“You knew! You sat down at this table and knew this entire time our bargain would not hold! You... you tricked me? Me!?”
Ivy shrugged and put her mother's journal away. “I did. Seems I've got a little more of your blood in me than you thought. Ilex, I'd like to know you. To be your sister. So long as you mean no harm to me and mine or report back to this prick about my life or the coven, you're welcome here.”
Ivy smiled genuinely at her brother and got up, brushing the wrinkles out of her dress, straightening her hat, so ready to get home and have that breakdown, she couldn't bear to wait another minute.
“Dad, nice to meet you, feel free to fuck off.”
Donnatar didn't take her dismissal too kindly, the ground rocking and rolling a bit more as the twelve-foot-tall forest god roared. “How dare you?”
Ivy had time to take a breath with the intention of responding in kind, when something hard wrapped around her leg. Something hard and covered in thorns.
She screamed as she was yanked under the table and hauled backward across the protective line of iron with enough force to audibly snap the bones in her calf.
She felt it, like two dry twigs cracking apart, the thorns digging deep as she struggled, shredding skin and muscle like a thousand sharp knives.
The lions roared out in challenge, she heard the girls shout out her name, but the inhuman bellow of a bear rose above them all.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Pain became everything. Every beat of her heart, every desperate breath, every clawing move she made to try and stop her backward momentum.
Ivy could barely see past the black spots dancing across her vision, but what she did see was a hulking bear throwing down with her father, holding nothing back as he charged and slashed at the sonofabitch.
The two battled it out with such ferocity Ivy couldn't keep up, clawing at the dirt to try and escape the pain that was swiftly swallowing her whole.
Her movement suddenly stopped, the jarring thud that vibrated up her leg pulled another scream out of her. Dimly she heard Ilex shouting something, but the ringing in her ears was painful too.
Worse, was the moment her scream distracted Uriah long enough for Donnatar to duck his head and use his antlers to charge. Time slowed to a crawl, the pain eating her alive momentarily forgotten as she watched those wicked sharp points drive into Uriah's chest and belly.
With a toss of Donnatar's head, the enormous bear flew through the air like a pillow, and the points of the forest god's antlers were red now. Red and dripping.
The bear landed hard enough to shake the ground, and he didn't get up.
Everything sped up then, the play button hit, and time snapped back in place. The lions attacked, their gold and black coats flashing in the sunlight as they fell on Donnatar in a tornado of claws, fangs, and fury.
Someone screamed like they were dying, and it took Ivy a minute to realize it was her. She tried to crawl across the meadow to where Uriah laid, but strong arms wrapped around her, and she was held back.
It didn't matter that her leg felt like it had been pushed through a meat grinder, she didn't care that every twist and buck she gave to get free only made the thorns bite deeper. Uriah was over there dying, bleeding out in the grass, and someone was holding her back.
“Ivy, IVY!” The authoritative, slightly accented voice shouted in her ear, the arms that held her felt like a vice that threatened to shatter her ribs, too.
It didn't matter. She didn't care how many of her bones were broken, her bear, her mate was dying, and nothing else mattered.
Kerrigan, Rowena, and Callie rushed past her, running across the meadow to drop down beside Uriah, holding their hands over his corpse while they began to chant.
They didn't seem to notice the lions being tossed around, one by one, as Donnatar slowly gained the upper hand. Where was Astrid?
“Let her go, asshole, or I swear to every dark goddess I know, I will turn you inside out and piss on your carcass!” Juliet's voice and the familiar, painful snaps of her magic pinched at Ivy's flesh.
Ilex ignored Juliet, bending to put his lips to Ivy's ear. “Sister, hear me. Call for the Wild Hunt. You need to do it now before the lions fail.”
“Did you hear me, mother fucker? I said, let her go!” Juliet shrieked.
Ivy couldn't breathe past the sobs wrenching out of her, she clawed at her brother's hands and arms, tearing her fingernails and furrows through his skin. “Uriah! Let me go! Let me go to him! He can't die knowing I wasn't there, please!”
Ilex shushed her gently, rocking carefully from side to side, acting as though he couldn't feel the hurt she inflicted on him at all. “Your sisters are caring for your mate, but unless we stop him now, our father will win this day. Call the Wild Hunt, Ivy. Call, and see justice done.”
“What the hell is the Wild Hunt?” Juliet demanded, little fires springing up all around them as she edged into total meltdown. Ivy didn't even care, the entire meadow could burn for all she cared.
“Not even a god can escape them, Ivy. Call upon them,” Ilex urged, a velvet whisper of sanity when the whole world around her was nothing but blood and pain.
“I don't know what you're talking about!” Ivy screamed, choking on her own indrawn breaths, watching the lions relentlessly attacking her father. All six of them were coated in blood. How badly they were hurt, she couldn't say, but at least Donnatar wasn't looking so pretty now.
One of his ears clung onto the side of his head by a stringy piece of flesh, a white flash of bone showed through the vicious rake marks across his face, and his bottom lip was torn in a macabre grimace. More shreds to his chest and arms decorated his powerful body, but Donnatar wasn't going down.
She watched, horrified when her father wrapped his huge hands around one of the lions, holding him up off the ground, acting completely unaffected as the huge cat dug his hind paws in and slashed at Donnatar's vulnerable belly while the others went for his hairy goat legs.
The captured lion howled the most terrifying sounds of agony, his golden fur turning dull and brittle, and his powerfully muscled body started shrinking in on itself as Donnatar sucked the life out of the lion and into himself, healing all the damage the pride had done to him.
“Your blood soaks this ground, your contract broken, all you have to do is say the words and the hunt will come when you call. Hurry, before it's too late. Repeat after me, Ivy.”
Ivy drew a shuddering breath and rushed to speak the words her brother whispered in her ear. “Gwynn ap Nudd, Lord of the Wild Hunt I summon thee. A deal I've made, a bargain witnessed and agreed, a contract broken with foulest deed. I call the Wild Hunt to take the oathbreaker, Donnatar the Horned One, and bid you see justice done.”
She waited, helplessly watching the lion slowly dying in the most unimaginable way, right in front of her.
A bone-chillingly cold wind rushed up from behind her, and whatever was back there made Juliet drop to her knees to throw herself protectively against Ivy.
Ivy heard the howling of what had to be a hundred dogs and felt the ground tremble beneath a sea of pounding hooves. The dirge of a lone horn cut through the sunny afternoon, and the sky overhead turned black as thick, ominous clouds rolled and churned overhead.
Over Juliet's shoulder, Ivy saw her father turn white as a sheet. The lion in his hands fell to the ground in a lifeless heap, quickly grabbed by one of his brethren and dragged out of the way as the rest of the cats scattered.