Chapter 13 #2
I set up the call, and a minute later, there’s a knock on the door.
I look up as Sienna enters. She is holding a tablet against her chest, and her hair is pinned up in the neatest twist I have seen her wear since she’s been here.
Her skirt falls to her knees, and her blouse is buttoned to the throat.
I know from this morning when I saw her in the distance that she’d left the top two buttons open. But for me, she has fastened them.
This is the first time she has entered my office since the day we…My fingers twitch at the ghost of the memory before I manage to compose myself.
“You asked to see me, Alpha Steele?”
Her expression is calm, but her eyes are carefully blank. My mother used to tell me that the eyes were the windows to the soul. “Look close enough, Lucas, and you will see the heart of a person.”
Sienna is concealing her heart from me. All I see when I look into her eyes is my own reflection.
“There’s an update in the hybrid case, and I want you to sit in on a meeting with your alpha.” I try to keep my voice calm.
“I see.” She nods and sits in a chair on the other side of my desk.
I wish she would be stiff, show some reluctance, but her movements are fluid, and a part of me wonders if letting me go was easy for her.
The screen on the wall blinks to life. Darius’s face fills it.
Beside him is a man I met when I was at Moonvale last month: Kain Ashford, his head of security.
Kain is also a defected member of the Covenant, an organization that kidnapped him as a teenager and brainwashed him into going after Darius’s mate, Violet, who happens to be a hybrid.
It was Kain’s fated mate, Anne, who ultimately led Kain to defect.
Now, he is one of Darius’s most trusted right-hand men.
“Thank you all for making time.” I hold up the folder. “My investigative team has finished a survey of missing hybrids in this region over the past two years.”
“How many?” Darius’s voice is tight.
When I reveal the number, both Darius and Kain shake their heads.
“The profiles are similar,” I continue. “Unattached. No close family. Nobody looking particularly hard for them.”
Sienna makes a small sound in her throat. Not quite a word. A caught breath.
I glance at her. Her face has gone pale.
“Their bodies have not been discovered,” I continue, “so there is a possibility that they’re alive.”
Darius raises one eyebrow. “You don’t truly believe that, do you?”
I sigh. I don’t.
“Why hybrids, though?” Kain asks. “Why not shifters? Hybrids are physically stronger than shifters, so taking them would not be an easy task. Especially taking them without a struggle.”
“That’s what bothers me, as well,” I admit. “Nearly all of them were taken from their homes. Three worked graveyard shifts, though: one at a gas station, one at a warehouse, and one at a nursing home. Those three were taken from their workplaces. Their belongings were all left behind.”
“They all would have struggled,” Sienna murmurs.
“Unless they knew the person and went willingly,” I point out. It’s a thought to be considered.
“The only thing aside from their strength that stands out,” Sienna says quietly, “is their ability to do magic.”
Darius leans forward on the screen. “Most of them don’t, though. They grow up among shifters. They live as wolves. They never develop their other half.”
“Yes, but the capacity is there. If they wanted to, they could learn, couldn’t they?” Sienna says to the screen.
I study her. “You’re saying somebody wants to use them.”
She doesn’t look at me. “I’m saying it would make sense. The witches are mostly gone from our territories, so if you wanted magic, where would you look? Not rogues. Not ordinary shifters. Hybrids.”
Kain’s voice cuts in. Low. Rough. “The Covenant was obsessed with magic.”
The other three of us stare at him.
“It was the single most discussed subject at the upper tier.”
I push back to test the theory. “These hybrids don’t practice magic. They don’t know how. Why take them?”
Kain looks past Darius at something off screen. He is choosing his words. “The Covenant conducts experiments,” he grinds out. “On their own soldiers.”
“What kind of experiments?” I ask.
“Magic. Enhancement. They have tried to push it into shifter bodies. They have had a few successes.” His eyes go somewhere dark. “Not any that last, though.”
I think about the rogues we executed at the estate the first week Sienna was here. The ones from the day she was almost taken. The strange cast of their fur in the light. Their impossible strength. Two of them kept fighting after my best men had their throats in their jaws.
Sienna beats me to it. “The rogues.”
Darius and Kain look at each other.
“The ones that attacked us in the forest when we were coming here,” she presses. “They were stronger than anything I have ever seen. The soldiers here have been describing the same thing. Unusual strength. Unusual stamina. Unusual everything.”
“Enhanced.” Kain’s voice has gone quiet.
“If you wanted to make a shifter hold magic,” Sienna continues slowly, “you would try it on someone whose body was already built to hold it. You would start with the raw material closest to what you wanted.”
“Hybrids,” Darius says.
“Hybrids,” Sienna echoes.
A long silence stretches across the call.
“So, somebody—the Covenant, most likely—is harvesting hybrids,” Darius says heavily. “Using them for magic. And potentially making them into enhanced soldiers.”
“That could be the case,” Kain says quietly. “But this is just a theory.”
“One we need to verify,” I add.
“Moonvale will run parallel,” Darius announces. “I will set up a joint intelligence line today. Lucas, your team. Kain, my security. Sienna coordinating.”
“Understood.”
“Let’s talk again at the end of the week.”
The screen goes dark.
Sienna gets to her feet, sliding her tablet under her arm. She heads to the door, and suddenly, I’m overwhelmed with anxiety. I want her to look at me. Not that empty, blank stare, but the way she used to look at me before.
“Sienna.”
She does not stop walking.
“Sienna, wait.”
Her hand is already on the knob.
“A word.”
She pauses and turns. Her tone is polite, disinterested. “About what, Alpha?”
I’ve got nothing. I wanted her to stop. I wanted another ten seconds of her in this room. Her scent. I wanted her to stop walking away from me.
“You have not been coming to meals,” I manage. “Some days, you only show up for dinner.”
“I have a lot of work.”
“I could lighten your load.”
An icy expression takes over her face. For the first time in three days, she looks at me properly. Green eyes. Steady. Colder than the window glass.
“I really don’t need the Alpha of Silvercrest doing me favors.” Her voice is level. “I have two weeks left on this assignment. I would like to do as much as possible before I leave. Please don’t concern yourself with my workload.”
“Sienna.”
“Is that all, Alpha?”
“Come down for dinner tonight.”
I hate the sound of my own voice asking her to do this. Thin. Nearly pleading. The sound of a man who has given up his right to ask.
Her jaw sets. Before she can say anything, there’s a knock on the door.
“Come in!” I snap through gritted teeth.
Sienna makes room for the door to open, and Monroe enters, wincing. “Sorry, Alpha Steele. Miss Carter has a visitor.”
Sienna blinks. “Me?”
Monroe steps aside, and a man appears in the doorway. He looks familiar, but I can’t place him. And then, Sienna’s entire face blooms with a smile so breathtaking that my wolf sits up, alert.
“Ethan!”
I’ve never seen her so happy before. She flings herself at the man, and he catches her by the waist.
“Hey!”
“Oh, you’re here!” There’s such profound relief in her voice that I find myself bristling.
“And you are?” I find myself asking.
“This is my friend, Ethan. He is also Darius’s friend,” Sienna says quickly, taking him by the hand.
My eyes are fixed on their hands as I slowly rise from my chair.
“I was not informed that we were expecting a representative from Moonvale,” I say icily. “Your alpha cannot just send his people uninvited.”
“I invited Ethan,” Sienna says abruptly. “I’m allowed to have guests.”
She’s touching him. She’s too close to him. That smile and that look in her eyes, they only ever belonged to me. Why is she giving them to this male, this—
“I missed Sienna, so I came to see her. I hope I’m not an inconvenience,” Ethan says with a polite smile.
I grind my teeth. “No inconvenience. You can join us for dinner.”
“No!” Sienna grasps his arm in a way that has my wolf coming into my eyes. “I’m taking him out to eat. Come on, Ethan. I’m done with work for the day.”
They walk out of the room, leaving me standing there, my hands clenched into fists.
Monroe clears his throat. “I, uh, should also…be going.”
He slips out, closing the door behind him.
I brace myself against the desk.
Ethan. She’s close to this man. Closer than she is with any man. The way she touched him makes me want to rip him to pieces. My wolf is so close to the surface that I can feel my teeth sharpening in my mouth.
I pick up the whiskey glass from the desk and hurl it at the door.
The glass shatters. Amber liquid runs down the wood.
The sound fills me with satisfaction for half a breath.
Then, that feeling is gone, and I am alone in my office with my chest heaving and my hands shaking and my wolf howling in my ear.
The enormity of what I have done to us settles on my shoulders like a wet cloak.
I agreed to give her up. I gave up this brilliant woman with her clever eyes and infectious smiles.
Because she would die if I gave her my mark.
The fight drains from my body with that thought, and a heavy grief settles in me.
I’m poison to her.
Sinking into my chair, I look numbly to the future. If I want Sienna to have a full life, a happy one, then I need to step back and let her live it.
Once Lydia wears my mating mark, this will all be over. Sienna and I will forget about being each other’s fated mates. This pain will lessen.
Hopefully.
But nothing will erase the image of the woman meant to be mine.
My hands are shaking. I walk over to the window and put them on the sill so they will stop.
They don’t stop.
Outside, the sun is setting over my territory. The oak tree stands alone in the last of the light.
I drink until the light is gone.