Chapter 2 #2
He knew if he laughed, she’d launch herself at him, so he stamped his lips together as she and Magnus strode away, the guard keeping a wise few paces behind his future queen.
“She’s going to kill you,” Rhydian said, also, it seemed, afraid to show any amusement until the two of them were out of sight. He lifted his head to examine the cloudy sky.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Kai answered truthfully, thinking of that passion being thrown at him. He turned his attention back to the border wall.
Rhydian said, “I thought you told everyone to be scarce around the House tonight.”
Yes, he’d had plans. Plans that began with dinner and ended with her struggling to keep those wonderful sounds of hers contained.
But then she’d wanted to trail Eli—not entirely strange, given her need to be involved in everything—and then he’d noticed something else.
The black cloak, torn and covered in dark blood, that hadn’t made it entirely under the bed to its typical hiding place.
Her mother’s cloak.
At the thought, his power writhed.
Murderer.
Kai battled away the thought, tried to stifle the void that tried to push and push. He wondered if Rhydian could sense it the way Isla could.
In a breath, Kai allowed it to cast out and gave it an outlet. He shrugged. “Plans change.”
A small bite must’ve slipped into his tone because Rhydian jeered, “You seem pleased by that.”
“Who wouldn’t want to spend the night trailing the general who brought their mate across the continent just to get in her pants, instead of being at home in bed with her?”
Rhydian’s smile was too wide for Kai’s liking. “Still on that mating edge, brother?” He must’ve understood, even if he and Davina had mated over a year ago.
Kai ran his tongue over his bottom lip, as if he could still taste Isla there, still feel the press of her body and her touch on his chest. On edge wasn’t the half of it.
Their bond was still new in a way, still fresh.
Broken and healing, but still had him in that newly mated male frenzy, wanting to be on her, in her, to the point where it was near maddening.
He said, “As long as it’s the two of us, I don’t care where we are.”
“Very diplomatic answer.” Rhydian twisted his head in the opposite direction to where Isla and Kai had come from. “So, you took Meera’s tip then. Do you think Eli’s up to the same shit Callan was?”
Kai opened his mouth to answer, but then closed it. As if he’d caught an animal on a snare, his senses snagged on something beyond the borders.
Go see.
Either his natural inclination or that power beckoned. He took a few careful steps forward, avoiding the crunch of the drying grass. Rhydian didn’t even bother questioning; he only followed.
“I don’t know what information Cassius would have him gather that he didn’t have Callan get already.
” Kai lowered his voice as he approached the wall’s weathered stone.
“He has to know about the tunnels. He knows what my father was planning, to an extent at least. He knows we’re dealing with a witch, and the witch came from his prison.
” He moved along the wall until he reached a small fissure, enough for one to slip through—where his scouts were meant to slip through.
Another breath. He closed his eyes, focusing.
Thunder rumbled—but not loud enough for Kai to miss the sound of a branch cracking beneath a foot. Someone was out there waiting… watching.
His nostrils flared as his eyes snapped open.
Then the Alpha of Deimos entered the rogue lands.
Behind the border wall, the forest was still, silent but for the sound of water pattering off bare branches of trees onto the leaf-littered floor. A vapor swirled around Kai’s legs, a fog in the distance by whatever uncharted body of water lay beyond.
Rogue territory, undesirable and nearly uninhabitable, was unclaimed by any of the kingdoms. The wolves who ended up here could’ve easily tried building their own societies, unchecked by the Imperial Alpha, but it wasn’t in their nature.
Rogues had become so mostly due to their heinous actions against fellow wolves or their desire to be free from a pack’s constraints.
Kai paused just before the fog’s edge, clocking Rhydian close behind him. He could sense so much of his brother’s feelings—the doubt, confusion, and apprehensiveness at being in here—but he still guarded Kai’s back. Always had.
“Something’s out here,” Kai finally enlightened him, and as if the Goddess had made it a point to spear her dwindling light through the clouds for him to notice, he caught a glittering within the leaf litter. Too perfectly piled.
Kai advanced, mindful of the still-muted forest and guided by instinct, he carefully brushed the perimeter of the spot until he revealed a chain.
He tugged it and then beheld a brutal spike meant to tear through flesh and bone.
Several spikes. A hunter’s trap, not unusual, used mainly by those who couldn’t shift to score game.
But here…
He crouched to examine it more closely and then twisted, noticing the trajectory the trap had hoped for its prey. It had been perfectly placed so that anyone approaching the fissure in the border would be snared; anyone going out or trying to get in.
There was a whisper of a blade unsheathing, followed by heavy breathing and footsteps.
A rattled battle cry was cut short as Kai’s hand, extracted claws digging into flesh, clamped around the charging man’s scrawny neck.
Not enough to kill, but enough that the warmth of blood coated his skin.
He brought him to the ground rough enough to knock the wind from his lungs and wrench the dagger from his hand.
His wolf howled within him, that power singing a war song as Kai breathed raggedly through clenched teeth.
This man, whoever he was, couldn’t shift.
The doorway of his mind, unused, was more difficult to find, but somehow, Kai had traced it, and the void rose, spearing for unfortified walls before Kai could leash it.
Thoughts that weren’t his own assaulted him along with shrieking, overwhelming emotions of fear and aggravation.
The sensation of pain that wasn’t his felt like pinpricks on his own consciousness.
It should’ve hurt. There should’ve been some consequence to something as vile and intrusive as this.
As he glimpsed people he did not know, heard words that were never meant for his ears, and felt joy, horror, pleasure, and suffering that wasn’t his.
Pull. Fucking. Back.
He couldn’t let this consume him entirely. Never again. No matter who this was.
A weak tug of something inside him, a glimmer of a dimmed light. A better part of him.
Kai breathed, then released.
The man ripped a panicked, frustrated scream so violently from his lungs that Kai wondered if he’d taken away that ability, too. His body squirmed amongst blood-matted leaves, his feet kicking and his nose leaking crimson from Kai’s unintended assault.
Kai released his grip on his neck, leaving his claws out and dripping gore onto the man’s chest as he pressed his foot to his throat instead. He could feel Rhydian behind him, sense the rise of his power and Rhydian’s apprehension that he hoped wasn’t towards him.
“You have two seconds to explain why you’re laying traps by my borders before I crush your windpipe,” Kai growled, bringing his wolf forward and allowing his eyes and lumerosi to glow their signature blood-red.
The man, a rogue, Kai could only assume, gurgled a curse through the blood in his mouth.
Not a mindlessly brash rogue, then. He knew to be afraid.
The man braced his hands on either side of Kai’s booted foot, pushing up to lessen some pressure, but Kai only pressed harder. “This isn’t your territory,” he wheezed, “you have no jurisdiction here, Alpha.”
Alpha?
“And yet, you address me properly.” Maybe he’d just been cast out. Rogues didn’t respect hierarchies. Apparently, he hadn’t unlearned that yet. Unless…
Kai sifted through the memories and feelings again, recalled the voices he’d heard, the shouts of agony, the words.
He narrowed his eyes, his canines feeling sharper than usual as he drew a horrendous conclusion. “You’re not a rogue at all, are you?” The man’s stiffening seemed enough of an answer. And if he wasn’t a rogue, then these traps… “Did someone send you out here?”
There.
A fluttering of the man’s heartbeat. A sinking sense of doom so potent that Kai could taste the bitterness.
Fuck.
Those shouts became a clear image of terrified people bounding for freedom, only to be snared in these jaws, hoping they’d bleed out before they could be dragged away. A bounty hunter meant to capture Kai’s spies or wrangle Locke’s fleeing pack members. That family… His own men…
How many had been taken?
Kai swore he could feel the man’s rasping breath against his sole as his face turned a faint shade of purple.
Kill him.
It was a thought that came too easily. A little more force, and he could. His power fed off his own malice. It wanted to dig and pry and tear and shred and rip apart. It wanted retribution—but Kai pulled back. Back, back.
“Are you alone?” Kai’s voice was lethally calm, cold.
As if he could sense his fate was at a crossroads, the man nodded.
If he lied, Kai would know anyway. It felt like he had a hold on the man’s bones, his breath, his soul.
Whatever wolf lay dormant beneath his skin, he found that too and had it cowering.
The lumerosi on his arms and his back burned. “How many other traps are there?”
“F… four. A… at each of the… these t… trees.” Gasping now, the man pointed out several of them with a shaky hand.
Kai wouldn’t turn his attention away, but there was Rhydian still at his back, guarding him. “Some of the trees are marked, likely so he wouldn’t accidentally trip them,” he said with no waver in his voice, a mountain of force, another threat in his own right.
“How do you disable them?” Kai asked.
Several attempted labored breaths fell before he could say, “A… a pin by the back mechanism.”
“Rhydian.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
Rhydian fell back to make work of disarming the snares while the man’s eyes fluttered, turning glassy. If Kai didn’t let up soon, this was over.
End it.
But if he could learn who he was working with, overhear his conversations with Locke, see plans through his eyes…
To protect his family, his people, to protect Isla—
“Rhyd, leave that one alone!” Kai called to his brother, who’d been crouched beside the last of the snares.
He ignored the temptation of his power, having the same sinking feeling as before. If he gave in to it, he’d lose another fragment of himself when he already struggled to keep himself pieced together.
Kai lifted his foot and stepped back from the man, who let out a cry of relief as he scrambled for his throat. “Th… thank you.”
Maybe he’d lost too much air. That was why he was so delusional.
Kai nodded sideways to the trap. “Walk.”
The man blinked. “What?”
“Walk,” Kai repeated, and echoing throughout the skies was the boom of thunder. The rain hadn’t fallen, but he could feel it. “I’m giving you the option of someone hearing you before you bleed out.” He took another step back. “Make me say it again, and I’ll leave you gutted here.”
The man barely deliberated.
He rose, keeping his hands where Kai could observe, and began his walk towards where Rhydian stood, his head low.
He knew if he ran, they’d catch him. But what Kai should’ve expected, maybe had in the back of his mind, is that the man would use his distance between them to reach into his pocket and pull out what looked like a small capsule.
Before either of them could react, he shoved it in his mouth.
One bite, one bob of his throat, and he fell into a writhing heap on the dirt, foam forming at the corners of his chapped lips.
Kai didn’t move; he just watched as Rhydian ran up to him, checking for a pulse at the side of his neck. “He’s dead.” Shock laced each word. “He’s dead. What do we do?”
Wordlessly, with veins filled with both fire and ice, Kai wrenched the man’s dagger from the dirt, then took hold of the man’s collar, dragging his limp body to the base of one of his marked trees. Above him, in the bark, Kai carved his family’s sigil as an acknowledgment, a warning.
He tossed the blade in the leaves beside the corpse and turned for home.
Then the rain began.