Sinister Mates

Ryland POV

One minute everything is fine, and everyone is having a good time, flipping the steaks on the barbecue; I wait for Evelyn to bring

out the tea towel I requested. I am about to walk back into the house to check on her when a shockwave blasts everyone away from the house.

None of us saw it coming; none of us expected this to happen. The windows of the house explode, sending shards of glass everywhere.

I can hear everyone screaming, smoke and flames everywhere. Sitting up from where I land next to the shed, I see smoke billowing out of the house. I hear my daughter scream her lungs out, and I look to Orion, who had her last time I checked.

I spot them near the car. Orion tries to calm her, but they seem okay and intact. Everyone picks themselves up off the ground when I feel Evelyn’s pain smash into me. Orion screams when I jump to my feet, remembering she is still in the house. Thaddeus screams her name as everyone runs toward the house. Thaddeus and I try to get in through the back door. The roof crushes inwards as we try to push our way in. Her pain gets stronger until she goes numb, and I feel shock wash over her.

Thaddeus walks back a few steps, and I manage to jump out of the way just as he uses his body to crash straight through the side of the house. Smoke and dust billows out of the hole he has just made. We both force our way through the rubble, trying to make our way through to what is left of the kitchen. The fridge blocks the doorway to the laundry, and Thaddeus kicks it with so much force the roof caves in on top of us and hits the laundry wall.

“Evelyn?” I call out into the smoke-filled room, barely able to see through the wreckage of our home. I hear her make a strangled noise, like she is choking, when I see her leaning against the counter.

Relief hits me until she stares back and coughs, blood spews from her mouth and runs down her chin. Only then do I notice what is clutched in her hands. At first, I don’t understand until she screams. The sound is so horridly agonized that my stomach drops, and Thaddeus growls, ripping through the debris, trying to get to her as she suddenly slumps forward, her body goes limp around the splintered wood that is pierced through her.

Thaddeus' hands frantically try to do something to help, but I can feel even he is unsure of what to do, the splintered wood goes straight through her pelvis. I grab her shoulders, hold her upright, and realize we have no choice but to pull the wooden table leg from her to release her from where she is pinned.

Thaddeus wraps his hands around the wood and rips the splintered wood from her before grabbing her limp body. She slumps forward over his shoulder, blood trails down his body as I try to clear a big enough path for him to squeeze through. I hold up a part of the roof for him to squeeze through to the laundry and out the hole in the wall he created.

Thaddeus places her on the ground, both of us completely covered in dust and smoke. My heart skips a beat as I see Orion pass our daughter off to Imogen, who is watching, horrified, as we try to save our mate and son.

Orion moves quickly as he plunges his hand into her stomach. I can hear her skin tear, blood gushes out of her, turning the ground red and staining the earth. Thaddeus is pacing, clutching his hair while I stand shocked, watching on helplessly. Her skin turns paler as the seconds tick when Orion suddenly pulls the umbilical cord out, the placenta comes out after. The wood has gone straight through the placenta. I watch his hand move in her stomach and he pulls our son out; his tiny body clutched in his hands.

That memory forever burned into my soul. He is perfectly, unharmed by looking at him, but the silence that follows is deafening. We wait to hear the cry, the cry of life. Everyone holds their breath as Orion tries and fails to make him breathe. He is gone, everything we have worked hard for, for the past year turns to dust before our eyes. Building a future that is now shattered to oblivion.

Orion looks up, his face haunted as he shakes his head. My legs buckle under me, and I hit the ground hard. Orion is the only one able to keep his composure along with Theo, but I can feel Orion's devastation hit me, hit Thaddeus, breaking all of us. Theo grabs our son, shielding him away from our daughter’s eyes. Evelyn is splayed out on the ground, unmoving. Orion stands up and rips me toward her. I stare at her body, look at the destruction it caused her.

Orion bites into my wrist, holds it over her mouth, and we all wait. She isn’t dead, her injuries are bad, but not enough to kill. However, her waking with the realization of what we all just lost, what she has lost, may be enough to make her wish for death. I stare in shock, then look up at everyone watching Orion working on our mate.

Amara is muttering and banging on her head with her fists as she paces and Tobias tries to calm her. Nothing feels real. I look around at everyone's grief-stricken faces, yet I feel dead inside, like it is some nightmare I am trapped in. Nothing makes sense, and I keep finding my eyes go back to our son in Theo’s arms, waiting expectantly for the sound of his cries, praying for some miracle to happen, when suddenly, Thaddeus screams. Anger smashes into me like never before, and I hear Imogen shriek as the necklace containing Thaddeus' magic suddenly ruptures, and she rips it from her neck, tossing it on the ground. The darkness creeps out and escapes its restraints, looking for its owner, and that owner is Thaddeus.

“Thaddeus, no!” Amara screams.

Everything happens in the blink of an eye as I watch, horrified, as the dark mist of his magic rushes toward him so quickly that no one has time to react. I watch as it hits him in the dead center of the chest. I feel it through the bond, rushing through him, cold and sickly sweet, sadistic, as it consumes him. Black tendrils creep under his skin, and I see him take a deep breath; his eyes turn obsidian as he looks at his hands. Black veins spread over his body and his face, consuming him as his magic bleeds into his soul, tainting it with its madness. Amara only just manages to put up a shield in time, blocking his magic as it bursts from him, along with his sorrow.

Amara’s hands go forward as she blocks his magic as it rushes toward us, her heels dig into the ground while it pushes her back as she tries to hold it back from us. He flattens everything around us and collapses onto the

ground. Amara drops her magic to brace her hands on her knees, sweat coats her skin and drips onto the ground from her chin.

I look around and find we are surrounded by a huge crater bored into the earth. Orion is frantically trying to awaken Evelyn, who is still unconscious. I feel Orion’s teeth bite into my wrist again as he tries to get her to heal, and I still feel nothing, completely numb.