Chapter 36 Nico
NICO
Two days. It had been two days, but it felt like so much longer.
The moment I’d opened that envelope, everything changed.
All my plans had gone out the window. I’d thought we were ready for everything.
I was so completely wrong. In fact, I’d never been this wrong in my entire life. Now we were paying for my missteps.
Maddy was upstairs in her room. She’d locked herself in there as soon as we got back. Nothing I said could get her out. She refused to speak to anyone. All we could do was leave food outside her door.
Thankfully, Dad came over. I needed his advice. The house felt too quiet without anyone to talk to.
We were sitting in my office, the contents of the envelope scattered across my desk.
Dad was leaning forward, staring down at the pictures.
One set showed Abi, bound and gagged, tied to a chair.
The picture caught her mid-scream, tears streaming down her face.
The second set of pictures were of Maddy’s parents.
They were also tied up, but looked worse than Abi.
Her father’s left eye was swollen almost completely shut, there was blood running from his nostrils, and a thick purple bruise on his right cheek.
Her mother’s hair was filled with leaves and dirt, and she had a blood-swollen lip and a gash on her forehead.
The royals had discovered Maddy’s weakness.
As soon as the pictures slid out into my hand on the tarmac, Maddy lost it.
She screamed and ran after Viola’s car, even though it was already out of sight.
I had to grab her and keep her from sprinting off the runway and onto the highway.
The scariest thing was that she wasn’t screaming at Viola in rage.
No, she was calling for Viola to come and take her.
It only took Maddy an instant to make the decision to sacrifice herself to save the people she loved.
Would I have made the same decision? Probably. Would I have been able to make it that fast? I don’t know. I’d had to fight her to get her into the car. She screamed at me to call the royals, to have them come and take her.
“We have to save them,” she sobbed into my face as I tried to buckle her in.
“I can’t let them take you. They’ll kill you, Maddy.”
She lashed out and slapped me across the face. “You don’t get to tell me what I get to do with my life.”
“Yes, I do!” I yelled at her. “I love you, and you love me. That means we do have a say when one of us wants to do something stupid.” I took her face in my hands before starting the truck. “I promise you, I will do everything I can to get them back safe.”
Tears streamed down her face, and I watched her face crumple. “You can’t promise that. You don’t know that you can. You’ve made a lot of promises you couldn’t keep.” She’d turned her face from me, pressed her forehead to the window and cried silently.
Those words had been like a punch in the face. I couldn’t even be mad about it. Because she was right. She was devastated and had no way of getting her frustrations and heartache out, so she sat in her room in silence.
I looked across the table at Dad. “Well?”
Dad shook his head and ran a hand through his beard. “I’m sorry, son. I never even thought about her friend Abi. That’s on me. I should have had someone on her friend. This is my fault.”
In the corner, Sebastian sat with Felipe and Luis, who’d finally gotten back home the night before.
Since finding out about Abi, he’d been fuming.
He slapped his thigh and put his face in his hands.
“I should have thought about it. I was too busy being a dickhead. Fuck,” he hissed and slammed a fist into the armrest of his chair.
“Did you find out what happened with Maddy’s parents?” Dad asked.
I gritted my teeth and nodded. “Yeah. The guys I hired to watch them were found floating in a lake about a mile from their house. Throats were slit. They were professionals. Whoever they sent after Maddy’s parents knew exactly what they were doing.”
“Did you read the file I sent you about this Viola chick?” Felipe asked.
“Yeah, she’s a real sweetheart,” I said.
Viola Monroe was well-known in certain circles.
Pretty famous actually, but not in the way celebrities were famous.
The general public would have no idea who she was, but she was famous in rich and powerful circles.
If billionaires had their own celebrities, she’d be right at the top.
Everything Felipe had dug up showed that she and her family gave millions of dollars every year to causes for the needy and downtrodden.
They even funded orphanages all over the world.
That last little tidbit pissed me off. The only reason they funded those was to find the descendants of Edemas and then kill them in their fucking beds.
They were like saints. We couldn’t find any dirt on them, not even a whiff of scandal.
I was sure there had been something over the years, but the type of money they had could buy away their troubles.
“We’ve got the fight of our lives on our hands,” Dad said.
His words hung in the room like an omen.
He was right. Our pack was strong, but against this?
Against a centuries-old family with more money than God, and decades of practice at killing and covering it up?
It sent shivers of anxiety through me just thinking about it.
I looked around the room and wondered if any of the people here were going to get out of this alive.
“We’re running out of time,” Luis said.
That was also true. Inside the envelope, along with the pictures, had been a note saying we had until the next full moon to hand Maddy over.
There was an address and nothing else. We all assumed the royals had already opened the tomb and brought whatever vessel the vial of blood was in.
They’d get Maddy there and bleed her dry trying to open it. I’d be damned if I let that happen.
I nodded at Luis. “Yeah. Less than four weeks. One thing I still don’t get…why are they so desperate to get into this vault or whatever? They’re already more powerful than almost anyone on earth. Is this vial of blood really that big of a deal?”
“I think there has to be something else inside there. Other than Edemas’s blood,” Luis said.
“Maybe,” I said.
Dad held up his hands. “We need to take a step back here. We’re getting caught up with all the extraneous stuff, but we need to focus on Maddy.
She still hasn’t shifted yet. We need her at full strength, whatever that is.
She can’t do that without you,” he said, nodding toward me.
“You’ve got to focus on her. We can plan afterward. ”
As though fate heard my father’s words, I found Maddy in the kitchen a couple hours later.
I’d come down from my room for a snack, and she was standing at the counter, making herself a sandwich.
I froze and stared at her. It was the first time I’d seen her in almost a full day.
My wolf whined at the sight of her. It was desperate to go to her, to hold her.
I hesitated to act on those desires. I didn’t know how she’d react to me.
The last words she’d spoken to me weren’t the loving kind.
I didn’t blame her for that, but it terrified me that something between us had been broken.
Maddy noticed my presence and turned from the plate she was working.
I stood in place, unsure what to do. She surprised me by dropping her butter knife and crossing the room.
She swung her arms around me and pressed her face into my chest, hugging me tightly.
I almost sobbed in relief and put my own arms around her, pulling her close.
Nothing had ever felt so good as having her body pressed into mine.
“I’m sorry,” Maddy whispered.
“For what?”
“For what I said to you. I’m sorry. I was panicking and freaked out and scared. I didn’t mean to say what I said to you. You have kept your promises. I wasn’t thinking clearly. All I could do was picture my family and Abi in those pictures. I just want to save them, Nico.”
I gently pulled her away from me and looked into her eyes.
“We’re going to figure this out.” I didn’t make another promise.
No matter what she said, I knew I hadn’t done a very good job at making good on my promises.
“I love you. Losing you is not an option. I’m not going to hand you over to them so they can do God knows what to you. ”
“I think I have a plan to help.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You do? Let’s hear it.”
“I want you to claim me. I think I’ll be able to shift after you do.
If the royals are afraid I can become some big powerful beast, then maybe I can.
Once I’m a full shifter, I can train and get stronger.
Put the fear of God into them. If I can control the power inside me, then maybe we can use it. ”
I frowned and thought for a second before answering. “Maddy, I plan on claiming you. I want you forever, but becoming a shifter won’t make you all-powerful. The guys and I are scared that we won’t be enough as it is. One more shifter won’t make that much of a difference.”
Maddy pulled her lower lip into her mouth and nibbled at it. I could see she was trying to think of what to say. Then she looked me dead in the eye and said something I wasn’t prepared for. “I don’t think my wolf is normal. I think she’s…much more.”
“Huh?”
“You guys talk about feeling sensations and emotions from your wolves, but my connection isn’t anything like what you guys describe.
Her voice is so strong, almost like it’s another person standing beside me, whispering in my ear.
I noticed it the night of the full moon.
She’s powerful, Nico. Very powerful. If we can finally break her free, she might be the secret weapon we need.
It’s only a hunch, but I think I’m right. ”
“Maddy, I don’t want to claim you on the basis of a hunch.”
“Are you serious?” Maddy asked.
“Uh…I…what?” I stumbled over my words, trying to come up with an answer. I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that. Serious about not claiming her, or that it was more than a hunch? I didn’t know what to say.
“I want you to claim me anyway, you big idiot. I already promised myself to you. I love you. That’s not going to change. I want you, and I want you completely and totally. If you still want to wait, then that’s up to you. I’ll wait, but just know that I’m ready to be yours. Completely yours.”
I thought my wolf was literally going to jump out of my chest. Hearing her lay it all out like that had sent him into a frenzy.
It almost felt like he was going feral. The desperation I felt in him was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
It was all I could do to hold him off. I wanted to take her more than anything.
I wanted to pick her up and slam her onto the kitchen island.
Rip her clothes off and fuck her brains out, then sink my teeth into her, claim her, and make her mine forever.
I blinked the thoughts away, I still didn’t want this to be some spontaneous thing. I wanted it to be special. To mean something.
I cupped her cheek. “A few more days, I promise. Not much longer. We’ll talk about how to get you through your first shift. Soon.”
Maddy leaned forward and kissed me. “I can wait. If that’s what’s best.”
“We’re going to make it through this, Maddy.”
She nodded. “I know. Fate didn’t bring us this far for us to fail.”