Greymoor Academy: I Accidentally Bonded With Four Lycan Royals! novel Chapter 195

Chapter 195: 195. Crazed

Maisie

The worst that could happen, it turned out, was Kisten doing... nothing.

He didn’t speak. Barely looked at me. His eyes were glassy, unfocused, like he was somewhere else entirely as he moved us across the dance floor mechanically. I danced stiffly in his arms, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Behind me, I could feel the heat of my mates’ rage like a living thing, pressing against my spine. They were holding back because of the truce. Just barely.

And still, Kisten did nothing.

Until the music began to fade.

He suddenly pulled me in hard, one hand locking around my waist, the other gripping my shoulder. His face had changed. The blankness was gone, replaced by something sharp and panicked.

"Mother is watching," he whispered, voice rough against my ear. His breath was uneven. "Where will you be on Samhain?"

I paused. "Samhain?"

"Halloween," he corrected, slurring the word. His eyes darted over my head, scanning the crowd like he was looking for something. "Two weeks from now. Where will you be?"

I was going to be at Lana’s wedding, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. He looked particularly crazed tonight and my stomach tightened. "Why?"

"I am not allowed to speak—" he choked on the word and his blue eyes shuttering in what looked to be anguish.

Despite how he’d been and what he’d done to me in the past, I asked, "Kisten, are you feeling alright—"

His grip on me turned bruising. "Stay with them that night. All of them. Don’t—" He cut himself off, jaw clenching so hard I heard his teeth grind. "Have the dreams started yet?"

A cold finger dragged down my spine. How could he have known?

Before I could answer, he shook his head like he was trying to clear it. "No matter. Just stay the fuck away from Greymoor that night. And this place. Especially this place."

My brows knotted. "Kisten—"

The music ended.

He released me so fast I nearly stumbled. For one second, his eyes met mine, wide and dazed, before he took off from the hall like a jackrabbit, shoulders tight, steps jerky.

Twice he glanced over his shoulder, but not at me or the confused and murmuring guests, but at something beyond.

I followed his gaze.

Margaret stood at the edge of the hall, watching us. Her mouth was curled with displeasure, and I frowned when I noticed a few of the guards pull away from the walls to go grab him and usher him up a stairwell.

My mates surrounded me in an instant.

"What did he say?"

"Did he hurt you?"

"Are you alright?"

Their voices overlapped, hands checking my arms, my waist, like they expected to find wounds.

I swallowed, still staring at the empty stairwell where Kisten had disappeared.

"It was... nothing," I said quietly, but the words tasted like ash on my tongue.

Either I’d gone insane or Kisten was drunk out of his mind.

Still, for the entire part of the banquet, I heard the warning echoing in my head.

I dreamt of the same woman again.

And the rift that yawned open just ahead of her, crackling with unstable light. She clutched the ruby to her chest as she sprinted toward it, the ancient voice in her mind sharp with urgency.

"You must make haste. They must not make it through."

Hundreds of creatures poured across the dead earth behind her, nocking arrows, throwing spears, aiming their dark powers towards her relentlessly. Their faces were gaunt, their gazes desperate and filled with darkness. Evil.

They were trying to stop her from reaching the rift. They were trying to kill her. They were trying to escape through the rift.

Warriors fought around her and for her, blades flashing, bodies falling.

She stumbled once, glancing back at the rock where the six bodies lay. For a second, her steps faltered, like she wanted to turn back. Like she wanted to return there and curl up beside them and die with them.

She might have, if one of the warriors protecting didn’t grab her by her collar and throw her over his shoulder, speeding across the withered earth, the rift crackling before them.

"Do not look back," he growled in that ancient language, voice rough with exhaustion and something close to grief.

"They knew what opening the gates would cost. And they made their choice. You must make sure it wasn’t for nothing. Live. For them. For the child in your belly."

I was surrounded by darkness.

A voice like a hissed viper curled around me and I heard the rattle of chains and the clang of claws against metal.

"You... must make haste." A face appeared in the dark, a face of rot and death and hands with talons wrapped around my neck. "Come... find me, keeper."

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