Chapter 44: Mother?

Chapter 44

Isabella’s breath hitched. “Hunting us?” Her voice was a harsh whisper as she looked at the heavy door, then back at Clara, who was now little more than a terrified woman trembling against the doorframe, stripped of the mystery that had made her so formidable.

“Why the fuck is your child hunting us?” Isabella’s voice rose in a panic. “You used your magic to leash it to your will, and now you’re telling me you just… let go? Didn’t you call yourself its mama?”

Clara’s mouth worked, but no sound came out at first. Her white eyes were wide, fixed on the wood of the door that was beginning to bow inward.

“It’s not… it wasn’t supposed to…”

“Supposed to what? Behave?” Isabella snapped, Why couldn’t anything ever go as planned? Her life had never been kind, but since the moment Lucian marked her—and now he vanished at the worst possible time—it felt like hell had decided to take personal interest.

She tore her eyes from the witch’s frozen form, lunging for the heavy wooden chair near the bed, her hands shaking so violently the wood rattled against the floorboards.

She jammed the top of the chair under the door handle, her knuckles white. “Great parenting, Clara. Truly top-tier.”

CRUNCH.

The sound of the cabin’s front door finally giving way thundered down the narrow hallway.

Isabella froze, her heart hammering against her ribs. She looked at Clara who seemed to be chanting vigorously while looking at her hand.

“Clara” Isabella whispered. No answer.

“Clara!” Isabella’s voice was sharper this time, but the witch didn’t even blink. Clara was hunched over, her eyes fixated on her upturned palms with a manic, terrifying intensity.

Her lips were moving in a frantic speed, spitting out syllables that sounded strange to human ears.

She was trying to force it—trying to reach into the hollowed-out void where her power used to live and drag a spark out by sheer force of will.

But all that came up was the sound of her own desperate breathing.

THUD.

A massive weight slammed into the coffee table located at the living room. The chair Isabella had jammed under the handle skidded an inch back across the floorboards.

“Clara, stop it! It’s not working!” Isabella screamed, but the witch just hummed louder, her fingers clawing at the air as if she could tear a hole back into the ether.

“Fucking hell, can a girl just get one single break?” Isabella hissed under her breath as she abandoned the door and lunged across the small space.

She grabbed Clara by the shoulders and shook her hard. Clara’s head snapped back and forth, her white eyes finally unfocusing from her hands to look at Isabella, though they were glazed with a terrifying sort of madness.

“Get your shit together!” Isabella roared over the sound of the scratching outside. She gripped Clara’s face, forcing the witch to look at her.

“The magic is gone, Clara! It’s gone! You’re not a queen right now, you’re just a target. If you don’t move, that thing is going to turn this room into a coffin, and I am not dying because you’re having an ego crisis!”

Clara’s jaw tightened, a flash of her old, venomous spirit flickering behind the terror. “You… you dare—”

“Yes, I dare!” Isabella snapped, her own adrenaline finally overriding her fear. “The door is breaking, Lucian is God-knows-where, and your child is currently breathing through the keyhole. Now, is there another way out of here, or are we just waiting for it to decide which one of us tastes better?”

Clara gasped, her chest heaving as she finally stopped the useless chanting. She looked at Isabella—really looked at her—and for the first time, the wolfless girl wasn’t just a nuisance.

She was the only thing grounded in reality. “The window.” Clara rasped, pointing a finger towards it.

“The window!” Isabella echoed, the realization hitting her like a jolt of electricity. “Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”

She didn’t wait for Clara to move. Isabella scrambled across the floor, getting on the bed, her knees digging into the soft duvet as she reached for the latch.

Her fingers fumbled with the cold metal until it clicked, and she shoved the glass open. The cool night air rushed in, whipping her hair across her face and stinging her cheeks.

It should have been a relief but as Isabella leaned out to gauge the jump, her stomach did a sickening somersault.

She didn’t see grass. She didn’t see the porch steps nor the trees she had just admired a while ago.

She saw the tops of the trees. “What the…” Isabella’s voice trailed off into a horrified whisper.

She blinked, shaking her head as if she could clear the hallucination, but the view didn’t change.

The cabin wasn’t on the ground anymore. It was suspended in the air, drifting high above the forest floor.

Clara scrambled up behind her, peering over Isabella’s shoulder. The witch’s breath hitched. “It’s not on the floor,”

“What do you mean it’s not on the floor?!” Isabella spun around, her eyes wide with frantic disbelief.

“We’re in a house, Clara! Houses stay on the ground! When did we move? I didn’t feel a thing!”

“We didn’t,” Clara rasped, her white eyes fixed on the swirling mist below the window ledge. “The world outside moved. Or we were moved out of it.”

CRASH. In the living room, the sound of splintering wood and shattering glass intensified.

The Sentinel was trashing the place, the heavy thud of its body hitting the walls making the now-levitating cabin sway dangerously.

Each tilt of the floor made Isabella’s head swim. “Where the fuck are you, your highness ?” Isabella screamed into the empty night air.

She used one arm to gripped the windowsill until her knuckles turned white. She reached out to the mark on her neck, closing her eyes and trying to reach for that strange, silver tether in her chest.

She pushed every ounce of her terror, her anger, and her desperate need for him through the bond, screaming his name in the silence of her mind.

Lucian! You said you’d know! You said you’d come! Clara ignored Isabella’s breakdown, her gaze shifting from the window to the door that was now bowing under the weight of the hound.

“He can’t hear you,” the witch said, a terrifying clarity returning to her voice. “This isn’t just a rogue hound, Isabella. This is a tethering spell. A displacement meant to remove us from the world without anyone noticing.”

“Speak English!” Isabella barked, her heart hammering against her ribs. “It means this is the work of a witch,” Clara hissed, her fingers digging into the windowsill next to Isabella’s.

“A powerful one. We aren’t just up against my hound anymore. Someone else is pulling the strings, and they’ve isolated us.”

The bedroom door handle gave a final, sickening snap. .The wood disintegrated and the Sentinel lunged inside.

its massive frame so large it took out a chunk of the adjacent wall just by stepping into the room.

Plaster and dust rained down, the cabin lurching violently to the side as the beast’s weight shifted the levitating house.

Isabella scrambled back until her spine hit the window frame. Her hand searched the floor frantically, her fingers closing around a heavy shard of broken wood from the door.

She held it up like a pathetic dagger, her eyes darting between the snarling beast and the terrifying drop behind her. She remembered Lucain words, this thing can’t be killed and

If she jump, she dies but If she stays, she gets eaten. The math was simple, and yet her legs wouldn’t move. The jump was too long, the forest floor a distant far below.

“Clara….” a voice purred. It was a silk, velvet sound, cutting through the low growls of the hound.

A footstep resounded throughout the room as a woman stepped through the wreckage of the doorway.

She was draped in a heavy black robes that seemed to swallow the candlelight. The hood of the robe was pulled low, shadowing her face completely.

Whatever eyes she had were hidden beneath the heavy folds of fabric, denied to the room like a deliberate cruelty.

Only her mouth was visible—pale lips curved in a slow, knowing smile, as if she didn’t need eyes to see any of them.

She didn’t look like a monster; she looked like a queen as she walked with a terrifying grace.

The hound, which had been ready to tear Isabella’s throat out, suddenly went still. It lowered its massive head, stepping aside with a submissive whimper to let the woman pass.

The woman’s lips curled into a dark, satisfied grin. Through the hood, she looked at the wreckage of the room, then straight at Clara, who had gone completely rigid, her face drained of every drop of color.

“Mother?” Clara gasped, Isabella’s head snapped toward Clara, her grip on the piece of wood tightening until it drew blood from her palm.

“MOTHER?” Isabella choked out, her heart stopping.

“My sweet, rebellious little bird,” the woman whispered. “You always did have such trouble keeping your pets on their leashes.”

Clara’s mouth opened, but no scream came out. She looked frozen in time, her white eyes wide with a soul-crushing recognition.

The dark witch turned her gaze toward Isabella, the grin widening to reveal teeth that were far too sharp.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep