Killer Crescent by Leigh Kelsey

22

Lightning-charged magic snapped out around my waist and anchored me to the nearest tree, taking some of the pressure off my neck before it could snap, but I gasped frantically for breath, every exhale a whimper.

I had a pathetic amount of magic, and no way of escaping a hex as bad as this. I felt death creep up on me like a sneaky cat, ready to pounce.

“Breathe, Blossom,” Edison snapped.

“I’m—fucking—trying,” I replied shortly, scratching at the rope wrapped suffocatingly tight around my throat until I could drag in another wisp of air. “Why don’t you—use all that fancy magic—get us free?”

“I’m fucking trying,” he shot back, and my stomach plummeted like a bungee jumper kicked off a cliff. Not that I’d ever kicked anyone off a cliff. Ever.

Edison was one of the most powerful witches of our generation. If he was struggling to fight these magical ropes, there was no hope for me.

“Try harder,” I growled, my wolf lashing inside me in a panic. My teeth ached as canines elongated, but I was bound by the whims of the full moon, and I couldn’t shift. Maybe if I was in wolf form, I wouldn’t be trapped.

“Rebel, listen,” Edison said tightly, and I blinked across the blurring trees to see him struggling against the ropes, bright light surrounding his hands as his magic surged and ebbed. “This seems pretty fucking dire, so I’ve got something to say.”

“Don’t,” I rasped, tugging at my own ropes and hissed when they didn’t budge, just rubbed my fingers raw. If it wasn’t for Edison’s tendril of magic around my waist, I knew my neck would have snapped and I’d be dead by now. Who the fuck wanted me dead? Oh no, what if that was what Edison wanted to say? What if he wanted to confess to his crimes?

But then why had he raced through the wall to save me?

“Why did you come here?” I asked, my words slow and breathless. “Why do you—care if I—fuck this up?”

Edison snarled, an unimpressive sound after hearing Dean’s and Hugh’s alpha growls, and he renewed his struggles against the ropes around his neck and chest. “I felt your pain. All right?”

“You felt my pain,” I repeated, an irritated rumble filling my voice as my wolf slipped free.

“I felt it through the bond,” he snapped, avoiding my glare when I swung around to stare at him, busying himself with the tangle of the knots around his middle.

“That must have,—” I panted, struggling harder as my lungs started to starve of air. “—been inconvenient—for you. I’m so sorry.”

“Would you shut the fuck up,” he snarled, his magic flashing higher, “and let me speak? God, Rebel, you’re such a pain in the ass.”

“And you’re such—a charming gentleman,” I hissed back, kicking my legs up until I began to swing, hoping to fray the rope.

“What I wanted to say,” he snarled, his black eyes flashing with anger and something else, something darker, “was that I’m fucking sorry. Okay?”

I stopped struggling and stared at him. He had the same icy hair I remembered, the same heavy brow and intense eyes, had that straight nose and cut-glass bone structure, and the same tattoos and deadly aura. But there was no way this man could be the Edison Bray I’d met two years ago. No way in hell would that man have ever apologised. For anything.

“For,” I asked slowly, dragging the words from the dark pit of my pain, past all the heartache and misery I’d suffered for years, “what?”

His eyes pinched, apology in their dark depths. “You know what my family’s like,” he said quietly. Not an explanation. “They expect the best, and anything less is a pathetic failure.” His bright magic dimmed to pewter at that, as if responding to his thoughts. “I was the golden boy.”

“Was?” I cut in before he could go on, frowning at his swinging form. His hair was mussed, and there was a scrape on his jaw, his black shirt smeared with dirt. He looked undone, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Not that I looked any better.¹

Edison’s low laugh cut the crackling sound of his magic, a laugh full of pain. I frowned deeper, even as I gasped for breath. “I messed up,” he said bitterly. “Some asshole tried to steal my phone, so I beat the shit out of him. Got myself thrown in prison for GBH.” He laughed again, another bubbling sound of misery and hatred. “I was no longer the perfect heir. They kicked me out.”

He shook his pale head, leaning his face against the rope so it cut into his cheek. “You want to know what’s seriously fucked up and hilarious?”

“I’m sensing this won’t—actually be funny,” I panted, watching him in fascination even as I turned lightheaded. I’d never even suspected this Edison existed beneath the asshole; his mask had been complete and without flaw.

“I spent my whole life making sure I was perfect so I lived up to their standards,” he said, a sharp smirk curling his lips. “I was terrified as a kid that, if I messed up, if I let the family down, they wouldn’t want me anymore. And I was right.”

I waited for the joke.

Nope, that was it.

“Thomas, that’s not funny.”

“And that’s not my name,” he replied, but wryly this time. “I doubt they’ll even care when they find out I’m dead. At least now I can’t shame the family.”

“You’re not going to die,” I growled, guttural. The mate instincts I’d buried for years came roaring to the surface. He hadn’t even said sorry, hadn’t said anything that explained why he suddenly gave a shit, but that didn’t lessen the force of my need to save him.

I liked to pretend I was violence and sharp edges and ruthlessness, and I was—but it wasn’t all I was. I was softness and love and loyalty, too. And while I still wanted to cut Edison’s balls off for what he’d said to me, for the way he’d treated me, that didn’t make my desire to save him from certain death any weaker.

I could chop his balls off later, when we both lived.

Unless he was ready to get down on his knees and … grovel.² Then I might need those balls for the future, so I’d leave them attached.

“Pretty sure I am going to die, actually,” he replied, all bitter and wry. I ignored him; there was no place for pessimism and negativity here. I needed to think of a way out. If these were ordinary ropes, I could do it, even with them around my neck, but they were spelled, and I was fucked.

But there had to be a way.

I refused to die—and I refused to let my mate die.

“They’d have hurt you,” he said quietly, without prompting, “and sneered at me. If I’d accepted you.”

“Oh?” I demanded, flashing him a glare for interrupting my concentration. “Like you sneered at me? I saw the way you hated me; don’t try to convince me you had feeeeelings.”

Edison huffed, his bright magic concentrating around the rope at his neck.

“What? No comeback?” I snarked, swinging my legs again. The soles of my boots smacked into the trunk of the tree I’d been strung to. “Fuck,” I rasped as I flew out again, the rope pulling taut. On the swing back, I twisted my body around, and ignored the chokehold on my throat as I wrapped my legs around the thick trunk, holding on by sheer thigh power. Good thing I’d kept up my training in my room at Blake Hall, because I was going to need all my strength.

“I’m sorry,” Edison said, both hissing and grave. “There was no way I could keep a dud as my mate. No way. My family wouldn’t have had it; they’d have stripped my heir title from me.”

I slammed both hands into the tree and dug in my fingers, bark embedding in my fingernails, eerily scentless.

“Good to know—what’s important to you,” I gasped, climbing up the tree in tiny increments. A few inches, and the pressure on my neck eased until I could breathe, and I sagged in relief against the trunk.

“And it turns out that title meant nothing,” Edison said bitterly. “And the second I messed up, they disowned me anyway.”

“Boo hoo,” I muttered. “Some of us had bigger problems. Some of us lost their sister in a brutal attack, got viciously rejected by their mate, and went to prison for murder.”

“I wanted to keep you,” he said quietly. I felt his eyes on my back, but I didn’t dare look. The words cut so fucking deep I swore I must be bleeding inside. I sank my teeth into my bottom lip, refusing to cry over this jerk again. “But I couldn’t, Rebel. We were from different worlds.”

“Yeah, I was Juliet, and you were dumbass Romeo,” I muttered, climbing higher bit by excruciating bit, until my fingers bled and my thighs killed. But I held on, looking for where the noose anchored. If my sparky magic could do nothing else, maybe it could burn through the knot? “I saw the way you looked at me, Edison, and it had nothing to do with your family. You hated me for being your mate.”

“I hated myself for what I said, for calling you a thing when you were the sexiest, most interesting woman I’d ever met. I hated myself for not being brave enough to claim you,” he snapped. Pain was heavy in his voice, and I didn’t think it was fake.

Chills went down my spine. Was he telling the truth? I wished he was lying, but the words rang true, and everything from that night shifted in a new direction. He hadn’t been disgusted with me; he’d been disgusted with himself.

Rage burned in my chest—at him, at his family for being judgemental bastards with impossibly high standards, at witch society as a whole. The anger shook in my hands, in my arms, until the back of my tongue tingled with it—and with power.

“Shit,” I gasped out, recognising the sensation. I’d felt this way when I’d shifted for the first time. “I think I’m going to—”

But my bones snapped before I could finish the sentence, and pain devoured me whole.