Page 3 of Renegade Kings

I could feel the power I’d fed into Dean brushing up against whatever magic lay inside him, and I felt the moment it surged in response. I could almost see the way they twined around each other, coating that precious fading light and coaxing it back into existence.

“Alyssa?” Tank’s voice broke with emotion as he tried to pull his hands away from mine, thinking I was giving up on the man in front of us when it couldn’t have been further from the truth.

I think I fell in love with him a little more at the realisation that he genuinely cared for Dean and the others.

And then Dean’s eyes surged open, and he took a deep breath, coughing as he pushed the water from his lungs.

Tank’s eyes widened in surprise, and we rolled Dean to his side as he coughed again, gagging as he expelled as much water as he could. I rubbed his back softly, wanting to wrap him in my arms and cry from the relief of seeing him awake. But we didn’t have the luxury of relief yet because we were still far from safety.

“Can you stay with him?” I asked, looking up at Tank. “I need to see if the others are still close by. I felt them in the water. They should have been here by now.”

Tank nodded, and Dean quickly grabbed my hand, squeezing my fingers before he gently pushed me away—always thinking about his brothers before himself.

Standing was harder than I could have imagined. The muscles in my legs screamed as I tried to stand, and I stumbled, dropping back to the sand at Dean’s side before taking a steadying breath.

Tank’s hand came to my shoulder before I could try again. “Alyssa?”

“I know. I’m okay. We can’t stop yet, not until everyone is safe.” I cringed as I said it because not only were we in Nymeria, where safety wasn’t really a concept you could rely on, but we’d failed in the one mission we had when we came here.

Damon wasn’t safe. He was fully in the grip of Arik and I had no idea how we’d break him free. Because there was no doubt in my mind that the Damon we’d encountered at the Winter Palace wasn’t the one the men around me knew.

Arik had done something to him.

He had to have.

The question was, what? How did Arik have the power to control not only people but the creatures of Nymeria as well? I had a feeling that if we could solve that one mystery, we’d find the key to how to bring down the pretender king.

“Rest.” Dean’s voice croaked as he spoke, and I knew it had to be hurting him. Then he tried to push himself up to sit like he’d jump back into action. Instead, he groaned, clutching his chest as he sank back to the ground.

“Yeah, dying and having a bear bring you back with chest compressions is probably going to leave you a bit bruised. You’re the one that needs to rest right now, Dean. What you’ve just been through is no joke. You need time to heal. We need you to heal. I can do this.”

I knew he was going to argue, so I forced my legs to cooperate and surged to my feet, staggering back down towards the shoreline before he could stop me.

And I knew he would.

Dean was turning into an alpha wolf. His first instinct would always be to protect those he cared about. Unfortunately for him, he had me to contend with and I was too used to standing up and protecting myself.

As my gaze moved to the water, searching for any sign that Maddox and Ryder were close by, I suddenly realised nothing was where it should have been. I looked around in confusion. This was definitely the riverbank I’d seen from the water, and I could even see the tracks in the sand where I’d dragged myself ashore. Only now did I realise the trees were wrong, the water was too still and there wasn’t the sound of the rushing river in the background.

I could hear the birds singing the same song that haunted my dreams some nights. The dreams that swiftly turned into nightmares, and a shudder rushed down my spine.

The woolly effect of shock entered my mind as I crouched and ran my fingers through the sand, grasping a handful and letting the grains run through my fingers as I stood.

I knew this place.

I’d been here so many times before that I’d never be able to forget it, no matter how hard I tried.

The realisation hit me like a physical blow in the chest, and I clutched at my wet tunic, feeling like it was constricting around me.

“This isn’t the river,” I muttered, my eyes searching from left to right as all I saw were the edges of a great lake. My gaze whipped to the rest of the area and a feeling of dread formed in the pit of my stomach. “This isn’t the Wildling Forest.”

But I didn’t have time to panic, because before I could let reality push me to the edge of sanity, Maddox, closely followed by Ryder, broke through the surface of the water, gasping for breath as they did.

Maddox’s eyes locked with mine before I even took a breath to call out to them. The relief of seeing them here with us was enough for me to ignore the reality of our situation right now. I watched as he said something to Ryder that I couldn’t hear and then they both swam towards me as I waited in silence on the sandy shore. It was hard to accept the possibility of safety in a place like this, but at least we were all together again.

As Maddox and Ryder pulled themselves up onto the soft sand, a soggy grey bundle launched from Ryder’s grip. Fizzle hissed and spat as he tried to pull himself away from Ryder’s arms. I’d never seen the little owl gryphon wet before but it had the effect of making the fur on his body cling to him, shrinking him down to a twiggy little figure with waterlogged wings dragging on the ground at his side.

Maddox rolled to his back as he tried to catch his breath, staring at the blue sky like it had the answers that would save us.