The Lost Elixir

Chapter Three

"Like hell you are!"

"What the hell are you thinking?"

"ARE YOU CRAZY?"

The war raging inside the walls of the dungeon room came from all five members of her family, their words battling over one in another in complete rage. Rayne grimaced. She supposed that would be the knee-jerk reaction to such a proclamation. She probably could have eased into the conversation easier, but her father hadn't given her much of a choice! Rushing everything out was all she could think of at the time.

"WAIT!" Rayne shouted, stopping them all from talking. She turned to look down at Jarrah, who looked almost bored, and gestured to her enraged family. "Tell them what you told me."

"I WON'T HEAR IT—" Nashoba shouted, but Jarrah was quick to interrupt him again.

"Sorry Alpha, but the sooner I tell you what we need to do about Ambrosius, the sooner I can leave," Jarrah finished, his sarcasm heavy. "I don't trust mutts, so don't think for one minute that I'm staying here longer than I have to without getting my people ready."

"What the fuck did you call us, fairy?" Ezra growled in the back of the room, taking a threatening step forward. Rayne gritted her jaw. The tension in the room only increased after the usage of the words 'fairy' and 'mutts', but she knew she had to calm things down if they were going to get anywhere.

"Let him talk," Rayne snapped.

Jarrah rolled his shoulders back, a challenge gleaming in his eye. "There's a myth among the Fae of something that could get rid of Ambrosius for good."

"We're putting our trust in you over a myth?" Ezra scoffed. "How the hell is something that isn't real going to help us? I guess I shouldn't be surprised; it is coming from a damn fairy."

Jarrah hastily strained against his chains, his gaze blazing brighter at the blatant disrespect. His eyes were glowing with frost again, his face glossing with translucent glitter along the sharp edges of his features the angrier he got. His powers were useless against the iron, but it did nothing to stop his intensity. "Got a better idea, dog? By all means go ahead and lift your leg on Ambrosius and see if that's more helpful. Maybe you can fetch him a bone while you're at it."

A snarl ripped free from Ezra's lips. Body shuddering with rage, he snapped his teeth warningly at Jarrah.

"Ezra," Nashoba snapped, glaring at him. "Knock it off."

Nevaeh was at Ezra's side, warning him to relax if he wanted the meeting to go successfully. Though he relaxed a smidgen and stopped his shaking under their mother's plea, he never took his eyes off their collective foe. No one did.

Nashoba turned back to Jarrah. "What myth?" he demanded, his voice icy. His shoulders were still tense from Rayne's eagerness to throw herself into the mix, and his eyes cut at her as if to say "I'll deal with you later".

Jarrah's eyes turned back to their signature woodsy brown, and Rayne tried hard not to focus on how much more she preferred their natural color over the milky white. She rolled her jaw as a reminder to concentrate and when he spoke again, his gaze lingered briefly on her. He only looked at Nashoba when she looked away.

"We've been told stories about a lost elixir that was stolen years ago from a man known as Utnapishtim. The elixir's told to both grant immortality and take it away if it's swallowed or injected into one's body," he explained. "It's the only known relic that can destroy someone as powerful as Ambrosius. He's been around since time itself and if we have any hopes of defeating him for good, we have to get it."

The shock wave of possibility drifted over the room and into the hopeful hearts of six desperate wolves who were willing to believe whatever he said. Ronan, however, was the first to recover from his words of enchantment and voiced out his hesitancy.