Chapter 21 #3
Dax leans in, scenting blood in the water. “What. Did. She. Say?”
Silas finally looks up. My stomach rolls at the look on his face.
Silas is younger than us, having just hit his second century, but he’s solid.
I’ve seen him in battle. I’ve seen him covered in blood and laughing about it with that chaotic energy that radiates from his pores.
I’ve seen him take injuries that would kill a lesser Alpha and shrug them off with a smile on his face.
But I’ve never seen him look the way he does right now.
Haunted. Hollowed out.
“She kept repeating Caelan’s name. Over and over,” he mutters. “She kept mumbling, but nothing she said made sense until…” he swallows thickly. “She said, ‘I had to give him to my father.’”
“Fuck,” Dax curses.
“There’s more.”
Silas looks to Gav, who nods grimly. For a second, I feel kind of awful for Silas. He’s been struggling since his pack left for Chicago, and Gav making him retell this feels kind of cruel.
“She smelled like fucking Omega and was covered in Caelan’s blood. We had to strip her down, throw her in the shower just to wash the scent away, and see if she had any serious injuries.”
The idea of Caelan’s blood coating the Omega’s skin makes my lungs ache. “When she was in the shower,” he hesitates, jaw working back and forth. I realize his eyes are wet with tears, and my stomach drops.
“She asked me if Caelan was alive. Then she asked me—she looked me dead in the fucking eyes and asked—‘Did it work?’”
The air in my lungs escapes in a shocked exhale. I physically feel the blood drain from my face.
“Did it work?” Dax repeats dangerously. “She asked if it worked?”
“She said Caelan told her he’d come back for her, in three days. She said she knew he’d come back. Then she started crying. Said it was all her fault. Over and over. ‘It’s my fault. It’s my fault, it’s my fault.’”
“Fates,” I breathe.
“That lying, manipulative—” Dax’s fists are clenched tight at his sides. He stands so fast his chair flies backward, scraping across the floor. “She fucking knew he was coming back, and she set him up. I fucking knew it. I knew it!”
I look to Gavran for confirmation.
“I heard her,” he says solemnly. “I was there. Heard every word she said. She was a bit delirious, sure, but she was lucid enough to answer questions. Lucid enough to tell us exactly what she did.”
I glance at Caelan. At the tubes, wires, and bandages. The too-still form of the male who was laughing with me in the gym just three days ago. The male, who, despite his ongoing fight with Dax, seemed wistfully happy recently when he thought no one was looking.
“She set him up,” Dax repeats. “Lured him in, then convinced him to come back for what? Sex? A Bond? Could she have convinced him they were Mates somehow?” He shakes his head. “Then she delivered him straight to her father.”
“We don’t know that,” I argue weakly. “Why would she do something like that?”
“Because she’s her father’s creature. They’re both pieces of shit,” Dax snaps.
“Then why is she injured?” I argue. I know I’m just grasping for something, anything, that’ll make this all make sense. “If she were working for her father, then why would he hurt her?”
“You’re not this naive,” Dax sneers.
“Pretend,” I snap back, “that I am.”
“The injuries are just all part of the act. They’re probably self-inflicted. Or her father did it, so there’s supposed proof that she’s a victim. So we’d do exactly what we’re doing now—questioning her guilt. I mean, she can’t very well claim innocence and come out completely unscathed.”
My head feels like it’s spinning. “It’s…”
“It’s completely fucking plausible,” Dax finishes for me. “Especially considering who her father is. You think he’s above hurting his daughter to make her damsel in distress act more convincing?”
I lean over, hanging my head between my legs.
Damnit. When he puts it like that, I can’t really argue.
My gaze lands again on my brother.
I look at him. Really fucking look at him. At his shallow breaths, the waxy pallor of his face, and his lips that are cracked and dry.
He’s broken. In pain. In a fucking coma.
Something inside of me hardens.
“You’re right.” My voice cracks. I ignore how the words taste like ash in my mouth. “She’s guilty. She lured him in, gave him to her father, and now…” I swallow. It feels like swallowing glass. “She did this to him.”
Daxen’s eyes soften. “Yes. She did.”
He sounds relieved. Like he’s been afraid—really afraid—for me until this moment. It pisses me off.
“I know you don’t want to believe a female who looks like that could be capable of such brutality, but we have to look at the facts.”
“I know. I know what the facts say.”
Still, something is swirling in my gut even as I feel my heart hardening in real time toward the Omega. It’s a nagging feeling. A persistent pull deep down that keeps whispering that something’s wrong. That we’re missing something. That the pieces don’t totally line up.
I shove the feeling down.
“I told you all that she was going to be a problem, and now look.” Dax waves a hand toward Caelan’s still body.
I flinch.
“Not all Omegas are manipulative bitches,” I mutter, exhausted by this same old argument.
“You’re right,” he agrees solemnly. Then he points in the direction of the interrogation rooms down the hall. His eyes harden, turning to ice. “Not all Omegas are manipulative bitches. But that one is.”
I stand abruptly. The legs of my chair scrape across the floor, and the noise startles Silas, who’s been quietly brooding.
“Where are you going?” He asks, frowning.
“Outside.” I run a hand across my brow. “I just need some air. Need to think.” I leave without waiting for acknowledgment.
The air in the hall feels stifling, like it’s pressing in around me. I pick up my pace, eager to get the fuck out of this compound. I can’t breathe.
As soon as I’m close enough, I slam against the metal bar of the door, stumbling through the exit that leads to the outside training yard.
The cool air hits my fevered skin. I take a deep breath, inhaling lungful after lungful of crisp spring air until I finally feel like I can take a full breath without choking. I collapse against the wall, exhaustion weighing down every limb.
I have to get over these feelings. I’ve barely even seen the girl. It doesn’t matter that I can’t get her out of my mind. Doesn’t matter that I can’t get rid of the nagging feeling that I’m missing something.
I don’t know how long I stand here, but when I feel the first rays of early morning light hit my skin, I finally blink open my tired eyes.
Immediately, my gaze catches on something bright yellow, flashing in the tree line of the forest. The shadows stir and shift, but even from two-hundred yards away, I can see unnatural movement between the trees.
I can hear the crisp snap of twigs breaking under the tread of something larger and heavier than a normal forest animal.
As my eyesight adjusts, the shadows come into focus.
No.
No fucking way. Is that…?
I blink.
Yellow eyes catch the sunlight and flash before focusing directly on me. I watch a huge maw open in a yawn, canines the size of my finger catching the subtle rays of the sun. An irritated yowl has the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
Those flashing yellow eyes glare without blinking, full of judgment and disgust. The shadow turns and disappears into the forest, giving me its back, making sure I know I’m no longer the largest fucking predator on this land.
Pitch black fur, sleek rippling muscle, graceful movements.
The cat from the Varenthrall estate—the one that looks like a cross between a house cat and Satan’s steed—has somehow, someway, found its way here.
And if I’ve not totally lost my fucking mind, I’m pretty sure it just looked at me like it knows something I don’t.
Which is… impossible. This isn’t a jungle, and even if it was, wild felines don’t act like border collies.
As the cool morning air washes over my skin, I can’t help but wonder how the fuck that thing hauled ass more than thirty miles away in less than a night without knowing where it was going.
No trail, no scent. It just showed up like it stepped out of a dream.
Or a nightmare.
And why, in all the hells, did it come here?