Redemption

The explosive conclusion to the bestselling series– The Chosen.

Four shall fight. Two shall remain.
The game of immortal elements has advanced to an unexpected level since Will and Emma have joined. But was their union a part of Water’s careful orchestration? Has the game swung to his advantage? With

Emma’s life — and the lives of those she loves — at risk, every move could be deadly.
A mother’s quest to protect her son has turned into a fight with eternal ramifications.
Realizing she’s the weakest participant in the final version of the game, Emma will do anything within her power to save Jake and Will. Even if it means dying.

A man who will do anything to save the woman he loves.
As Will struggles with the implications of his destiny, he’s left to question the true intentions of the father he’s never known and what it means to Emma’s survival. The woman he is now bound to for eternity.

A boy who is the key.
In loneliness and desperation, Jake friends the lurking shadows, and now his heart battles between love and hate. The shadows offer to help him save his mother but does it come at a price?

The final confrontation is on the horizon and Emma is forced to confront her nightmare—is she the destruction of the world or the savior?

Smoke clung to her nostrils, now an ever-burning constant. Downtown Albuquerque smoldered in the valley below her, but Emma’s more immediate concern was above.
Marcus stood on the cliff, the element Water in human form. Emma knew the destruction he was capable of causing, but she’d been searching for him, hoping he would be her savior. Instead, he’d just declared himself to be her worst nightmare.
“What the hell?” Will growled, trying to shield her with his body, a difficult task given that they sat on a tree growing from the rock wall. “You told me to save her. Now you’re threatening her?”
Marcus leaned over the edge, opening his mouth as though to speak, but abruptly turned and ran out of view.
“We have to get out of here.” Will rose to a crouch while he craned his neck to see above.
“No kidding,” Emma muttered, searching for an escape as well. The tree trunk they straddled was ten feet down the side of a cliff. The car she had been in lay fifty feet below in the bottom of a ravine.
“Shit,” Will growled.
Emma could only imagine the lengths Will would go to protect her now. He had felt protective of her before, when her son Jake had branded him, binding them together with a mystical mark. But only moments ago they had joined, which bound their hearts and their powers for eternity. If Will felt half the need to protect her that she felt for him, he could be reckless, and that worried her.
He pointed to a tree several feet away but out of reach. “If we can make it to that branch, then I think we can climb up to the ledge.”
“And then what?”
“I guess we’ll find out. I’m going first.”
“Okay.”
Grabbing hold of a rock that jutted out of the cliff, Will pulled himself along the wall while Emma looked above. Marcus might have left, but Emma remained doubtful. The Water elemental had shown up for a reason. While she and Will were half-elemental, the experiences she’d had with full elements had proved them to be self-centered and manipulative. She expected no less from Marcus. She’d hoped, while searching for him, to appeal to their mutual hatred for her father, Aiden.
Will’s foot slipped on a small ledge, and Emma’s breath caught. Small rocks tumbled to the ravine as he regained his footing.
“Will, be careful.” The words were wasted breath, yet it gave her comfort to say them.
“I didn’t just find out who I really am to plunge to my death, princess. Besides, maybe I could whip up a water slide or something.” Of course Will would joke about the power he’d just discovered he possessed.
His right hand reached the branch, but he kept his foot on the ridge as he tested its weight, then pulled himself up to straddle it. “Okay. Your turn.”
Adjusting the backpack slung over her shoulders, she maneuvered into a crouch on the tree branch she sat on. She glanced up and locked eyes with Will. His mouth pinched in determination.
“Do you think he’s still up there?” she asked, reaching for a rock. Her hand slipped on the wet surface. Wet from Will’s recent demonstration of his new power.
Will’s silence unnerved her, and she cast a glance at him for reassurance.
He grimaced. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”
The book and the laptop in her backpack threw off her balance, but the book was more important than she realized when she and Will had stolen it weeks ago. Written in a magical language that humans were unable to read, the book held the details of the looming confrontation between the elements. The final confrontation. Albuquerque had been partially destroyed by Emma, who was half Fire; Raphael, the element Earth; and Alex, the element Air, as they fought for control of the book. She wasn’t about to let it fall into the ravine, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to go down with it.
When she was closer to Will, he gripped her wrist and pulled her to the branch with him. Their combined weight made the wood creak.
“Now up?” she asked, her stomach tumbling at the thought of what waited for them above.
Worry filled his eyes. “I’ll go first.”
She accepted his decision. For one thing, as an ex-Marine who’d been in the Special Forces, Will was a seasoned warrior. For another, although Will had only gotten his power moments before, he’d managed something that had taken Emma weeks to master. And last, Marcus was apparently Will’s biological father. Marcus had just found Will, and it was doubtful that he’d sought his son in order to harm him. Even her father Aiden, in all his perverse game-playing, had never tried to physically harm her.
“Be careful,” she said again, annoyed at her own redundancy. Yet she couldn’t let him go without saying something.
“Always.” His mouth lifted into his cocky smile; then he kissed her.
He started to lean back, but she put her hand behind his head and brought his face close to hers. “I love you, Will. If you get yourself hurt, I’ll kill you. Got it?”
He grinned again. “I’ve got quite the honeymoon planned later. I won’t be letting anything get in the way of that.”
Honeymoon. She guessed technically they were newlyweds. While they might not have gotten married in the eyes of the state or a church, she and Will had just pledged themselves to each other eternally. Their souls had been supernaturally bound with no possibility of breaking it, even through death.
“Does it include the honeymoon suite at the Ritz?”
“No, but it does include a hot shower.”
“Even better.”
His smile fell away as he glanced to the edge of the cliff. “I don’t know what I’m going to find up there, so stay put until I tell you it’s safe.”
“I should be with you.”
He shook his head and determination hardened his eyes. “Marcus just threatened you, not me. It doesn’t make sense that he wants to harm you when he was the one who told me to save you. Let me go talk to him and see what that was about.”
“If it sounds like you’re in trouble, then I’m coming up.”
Pausing, he looked up, then back into her eyes. “Okay, but watch yourself in case I’m wrong.”
“Okay.”