“So how are we going to do this?” Luca asks. “Knock on the door and ask if she just happens to be married to the person who made an unbreakable pair of shackles for an Unkillable Beast? And if so, how do we break them, please and thank you?”

“Your optimism is heartwarming,” Flint tells him as he gently knocks their shoulders together.

“Sorry. We probably should have talked about this before.” I think for a minute. “If Falia is as sad as Olya says she is, I think honesty really is the best policy. She doesn’t need more drama in her life.”

“That’s fair,” Eden agrees “But maybe we all shouldn’t knock on the door together. We don’t want to scare her.”

“She’s a giant,” Mekhi retorts. “I’m pretty sure she could rip us limb from limb if she wanted to.”

“Good point,” she answers. “On second thought, maybe we need Jaxon and Macy, too.”

“You know, I totally wasn’t prepared for how big these giants are,” Flint says as we start down what was once a well-structured walkway and is now just pieces of broken cement overrun by weeds. “Admittedly, Damasen is the only giant I’ve ever met before, but he’s a shrimp compared to most of these people.”

“Right?” Luca agrees. “I was prepared for them to all be seven or eight feet, but these people are huge! I met a guy today who had to be close to twenty feet.”

“No wonder they have to live out here,” Eden comments. “We think we’ve got it bad, having to hide our existence from regular people. But so many of the giants we met today can’t hide, even if they wanted to. It’s so not fair to them.”

“I hope she’s nice,” I whisper as we finally reach the stairs at the bottom of the tree. But before we can so much as begin to scale the first step—which is several feet off the ground—the very unmistakable sound of someone weeping drifts down the stairs right at us.

59

Leaf Me Alone

“It sounds like her heart is breaking,” Eden whispers, and for once, the very tough dragon sounds like she’s choked up.

“No,” I disagree. “It sounds like her heart is already broken. And has been for a very, very long time.”

I recognize the sound.

“Is it coming from upstairs?” Mekhi asks as he vaults up the first step…or tries to.

The second his foot touches it, the staircase rolls several yards up the tree.

“Umm, what just happened?” Eden asks as we all kind of look at one another.

“I have no idea,” Mekhi replies as the staircase rolls itself back down several seconds later.

Luca tries next, and it does the same thing. It just rolls itself up. Only this time, the guardrails move, too. Except, it’s not the actual guardrails that move. It’s the carvings inside them—pictures of a woman and two children doing all kinds of different things.

Swimming in the pond.

Tending the roses.

Digging up stones for the jewelry.

Baking cookies.

The list goes on and on…and the people in each of those carvings are literally scampering up the tree away from us.

“What. The. Actual. Hell?” Flint asks, and he sounds amazed.

“I don’t know,” I say, stepping up to put a hand on the tree trunk.

I’m prepared to tap into my earth magic to try and figure this out, but the second I touch the tree trunk, I realize I don’t have to. The tree is literally screaming on the inside.

“It’s tapped in to her,” I whisper as sadness whispers through me. “It’s drowning in her emotions.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Eden asks, and for the first time since I met her, she sounds reticent. Like she isn’t sure she wants to know.

“She’s been missing her mate for a long time,” Hudson says quietly, and there’s a somberness to him that sets off all the alarm bells inside me.

Is this what I’m dooming Jaxon to now that our mating bond is broken?

Or is this what will happen to me if Hudson is sent to prison and I don’t join him?

Either way, the thought is horrifying. Devastating. Soul-crushing.

“Maybe we should go,” I say, stepping away from the tree with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Go?” Flint stares at me incredulously. “This is the whole reason we’re even here.”

“I know. I just…” Truthfully, I don’t want to face what this feels like. It wasn’t that long ago that Cole broke my mating bond with Jaxon, and I could barely get off the ground. I don’t want to remember what that felt like. I sure as hell don’t want to be immersed in the agony of it all.

Yes, I have Hudson now. But that only makes it all scarier. Because losing Jaxon nearly killed me. What happens if I lose the mate who was my destiny?

Just the thought has anxiety skating under my skin, and it takes every ounce of courage I have not to run away.

Just feeling the tree scream was enough to put cracks in my very fragile heart. I don’t know if I’ve got it in me to take on Falia as well.

“Hey.” Hudson puts a hand on my lower back and wraps himself halfway around me. He looks at the tree, grim-faced, and I know he knows what I’m thinking. What I’m feeling. He pulls me closer into the shelter of his body and whispers, “I’ve got you. I promise.”

“I know,” I answer as the warmth of him seeps into me. As the heat of our connection works its way past the cold and burrows into my very bones.

I just wish I knew how long it will last. Forever, like the mating bond lore says it should? Or is that just another pipe dream that can be snatched away from me whenever someone decides to do so?

But now isn’t exactly the time for a crisis like this, so I shove the doubts back down and force a little half smile as I look up at Hudson. “I’m good.”

He doesn’t buy it—neither the words nor the smile. But he gives me one more tight squeeze, almost like he’s trying to instill his own confidence within me, before he lets me go.

Once he does, I realize the others are busy trying to figure out how to climb a tree that very definitely doesn’t want to be climbed.

And every time one of them attempts it, something more severe happens. Not only does the staircase move, but when Flint tries to climb the tree, very worn, very aged leather rolls down over the first two screened-in platforms, hiding the rooms from view.

When Hudson tries, the tree drops hundreds of small pine cones on our heads.

And when I finally try, well, the minute I touch the tree, all I hear is screaming so loud and anguished that I immediately let go.

Through it all, Falia continues to weep.

“What. The. Hell?” Flint exclaims again.

“I don’t think she wants to see us,” Luca says.

“But we still need to see her,” Eden adds, frustration rife in her voice. She walks around the tree 180 degrees until she gets to the area where the crying is coming from. And there, three platforms up, is a woman in gray, sobbing her eyes out.

“Hey!” Eden calls, but she doesn’t get an answer.

“Excuse me?” Flint cups his hands around his mouth and joins in the shouting.

Nothing.

“We’re sorry to bother you,” I shout up, “but can we have just a minute of your time?”

Still nothing.

Eventually, Luca gets tired of waiting and jumps straight to the platform. Except the second he lands on the wood, the floor swings up and sends him spiraling back to earth.

Even though it probably isn’t necessary—vampires always land on their feet—Flint hustles and catches him. Luca grins and whispers, “My hero,” just loudly enough for us to hear him.

Flint flushes a little with embarrassment, but his grin is huge.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Mekhi teases. “The way it slapped you back, I was sure you were going to end up doing your best impression of a vamp cannonball.”

Luca laughs. “Yeah, me too.”

“Now what?” I ask, because we really need to talk to Falia. And to do that, we’re going to have to get past this tree’s amazing security system.

Except as we circle the tree, trying to figure out how to breach its defenses, I finally realize that the crying has stopped. Right before I look up and see a tall woman in a gray sweatshirt and a long gray skirt walking slowly down the staircase.

Apparently, Falia has decided to come to us.

60

A Fate Worse

than Death

She doesn’t say anything until she gets to the bottom part of the staircase. And even then, it’s only, “Can I help you?” in a voice so rusty with disuse, it’s barely understandable.

No rebukes about the shouting, no queries about why we decided to jump into one of the rooms in her house, nothing but a polite smile and tragic gray eyes that make my heart ache just looking at her.

“We’re so sorry to bother you,” I say, stepping forward and holding out my hand. “My name is Grace, and these are my friends.” I don’t introduce all of them because it’s fairly obvious she doesn’t care.

She studies my hand for a while, then reaches out to shake it. But the house interferes again, raising the stair she’s on until our hands are too far apart.

Falia watches with a small smile. “I’m sorry. The house is very protective of my girls and me.”