Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
Opening my eyes, I found myself back in Nelissa’s camp. I must have drifted off to sleep again.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Sex with Lash wasn’t exactly a passive experience. There was no lying back and relaxing. Like training for a marathon, it was a full-body, heart-pounding, sweat-causing affair.
Clearly, it was going to take me a little time to build my stamina.
But at least there was an upside to my exhaustion.
Taking a midday nap meant my consciousness was free to eavesdrop on anyone walking by.
Which would have been great if there had been anyone in the camp.
But unfortunately, the place was practically empty. Besides a handful of bored-looking alphas who’d no doubt stayed behind as guards, everyone else was out in the forest hunting for us.
Well, probably not everyone.
The presence of guards signified there was something here worth guarding.
And it definitely wasn’t any of the worn and broken junk scattered on the ground. Which meant…
I turned my head toward Nelissa’s tent. Sure enough, there was another pair of alphas standing sentry outside the opening flap.
She had to be in there, though probably not in great shape. The last time I’d seen Nelissa, I’d blown half her damn face off. While Lash was insistent that she’d survived, I couldn’t imagine two days were enough to fully recover from such a severe injury.
Not even a ferus could heal that quickly.
If I were lucky, I might even find her asleep and slip into her dreams. Maybe even tease some information out of her.
Unfortunately, that proved to be a hell of a lot easier said than done.
Existing as only dream energy in the material world made interaction with solid matter impossible.
Sure, my footsteps were silent, but that was only because the soles of my feet didn’t actually touch the ground. Instead, they hovered just a fraction of an inch above every twig and dried leaf. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move even a speck of the soft earth beneath my toes.
I only realized this was a major problem once I reached the front of Nelissa’s tent and reached for the opening flap cut into the leather.
Like a magnet pushing against the same polarity, there seemed to be some invisible barrier between my hand and the material—an energy that not only kept me from touching it, but also from moving through it like a ghost.
Damn. The rules of this dream-state were more complicated than I’d imagined.
Huffing in frustration but refusing to give up, I tried a few other ways to get inside the tent—muscling my way through the barrier, searching for another opening to slip through, whispering into one of the guard’s ears to let me in. None of them worked.
After half a dozen failures, I gave up on the physical routes and focused on the psychic ones instead. Closing my eyes, I focused all my energy on willing myself inside.
And holy shit, if it didn’t work.
I felt my body shift. In an instant, the air changed. When I opened my eyes, I was standing just inside the door of Nelissa’s tent. The temperature was cooler in here…but the atmosphere was far more tense.
“I’m tired of your excuses, Garron.”
My head snapped toward the sound of Nelissa’s voice.
She wasn’t resting in bed, but fully dressed and sitting upright on a mound of cushions, appearing every bit as elegant as before.
But for someone in such a comfortable position, she sure looked pissed.
At least the right half of her face did.
The left side, the one that I’d shot off, was anyone’s guess. An opaque veil draped over that half, hiding the injury and leaving me to guess how severe the wound might still be.
But it wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t talk. She didn’t appear to be having any trouble shouting at the alpha, standing with his hands clasped in front of him.
“I know, Lykaon,” he said, sounding strangely apologetic for someone who was more than twice her size. “But you have to understand?—“
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Nelissa snapped back. “I don’t need to understand anything. You’re the one tasked with turning my orders into reality.”
The alpha’s jaw twitched in frustration. Even I could see it wasn’t in his nature to bite his tongue. Though why he was bothering to do it for someone as unlikeable as Nelissa was beyond me. What exactly was behind the power she wielded over these men?
“You summoned me away from the search to give you a report, Lykaon,” the alpha grumbled. “If you no longer require one, I will happily return to the hunt.”
Throwing her arms over the back of her makeshift sofa, she let out an overly dramatic sigh before nodding. “Proceed.”
“The pack has thoroughly searched every inch of the valley,” he started. “We tracked the traitor’s scent as far as the northern cliffside, but that’s where the trail disappears.”
Nelissa’s thin lips pursed together in disgust. “And did it occur to any of you mutts that he must have climbed the damned thing?”
“Of course,” the alpha nodded. “I sent several of our best trackers up the rock wall to follow, but the vegetation is sparse there, and the winds are heavy. By the time they arrived, the air had been scrubbed clean, and the trail was long gone.”
“Any fool could have expected that,” Nelissa spat, her tone caustic. “Please tell me you didn’t allow them to simply give up?”
“Of course not, Lykaon. The pack had spread out in all directions from the peak, but…” He hesitated.
Narrowing her eyes, Nelissa leaned forward. “But what, Garron?”
“But this is Lash we’re talking about,” he reluctantly continued. “He is practically untraceable. For all we know, he’s already halfway to the Northern Wastes.”
But Nelissa shook her head.
“Not while weighed down with a kirre,” she said. “You’ve never spent much time around one. Not like I have. They’re slow, weak creatures. There’s no way Lash could have made it far with one constantly weighing him down.”
I grimaced, hating to admit that she was right.
In comparison to a ferus, I was slow. I was weak. I was the one keeping us both in danger.
“You think he’s still traveling with the kirre?” The alpha’s brows arched high. He didn’t just sound shocked by the idea; he sounded appalled.
“Of course he is,” Nelissa answered. “She’s the whole reason he turned against us in the first place. The bitch has enchanted him with some kind of kirre magic. It’s the same evil sorcery that Hannah used to capture Tauren as her mate.”
What was this nonsense?
Kirre magic?
That was some Grade-A bullshit right there.
“Even if that’s true,” the alpha continued. “Lash has been exceptionally careful covering his steps. The truth is there’s too much territory to cover, and we don’t have enough men to search all of it.”
To my surprise, Nelissa didn’t immediately snap at her underling. Instead, she leaned back on her cushions, her gaze drifting to the side as she thought.
“Well, then we’ll just have to find more men to join the hunt,” she mused.
“But there are none, Lykaon. All your alphas are already out in the field.”
“I never said they had to be my alphas.” Lifting her chin, the breeze caught the edge of her veil, lifting it just high enough for me to catch sight of a tangled web of raw scar tissue already meshing together over her cheek and jaw.
“Lash might have been one of our most skilled warriors, but he was also a defiant pain in the ass. And a man like that collects a lot of enemies.”
I could tell the alpha was trying to follow her logic, but based on the depth of his forehead wrinkles, it wasn’t going well. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” Nelissa groaned. “I’m saying we could use our old pack against him. Those alphas could barely stand Lash back when he lived among them. I’m guessing that hatred has only grown with time.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Garron started. “But Calindra despises you. She’d never join forces with us. Not even against Lash.”
“You’re close,” Nelissa clarified. “She’d never willingly join us. But if she was made to believe that Lash had attacked one of her outposts, slaughtered her sentries, and ransacked her storerooms, she would be forced to send out her best warriors to hunt him down.”
The alpha thought about it before slowly nodding.
“That could help flush him out,” he said. “And I suppose it doesn’t matter who delivers the killing blow as long as, in the end, someone does.”
Their words were cold enough to send shivers through my non-corporal body. It was damn lucky that I’d fallen asleep when I had and traveled here in my dreams to hear this.
It’s not luck, my subconscious mind piped up. It’s destiny.
Fate.
No. I rejected that uncomfortable idea one more time, pushing it to the furthest corner of my mind. I didn’t have time for that bullshit. Not now.
Not while Nelissa’s half smile was growing sharper by the second.
“Yes, I think I like this idea,” she said.
“While Calindra sends out her warriors to take over the hunt for Lash, her village will be left nearly defenseless. We’ll have a perfect opportunity to attack and spear that self-righteous bitch and her precious kirre sluts through their hearts.
And I’ll finally have the chance to take revenge for what they did to me. ”
The alpha’s brows pulled together. “What they did to us, you mean?”
“Of course,” she said. “The cause remains. Never doubt that, Garron. Our mission is always at the center of everything I do. But this plan will give us the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.”
He nodded...though somewhat less enthusiastically than before. “Yes, Lykaon.”
“Good,” Nelissa continued, clearly considering the matter settled. “Then call in half the men from the field. The others can continue the hunt for Lash and the kirre. Everyone else, I want rested and ready for the attack on Calindra’s northern outpost and village invasion by the upcoming new moon.”
“Consider it done,” Garron said. Then after a quick bow, he strode from the room.
Shit.
This was serious.
Nelissa’s plan would put a lot of people in danger, including Sophia, by the sound of it. No doubt, she was one of the “kirre sluts” Nelissa had been talking about. I had to do something.
But what?
It wasn’t as if I could pick up one of the knives on Nelissa’s table and stab it into her heart—no matter how much I wanted to. All I could do was play the part of the silent witness until I woke up.
And after I woke up?
Lash and I would still be unarmed, outnumbered, and miles away from anyone we were trying to help.
But I couldn’t just give up. Not when it came to Sophia’s safety. And apparently, not when it came to Lash’s either.
That was a surprise.
Somewhere along the line, the alpha had switched from someone I’d been fighting against to someone I was fighting for. I couldn’t pinpoint the moment it happened. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. All I knew was that suddenly I was as afraid for his safety as I was for my own.
And if I was going to do anything to help us, I needed to wake the hell up.
So, just like when I’d found myself trapped outside the tent, I closed my eyes and desperately tried to will myself awake.