Chapter 7
ADRIEN
“Isn’t it a bit early, Your Highness?”
Adrien didn’t even glance at Sandrine as he splashed bourbon into a glass. He’d been in the room for all of ten seconds before the dry bar in the corner called to him like a beacon on a stormy night.
“No.” The prince knocked the drink back, savoring the burn in his throat as he refilled the glass.
Sandrine made a disbelieving sound, flipping her coppery hair over a crimson-clad shoulder. “So, who is she that has you so wound up?”
Another drain to the dregs. “I’m not wound up.”
“Yeah, okay. And I didn’t see that little caress back in the car or find it strange that the two of you are hiding out in your vacation home or that your scent when you’re near her becomes just a bit too detectable.”
Adrien contemplated pouring another, but instead, set the glass back on the bar’s crystal surface. “I don’t recall you being so nosy.”
“Some say nosy, others perceptive. It’s a good trait as a guard.”
“An annoying one,” Adrien muttered, turning to find her standing with proper form, shoulders and legs square, hands behind her back. “Do you ever stop being a guard?”
Sandrine gave him a flat look and relaxed, though she didn’t move from her spot.
“I won’t deny she’s pretty, but she isn’t of Io.
At least, I don’t recall ever meeting her.
I can’t get a scent off her either, other than how she clearly also feels about you—like every other mateless woman on this continent.
I believe I caught an accent, too. Did you pick her up in the southern territories or something? ”
The southern territories? Wrong direction, but good enough, he supposed.
“Yeah,” he said gruffly, running his hands over his face as he took a seat on one of the leather couches.
“I hope you get better at lying before you become the Alpha, for your own sake,” Sandrine said. “Were you always so bad at it?”
Adrien narrowed his eyes at her, though she wasn’t wrong.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he rested his head back and let his eyes trace the ceiling. This sitting room, like others on this floor, was littered with old books and maps. He glanced over at the piece draped on the wall, similar to the one in the lounge he’d left Raana in with his father.
It had taken every scrap of willpower to leave her with him and not to go back in there right now.
His shoulders were practically up to his ears. Wound up. Yeah, he was.
The last thing you, of all people, need is to be screwing around with a witch.
At Isla’s voice in his head, Adrien grimaced. What he’d give to have her here, slapping sense into him right now.
As if she’d sensed, tangentially, where his mind had gone, Sandrine asked, her voice light with mocking, “What is it? Are you lost without your other half? I don’t think you and Sebastian have ever been apart for this long.”
Adrien didn’t bother lifting his head. “He’ll be back; don’t worry.
” If he remembered correctly, Sandrine had fawned over his lifelong best friend when they’d been teenagers.
But then again, Sebastian charmed everyone—even those Adrien thought the Imperial Beta’s son had no shot with.
He wondered how things were going with him and Kai’s friend, Ameera, while he was in Deimos for Isla’s coronation.
Intimidatingly beautiful, a warrior, and unattainable. One of his many types.
“Not Isla, though,” Sandrine said.
Adrien furrowed his brows at the mention, the barely perceptible bite to her voice. “No, not Isla.” The words stung more than he’d braced for.
“You know, a part of me always thought you two would’ve ended up together, especially after she ended things with my cousin. And you—” Sandrine cut herself off.
Adrien tried to ignore where her words had been heading, banishing any thoughts of his own past, and forced a laugh. “I love her, but not a chance in hell. There never was.”
Even when she’d been with Sandrine’s cousin.
Callan, Isla’s shitty ex, was a warrior as she’d become. The two of them had been put on assignment in Deimos a couple of months ago to deal with rogue attacks on the pack’s borders.
Sandrine snorted, and at a look from Adrien that said stop having a stick up your ass for two seconds and relax, she sat on the chair across from him. “Her coronation’s in a few days, isn’t it?”
“On the Equinox,” Adrien said before testing out slowly, “Luna Isla of Deimos. Long may she reign.”
Sandrine snickered. “Of all the packs on the continent.”
“Deimos isn’t so bad.”
“I heard from other guards that your father received death threats while he was there.”
“As he does in Mimas, Tethys, Rhea, and Iapetus. My father is the Alpha. If his life wasn’t in danger from some radicals or rogues, then he should fear that he’s lost track of where the threat is.”
Sandrine hummed. “I also heard you ran off, too. That you weren’t supposed to be there for the challenge.”
Adrien shrugged. “I had to be there for a friend. Alpha Kai is Isla’s mate, her fated mate. I couldn’t leave her to deal with watching that alone.”
His statement had something sparking in Sandrine’s eyes, her brows raising.
“So, what I don’t get,” she began carefully, “If he’s her fated mate…
they were in the Hunt together. Surely, they knew they were fated, then.
But they obviously didn’t reject the bond.
Yet, Isla came back here for a month before going back to Deimos and taking the throne. ”
Her words sounded so rehearsed that they made Adrien clench his teeth. It had been distrust and suspicion in her eyes. It didn’t take much to figure out what she was alluding to. Isla, a luna by destiny, living secretly amongst Io’s citizens. A spy.
He obviously knew the whole tale and had confronted her about her logic and their reasoning for choosing to do nothing about what lay between them, but was it his to disclose? Before he could muster an answer, the door mercifully burst open.
Or maybe not so mercifully.
Raana was a whirlwind, and Adrien shot to his feet. Magic seared in her blood—he wasn’t sure how he could sense it. She was on the precipice of something dangerous. It was apparent on her face, too, her soft features drawn in lethal lines. “What happened?”
“I need to talk to you.” Her voice was hoarse, broken. Cold. “Now. Alone.”
Sandrine had also risen, her feet spread and shoulders squared, lumerosi and eyes glowing that common pale blue. Her fingers splayed, ready to draw claws, prepared to uphold her duty to protect him.
Adrien’s heart was a war drum, and his wolf crested, a burn beneath his skin as his own markings flared. “Stand down.” A command that made Sandrine stiffen. “Leave us.”
The guard gave a subtle shake of her head as if she also had the preternatural sense of the threat rising in the room. “Your Highness—”
“Go.”
Reluctantly, she obeyed—but not without a glower at Raana. When the door had closed behind her, a wave of black cascaded over the wood. Shadows forming a barrier, hardening.
Keeping others out. Or… him in?
Adrien should’ve been more afraid of the woman before him. A phantom wind billowed her hair, her dress, the crystal glittering near her throat. Her entire body, from her toes to the crown of her head, seemed to hum with anger—with power. Adrien swore that on an exhale, he could see his own breath.
Only once had he seen a glimpse of this. Of her. The true her.
In the face of it, Adrien pulled back his wolf. Not much, but enough to take the burn from his eyes, his markings.
If she had something to throw at him, he’d be ready to weather it, but more than anything, he needed to keep her mortal. His voice was a tender caress as he chanced a step. “Raana.”
Shadows greeted him, curling around his feet like feral cats.
Her magic, her fae magic, probed him, his intentions, if he was a threat.
His wolf wanted to rise to it, to fight it off.
But when it came to faerie magic, Adrien, all of them, were almost powerless.
He’d need to weaken her beyond reason to land a blow, as they had in the past against her ancestors.
Raana’s mouth opened and closed, her chest heaving, eyes glossing over. “Helene.”
The name had barely been a whisper.
Adrien continued to advance. “What about her?”
Raana wouldn’t meet his eyes, but he could see the way hers flickered. And that wasn’t shadows crawling up her arms; the darkness spider-webbing there was skin-deep. Her features, her face, her ears, all of it… had shifted. His eyes darted to her hand, still donning that ring.
“Raana,” he pressed as the light seemed to flee from the room, from her.
A shiver raced up his spine, ice filling his veins.
Those cats at his feet scraped at him with claws and teeth, teasing, testing.
He bared down when they bit, the magic nearly tearing his clothes when they tried to lock him in place away from her. They failed.
When his hand touched her cheek, it was freezing, unbearably so, but he didn’t move, even when her shadows tried to pull again. “What happened to Helene?”
Her eyes met his—primal, ethereal. Fae. A universe born and destroyed within them with each blink. “She’s—she’s never coming back.”
It was a numb, distant sentence. Disbelieving.
“What happened?” Adrien kept his body from tightening, from letting his reaction feed into hers. What the fuck did his father do?
Raana’s jaw tensed beneath his fingers, and her hand wearing that ring reached up to touch his, squeezing for reassurance that he was actually there.
“She told him. She told your father. She told him what I am, and she left. Forever.” The final word was breathless.
“It wasn’t worth the risk anymore—I wasn’t—so she left, left me to him. She’s gone.”
Raana dropped her hand from his and stepped back, wrapping her arms around herself. Shadows swept over her, seeming to drape her like a cloak. The room brightened, warmed.