CHAPTER FIVE: The Bride of War

Maya's pov

Flames stretch toward the sky, engulfing all in hellish orange glow. My village, the one I've had my own for three years, is on fire and I stand shivering at the edge of trees, beholding my world fall apart.

They lie scattered about Main Street. I see Mrs. Chen, the baker, her apron cinched about her waist, blood oozing under her graying hair. Tommy Martinez lies near the fountain, his face contorted in death, stretched thin by adolescence. He'd had just sixteen years. Just sixteen, and now he's...

Double, I vomit until my stomach's dry and parched. My lungs are scorched with acrid smoke, and that's nowhere close to fire that's burning my chest. Dead people's hands weigh heavy on my conscience. I am what I've become. I couldn't go on learning what I'd turned out.

"Maya."

The voice cuts through the din of flames and my frantic breathing. Deep. Familiar. Impossible.

Slowly, I rise to my feet, my legs shaking as I glance in the direction of the disturbance. Out of sulfurous smoke and fire vapors, emerges a figure, emerging from what is left of the community center. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Cat-like agility, of a hunter who knows that he possesses everything he sees.

Vincent.

But not my Vincent. This man bigger, his shoulders broader, his aura about him, extended about him, like a physical power. His black hair blacker, casting shadow to a more lovely, more horrible, face than previously. Scars score white lines down his jaw and neck, testimony to hurts that ought to have slain him.

His eyes lock with mine down that sweltering street, and they ignite with an inner flame that has little to do with that licking fire. When he flashes a smile, I glimpse fangs too sharp, too long. Not wolf. Not human. Other.

"Hi, little mate," His words bridge just that easily between us, and I sense them, as well, as a physical caress on my flesh. "Did you miss me?"

Behind him, there is movement in the smoke. Dozens of them, and they just keep pouring out of burning buildings like demons out of hell. Their eyes glow in the firelight, and when they show their fangs, I see just that same unnatural length to their fangs that Vincent's have.

The Shadowfang pack. I had believed they were all dead, scattered when Vincent fell. But look, here they are, reformed and stronger than ever, following their reborn alpha with the devotion of cultists.

"You're dead." The words rasp the back of my throat like jagged glass. "I saw you die. I saw Marcus bury..."

"You saw Marcus burying a dead body." Vincent moves forward a bit, and my body temperature lowers each time. "But whose body, I ask? Jeremy always had a big mouth regarding pack business."

Ice in my veins. Jeremy. Vincent's beta. Same build, same size when modified. If Marcus had been desperate, if he'd been bereaved enough.

"He wanted to rescue you," Vincent continues, his voice informal. "Sugar Marcus believed if he could convince you I'd died, your heart'd be free. You'd have time to mend, to find someone and make them whole. Someone who deserves that light of yours."

His voice turns taunting on the final words, and rage flashes over fear clouding my mind. "Don't you dare..."

"Dare what? Tell the truth?" Vincent laughs, and I feel his laughter make my wolf whine and try to burrow deeper into my chest. "The truth is that your beloved mate lied to you. Used you. Betrayed all that you believed your relationship to be."

"HE WAS COVERING ME!"

"From me? From us, who were always destined to be mates?" His eyes flash, and I see, for one fleeting moment, what can be hurt shining through the rage. "You felt it too, Maya. Before everything went wrong. Before you concluded that I was monster in your tale."

Shaking in my hands when I press them hard against my ears, but I couldn't if I had to because they burrow their way into my head anyway. Memories I'd worked so hard to shove aside resurfacing. The way Vincent had always, always had his eyes on me at pack gatherings. The way I'd gotten that jolt of electric current when I'd touched his hand. The way I'd dreamed, weeks before I'd even met Marcus, of gold eyes and whispering promises and that bond that'd felt so old and unbreakable.

I had convinced myself it was nothing. Pleading with myself that my passion for Marcus was pure, unadultered, free of that darkness which had appeared to accompany Vincent like cancer's shadow. But always, that skepticism, that gnawing shadow in my head.

"Stop it," I tell them, my words cracking on them. "Just stop."

"I couldn't keep at it, Maya. I've tried. God knows I've tried." Vincent's words are dropped almost to a whisper, but I hear them all in complete clarity. "I've been dead three months. Do you have any idea what that's like? Being suspended in that limbo between living and dying, held there by willpower and the reality that you'd rescue me?"

"I didn't know..."

"You knew." His tone hard and gentleness goes away, just like smoke. "You sensed it each time that you touched him. Each time that Marcus kissed you, carried you, that you sensed that it was wrong. You knew that you belonged to someone else."

Tears streak down my face, burning my skin. Because he's right. God forgive, he's right. It had always been a struggle with Marcus, attempts to force a square peg in a round one. I'd attributed stress, dangers that I'd experienced, anything but the reality I'd feared too much to confront.

"I loved him," I breathe.

"Love." Vincent ejects the word in disgust. "Love's what you talked yourself into to make the betrayal okay. Love's what you called it when you put the gun to my chest and pulled the trigger."

Everything tilts to one side. My knees crash into concrete, and I don't even flinch. Because I'm back there again, three months earlier, in that warehouse, Vincent cornered and frantic, his eyes wild with madness. The gun heavy in my hand, Marcus's words ringing in my head telling me to shoot, to finish it, to save us all. I'd hesitated. For one moment of death, I'd stared into the eyes of Vincent and not seen a monster, but a tormented man. A man who'd lost everything and all he had was the vain hope that I'd love him.

But I would have done it anyway.

"It was an accident," I struggle to say. "I wasn't trying...the gun went off, I didn't mean..."

"Accident or not, it all ended the same way." Vincent kneels before me, his eyes at my level. I see a close-up view of the flashes of gold in his dark eyes, catch the glomming at close range of that floor-sweeping, head-reeling scent of pine and leather that used to make my heart pound. "You killed me, Maya. The one I loved, who I'd have died for, put a gunshot in my heart."

"Vincent, please..."

"But I'm not here for apologies." His hand lands on me, and I wince as his fingers bracket my jaw. His touch raises the hairs along my skin, and I shiver. "I'm here because this world's going to rend itself in two, and only you can prevent it."

Footsteps drawing near to him. Heavy boots on broken asphalt. Rhain's smell comes to my senses first, before he comes out of the smoke, countenance a mask of final-held rage. Three of his wolves walk beside him, eyes ablaze with alpha power.

"Let her go." Rhain's tone is colder than death, but I can feel that potential for assault in him like heat from a furnace. "Now."

Vincent does not budge. Doesn't even look away from my face. "Alpha Rhain. I've been expecting you to show up and collect your winnings."

"She's not a trophy. She's my protected one."

"Your protection?" Vincent's laughter is like broken glass. "Look around you, Alpha. How well has your protection served her people?"

Rhain's face hardens, and I see his fists clench. Tension between alphas increases, and I know that at a moment's notice now, this will escalate to violence that will take yet more corpses on the ground.

"Neither," I force myself to my feet in front of Vincent's wolves. "You don't have to do this. No one else has to die."

"But they will," Vincent grumbles. "They're dying already. Three packs have issued a war declaration just this hour. The Council's called all alphas here to Canada. Supernatural Earth's going to flow red with blood, all because of you."

"It's your fault!" My words spurted out, all my guilt and contempt and fear in one great flow, like poison oozing out of a wound. "You did it all! You've hexed me, dark magic, you..."

"I loved you." Two small words that struck me with force. "I loved you, and you shattered me for it. So yes, I cursed you. I tied my life to yours in pain and blood and this sort of magic that hurt the soul. Because if I couldn't have you, I was damn well going to make sure that no one else would have you either."

That patch of flesh on my shoulder blade sears with worse burning than flame, and I press my palm down hard, feeling ridges of raised skin through my shirt. "You and your omega bond. Your bond with Rhain. It's all your fault."

"A piece of spite," Vincent lowers his head. "But I have to say, I didn't think your new alpha would be so. committed. Most men your kind would have disposed of you by now."

Rhain growls behind my back, but I don't glance back. I can't tear my eyes away from Vincent's face. Because I see when his face shifts, when thinking replaces gut emotion.

"But I am not angry," he goes on. "I don't want the world to burn. Is there no prize for that?"

"Then cease this," I beg. "Call off your pack. End this war before it's more than a war."

"I won't," Vincent's smile interrupting. "The magic that holds us together, it's gotten too huge. Other alphas can feel the disturbance, the unbalance. They're coming your way, Maya. All of them. And they'll stop at nothing until they've had their claim or burned everything to the ground in the process."

"What do you want?" The words rip from my mouth like a prayer.

Vincent's eyes glow more, and when he speaks, there are hints of prophecy in his words.

"My war will end." Looming above me, shadowing, he's a dark angel. "I will call my pack back, Shadowfang. I will speak to other alphas, convince them that you are no threat. I will grant your peace that you've pleaded for." Hope springs in my heart like a wick on a candle. "And in return?" His smile is the most beautiful and sly thing that I have ever seen. "Be my bride."