Chapter 38
CHAPTER 38
I sla had never seen such focus on Kai’s face. Now, down in his office, leaning against his desk, she watched as he rested his hands on the wood surface opposite her. He shifted his gaze between the last piece of the diadem, the newly acquired marker, and what she’d written of the fifth symbol.
As his quietness persisted, she let her eyes roam the room again before gazing out the window. Spacious and more ornately decorated than she’d been expecting, Kai’s office also had a view of the city. Not quite as wondrous as the one captured from the overlook but enough. She’d noted earlier how the walls were barren but held signs—specific demarcations on the blend of stone, dark wood paneling, and wallpaper—that, at one point, there had been pictures. Some artworks.
If this space had always been for the Alpha of Deimos, then that meant this had previously belonged to Kai’s father. Bore the images he had chosen. Been arranged in the way he had wanted. Certain scratches on the floor told her the furniture had been shifted, maybe an inch or two, but the bare walls never recovered.
She wouldn’t mention it, not now, but something about the room felt empty. Cold in a way the hearth at the far side of the space couldn’t warm.
The desk creaked, and Isla whipped her head back to Kai as he wordlessly pressed up from the wood and turned to approach the antiquated map splayed out on the wall. It displayed Deimos and what was once Phobos before it had been destroyed. Here, Isla saw the entire expanse of land, the former pack stretching to the Great Ocean that separated their continent from the mainland of the witches.
“We have rogues on our southeastern border,” Kai finally began, his voice even-toned yet edged with irritation. “The Imperial Alpha breathing down our necks from the north, and now, the Wall in the west.” He let out a heavy sigh and ran both hands through his hair. “We need to work backwards. And we need to move carefully. If everything’s connected like you think it’s been, when we pull one piece on the board, another moves with it, and we’re back to square one, trying to figure out what the hell’s going on.”
Isla adjusted herself on the desk. “Where do you want to start?”
Another breath and another glance at the map. “Other wolves, rogues or not, we can handle. Io, we can manage, but bak getting beyond the Wall is the biggest issue we have. We don’t have those defenses. And I highly doubt, given the current climate, Alpha Cassius would be keen on sending me more warriors.” He mumbled, “If I could even trust them here.”
Isla winced, though she got the point. “He doesn’t have a choice about sending warriors if they’re needed. Regardless of who was to dispatch us, if we know there’s a threat anywhere on the continent, we’d want to help. I mean, I came here even though I knew the consequences.”
Kai raised a brow.
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean."
The smallest upturn of his mouth told her he did.
Not long after, he began pacing the floor. “I knew we should’ve been looking into the Wall earlier. Maybe we would’ve caught those tunnels. We need to figure out how far they stretch and where they go. If Callan found them. Why he was looking.” A muscle feathered in his cheek. “You think that the killer knows how all of this we’ve been dealing with is connected, and they’ve been trying to tell us, but why warn me after nearly killing me?”
“I don’t know.” Isla gestured to the wooden ball on the table. “ But I do know that the marker Lukas and I found belongs underground in those tunnels and that someone, something , brought it to the surface. We can’t know for sure when, but if it was them because they knew you were in the Hunt, the tunnels are probably what they wanted you to know.”
“But I ended up nowhere near where you and Lukas were when I was hunting. I was already heading back to the Gate when I felt you. If they had wanted me to just happen upon it, then the chances were remarkably low.”
Isla sighed. That was true.
Quiet descended between them again as she pondered her thoughts. Sebastian’s voice being the one that rang clearly in her head was the last thing she’d expected.
“My brother had told me they thought the two of us were in the wrong place at the wrong time or targeted. What if it was both? Lukas and I were the only two hunters who faced multiple bak. What if they’d targeted me, left the marker there for us to find, not with the intention of me dying but to lure you back?”
Kai reached up to scratch along his jaw. “Then that means they knew you were my mate and that I’d come back for you.” He let out a low hum before saying, “Those two hunters that I sent for you after you’d been attacked said they found you in a house. I can’t picture a bak stowing you away like that, especially alive.”
Isla didn’t want to think back to that day, especially after what she’d just faced. But the flashes of her memory reeled, and she recalled the cold floor, the searing pain, the distant questions as she fell in and out of consciousness about whether she was even still alive.
“Then the killer saved me.” The realization came out of Isla’s mouth in a breath. And though he had left its safety… “They saved Lukas, too, and hid us in the house with the marker.” Isla blinked, her mind drifting. “Do you think…do you think they’re being used by someone else?”
Kai nearly choked at the proposal. “Why would you think that?”
“Because their behavior isn’t consistent,” Isla said. “They nearly kill you, now warn you. Nearly kill me, then warn me. It’s like they…broke character. Snapped. ”
“By killing?”
“By not. ” Isla hesitated, trying to figure out the best way to explain her theory, especially because of the topic she’d be broaching. “They killed your father and brother first and intended to kill you. Something that extreme requires planning and skill, which they’ve proven to have.” She was mindful of the way Kai shifted, the tenseness she felt on the other end of the bond. “They broke from the plan when they got to you.”
“Why?” Kai asked gruffly, that guilt flickering in his eyes. “What made me any different from them?”
“I don’t know.”
“So why would that mean they’re being used?”
Now, Isla began pacing. “In the wasteland before Rhydian and Ameera showed up after the killer saved me from the bak, they seemed—hurt—when I asked them why they did it. Why they tried to kill me through Lukas.” She knew she would sound crazy, but still posed, “What if it was because they…hadn’t wanted to?”
“They hadn’t wanted to, but they had to?” Despite his assessing words, Kai didn’t look at all convinced.
Still, Isla answered, “Yes.”
Silence again.
In it, Isla finished her movements and rested her hands on the back of the chair across from Kai’s desk. Her mind reeled, trying to pull more pieces together before Kai broke her from her thoughts again with a curse. “There’s a witch here. Now. Has to be.”
“What?” Though Isla had figured one had cast the wards on the house’s door, she hadn’t deduced when that would’ve been. “How would a witch even get over here? Ameera said that house wasn’t too old, and the witches haven’t been invited here for an extensive amount of time. They’d never make it past Io’s border from beyond the mountains. I mean, we were always guarded, but the prison’s right there, too. No one gets near it, even from our end. Every pack border, including the coastlines, is protected. They wouldn’t get in without us noticing.”
“All coastlines but one,” Kai corrected lowly.
Isla’s eyes flicked to the map on the Wall. “You think a witch could— would —sail to the Wilds? The bak would eat them alive within hours, minutes of touching land…though, they do have magic.”
“It wouldn’t work,” Kai said. “There’s a reason we had to build a Wall to contain them rather than wipe them out in the way they came. The bak were birthed by magic from the decimation. Whatever that witch did couldn’t be reversed, repaired, or even touched by any of the others that came to aid us and repay the debt. The only way to kill them is how we’ve been doing for centuries—brute force and strategy. No matter how strong our people are, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Isla gnawed on her lip.
She’d known some details of the decimation and was aware of the consequences, aware of what had been done and raised as a result. But she never knew the why , how witch magic worked. At the thought, her eyes drifted to the crystal perched on Kai’s desk, glittering in a stream of sunlight.
“They had to have been in the Wilds during the Hunt,” he concluded, face drawn gravely. “They’d never be able to survive for an extended time, but if they had a means of getting in and out, somewhere safe to return to.. .”
Isla knew where he meant. “The house.”
“It explains the warded door.”
It did, but—“Why? How? When?”
“I don’t know why they’re here, but if Lukas saw them , what better reason to get rid of his memories?”
Isla’s gut twisted. “But how? I don’t understand the laws of magic, but wiping memories to that extent sounds really potent, especially against us.”
“Lukas can’t shift, which means his susceptibility is higher than it would be for wolves like you and me.”
Isla opened and closed her mouth, not knowing where to even begin—or end. How could they have missed this? “But the house was empty when we went. There were some signs that someone had been there, but not recently. Though, definitely not ten years ago either. Do you think they’re…back in the Wilds? Or somewhere in the pack?”
Kai groaned. “I’m not sure, but they may have just become one of the biggest problems we have. ”
“Why?”
He met Isla’s stare. “Because they can survive the Wilds, which means they’ve found a way to conquer the bak. By their own wits or by their own power, it means they’re dangerous. ”
Isla couldn’t even entertain the question of how ; she’d already doubled back to what it meant .
There had been a witch in the Wilds during the Hunt.
A witch had cursed Lukasand made him act as he had.
He had no reason to be in Valkeric, no reason to be wiped from the realm. He should’ve been a warrior, been home with his family.
“Kai, we have to tell someone. The Imperial Alpha, if he knew—”
“We can’t do that.”
Isla jerked back before narrowing her eyes at her mate. “But he’s in prison , and it’s not even his fault. He didn’t know what he was doing.” She looked down at her hands, remembering the feeling of Lukas’s blood coating her skin, recalling how it had felt to tear through his flesh. Recalling that look in his eyes that still haunted her sometimes. That sudden clearness, openness, before she thought she’d watched him die.
A bit of sympathy shone in Kai’s stare, but still, he said, “I’m hoping Alpha Cassius doesn’t declare war over refugees here building a non-existent army. If he thought we were harboring a witch, too?”
Refugees building a non-existent army—they hadn’t even breached the subject of how Charon had been involved in all of this. Kai had finally disclosed a piece she’d been missing with regards to Callan’s map, a theory that had been brewing since he’d learned his fake identity.
Rogue wolves had always been a murky subject throughout the packs for a long, long while. For those cast out for criminal reasons, it was simpler, but for those who left their pack of their own accord, it was incredibly complicated. And dangerous.
One of the biggest of their sacred principles was unyielding loyalty to one’s family, and your pack was your family. That rule could only be broken, with no question or bestowed approval, by an even greater covenant—the bond of fated mates.
If it weren’t for the fact Isla was destined to Kai, to remain in Deimos and defect from Io, she’d need approval from Alpha Cassius and Io’s Council. If they’d voted no , she would need to remain in her pack, or if asking to leave had pissed them off enough, she’d be cast out to live the rest of her life as a rogue. She could try to get into another region, but the repercussions of taking her in would be more than any alpha would risk. It would be a near declaration of war against the pack from which she came.
So, Isla had learned, Deimos had been taking in an influx of new pack members from their eastern neighbor. Those fleeing their hellish lives under the tyranny of Alpha Locke, a cruelty that may have been enabled, even put in place, by the continent’s highest ruler…
Isla’s gaze was pleading. “But you didn’t know about the witch.”
Two knocks in rapid succession suddenly came from the door.
Kai huffed and ran a hand over his forehead. “Yes?”
“May I come in, Alpha?”
Ezekiel.
Kai glanced at Isla, who’d gone rigid.
Ezekiel would be the first person to find out about them. Did she want that?
She suddenly felt a warmth at her back that spread as Kai wrapped his arms around her middle. Her nerves eased as he leaned down to whisper, “We don’t have to tell him right now. We can pick another time.”
Isla twisted her head to him, scanning his face to get an idea of what he would want. But something about her expression, her pause, had him leaning in to peck her lips, then her neck before he tugged her shirt collar and brushed forward her hair to hide her mark. It was enough to say they’d do it later, maybe when the challenge wasn’t so fresh.
He adjusted his own garment before he announced, “Come in.”
Ezekiel opened the door and stepped into the room, shifting his keen eye between them. “Am I interrupting?”
Isla wanted to say “yes” just for the hell of it, but there was something a bit more satisfying.
“No, you can come in,” she permitted him, a little smug.
The look Ezekiel returned bordered a grimace .
She could hear Kai breathe a laugh before he asked, “Where are Marin and Sol?”
Ezekiel closed the office door behind him. “They’ll come by in an hour or two.” He approached them at the desk. His gaze drifting to Isla, he began, “Will you be—”
He stumbled a step and froze.
Though it wasn’t for her or noting they were mates but for the glare that had seemingly caught the corner of his eye.
As Ezekiel turned his head to observe the gleaming jewel of the diadem and the marker on Kai’s desk, his eyes widened for just a heartbeat’s time, and his body gave the slightest tremble.
Isla pursed her lips.
Even Kai straightened where he stood. “Ezekiel?”
The beta righted himself, but though his posture held assured, that cornered doe look slipped back into his eyes. But it wasn’t only that. She could’ve sworn awareness lingered, too.
Isla braced herself for questions, especially given Ezekiel’s need to know and have a hand in everything. But he acknowledged Kai and then turned to her, placing his hands behind his back in a dutiful, near-respectful manner. She wondered if it was to hide the slight shake of his fingers.
“Will you be joining us?”
It was hard for her to keep the surprise off her face. How polite.
Isla glanced at Kai, whose eyes had narrowed slightly. The stormy gray shifted between his beta and the items on his desk that she suddenly felt incredibly protective over.
“Am I permitted to?” Isla asked, bringing her focus back to Ezekiel, and something about him, about the air, seemed to shift.
In her periphery, she caught Kai’s hands ball and release from fists. A few moments passed before his features relaxed, and his reach over the globe of the world on his desk drew both Isla and Ezekiel’s undivided attention. He picked up the jewel and let it linger in the sunlight before it collapsed into his closing palm.
With a sidelong glance, Isla noticed Ezekiel shift on his feet, retreating just an inch.
“Where did you get that?” he nearly blurted the question as if he’d been biting his tongue. He forced his shoulders to relax. “Is it from the vaults? ”
Kai grinned curtly, daring to toss the gem in the air before catching it. A low intensity simmered behind his eyes as he turned to Ezekiel. She sensed it then, that alpha’s aura, Kai’s power—a reminder.
“No,” he said with a coolness Isla felt down her spine. And suddenly, he demanded of the beta, “Sit.”