Chapter 30 - Ryder
There was no sign of night or day in the cave. Ryder occasionally felt a breath of air waft in, bringing with it brief relief from the heavy stench of rot. How deep he was within the earth was impossible to know. He wished he could break out of this cage and destroy the beast-demon eggs. How many more of these secret hideouts did they have scattered through the mountain?
He judged he’d been here for at least twelve hours before Jace came back. He sauntered in, using his human form. The other demons with him were in wolf form. At first, Ryder thought there were more mutations. They were all hairless with cracked, reddish-brown skin. As one passed the cage, though, he saw that they had shaved off their fur and coated themselves with a thick layer of mud.
“Clever,” he said, lifting his eyes to Jace. “I take it that’s why we’ve had such a hard time picking up your scent.”
Jace smiled. “We leave such a heavy trail normally, we have to do something to counteract it.”
Ryder looped his arms through the cage. “I’m ready to make a deal with you about this… marker in the blood thing,” he said, keeping his voice hard and serious. “Before we get to the details, though, I have to point out that you’re also after my sister and mother.”
“Don’t forget your nephew,” Jace said, standing just outside the cage door. “But also remember that Tess is the one carrying your baby. So you can pick one person, Ryder. I won’t go through the effort of saving more than one life.”
Ryder emptied his face of all emotion. He had years’ worth of experience of keeping his feelings close to the vest. “I don’t care about Tess. She rejected me. I have no responsibility to her. And I don’t see how you could possibly keep her baby from dying. I don’t care about it, anyway. I have no proof it’s mine.”
Jace’s eyebrows furrowed. “Your sister or mother, then?”
“My mother was selfish enough not to have a mate and subject me to years of torment, and if she ever learned I picked her over my sister, she’d never forgive me. As for Mica, she chose Hayden. I’m not going to live my life trying to protect someone who hates me,” Ryder said, keeping his voice flat.
“So you don’t want to save any of them? That’s… surprising,” Jace said, suspicion entering his expression.
“I never said that,” Ryder answered easily. “Denzel is too young to care. I can raise him myself and raise him right.”
“You’d raise another man’s son?”
Ryder shrugged. “An Alpha’s son. He’ll grow up with that innate desire to be an Alpha himself. All the responsibility, and he’ll take my cues.”
He’d thought long and hard about this. While he longed to cast his protection over Tess and the baby, he knew it wasn’t that easy. And if he picked one over the other, he knew in his bones that Jace would specifically target the other. If he said save Tess, he’d make sure she lost the baby. If he said the baby? Give Tess enough brain damage to no longer truly alive so she could remain an incubator for the rest of the pregnancy.
The rest of them could fight. Denzel was the most vulnerable in this equation. Next would be Mica or Elin—not that Ryder could bargain for Elin’s safety when he had no connection to her. Mica could hold her own. She could fight, and she could run—Denzel could do neither.
“That’s a deal I can make.” Jace nodded, a satisfied smile spreading over his face. “But for this arrangement to be… binding, you have to swear an oath in return. You’ll put your hand on this,” he removed the Demon Seed from around his neck and dangled it in front of Ryder’s face. “You’ll swear not to betray or tell Hayden any of what you learn in this cave in exchange for Denzel’s safety.”
This means that as soon as Jace no longer needed Ryder, he’d break his side of the bargain and hurt Denzel anyway. But by the point he’d do that, it wouldn’t matter if Ryder would betray him or not.
Ryder, however, pretended not to realize that.
He braced himself and held out his hand, palm up. Jace shook his head, turned his hand over, and took a firm grip on the Seed. He held it just under Ryder’s fingertips.
“Repeat after me,” he said. “I swear not to betray you, nor will I tell any person or thing what I have learned here today.”
Ryder took a deep breath and repeated the words, adding, “So long as my nephew Denzel remains utterly unharmed.”
A strange, cold feeling crept up his hand. It was as though the frost was crawling up his arm. There was no sign of change. The icy fingers wrapped around his throat and sank into him, lingering in his vocal cords. He coughed, pulling his hand away from the Demon Seed. He grasped at his own neck. His skin felt the same, but that icy numbness was still there.
“Now, then.” Jace returned the Demon Seed to around his neck. “Now that’s out of the way, I should tell you that I know you aren’t really here to betray your Alpha. Nobody in the special ops team would turn against each other. Even if that whole display during the pack meeting was real, you’d still die before turning against him.”
Ryder growled under his breath, shaking his head. His heart pounded. So Jace had seen through it—was anything he’d told Ryder the truth? There has to be something. Otherwise, why would he make me swear not to tell?
“Don’t look so surprised. Your team must be desperate even to try something so flimsy,” Jace said with a roll of his eyes. “But now you’re bound by the oath and in the perfect position. Helpless. Unable to do anything to stop me.”
“You’re an idiot if you think—”
Jace held up a hand. “I lied about the host, too. He wasn’t some corpse I found. He’s from the same branch of the demon-hunting military as you. Only you never had anything to do with him. I know all your procedures. Everything about how you were trained. I knew you’d take as many prisoners as you could to try to get more information.”
A fresh chill stole down Ryder’s spine.
“Your team brought my people into your town themselves,” Jace said with a laugh. His eyes burned with malicious excitement.
If there was one thing a demon was good at, it was bragging about how clever he was. Ryder forced aside his growing panic. “What’s the good of that when they’re imprisoned?”
“Simple. We know how to get around your salty defenses, thanks to that whole garden hose incident with you and Tess,” Jace said, waving a hand. “Break the container, wash away the salt, and we can open up the barrier. My people inside the town will break out of the prison while we open up the barriers around town. Then they’ll bring the women and Zealuv to me.”
And Zealuv would be freed again. He gripped the bars of his cage tightly. “You also found out how to prevent exorcisms. How?”
Jace laughed again and reached through the bars. He pressed one finger to Ryder’s abdomen, where the talisman was. “What keeps us out also keeps us in.”
Of course. Jace had been using the team’s own methods against them from the start. Why didn’t they see it? He had them running around chasing him, exhausting their resources.
“All this to free Zealuv,” Ryder growled. “He must be really important to you.”
Jace’s face lit up with delight. He clapped his hands. “Oh, he is for certain. But not the way you think. I gave you the hints myself, Ryder. I told you I didn’t want to rule over nothing but demons because we’re always stabbing each other in the back. Do you know how archdemons come to be?”
Ryder squinted, fighting back his confusion.
“Cannibalism,” Jace said. “We consume the essence of other demons to grow stronger. I’ve been satisfying myself with the beasts. They’re the easiest prey. But here in Bluebell Valley, there’s an archdemon for the taking! Locked away, weakened. Once I consume his essence, I’ll be an archdemon myself.”
Ryder inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We didn’t know that. We don’t know much at all. Where could we go to find out more?”
“Hell itself.” Jace shrugged. “You’re lucky, you know. I was planning on killing all of you. But you came here and offered yourself up to me. So you get to watch as I crush your town. You will be the Alpha, and everyone will look at you as a traitor.”
“Fuck that,” Ryder snarled.
Jace pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the cage door. He opened it and stepped back. Ryder lunged, swinging his fists—except frost flashed through his muscles, freezing him to the spot. He couldn’t move to attack.
“You vowed not to betray me,” Jace reminded him. “Which means that you have to do as I say.”
His fist drove into Ryder’s stomach. A series of blows rained down on him as Ryder dropped. He couldn’t even defend himself as Jace beat him. He curled into a ball, protecting himself as his wolf howled and snarled. He rode out the beating silently, refusing to give Jace the satisfaction of seeing his pain.
“Get out of here,” Jace snarled, panting when he was finally done. “And tell Hayden that I didn’t believe you. You barely escaped with your life, and you learned nothing.”
Ryder staggered to his face. He stripped off the pink shirt and glittery pants, dropping them to the floor. Then he shifted to his wolf form, that frosty feeling washing throughout his whole body. He limped from the cave. The forest was thick with rain, a constant drizzle raining down from above.
He tried to plan what he would do once he got home, but a bolt of white-cold pain chased away every thought.
He’d made a terrible mistake. How could he protect his pack and Tess now?