“Then you’ll stay here forever,” Etherian warned.
“Piper,” Merc whispered low in my ear, “we have to go.”
“Yes, you do,” Etherian said just as the filmy portal back to Earth appeared in the center of the room right below Grizz. “Return as soon as you have all the things necessary to deliver on your promise.”
“But—”
“Go!” he boomed, shaking debris loose from the walls.
Merc took my hand and drew me toward the portal, but I didn’t go willingly. I kicked and fought and screamed for Grizz until I felt the press of the veil against my skin. One second we were in the Ether, and the next, we were on the bridge with everyone else—those that had been left behind.
I grabbed the railing, prepared to throw myself back over to get Grizz, but Merc’s grip was like steel, and Knox’s arms wrapped around my waist for reinforcement.
“Let me go!” I yelled as I raged against them.
“Piper!” Merc shouted back as he thrust his face into mine. “Piper, you have to stop.” Those piercing dark eyes of his homed in on mine, and I felt the fight slowly leave me, giving way to a fear so impaling that I could barely breathe. If Knox hadn’t been holding me, I would have crashed to the dodgy wooden planks beneath us. “Now is not the time for a meltdown. Now is the time for forming a plan to get your guardian back.”
“How?” I asked, defeat and grief thick in my tone. “I was talking out my ass down there so we could get out. I have no idea if Reinhardt can do what I said!”
“Then call your sack of shit father over here so we can find out,” Kat said, her barely withheld emotions clear in her voice.
Merc’s gaze drifted to her, then to the alpha at my back. “And don’t let him leave until he finds the solution.”
Chapter Thirteen
We all filed into the media room to await Reinhardt’s arrival. Silence permeated the room despite the number of wolves and vampires there. Knox, Foust, Brunton, and Jagger huddled together in a corner, discussing something in whispers. Merc, Jase, and Dean did the same, only telepathically. Random pack members and enforcers lined the walls and furniture in the room, waiting to hear from their leaders, while I stood in the center of the vast space feeling totally numb as I watched Kat flop down in the corner of the sectional, expressionless.
The undercurrent of despair from those of us closest to my guardian was infectious, and though I tried to shake it off, I felt its nails dig into my skin and burrow deep. If my father didn’t have a viable solution to our problem, it would surely take hold and never let go.
The clatter of the door crashing open pulled me from my spiraling thoughts, and my attention snapped to the media room entrance as Reinhardt’s heavy footfalls echoed up the foyer steps.
“Piper!” he shouted, a healthy amount of concern in his voice, which made sense given the dire text I’d sent him. The words ‘help me…I’m dying’ tend to get anyone’s attention.
“We’re in here!” I called. Seconds later, he flew through the doorway, eyes wide and wild, the raven on his shoulder.
His expression eased, then soured as he realized what I’d done. “I don’t appreciate being manipulated,” he said. His parental disapproval was duly noted.
“We don’t have time for your fatherly admonishments right now. I’m sorry for scaring you, but I need you to have the same level of urgency as the rest of us.”
“What’s going on?”
“Grizz is gone.”
“Gone?”
“He’s being held prisoner in Faerie—in the Ether.” When it was clear that he, like the rest of us, had no fucking clue what that was, I gave a quick rundown of what had happened. In fairness, it was a lot to take in at once, but I didn’t have the luxury of fleshing out all the details. Time was ticking.
“So you told this ancient, cast-out being of Faerie that I could give him back his physical form?”
“Essentially, yes. I did.”
“To Piper’s credit, he bought her story,” Merc said, crossing the room to join me. “Without her quick thinking, we might not have returned at all.”
“It was Grizz,” I said softly. “He was the one that put it together. And now he’s stuck down there with that fucking disembodied psycho—”
”We’ll get him back,” Knox said from behind me. “I don’t care how, but we will.”
“How?” Reinhardt asked him, no hint of confidence in his tone. “Can you do what he demands?”
“No,” Knox growled, “but I won’t let that stop me. That’s the difference between you and me. I don’t let shitty odds defeat me. I don’t hide behind excuses to shirk my responsibilities. I don’t let fear rule me, and I sure as fuck won’t leave one of mine behind because of it.”
His golden yellow eyes glowed with anger, and soon they weren’t the only pair. One by one, the other wolves of his Alaskan pack joined in shared rage at the loss of their adopted member—the crazy bear that they’d taken in even before we’d returned to New York.
“You are asking me to do something I am not capable of,” Reinhardt fired back. “Giving Grizz a human form was possible because I had a form to work with.”
“And Drake?” I asked, staring at the being in question still perched on his right shoulder. “He died, and somehow you managed to stuff his soul into that bird.”
“That,” my father said, pinning me in place with a furious stare, “was not my doing. Something else was at play there. Something I don’t understand. Something I’m not capable of doing.”
“Try,” I beseeched him. “Do whatever you have to. Sacrifice goats, or lambs, or Kingston if that would help. Sell your soul to the devil—or mine, if necessary—but figure it out, because I cannot lose Grizz…I just can’t.”
His hard gaze softened slightly as he delivered the painful truth. “And I cannot do the impossible.”
As I felt my resolve—my blind hope—begin to unravel, Foust opened his mouth.
“Maybe you don’t have to. Maybe you just need to make Etherian think you can long enough for us to grab Grizz and the witches and get out.” We all stared at him like the wise, dreadlocked voice of reason he was. “We don’t need you to be successful. We just need you to buy us time and distract Etherian long enough for us to escape.”
“I think he’ll notice us all slipping through a portal out of him, which he’ll probably have already closed before we could even try,” Brunton countered.
“Yeah…maybe.”
“Even if we were to fool Etherian, collect the witches and Grizz, and then escape, we will have burned our only advantage against the fey royals,” Merc pointed out. “We have not heard from Liam, and we are no closer to learning their plan. Attacking them without notice is an advantage I’m not certain we can afford to lose.” His grim expression did nothing to inspire those in the room. “We must find a way to give Etherian what he wants.”
“Then you must find someone else to do it,” Reinhardt argued, ”because I cannot. Even if I had a body, I have no idea how to put him in it, or if my magic would be strong enough there. And even if I could do it, how are we to know that he’ll honor his side of the deal?”