Chapter 215

Zane POV

Sarah woke up late in the afternoon. Dr. Ibsen called me on my phone, and I was down in the hall in seconds. The girls walked in not far behind me, following instinct or the sounds of my jogging.

The doctor had propped her up on pillows, and at the sight of me she raised up her arms. I was in them in another second, holding her close. Goddess, she felt good.

“Hey there, Chloe, Grace,” she said over my shoulder, and then I felt the bed shift as the girls clambered up, and two pairs of arms came around me and Sarah. For a long, grateful moment, we all just held on.

“Why didn’t you come home, Mommy?” Grace asked.

“I wanted to. I tried to, but they kept getting in my way,” Sarah said. I felt her tremble and then steady herself. I wanted to ask her a dozen questions, but not with the girls in the room.

“You shouldn’t have gone there,” Chloe said.

“No, I shouldn’t have.” Sarah squeezed harder and then let us go to lie back against the pillows. She looked exhausted. She met my eyes and smiled, and I could see the effort it took.

“You need to eat,” said Dr. Ibsen, a beta GP I had long trusted with my own health. “Whatever they’ve been having you do at the temple, it’s burned up a ton of calories, and you’re severely dehydrated.”

“Explains the IV,” Sarah said, looking at her arm where the saline solution was going in.

“Can you handle some food?” I asked.

“Honestly? I could eat about a dozen sandwiches right now, and I don’t mean those little ones for tea.”

I laughed, which made the girls laugh. I made to get off the bed when Ibsen held up his hand.

“I’ll tell your chef.”

“Rachel is here?” Sarah asked. “Tell her I’d kill someone for a steak right now.”

“That’s a good sign,” the doctor said with a wink. Then he left the room, and the girls threw themselves to Sarah’s sides. She put her arms around them with a sigh of obvious pleasure.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“After the girls—”

“No, and sorry for interrupting, but they’re a part of this, and they should know.”

“Know what, Mom?” Chloe asked.

She smiled down at my daughters and then looked up at me with serious eyes. “I don’t know about other temples, of course, and I don’t want to paint them all with the same brush, but the one here is corrupt with power.”

“Corrupt?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’m not a wolf, let alone whatever a Moon Wolf is supposed to be, but I’m a something, maybe just a human who’s had enough exposure to things that I’ve taken on some of the abilities around me.”

“Abilities?”

She frowned. “Look, to start with, when you and I are were in the temple together? That wasn’t just us.”

I was glad to take her cue on that. The girls didn’t need to know just what we’d done, but still, I didn’t get what she was saying.

“Not just us?”

“Right. The head Oracle—her name is Janine, by the way—said it was a blessing. I knew she and the others were influencing us. They have that sort of power.”

“‘She could have given the Luna Temple a millennia of power,’” I quoted.

“Yes. They were after me for my ‘power,’ whatever that means. Seriously, Zane, it was creepy. I meditated in their Zen garden, and when I came out of it, they were all gathered around me like I were some sort of campfire. I half-expected them to whip out sticks with marshmallows.”

I laughed in humor and relief.

“They wanted me to have sex with this old priest guy.”

That sobered me up.

She closed her pale eyelids and shook her head. I took her trembling hands in mine, not reacting to how cold they were.

“They wanted me to have this line of children so they could, I don’t know, feed off of us for the power of their temple. They tied me to the bed and tried to spirit-walk me into compliance.”

“But you refused,” I said, making my voice calm. “And that’s why they threw you back at us?”

“Yes.” She frowned then, and a murderous look I had never seen before came into her eyes. “They wanted to keep me like some sort of broodmare, and they didn’t care if I liked the idea or not.”

I nodded, took a breath, and then got up from the bed. Sarah nodded back. We understood each other well.

I got on the phone and called Ollie. We met at the car, but instead of getting into the backseat right away, I stopped in front of him.

“I need to thank you for yesterday,” I said.

He nodded but looked disconcerted. “I’m afraid I don’t remember much about it.”

“Blame the temple, all right? They were messing with us.”

“I see. Where to, Alpha Zane?”

“The temple. It’s time for us to mess with them.”

Ollie all but threw himself behind the wheel, and in a moment we were driving down the street, passing cars with the sort of urgency Ollie almost never allowed. I appreciated it.

We didn’t bother to stop at the temple gate. The priests stared after us.

I had Ollie pull up as close to the temple as he could, and then I got out and marched to the front door, which opened as I neared.

A hooded Oracle stood in the doorway. I shoved past her and avoided the bathing corridor. In a moment, I was in the main chamber.

Several Oracles were there playing on their instruments: a flute, a harp, an oboe.

“Where’s Janine?” I demanded.

Their hooded faces turned toward me.

“I said, where is Janine?”

“Please address me as an Oracle,” an Oracle asked as she entered. In a single step, I was in front of her and ripped off her hood.

Several Oracles gasped. I didn’t care. The astonished blue eyes and near-white hair told me this was the omega I was looking for.

“As Pack Alpha of Cavendish Territory, I banish you,” I said. “As Alpha Zane Cavendish, I banish you. As—”

“Wait!” she screamed, eyes wide.

“As Zane Preston Cavendish, I banish you,” I finished. I looked around. “Now, where’s that priest bastard who tried to rape my future mate?”