Chapter 31
KAI
“I’m sorry for what I said.”
Kai glanced over at Isla from where he’d been observing the lake’s surface, the wind catching the wisps loosened from where she’d braided back her hair. The crescent pommel of the sword strapped to her back glinted in the moonlight. “What do you mean?”
She closed the distance between them, a map of Deimos in her hands.
Across it, lines were scribbled, mimicking the ones Callan had drawn.
“When I said it wasn’t ‘worth it,’ I didn’t mean…
” She paused. “I didn’t mean Ezekiel shouldn’t pay.
I know locking him up isn’t enough of a punishment for all he’s done—”
Kai stopped her with a crooked finger beneath her chin.
“If you didn’t stop me, I could’ve killed him, and we don’t need that right now.
” Maybe it should’ve frightened him that there was very little tethering him not to do it.
As it had before, even dulled to a whisper by the bane, the power called to him to kill.
Ezekiel had a feeble mind, so easy to shatter and pick apart.
Moving him out of the safehouse and into dank, cold, ancient dungeons beneath the hall would do for now.
Isla pursed her lips, haunted azure eyes glittering with the stars. “Are you okay?”
I don’t think there’s any chance for peace while you exist.
He only told me it was to protect the family… to protect you.
It was his fault. All of it. His father and Jaden’s death, his mother’s heartache, and every horrible occurrence that followed. His. Fault.
Guilt settled like tar on his heart as he took in Isla’s beautiful face, her despondent eyes—the face of a woman who would not know rest as long as she stood by his side.
I am me because I am yours. I’m made to take you, all of you, as you are.
Even if he was a fucking curse?
Kai forced a soft smile. “I will be.” Saying anything else would be too heinous a lie.
Isla’s grin was just as gentle as she pushed to her toes and pressed her mouth to his.
You are mine.
He was grateful that whatever void festered inside him didn’t push her away. When they broke apart, he rested his forehead against hers.
“We’re going to be okay,” she whispered between them. A reassurance, a question, a plea. And hearing it from her lips, knowing the mental hell she’d been going through since Eli had been killed, meant everything.
He tilted his head down to kiss her nose. “We’re going to be okay.”
Isla took a step back, her hands going to the straps of her pack. After speaking with Ezekiel, they’d prepared for a small night of exploration in the tunnels.
“This was the lake you washed off in after the bak?”
Kai hummed in affirmation, remembering how he’d felt plunging into the water, no longer on the brink of death. “We should be close. Not long after that hill’s decline, the slope feeds into a forest, and it’s hidden by the brush.”
“Let’s keep moving, then.” Isla took the lead, plowing ahead.
He may have given her a few extra steps while appreciating the view.
Unlike on the Equinox, the passage did not beckon him this time. All was quiet. Internally, at least. Around them, the forest felt alive, charged.
The scent of the tunnel hit him first. Acrid and vile. A clear echo of the abhorrent scent of the Wilds with its dark and twisted magic. Given how far away they were from the Wall, from Phobos, the odor was concerning.
At the cave’s mouth, Kai peered into the blackness, barely lit by crystals in the walls, as if the Goddess and her light had been chased away from here. The stone floor, to his surprise, was splattered with dried blood.
His blood.
“Goddess above.” Isla crouched. “There’s so much.”
Apparently, he’d been more injured than he’d thought.
Isla’s wide eyes drifted further inward, tracing his bloodied path. “How did you even make it back home?”
Kai blinked. “I… recovered?”
Isla stood with a hand on her hip, and Kai could hear the ratcheting up of her heartbeat, the quickening of her breath. He couldn’t deny struggling with confined spaces, but from what Isla had told him, for her, they were a nightmare. Why would she have proposed coming here at all?
He placed a gentle hand on her back. “We don't have to do this tonight, Isla.”
She glanced up at him, hesitance flickering in her eyes before that warrior’s steel settled over it. “No. If war is coming, coming soon, then we should understand all paths that leave us vulnerable—or that we can use. Getting the markers is important to map it all.”
She took a sidestep from him before reaching back and drawing her sword, the metal sighing as it was released from the sheath. Kai couldn’t fight the smile tugging at his lips.
Isla inclined her head at him. “What?”
Kai shrugged. “I shouldn’t find you so attractive holding a weapon.”
Lamp in hand, Kai led the way, taking them the first few yards beyond the cave’s mouth.
The air hollowed in his ears with each step, and there was the faintest sound of rushing water.
His hand ran along the cool cave wall, keeping his eye out for any of those small wooden orbs etched with the swirls and symbols of his ancestors.
“How far in had you gone?” Isla’s question was punctuated by the click of a dropped pebble, the glitter-painted rock laid to keep track of their path.
She hadn’t dropped them often, though, given his blood had already mapped their path.
Given the volume, he had no idea how he was able to walk out of here and home alive.
“In another few yards, there's a split. You'll know which direction I took by my blood.”
A few more feet, and they came upon the divide, and indeed, more blood, the most they’d seen because his wounds were freshest here. And the smell—Goddess, the stench made his eyes water.
Even Isla had brought her sleeve up to her nose. “Something tells me the bak weren’t moved.”
They came to a halt a few feet from the closest dead beast, the two others further away. Three throats torn to shreds by Kai’s wolf. Swarms of insects and some tiny rat-like creatures now fed off the carcasses.
“Goddess,” Isla groaned, her eyes flicking up and focusing on something. “There’s a marker over here.” She’d have to get close to the beast to wrench it from the cave wall.
“I’ll do it.” Kai extended a hand for the small chisel. To his surprise, she didn’t argue.
While he drove the blade into the rock around the marker’s edge, Isla examined the bak’s corpse. “How did you kill this one?”
Kai glanced down from the stone wall, noticing her tipping the creature’s chin with the blade of her sword. “What do you mean?”
“The throat is still intact. The others aren’t.
” She gestured to the clear pools of blood beneath the other two and trained her eyes elsewhere along the body.
“And I don’t see any other injuries.” Though the creature appeared very much dead, accompanied by a blank, vacant red stare, Isla lifted her sword high.
She was about to bring it down, cleaving the beast’s body, when she screamed and fell back on her ass.
Her shout still echoed as Kai abandoned his work on the marker, his wolf attempting to rise to the surface against the bane. “What is it?”
But Isla didn’t speak; she just sat on the rock floor, sword at her side as she panted, wide-eyed. It took him a few darting glances to realize what she was staring at.
A minute, beady set of red eyes peeked from the large crevice between the bak’s neck and shoulder.
Then red eyes became a tiny head, half-drooped ears, and a small, wet snout.
It had ashen-gray hair-covered skin and paws, without any skin-tearing, gutting claws.
And when the creature yawned, those were not throat-tearing teeth.
Kai’s whisper reverberated off the tunnel’s walls. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“It’s a baby,” Isla gushed, more confused, fascinated, and excited than he would’ve liked her to be.
The first two emotions, he agreed on. He’d never seen a bak pup before. Hell, he didn’t know they… reproduced, but then again, they’d never explored much of the Wilds. And the bak had to come from somewhere with the Hunt going on for as long as it had.
Suddenly, one of the rats, no longer satisfied with its dead meal, dove for the bak pup. Its teeth nipped at the baby, a yelp and cry slipping its maw.
“Hey!”
Before Kai could stop Isla, she was lunging forward, scooping the pup in her arms, and impaling the rat with her sword.
The other rodents took a break from their feasting to turn on her, but one flash of her violet eyes, her wolf rising, sent them squeaking and scurrying away. “Yeah, you better run.” She flicked their dead companion off her blade’s tip.
Kai noticed the pup gazing up at her, its tiny red eyes drinking her in. A wolf, a predator. A queen. He was shocked when it didn’t squirm or try to flee from her arms.
No, the little beast settled.
It took up the entire cradle of her arm, a decent size but nowhere near the size of an adult bak.
For a delirious moment, he could admit it was cute. Endearing, even, as it tucked into her for protection.
Then reality set in.
Kai asked, “What are you doing?"
Isla tucked the pup closer as she turned to him.
She met his eyes, then followed his stare to the bak in her arms. They darted back to him, then to the bak again.
She smiled weakly. “I don’t really know.
” From its perch in her hold, the pup shivered as it stared at the dead bak below.
Isla frowned. “I think one of these is its mother.”
Kai observed the gruesome scene. It had been a melee of teeth, claws, and death. He hadn’t noticed a mother protecting her pup. Though if they’d been calm in this makeshift den of theirs and they perceived him as a threat…
Of course, they’d fight.
He was surprised by the nausea that roiled his gut.
But these were bak in his territory. He had to get a grip.
“It’s horribly trusting,” he said.
“I didn’t know bak had pups.”
“Neither did I.”
His mate glanced down at the small beast in her arms, then ran a finger over the back of its head, behind its ears. It seemed to lean into her touch, and she let out a small, incredulous sound. “We left all the food outside the cave mouth?”
“Yes, why?”
“It’s so thin,” Isla said, still petting. “And its heartbeat is weak. It probably hasn’t eaten in days.”
As it nudged into the cup of her hand, and she let out a small laugh—one of the most joyous sounds he’d heard from her in days—Kai sighed. “Isla.” He fought to keep off a smile that mirrored her own as she met his eyes. “What are you thinking?”
The grin that slid across her mouth, though innocent, was far from it. “I want to feed it.”
“Just feed it,” Kai affirmed.
“Yes.”
His mate, a lover and giver of the benefit of the doubt to all… including little monsters.
“Isla.”
“Kai,” she mocked his tone. “I just want to get it some food, and then we'll bring it back to the Wilds.”
“We haven’t fully traced a safe path directly to the Wilds yet.”
“Well, now we have more incentive to.”
As if it could sense his opposition, the pup turned to Kai. He narrowed his eyes, and the creature flinched, curling into Isla.
She gave Kai a deadpan look, caressing the creature between the ears.
"Don't let the brooding fool you,” she whispered to it. “He’s a softie. He won't hurt you.” Kai kept his features unwavering, and Isla sighed. “I just want to get it some food, and then we’ll keep going. Maybe we’ll find the direct path tonight. ”
“We’re in Ifera.”
It wasn’t possible to reach the Wilds from here unless they intended to be out all night and felt like risking getting lost in this unknown maze forever.
Isla shrugged. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
When she began heading back the way they’d come, following her pebbles and his river of dried blood, Kai waited a few moments. Not to watch her walk away this time, but to glance back at the three dead bak.
At that one with the uncut throat and the maw of the tunnel beyond. Quiet. So quiet.
What had called him here?
Kai shook his head, knowing he wouldn’t find the answer in this barrenness. With three more hard knocks to the marker, it popped off into his hand, and he followed her.