Second Chance by Fate (Fated Apex Mates #3)

8. Steele

Chapter 8

Steele

A cry wakes me in the middle of the night. Bolting upright, I throw the covers aside and leap out of bed, rushing toward Violet’s room. No one else is in the hallway of the pack house, and neither of my brothers seems to have heard her.

My senses are on high alert, and I peer through the darkness, searching for signs of an intruder. But I don’t see, hear, or smell anyone.

When I open her door, I find her tossing and turning in bed. My chest tightens to see her writhing in such agony, the dream overtaking her.

“Violet,” I rasp, sliding in beside her. Instantly, her warmth overtakes me, and blood rushes through my entire body. “Wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”

She gasps, her eyes fluttering as she wakes, blinking rapidly. “Steele.”

I brush her black tresses away from her pale cheeks in the inky darkness. Her lower lip quivers, and my eyes rake searchingly over her face. Unable to resist, I brush my lips against hers, and she sighs, releasing the last of the dream in a whoosh of breath.

“You’re all right now,” I murmur tenderly, stroking her face. “What is it? A premonition?”

She swallows visibly. “I-I don’t know. Maybe.”

My arm encircles her, and I pull her against my chest, relishing the feel of her skin against mine, all my previous suspicions about her melting away. “We’re going to figure this out.”

“I don’t know if we will,” she whispers. “It’s been too long in the making.”

Pulling away, I stare at her with narrowed eyes. “What does that mean?”

Biting on her lower lip, she looks away. “I’m not sure…”

“You have your suspicions,” I press. “What are they?”

“I… I think this started with your parents,” she explains, sitting up. “One of your fathers brought this on you guys.”

My eyes narrow. “Which one? How do you know?”

The thought of any of my fathers—the three brothers who made up our previous ruling Apex triad— leaving behind an unresolved conflict makes my skin prickle.

She shakes her head. “My dream… it’s already fading…”

Her head drops back against my chest, and she’s asleep again. I realize that she’s been chattering in her sleep the whole time. She won’t even remember this conversation in the morning.

Frustration floods me, and I want to wake her up, but I don’t. Violet needs to heal, and I need to process what she just said.

We stay at the pack house all day. Enzo sent word to the pack that the east end house isn’t to be used, and we’re on guard for any suspicious activity around us, but the unusual acts of magic haven’t followed us outside the estate. Here, the house doesn’t shake, and there are no random flashes of light. I wait for my suspicions to kick back in, for my wary mind to suggest that maybe Violet is just on her best behavior now that she knows she’s being watched, but I can’t reconcile the idea that the driver tried to kill her, too. If she were truly working with them, they would want her alive.

I curl up with Violet on the couch in the living room with my brothers, a movie playing on the mounted television, but we’re discussing the plan for tomorrow, so none of us are paying attention.

“You go in and get out,” Jax repeats. He’s said this so many times by now, I’m getting annoyed.

“I know, Jax,” Violet sighs in exasperation. “I’m not looking for trouble.”

“I didn’t say you were, but you’re also not going to avoid it if it finds you, are you?”

She sneers at him. “I know you mean well, babe, but honestly, it’s a little hard for me to forget that you threw me out of here three years ago without ever worrying about my well-being.”

“That’s not true,” Jax growls. “We did worry about you! I told you that I tried to contact you.” He looks at us accusingly. “Did you put a blocker on my emails or texts?”

“No.” I frown at Enzo, but he appears just as confused.

“No,” he answers with just as much perplexity. We look to one another. “Could the dark witches do that?”

“They didn’t stop us from reaching out to the Florida Apex Alphas about her,” I blurt out.

“What?” she scoffs, surprised. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I glance at Enzo, but he doesn’t meet my eyes.

“We reached out to the Florida Apexes to keep an eye on you,” I admit. “They knew you were in their territory.”

Her eyes pop in dismay, and she pushes my arms away from her slender form. “You were spying on me, even from here?! What the hell was the point of exile if you were just going to keep spying on me?!”

“No!” Jax grumbles. “It wasn’t spying. We wanted to make sure you were safe.”

“You banished me! If you were so worried about my safety, you wouldn’t have kicked me out of Arizona in the first place!”

“You know why we had to do that,” Enzo sighs. “Come on, Violet. There’s nothing we can do to change the past now. We did what we thought was best for the territory at the time.”

She sits upright on the sofa and looks at me. “I’m not trying to change the past. I’m trying to change the future… for all of us.”

Drawing in a deep breath, she looks at us imploringly. To my relief, she settles back into my arms, and my hold tightens around her.

“You have to think,” she urges. “Why would this happen? What would your father have done to them? This level of hatred…”

“Nothing!” I snap, defensive, but Jax and Enzo are less insistent.

“She’s right. This doesn’t come from nowhere. Someone must have triggered this,” Jax agrees.

“Whose side are you on?” I grumble irritably.

“I’m on the side of getting this curse lifted,” Jax fires back, jumping up to pace around the room. “But to do that, we need to understand it.”

“And it can’t just be that they’re evil and want our power for themselves?” I counter. “A usurping has been known to happen.”

“It has… but not by witches. If this were the work of other shifters, maybe,” Enzo drawls. “Shifters aren’t just going to roll over and accept rule by a coven now. They can’t just walk in and take over the territory.”

We ponder their motives and drive more, but the answers are much harder to come by.

“It might not be so simple as getting in and out tomorrow,” Violet says quietly. “Not if we really want this to be over for good.”

“Violet—”

“Hear me out,” she insists. “I might be your only shot to do this.”

We lean in to listen, but the more the details of her plan unfold, the less I like it, my eyes darting toward my brothers. It’s obvious that feelings are irrelevant in this matter already. I’m outnumbered.

Violet is going to do what she wants to do, and there’s nothing I can do to stop her.

When I wake, Violet is already gone, and I panic slightly. I intended to spend the night with her, but I fell asleep on the sofa, and she left before I woke.

“Where is she?” I demand, rousing my brothers from their slumber.

Jax and Enzo bounce out of bed without hesitation, blinking wildly. They race through the pack house to look for her, but it’s too late. I’ve already gone that route.

She’s undoubtedly gone.

“You didn’t hear her leave?” Jax demands, throwing open the curtains in the living room. “You were right here!”

We inhale collectively. His car is gone.

“She did that on purpose,” I mutter, shaking my head.

She was onto our plan.

“She left without telling us!”

I try her phone, but she doesn’t respond, and I send her a text, not hiding my annoyance.

Me: I hope you haven’t gone to the estate already. Call me right away!

“We need to go after her,” I say.

“She could have gone for coffee,” Jax suggests weakly, but I can tell he doesn’t believe that in the least.

“Let’s give her half an hour,” Enzo agrees, and I fume about it. “The last thing we want is to go back to Dusty Woods without her.”

“Right. Because she’s the bait,” I grouch coldly.

“That’s the plan, whether you like it or not,” Enzo retorts. “We need to see this through and end this. How many more years are we going to go on like this? I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of being the weakest Apex Alphas in the country.”

Unsurprisingly, Violet doesn’t return in the allotted time, and I’m the first one out the door when my oldest brother declares the time up.

“We might already be too late,” I warn them, but I don’t wait for either of them to respond before I shift into my panther form and bolt off down the road.

Through my peripheral vision, I see them both shift into their animal forms, and I’m relieved they’re not fighting me on the course of action.

Silently, we stalk off in the daylight through the Sedona back roads toward Dusty Woods, and I ponder again how the dark witches infiltrated the town and estate. We weren’t careful enough in our weakened state. Sending Violet away was our first mistake. If she had been here, she would have noticed this a long time ago.

Shame propels me further faster, worry for her adding speed to my paws.

Arriving at the gate, Enzo stops to talk to the guards, asking if Violet went through. They confirm she got in earlier, and the dread on their faces is evident.

“Was she not allowed? There was no resistance to her entry,” one squeaks. “It seems like she had permission to be here.”

“She’s fine,” Enzo growls. “Was anyone with her?”

“No, Alpha.”

“How long ago did she arrive?” I ask impatiently.

“Over an hour.”

I look to my right at Enzo.

Should we enlist these guards as backups? I ask my brother.

Enzo shakes his head and answers me through our mind connection. No. We don’t know who we can trust. For all we know, he’s one of them.

Jax nods in agreement, and I smother a sigh of discontent. We’re truly on our own.

Come on. Let’s do this.

Morphing back into our animal forms, we bolt forward and clear the rest of the way toward the estate.

Jax’s car is parked in the front, to my fusion of relief and concern. As I cautiously pad around it, keeping out of view of the windows, I notice nothing has been packed inside.

What’s the plan here? Jax demands. We need to stay out of sight.

We need to get inside, I counter. See what’s happening.

Turning to Enzo, we wait for him to tie-break the decision, and he gestures with his chin for us to follow him around the back of the estate.

We’ll split up, he decides. Jax takes the main floor. I’ll stay outside. You take the second floor, Steele.

It makes the most sense. I can scale walls best in my cat form, but I think we should stay together.

I wish Violet hadn’t left without telling us.

It’s too late to do more than follow this makeshift scheme now, and I nod curtly, bounding toward the trellis around the back of the house.

We part ways, and my pulse races. I immediately sense danger, and I scale the wall.

My ears hone toward the interior of the house, nose raised to sniff for others. The familiar scents of our staff reach my nose, and my guard peaks, but I have no handle on Violet.

“—odd for them all to be out all night. I wonder if it has anything to do with what happened last night,” one servant comments to another as they clean the main bedroom.

I land silently on the balcony, away from their view.

“The witch is here. I saw her,” the other maid replies.

The original maid perks up, and my eyes narrow at her interest. “Is she?”

“Yeah. In her suite. I think she’s collecting some of her things.”

“I thought she left yesterday,” she purrs.

My senses go haywire.

“I guess she’s back.” Shrugging, the second servant continues to clean, but the first one sets down her supplies and discreetly leaves the room.

Violet is in her suite. And I think I found another one of the dark witches. She’s heading to her now, I silently message my brothers.

There’s no answer from either of them, their range too far, apparently. I have no choice but to climb higher if I don’t want to be seen. From my vantage point on the roof, I peer down, hoping to catch a glimpse of either Violet or my brothers, but there’s no one around. Still, I can feel the danger intensifying. My ears hone around me, and I slide over the roof toward the other side of the house where Violet’s suite sits.

We should call this off right now. There’s not enough planning. Something could go wrong.

But it’s too late. We’re in it, and we agreed to this already. Even if Violet doesn’t know we’re here, she needs our backup.

I slink back down over her balcony and hear the voice clearly through the open door.

“—be in here!” Violet accuses the servant. “Get out!”

“I just wanted to see if you need any help, miss,” the maid coos.

I peer around the corner and see the blackened glow of the maid’s eyes, my pulse quickening. Her head whips up as if she detects me here, and I fall back against the wall. I know what we’re up against now.

How did we not see it before? Were our powers that diminished? Have we become that complacent?

“I don’t,” Violet answers. “If I needed help, I would have called for you.”

Light footsteps fill my ears, and I realize the maid does not take her cue to leave.

“I told you to get out!” Violet growls.

“Don’t you feel like a traitor, sleeping with the enemy like this?” the servant asks coldly.

Silence ensues for a moment.

“Don’t you feel a little out of line, speaking to a guest of the Alphas like this?” Violet fires back, but I hear the waver in her voice. “They are the ones who sign your paycheck, after all.”

A whoosh of air startles me, and I whip my head around as Enzo lands stealthily on the opposite side of the balcony, his steely eyes boring into mine.

Marianne? he asks. I stare at him blankly. The servant. Her name is Marianne. She’s a dark witch?

I have no answer for him. My teeth bare slightly, and he turns his attention toward the room.

“You’re not a guest. You’re an exile who forced herself back in. What were you hoping to achieve here, Violet? Haven’t they humiliated you enough?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Violet mutters.

“I know you were warned. And now you’ll pay the price, won’t you?”

“Get out of my room.”

“It’s not your room. It’s our room. This entire estate is ours—or it will be once we find your Alphas.”

“How?” Violet snaps. “The packs will never respect a coven! This is insanity!”

“They will with enough magic,” Marianne chuckles. “They’ll succumb if we make them. Tell me, where are your Alphas hiding now? Let’s put them out of their misery once and for all.”

Violet gasps. “I… I won’t tell you anything!”

Marianne shakes her head and ambles closer. The instinct to jump in overwhelms me, but Enzo’s voice rings out in my head.

Don’t! Don’t move.

“Weren’t you warned about what would happen if you interfered? Look how little they care about you, little witch. Sending you here on your own, even though they know their lives are in danger.”

Marianne advances on Violet with a laugh, but as she draws near, Violet throws up her hands, a shimmering golden shield protectively falling around her.

“I haven’t interfered. I came home,” she retorts. “You are the ones interfering with Apex business, and you’ll pay for this. Are you out of your minds? You can’t come after Apex Alphas! You’ll have the wrath of an entire country of shifters on you!”

Grimacing, Marianne stands back, folding her arms over her chest as she studies the shield around Violet.

“That shroud of protection won’t last forever,” she hisses. “And I’ve got all day, since your Alphas are too cowardly to show themselves. Once it falls, I will enact that curse we promised you, and you’ll feel the brunt of betraying your kind.”

The door to the bedroom opens, and three more servants appear with grins on their collective faces, the driver among them. My stomach drops as Enzo’s voice fills my head.

Oh, gods. There’s more of them.

Violet is less bothered by their numbers, even though she appears to recognize one of the maids who just entered.

“I did warn you,” the newcomer servant sings. “You just couldn’t stay away, could you?”

“Is that all you’ve got?” Violet shoots out casually. “Four of you?”

“Dark magic doesn’t need numbers,” Marianne snaps, her facade fading under Violet’s mocking.

I thought she wasn’t going to antagonize them, I grumble to Enzo, but he doesn’t look at me. He’s just as worried as I am, I can smell it all over him.

“I’m giving you one more chance here,” the leader of the dark witches tells Violet, circling her like a vulture.

“Oh, yeah?”

“We’re taking Dusty Woods,” Marianne informs Violet, her ebony eyes shimmering with malice. “And you can join us or die—after enjoying a long, hurtful curse.”