Destiny (The Chosen One Trilogy:Book Three) (29 page)

Jenna put a hand on his arm. “If
you’d been there they could have gotten both of you.”

“When did you notice he was
gone?”

“First thing this morning. After
everyone left the bonfire, I took Jenna home then went to our
meeting place. When I got there I could tell there had been a
struggle.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two identical
pockets knives. “I found his on the ground. It was open and had
blood on it. I found his dagger about a hundred feet farther in the
bush.”

Jasper took a deep breath. “Did
you tell your mom and dad?”

Tyler shook his head. “I
couldn’t find them.”

“They’ll be in the field by the
silver tree. That’s where everyone is meeting this morning.” Hayden
strapped on her swords. “Let’s go.”

Jasper glanced back at Tyler and
Jenna who were following them. Tyler mumbled something and Jenna
looked up at him then took his hand. It didn’t take long to find
Luke and Mel.

Luke’s deep brown eyes met his
brother’s light blue ones and he paled. “What’s wrong?”

Jasper swallowed the lump in his
throat. “They have Trent.”

Mel gave a strangled cry and
Luke pulled her to his chest. “When?” He choked out the word.

“Sometime yesterday. I was
supposed to go meet him last night.” Tyler’s voice was so quiet
Jasper strained to hear it. “I didn’t go until this morning.”

“By the moons, Tyler, this
wasn’t your fault.” Jenna wrapped her arms around him and looked
up. “He’s alive. We’ll get him back.”

“You can tell?” Luke put a hand
on his son’s shoulder. Tyler nodded.

“In which direction is he?”
Mel’s voice was a whisper.

Tyler closed his eyes and took a
deep breath. Jasper could hear his nephew’s teeth grinding
together. Jenna stepped away from him as he shifted from one foot
to the other. He slowly turned a full circle and hesitated before
coming back a bit in the opposite direction. He nodded.

“He’s that way. He’s far.”

Jasper felt icy shivers run up
his spine. “They’re taking him to Paradin.” He glanced down at
Hayden as she pressed a hand against his arm.

“We leave this afternoon. Not
tomorrow. The longer we wait, the more shifters they manage to
take.”

“What’s going on?” Rainen was
making her way over to them.

“They have our nephew, Trent.”
Hayden’s voice was full of the anger she was feeling.

Rainen frowned. “How long has it
been?”

Tyler shrugged and looked
miserable. “About twelve hours.”

She nodded, shifted, howled, and
shifted back.

“I assume we’ll be leaving this
afternoon?”

Jasper nodded and watched as
about thirty Majs made their way toward them.

Rainen looked at Luke. “Is this
enough for your pack? If you leave now you might be able to catch
up to them.”

Luke looked over the men and
women in front of him. He nodded.

Jasper felt torn. The need to go
with his brother was battling with his duty to stay here and finish
what he and Hayden had started. Luke seemed to sense the battle
that was going on within his younger brother.

“I’ll meet you up there.”

Jasper nodded. “Stay safe,
Luke.”

Luke hugged him and then Hayden.
“Stay safe, Jasper. And you, sweet sister, you keep him safe for
me.”

She managed a smile. “That’s a
lot to ask of a woman.”

Luke chuckled.

She took a deep breath. “If he’s
inside you make sure you wait for us.”

He nodded and watched as she
hugged Mel, Tyler, and Jenna.

Jasper was vibrating with
nervous energy. He looked on as Luke shifted and the rest of his
pack followed suit. Hayden put an arm around him and he pulled her
close. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself.

“Let’s go. The sooner we get
moving the better.” He heard the change in his own voice and he
glanced down at Hayden apologetically. He knew she worried when he
turned ‘all business’ as she called it. She shook her head and
squeezed his hand. By the way her green eyes flashed she was ‘all
business’ herself.

His hand tingled in Hayden’s.
Rainen’s eyes widened as she felt the energy his mate was
radiating. His first thought was to tell her to stay calm, but
decided to see what would happen if she didn’t. The tingling moved
up his arm. She looked up at him, her deep green eyes so dark with
anger that the gold and grey flecks seemed to jump out of them.

She clenched her jaw. “Let’s
show Braw he picked the wrong world to piss on.”

*****

I felt the energy building up
inside of me and instead of holding it like I usually did I let it
do as it pleased. I knew Jasper could feel it by the look in his
eyes but he didn’t seem worried. This energy was mine and not the
staff’s.

Everyone who had any bit of feel
for magic looked up as we neared the large group of Namaels, Majs,
Wedelves, Winged Ones, and Scannoves.

Matthew frowned and looked
around. “What in the world is that?”

That would be
Hayden,
answered Dodge.

Matthew looked at me and smiled.
“Finally decided to become the Chosen One, have you?”

I couldn’t help but smirk at the
title but I nodded. “I didn’t know you felt magic.”

“Neither did I!”

I stood on a bit of a hill along
with Jasper, Rainen, Damian, Ben, Dodge, Shanus, and Phlann.
Everyone looked at us expectantly. I watched Jasper gaze over the
clearing. Our original pack all stood closest to the front. Behind
them were a scattered mix of cats and dogs, some of them shifted,
Wedelves, Scannoves, and Winged Ones.

“Hey, Rainen? Where’s the
Bailaus?” I noticed that there weren’t any of the tall minotaur
looking beings with four arms and lizard tails.

She frowned. “The thing with
Bailaus is that once they’ve made up their mind about something,
it’s impossible to persuade them otherwise. Stupid cows. They’ve
decided that you’ll do us in.”

I started to laugh. “What?”

She chuckled. “Nothing I said
worked. They are bound and determined that you are cursed and will
bring death to us all.”

“Oh, god, you know, they could
be right.”

She shrugged. “Time will tell, I
suppose.”

I looked in the direction Luke
and his pack had gone. Jasper squeezed my hand and turned back
toward the crowd. “You all know why we’re here.” His voice carried
over to everyone. “Braw has changed his tactics and has started
taking prisoners.” Growls of every sort and the stomping of hooves
echoed through the clearing. “For this reason, we leave today.”
Everyone was nodding their agreement. “By the time we’re done with
him, Braw’s going to wish he’d never crossed over.” He growled low
in his throat and I looked up at him. His eyes were narrowed into
blue slits, the wind was tugging at his clothes, but it wasn’t just
the way he looked that made me stare. It was the confidence that
radiated from him. Everyone could feel it, it didn’t matter what
kind of being they were. Jasper said we were going to win and he
gave us no reason to doubt that he was right. Good lord, the man
was gorgeous on a regular day; seeing him kick into captain mode
always made me want to tear his clothes off on the spot. I saw his
mouth twitch as he tried to hide a smile and he glanced down at me,
amusement clear on his face.

“You’re making it hard to
concentrate on the matter at hand, Shlova,” he whispered. He turned
back to the rest of the group. “Are there any questions?”

An older man I recognized from
Jasper’s second shift pack put his hand up. “Is Hayden going to be
able to somehow make it so we can tell the humans apart from the
shifters? I mean, we all look the same, shifted or not.”

I frowned. Now there was
something I hadn’t thought of.

“We can help,” a high pitched
voice rang out behind me and I jumped. Two teal skinned Burries
bowed low. When they stood again, neither was taller than my waist.
The older looking of the two smiled and I was just as shocked by
the mouthful of pointed teeth as I had been the first time I had
seen one. Two pairs of blood red eyes bore into mine. I smiled.

“We’ve met before.”

He, she, whatever it was,
nodded.

“Alright. I have two questions
for you. The first is this…do you actually come from Burrie
trees?”

Jasper started to laugh and I
smiled. The Burrie nodded and Jasper stuck his tongue out at me.
“See, I told you.”

“Well, you never did show me the
trees.” I turned back to the Burrie. “Now, how can you help
us?”

The two of them lifted into the
air with a few graceful beats of their clear wings. They hovered
over us and I could hear them talk in their secret language. I
watched as they took their time and pointed every once in a while
to people in the crowd.

The Burrie I had met my first
year here hovered closer to me. “You have eleven humans in your
pack.”

I nodded. Some of the humans
that were living around Sageden had decided to join our cause.

Both Burries dipped their hands
into the pouch at their sides and pulled out a handful of dust
before flying higher into the sky. They flew back and forth across
the clearing, sprinkling the dust as they went.

“Holy shit! Can you see that?” I
looked up at Jasper and could tell by the look on his face that he
could. As the dust fell onto the beings below, a strange glow
seemed to radiate from them. I heard Emelly laugh and looked to see
what was so funny. She was running her hand through the glow that
surrounded Matthew.

“You’re all glowy…what does it
feel like?” She looked at her own arms to make sure she wasn’t
reacting to the dust.

“Like nothing. Other than the
fact that I can see it, I wouldn’t know it was happening.”

I noticed how Matthew’s glow was
a bit brighter than Kacey’s who was standing beside him.

“Damian, look. Anyone who is
sensitive or can use the magic glows more than the rest of them.”
Damian and Rainen were so bright I felt like I should be squinting.
By the way they were looking at me I guessed I was giving off quite
a bit of light as well. All eleven of the humans, whether they had
a stone or not, had absolutely no reaction to the dust. The Burries
landed in front of me.

“We come to offer our help
should you want it.”

I nodded. “Thank you. I’m just
curious, though. Why do you want to help us?”

The older Burrie frowned.
“Shifters aren’t the only ones that Braw thinks he should rid the
world of. We come from trees. According to him, that makes us evil
somehow.”

I felt the blood leave my face.
“What does he do?” I asked even though I was sure I didn’t want to
know.

“When they manage to catch one
of us they tie our hands together, hang us from our wings, and
light a fire under us. Unless you want to burn to death, there’s
only one other option. If you can stand the pain, the only way to
escape is to rip out your wings. Either way, it’s a death sentence.
Our dust, our magic, is in our wings…” He frowned. “Separating a
Burrie from its wings is the exact same thing as separating a
shifter from his animal.” He looked across the clearing where the
glowing was starting to fade. “We’re going to need a lot more
Burries. Those with the least amount of magic should be back to
normal in a few hours.” He looked up at me and grinned. “You might
take a couple of days.” He bowed low before taking to the air
again. “We shall meet you in Paradin, Chosen One.”

I watched until they had
disappeared from sight. “Argh! What is wrong with that man?” The
colors were flowing in front of me and I waved them away. Jasper
took my hand and smiled.

“Look up, Shlova.”

I squinted up into the sky.
“What is that?”

“That’s a Faelie.” Rainen seemed
just as amazed as I was. The being circled over the clearing still
too high for me to tell what it looked like. It slowly descended,
made a few more circles then flew away.

“Where is she going?”

Jasper stopped me as I made to
swing onto Dodge. “Don’t. If they want to talk to us, they’ll come.
I think we can take it as a good sign that this one showed
itself.”

Rainen nodded. “Faelies are
skittish. If you push, they’ll leave.”

I frowned and looked to where
the blond woman had gone. Even from a distance her wings had been a
shocking mix of yellows, blues and greens all swirled together.

“Ok, well, I guess it’s time,
right?” The butterflies in my stomach were starting to flutter
around.

Jasper nodded, watched as I
swung onto Dodge, shifted and let out a roar. Rainen followed suit
and howled. Everyone who could shift did and we were on our
way.

Chapter Nine

I prayed to God every morning we
wouldn’t run into any human packs and every night I thanked the
moons that we hadn’t. I wasn’t sure how much longer our luck would
hold, but it had been a week since we’d left Sageden and so far so
good.

I looked up from getting our
blankets ready for the night. The sound of a scuffle reached my
ears. Everyone tensed, reached for weapons, or shifted.

“Let go of me!” The cry came
from the far end of the clearing we were camped in. A group of four
shifters I didn’t recognize made their way through the crowd. The
woman they were holding was struggling against them, cursing them
and her head became visible for a moment.

Alex’s growl rumbled through
him. “Get your hands off of her!” He ploughed through the beings in
his way and tackled one of the men holding Leslie.

“Alex!” Leslie’s voice was full
of relief. She stopped struggling.

Rainen shifted and her barks
filled the clearing. Jasper’s growl echoed her calls. Every being
in the clearing stopped moving and only the wind could be heard.
Leslie stood awkwardly looking at Alex who got up and brushed the
grass off of his clothes. He took two long strides toward her,
laced his fingers in her short silver streaked charcoal coloured
hair, and crushed her lips with his. She wrapped her arms around
him, her raven black skin dark against his white tunic.