Chapter 17
Conrí
“You look pale, Mr Gallagher,” Nora said with a frown.
“Get everything you can on Nika Horvat, please.”
She nodded, pen already moving. “Internal and external?”
“Everything.”
Her eyebrows lifted almost to her hairline but she was far too professional to say anything.
Unlike Nika.
Nika Horvat.
The name had not stopped circling.
Wrong smell. Wrong eyes. Wrong mouth.
Just thinking about her pricked at my hunting instinct. Not hunting for sustenance. Hunting for survival.
Kael hummed with approval. We were aligned again.
“Thanks, Nora. I’m going to make a personal call,” I said, turning into my office.
My first thought was to call Cuán about the potential threat. I could hear him in my head already—laughing, asking me if I really couldn’t handle one female, offering to come over and help. I knew this because if our positions were reversed I would never let him live it down either.
I FaceTimed my father.
Who has silver eyes?
Kael growled.
The phone rang twice.
Dad answered. Both of them were there.
“Hello,” they said in unison.
“Aww, look at him.” Mum’s face filled the screen, then frowned. “Nice of ye to call us.”
“Aye, at least Cuán makes a bit more of an effort,” my dad said, grinning. “It’s good to see ye, son.”
“Hey. Sorry for not calling sooner.” I rubbed the back of my neck.
My dad stared at me for a moment, then whispered something to my mum. She blew me a kiss.
“Call me on the weekend,” she said sharply, and moved away from the camera.
“Dad—have you ever encountered something not quite a wolf? Is there anything documented?”
My dad started pacing. His face brightened as he moved closer to a window, the Irish light catching him.
“I’ve come across strange scents that aren’t all human, but no part of any of them was wolf. I would need to look back at recorded encounters.” He paused. “There’s a book on mystical beings and half-breed animal spirits.”
“Can you send it to me?”
“Sure. What did your senses register?” He resumed pacing.
“Existential danger. For Kael. For us.”
His eyes widened. He closed his mouth.
“That’s a first,” he murmured.
Yeah. No kidding.
“I wanted to kill her on the spot, but we were in the boardroom. A human was with us.”
“Her?” My dad stopped pacing.
Something moved behind his eyes that I didn’t have a name for.
I nodded.
“What did she smell like?” He raised the phone closer, watching me so carefully I could see the pores on his skin.
“Just wrong, Dad.” Agitation crept in because I couldn’t think of what her scent had actually been like. Couldn’t pin it. “Maybe a hybrid.”
“Hm.” He sat down. “Do you remember your grandfather’s younger brother?”
“The recluse?”
Dad nodded.
“He left the pack to live in a remote cabin in Scotland. The truth is, son—his wolf was broken.”
“What? How can that even happen?”
“We aren’t in control of who our mate will be. His fated mate not only rejected him, but attacked him.”
My stomach turned.
Kael went very still inside me.
“No,” I whispered.
I shook my head.
“No, Dad. But—” I paused, trying to fit it against what I had just experienced. “It was nothing like what you and Mum described.”
He said nothing. His brow stayed furrowed.
“What happened to his mate?”
“She never joined the pack and the pack never would have accepted her,” he said with a shrug.
I reached for my desk for support and sank into my chair.
“I’ve waited years,” I whispered, closing my eyes as sorrow emanated from Kael. Heavy. Bone-deep. The kind of grief that came from something that had been holding hope for decades and was now being asked to put it down. “A lifetime—for her.”
“Tadhg made his mistakes too, son. From what my Da told me, they were locked between wanting to kill one another and mate.”
Kael didn’t like that.
I rubbed my chest.
“It was a broken bond. Unnatural to the pack, therefore rejected. But times were different then. There were more of us.”
I swiped my hand down my face.
“Don’t tell Cuán,” I murmured.
He nodded with a wry smile.
“Conrí, you and Kael are going to need every last bit of your self-control,” he said before he paused. “If the fates have bound you to her, you’ll know soon enough.”
The burning desire to harm me was in those maniacal cold eyes of hers.
Kael flexed, stretching out.
Find her.
Watch her.
Destroy— he paused.
Silence.
A long, unsettled silence.
Contain her.