Chapter 21 What the Fae? #3
Teya seemed surprised at that because her eyes widened, her lips parting in shock.
“Since I’m the only Alpha in the western part of the States, there is no Alpha nearby who could challenge me either,” Lucien stated matter-of-factly, as if talking about his unparalleled power was a mundane part of his routine.
“If someone attacked me, whether in broad daylight or in the middle of the night, I would be able to sense them, even without switching on my senses in my human form. But that night, the attack came from nowhere. Or so it felt.”
He pointed at the table, and when I looked, I saw nothing there, other than .
. . well, his shadow. “That’s right,” Lucien said with a bitter smile, “certain Underearth Fae have the unique ability to blend into one’s shadow.
It took me a couple of days after the attack to think about it, about how I couldn’t sense my attacker, when it occurred to me that if the Syndicate was involved, then obviously, this was an option. ”
Callista raised her hand hesitantly, and when Lucien simply glared at her, she winced and said in a soft voice, “But for the Fae to enter your shadow, they need to have at least followed you to target it.”
“Not necessarily,” Blaise said in that solemn voice of his. “Umbral Fae can shadow hop, moving from one shadow to another without being noticed. That Fae could’ve hopped between shadows of nearby humans until they found our Alpha.”
“That’s exactly it.” Lucien’s angry voice was now sarcastic. “That Fae must’ve belonged to the Syndicate’s Covert Umbral Neutralization Taskforce—the assassin division.”
Something occurred to me just then, and I had to cough to hide a snort. Thankfully, no one noticed.
Lucien, glaring at Oz, whose face was now white, resumed.
“That Umbral Fae couldn’t have known which neighborhood I was in without an informant on the inside,” Lucien said now, furiously, but I could see beyond that.
His arctic-blue eyes might have been sparking with anger, but I could see the pain he was trying to hide.
The pain of the betrayal. That wiped away any sort of humor I might’ve felt.
“Since I don’t exactly advertise my whereabouts, I had a few suspects.
Blaise and Rémi compiled a definite list, according to everything I told them. ”
Oz slowly sat down, his hands clenched into fists so tightly, his knuckles turned white.
“Mack Page’s involvement was definitively proven when Drew and I visited Enoch’s hospital in San Diego,” Lucien continued, pulling his anger back under a mask of coldness, as he nodded to Enoch.
“Mack had gone there to inquire about someone bringing in a werewolf, after he failed to find a body where his Umbral Fae assassin hire told him I should be. He thought then that the plan must’ve failed somehow, and I got help.
The most likely conclusion would be that another werewolf, or Otherborne, found me and brought me to the only hospital on the West Coast that accepted Otherborne patients.
He probably wanted to finish the job when I was at my most vulnerable, but he was continually being told there was no werewolf patient in the hospital, which confused the hell out of him.
“And that’s when I finally showed up and showed him what exactly is the price of betrayal.”
Dead silence spread through the room, and I watched Lucien with concern.
He seemed to have his emotions under control now, but my gut told me it was all a facade.
That he was far more stripped down than the Betas at the table could ever know.
He might’ve looked to them like a pissed-off Alpha who had taken revenge on his traitor subordinate, but in reality, I could tell he was hurting.
When Lucien killed Mack Page, he did not take pleasure in it. He did not seem elated to have taken his revenge. He seemed lost. So utterly, completely lost. Like a man who didn’t know where he belonged.
And I could relate to that. I’d felt it myself, too, more often than not.
Even now, as he stood in this room full of his Betas, he looked so sad and alone, it made me hurt too.
Now that I knew the whole truth about what happened that night I found him, things started making a lot of sense. I finally understood now how everything connected.
Or almost everything.
Because there was one thing that still didn’t make sense.
If Lucien was all-powerful, so much so that only another Alpha, or maybe Teya, could take him out, then how had a Fae nearly managed to kill him? Sure, they had the element of surprise, but after seeing Lucien in action, I doubted that was all there was to it.
Especially since there was this specific Spellscript on his back that seemed to prevent him from healing properly. That affected his ability to shift to his wolf form and back.
But seeing as, soon after, Lucien ended the meeting with the promise of reconvening after Blaise did some investigating, I didn’t bring any of that up.
If Lucien didn’t tell, it was certainly not my place to tell either.