Sacrifice of Love (The Grey Wolves #7)(44)

“The dark forest.” Alston’s words couldn’t have struck any deeper if they had been attached to a harpoon and shot straight into Peri’s soul.
“What did you say?” she asked. Though her voice sounded calm, she was anything but.
“The dark forest: Volcan, witches, wolves, death.” Alston’s words seemed to ring loudly in the quiet, still room.
Peri stumbled and caught herself on the wall. “Holy hell,” she muttered.
“We need to hurry,” Alston stood up, not bothering to put any of the books back on the shelves. He started to push past Peri and when he noticed that she wasn’t following, he turned and looked back at her. “Peri, we need to hurry; we need to get Vasile and the wolves to the dark forest.”
Peri’s eyes had grown large and held the haunted look in them of someone who had seen too many shadows in their life. “When he remembers, he is, he will…” When her eyes met Alston’s they were wet with unshed tears.
Alston nodded. “He will hurt, and the wound will feel brand new.”
“Why does this seem too easy?” Jacque asked Alina as she walked slowly around the forest where Lorelle had dropped them, literally, on their asses. Alina had let an uncharacteristic cuss word slip, causing Jacque to laugh, which earned her yet another cuss word.
“Because it is,” Alina answered. “Lorelle is fae; she will have something up her sleeve.”
“Magic?” Jacque asked.
“Exactly. Vasile will not underestimate her,” Alina spoke confidently of her mate.
Jacque wished she shared that confidence, but all she could think was that by the time the males found them, they would be frantic and probably not thinking very clearly. But instead of pointing that out she asked a question, “Do you think the others are in similar situations?”
“Probably,” she answered. “He’s set this up as a hunt, so he isn’t going to want them giving away their location by crying out in pain,” she paused thoughtfully then finished. “Then again, he could have some spell keeping any noise from escaping.” 
“That’s not helping, Alina,” Jacque growled.
“Then let’s just go with their situations are probably the same.”
“Sally,” Crina’s voice broke through the fog covered air, “are you okay?”
“I’m good,” Sally answered as she stood from the ground and brushed the dirt from her palms where she had caught herself after being tossed by Lorelle. “How about you?" Sally asked.
“Say something again.”
“Something again?” Sally’s words came out as a question as she waited for Crina’s response. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a hand close around her shoulder. “Bloody hell, Crina.” Sally grasped at her chest and swallowed down the scream that had nearly clawed its way out of her throat. “Give a girl warning before you just reach out of the fog and grab her okay?”
Crina’s face emerged from the haze and frowned. “I told you to say something so that I would know where you were since I couldn’t see you.”
“But you didn’t say, 'hey Sally, I’m going to grab your arm and scare the crap out of you',” Sally pointed out.
“Okay, next time I will make sure to tell you that I am going to scare the crap out of you.” Crina smiled a toothy wolf smile.
Sally rolled her eyes. “My inner Jen wants me to call you a smartass.”
“What does your outer Sally want to call me?”
“A bitch,” the word slipped from Sally as easy as butter slips from the hand and Crina laughed out loud.
“Then you’d both be right.” Crina winked at the now blushing Sally, then looked around. Fog surrounded them on all sides and kept them from seeing further than a foot in front of them. There were no other sounds than that of their own breathing.
“Do you think she meant to just leave us free like this?” Sally asked.
“I definitely think she meant to leave us like this, but I think we are anything but free.”
“Elle, give it to me straight, on a scale of one to screwed, how bad is it?” Lilly asked the fae as they stood as far from the ledge of the cliff as they could.
“Considering that there isn’t a cliff in the dark forest, and we are standing on a very obvious cliff, then I’d say we’re pretty screwed,” Elle told her as she stuck her head far enough out to see down. It was a very long way down.
“Well, I’ll be honest, that’s not what I was hoping to hear. But at least you were honest with me.”
“It could be worse,” Elle admitted.
Lilly looked hopeful. “It could?”
Elle nodded. “We could be in the hands of a revenge crazed warlock, hell bent on killing his brother’s mate, and you could be his brother’s mate, oh wait…” she paused and looked at Lilly with a sly smile.
“Ha, ha,” Lilly said dryly.
“You have to make your mind believe that what you’re seeing isn’t real,” Elle said suddenly serious. “That’s how we are going to survive this.”
Lilly nodded, now every bit as sober as the fae. “Okay, it isn’t real, it isn’t real,” she began repeating over and over.
“Lilly?”
“Huh, what?” Lilly asked absently as she continued to repeat her mantra.
“Does it help to tell yourself out loud that it isn’t real?” Elle looked at her quizzically.
Lilly let out a huff of laughter. “Yeah, don’t you know that trick? Tell yourself something enough times and it makes it true.”“If it gets us off this cliff then I’m all for it.”
Lilly frowned. “What do you mean if it gets us off here? You know it isn’t real.”
“Yes, but Lorelle is smart, and the only way we are going to get off this cliff alive is for anyone seeing it to believe it to be false.”
“Son of a… Crap!”
“Exactly.”
“Did she seriously just drop us in a cave?” Jen asked as she stood at the mouth of the cave.
“Looks that way,” Cynthia’s words faded off and Jen turned to look at her to see what had caught her attention.
“What is all of that?” Jen asked.
Cynthia began opening the boxes. The first contained blankets, the next water, and the next surgical instruments. There was one box left and it was smaller than the others. Cynthia’s hand hovered over it and something inside her did not want to open it. In fact, it was screaming at her to run the other direction, but there was nowhere to run. Cynthia knew with a certainty that she couldn’t explain that they could not leave. The opening of the cave may look like they could walk away at any second but she knew better. They were stuck in this cave until someone came for them. She just hoped they made it until the right someone came.
She finally lifted the lid on the final box and found a birth announcement. The paper shook in her hand as she held it and her mouth suddenly felt as dry as a barren desert.
“Doc?” Jen’s voice was in the back of her mind, but all she could focus on was that folded piece of paper. She gingerly unfolded it and stared at the print on the inside. She read it several times, hoping that it would change and that the words on it would suddenly be wiped clean.
“The date, Jen, what’s the date?” Cynthia asked.
“Crap I don’t know. If we’re talking dark kingdom of fae then I’m thinking late August or early September, but human realm, it’s like June. Why?”
Cynthia swore under her breath as she read the paper again. Congratulations Jennifer and Decebel, on the birth of your baby girl on this 30th day of August.
“Um, Cynthia what the hell?” Jen said from over her shoulder. She plucked the paper from her hand and stood up, reading it with eyes that were as wide and worried as the doctor’s. “What does this mean?”
Jen looked over at Cynthia only to see that she was holding another piece of paper. “Crap, what does that one say, that he’s throwing me a baby shower?”
Cynthia’s eyes rose slowly from the paper to meet Jens. She shook her head. “No, it…,” she stopped and tried to look away from Jen.
“No,” Jen snapped her fingers, “You look at me when you tell me horrific news; now spit it out.” 
“It says that, it…”
“Read it doc,” Jen growled.
Cynthia cleared her throat before starting, dread building in her stomach over the words she was about to force out. “Dr. Cynthia Steele, Once you see the hunting party in your line of site out of the mouth of the cave, you are to perform a Cesarean section on Jennifer, mate to Decebel. I have given you all of the necessary medical supplies to perform this safely, though perhaps not painlessly. You are to have Jennifer lie on the X marked on the ground. Once the child is born, you are to turn sixty degrees and take two steps with the child held out in front of you. You are to make sure your body is parallel with the wall so that Decebel has a clear view of his child.”
Jen stood speechless staring at Cynthia, unsure of what to say. She had just been told she was going to be gutted like a fish and have her child handed over to a mad man while she and Decebel watch helplessly.
“Can’t we try to escape?” Jen asked, suddenly very desperate. She pointed to the opening of the cave.
Cynthia shook her head, “If I were a betting doctor, I would say it’s spelled to look as though we can walk out or anyone can walk in. I’ll double check though, just so that we aren’t the idiots who trapped themselves because they didn’t bother to attempt to run away.”