will taste like rotten meat or, worse—grapefruit.

  “So are we just going to not talk about what happened?” I ask, hoping the change in subject will make Ryn stop looking at me like he’s trying to figure out how to shove the grot berries down my throat. Where’s a duda fruit when a girl needs one?

  Zeph’s and Ryn’s features both close off, and it’s like watching the curtain shut on a movie theater screen. They both clamp down so fast. Zeph suddenly gets real interested in peeling not-watermelons, and Ryn puts all his attention into starting a fire and building a spit. I push away from Treno so I can position myself closer to the growing fire and its warmth. I didn’t realize I was so cold until right now.

  “Don’t think that avoiding the subject is going to change the fact that your spying sister betrayed you and your people and then slit my throat.” I rub my neck but immediately stop, it hurts. I feel like I’m bruised, and I picture a black patchwork of bruises surrounding the new scar accessorizing my neck. Maybe my voice isn’t fucked up solely from sleep. Did she do damage? I try to palpate my neck again, suddenly feeling like I need to know just how bad it is, but it feels swollen and too tender. The scratchy material of the blanket I’m wearing suddenly feels like sandpaper against my skin when I move, and I want it off of me.

  “Any extra clothes hidden in some well-placed wooden chest inside this cave?” I ask, recalling the well-stocked cave Zeph and I holed up in after our lake tour and subsequent crash landing. I don’t see one around, but they got these blankets from somewhere.

  Zeph puts his peeled fruit on some kind of wooden looking plate and rinses his hands with a skin of water. He reaches behind his head and pulls off the gray tunic he’s wearing. He chucks it at me, and it smacks right into my face and falls uncaught to my blanket covered lap. I shake away the image of his well-muscled body and ignore what it does to me.

  Apparently, my body is too tired to move much, but not too tired to appreciate my asshole mate’s muscles. The word mate snaps me all the way out of my daze, and I pick up the shirt and sniff it. I’m totally checking to see if it’s clean and not at all going for a nose full of his rich masculine scent. Nope. I don’t care if he smells like Bvlgari and bitterness, and I can do laundry on his abs. He’s a bad fucking dude.

  I pull the gray shirt over my head and then try to reposition the scratchy blanket under my now cotton clad ass, using as little energy as possible. Pieces of meat are placed so they can start cooking over the fire, and I try to keep my eyes off the other pieces of meat walking around this massive cave, being all surly and shit.

  “So you guys treat me like crap, lie to me, and keep vital information from me all because you thought I was a spy. Meanwhile, neither of you detected the actual spy in your midst. I take it you and your sister weren’t close?” I ask Ryn, watching as he tenses while putting more meat on sticks to cook. “She was pretty adamant that I stay away from you,” I go on. “I thought it was because she wanted to fuck you; guess I read that all wrong.”

  Ryn doesn’t say anything.

  My stare moves from Ryn to Zeph. “You should have let me kill her when I had the chance,” I tell him, anger and unmasked accusation leaking into my tone. “If you hadn’t stepped in and saved her, maybe all of this could have been avoided.” I gesture—or at least try to gesture—at the cave all around us, but my weak muscles don’t want to cooperate with the level of drama I’m trying to achieve. It’s all I can do just to sit here...sitting up. I glance over at the grot berries and contemplate plugging my nose and just going for it. My weak state is really starting to worry me.

  “What are you talking about?” Ryn breaks his silence and asks.

  “Your sister tried to kill me while pretending it was a training exercise. I’m pretty sure Zeph purposely kept Sutton away from me, because he’s a petty little shit, and put Loa the Betrayer in charge of training the kiddies,” I explain.

  “He had his hands all over you,” Zeph snarls from the other side of the fire. The flame’s shadows dance over his skin and muscles, and a flash of him underneath me as I use his solid chest for leverage and fuck him hard and fast pops up unbidden in my mind.

  “Oh right, and you didn’t have your hand shoved in the top of some female practically fucking you in front of everybody?” I counter, reminding him of the lap trophy he was playing with that night of the festival. “The difference between you and me that night, is that I didn’t know you were my mate...you did.”

  “Is nothing sacred to you?” Ryn snarls at Zeph.

  “It was just Neece. I did
n’t do anything with her, but I had to keep up some level of pretense while I was waiting for you to bring back answers,” Zeph defends. “Sutton crossed a line. I could smell his want from a league away, for rut’s sake. Neece knows her place.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s very good on her knees,” I snap at him. “Loa fucking challenged me, and then you stepped in to save her ass when she lost! Stop pretending like Sutton was the problem, and not you and your bullshit issues with trust!”

  “My issues with trust?” Zeph growls. “I have to be careful. You’ve been in our world for less than half a sun cycle and you think you know the dangers we face? You have no idea what we’ve been through.”

  “I know enough to get why you’d be cautious. But I was your mate. Where was the trust in that? That should have meant something to you. It should have allowed for some benefit of the doubt. You threw me out,” I scream at him, my voice and soul suddenly feeling raw and painful. My throat throbs, begging me to stop talking and abusing it even further.

  “You tried to Ouphe bend me!” he shouts back.

  “Are you fucking crazy?” I demand, furious. “I didn’t do anything to you other than attempt to make you stop trying to fuck me after I said no. It was just an instinctual reaction to what you were doing!”

  In a flash of movement, Ryn is over the fire and attacking Zeph before my eyes can even focus on what’s happening. I’m so shocked by the burst of action and the violence of it all that it takes me several heartbeats to react. They’re a blur of fists and movement, and the sound of punches landing and threats being spewed fill the entire cave until I’m drowning in them. They’re brutal in their attacks against each other, and I can feel the promise of blood and death in the air.