Chapter 6 #2
Iris uncrossed her arms slowly, Doris hanging in one hand. “This doesn’t feel random.”
There it was. The thing none of us wanted to say out loud.
Ronin looked toward her. “You think someone did this on purpose to a kid?”
“Addison,” I growled her name, knowing all along she’d done this, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to say it.
“She did this. I don’t know how she did it, but this was her.
” Even though wereapes weren’t magical creatures, and most of them hated magic, it was pretty easy for one to get their hands on a Dark curse on the black paranormal market.
Iris’s dark gaze flicked toward me briefly, and I knew she agreed with me.
Addison. Had made my kid sick.
The timing. The smile she gave me at the festival. It all fit.
I didn’t believe in coincidences.
“I’m going to kill her,” said Marcus quietly. The calmness in his voice somehow made the threat infinitely scarier. Very alpha wereape. Very terrifying husband energy.
“Marcus,” I whispered.
His gray eyes shifted toward me.
“I’m not saying she didn’t do something,” I said carefully, trying to keep my spiraling panic from fully taking over. “But we don’t know that yet. Not a hundred percent.”
Marcus looked unconvinced.
Darian whimpered again and curled instinctively toward my chest. Then his tiny body jerked sharply. A low gorilla growl escaped him before dissolving into a frightened little human cry.
The sound ripped straight through me.
“Oh goddess,” I whispered.
Marcus crouched beside us. Our eyes met over Darian—fear, real fear, the kind no parent ever wants to see reflected back at them.
“He’ll be okay,” Marcus said firmly. Maybe to me. Maybe to himself.
I wanted desperately to believe him. But then Darian’s shifting flickered again.
Fur. Skin. Fur. Skin. Fast now, like his body was losing control. And deep down, beneath all my panic and denial and desperate hope…
I knew.
Something was happening. Something bad. And every protective instinct inside me sharpened instantly.
A knock on the door spun me around. Marcus was already moving by the time the third knock finished. He opened the door.
Lori stood there. “We looked everywhere, boss. We can’t find her. It’s like she disappeared.”
“Keep looking,” said Marcus, and then he said something else to her that I couldn’t quite hear. After closing the door, he came back into the living room. He met my eyes. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”
“When?” I said, my voice rising.
I’d asked Marcus to look for Addison the moment we came back to the cottage. Lori and the others were good at tracking, but I had a feeling Addison expected it. Challenged me even. It wouldn’t be easy to find her. “It could be days before anyone finds her. By then… by then Darian might be worse.”
The words barely made it out before my throat tightened again. Because the second you spoke those kinds of fears into existence, they became real somehow. Permanent. Heavy.
And right now, I needed hope more than realism.
Darian shifted weakly beneath the blanket again, one tiny furry foot kicking slightly before shrinking halfway back into human form.
My chest physically hurt watching it. Every instinct inside me kept screaming, “Fix this. Fix him. Do something.”
But I didn’t know what to do.
Marcus stood near the couch like a storm barely holding itself together. His broad shoulders looked tense enough to crack stone while his gray eyes stayed locked on Darian with terrifying focus.
The entire room felt saturated with protective energy—violent protective energy.
If Addison walked through the front door right now, Marcus would probably launch through the wall before she finished her first sentence.
Part of me appreciated that. Part of me was worried we’d have to hide a body afterward.
“I’ll increase the dosage,” said Ruth, standing up. “It’ll keep him comfortable.”
I watched as Ruth went back to her bag and started pulling out jars and tiny pouches.
The old leather bag looked impossibly deep, stuffed with dried herbs, potion bottles, bundles of roots tied together with twine, tiny labeled jars, and what looked suspiciously like a preserved frog wearing a tiny hat.
I decided not to ask.
Ruth moved quickly now, far more focused than usual. Her white cloud of hair bounced slightly as she uncorked bottles and muttered softly under her breath. “Moonroot…” She grabbed one jar. “No, too strong.” Another. “Frostleaf.” Another. “Where in the cauldron did I put the ironroot? Oh. Here.”
Ruth began grinding the ironroot carefully into a small stone bowl along with crushed frostleaf. The sharp earthy smell of herbs filled the room.
“Darian’s strong,” she said gently while mixing the potion. “His magic is strong too.”
“That’s what scares me,” I admitted. Because what if his magic was too strong? Too unstable? Too impossible? Darian wasn’t just a wereape child. He was Marcus’s son.
My son. Nexari. Accelerated. Something entirely new.
And suddenly that uniqueness didn’t feel special anymore.
It felt dangerous.
“What do you want to do, Tessa?” asked Iris.
I thought about it, though it was hard to think with a sick kid. I didn’t know where Addison was or even could be. I didn’t know where she was hiding. And if I did find her, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to control myself… or my magic.
But I knew she was smart. Cleverer than her sister. She wouldn’t be easy to track down. Hell, no one had even known she existed.
But something still nagged at me. Something didn’t add up. Whatever this was, it started long before she knocked on my front door, and her twin sister Allison was part of it.
I needed proof. Proof she did something. Proof she was a psychopath. Proof this wasn’t just grief or paranoia turning my brain into emotional soup.
It would have been easy to ask Allison since she was locked up in a paranormal prison with nowhere to hide. But Allison was dead.
And then it hit me. I knew what I needed to do.
I looked at them and said, “I’m going to Grimway Citadel.”
Because if I wanted answers about Addison, I had a feeling I’d find them there.