Drowning with Fire #3 ✔

Chapter 24 - Ember

"Coming!" Theo and I yelled back in sync – then we caught each other's eye and snickered slightly.

"C'mon." I grabbed hold of his hand and pulled him back into the house.

In hindsight, I should've lingered out there a little longer with Theo in a gentle mood with me – as it wasn't long before he snapped back into Alpha mode. Part of me couldn't help but wonder why it was so difficult for him to be caring and in control at the same time. Though to be fair to him, it'd hardly been a day since he'd fully accepted himself as an Alpha – I guess these sorts of life-changing shifts in power can take a little getting used to.

We gathered around the large wooden farmhouse table which stood in the Mortelles' kitchen. The surface of the wood revealed its age and I ran my fingers over the ridges and knots in the wood to calm myself.

"It's as we expected – Victoria came back here to finish what she started," Theo began, only for me to interrupt – in spite of everyone, including Halia, being totally on board with what the Alpha had started to explain.

"Umm, sorry but I think I missed out on that conversation while I was dead..." I bit my lip.

Clearly not over my death, Wednesday quivered at my words. I circled around the kitchen to stand next to her, closing my hand over hers as it rested on the table. She smiled at my presence and nudged her shoulder against mine.

"Ember, when you were burning down the warehouse with Victoria in last year, Kaden and I were both affected. We had to break the Alpha-Beta bond by triggering pain and digging our claws into each other's forearms," Theo explained patiently – aware that I had no idea what he was on about. "But, as it turns out, the bond wasn't totally broken for Kaden."

"And even though she left..." Al added, leaving Ryder to finish.

"An Alpha can't truly move on from a place if they still have a Beta there," Ryder concluded while I nodded, slowly grasping the werewolf lore behind it all. "Especially not if the Alpha has unfinished business with the Beta. It's kinda like an obligation that the Alpha return."

"Okay... So what did you find out from getting inside her head?" I turned back to Theo.

"Other than the fact she's still a psychopathic murderer, she still wanted Kaden to be part of her pack. Last year, I killed that old man to force Victoria to allow both me and Kaden into her pack, but she still insisted that he'd have to kill eventually." Theo pressed his lips together, making his expression blank and unreadable. "We can assume that she made him kill and that caused Killian to surface – as Thea pointed out, some curses are triggered by murder."

It all fitted together in my mind and made perfect sense to me – possibly due to the Phoenix's past experiences. The notion of the dark spirit of Killian being present in the dark recesses of Kaden's soul since the accident was akin to the Phoenix's knowledge of possession.

"Ember," Thea turned to me as she asked, "Do you, or your Phoenix, know if there's any chance that Kaden could've had this curse of Killian within him since birth?"

I mulled her question over silently, trying to draw on all of the Phoenix's knowledge related to Killian. Closing my eyes, I pictured a library full of the Phoenix's centuries of insight and understanding – remembering my old trick of using non-supernatural concepts to aid me with supernatural and, in this case, mythical abilities.

Yet I also drew on my own knowledge too; before Kaden's accident, I'd been friends with him for a good number of years. And while my Phoenix was much more subdued then, I never had any inkling of Kaden being anything other than a normal teenage boy.

"I don't think he has," I finally spoke and shook my head, letting my control slip a little so that the Phoenix could speak through me. "This particular dark spirit is so powerful that Kaden wouldn't have made it into his teenage years if he'd been harbouring the spirit since birth. It would have been a miracle for Kaden to survive infancy, had that beast been locked inside of him."