15. Chapter 15
Chapter 15
Dean
W e’d been searching this room for a whole day now, and even with Alyssa knowing most of the secret places her parents had hidden things, we’d still not found what we were looking for.
“There has to be some sort of compartment you don’t know about,” Maddox said as he slid a book back onto the shelf with far more force than needed.
We were all feeling the frustration. Me more than the rest. The wolf inside me kept pushing me to destroy it all. To rampage through this room of paper and tear it apart. His frustration was lined with a need for violence, and it was becoming harder and harder to resist.
Probably because of tonight.
The thing we hadn’t talked about yet and the thing I couldn’t decide if I was excited about or dreading.
They kept telling us that this first shift was important. That it could be dangerous for those around us if we lost control. It was like none of them realised how on the edge I was all the fucking time. Control wasn’t something I needed to worry about tonight. It was something I worried about every second of the goddamned day.
The wolf was always there. Always pushing. And sometimes I didn’t even want to fight him, because I wanted the violence too. Especially whenever fucking Rhidian had come to the door. I didn’t even care that he was bringing us the things we needed, the things she needed. If anything, it made me hate him even more.
Rhidian needed to die. The wolf was convinced, and since I’d found out what he’d done to Alyssa, what he’d signed her up for, I hadn’t been able to think of a single reason why he shouldn’t.
I felt my teeth start to elongate as the saliva pooled in my mouth at the thought of the violence I wanted to bring. At the pain I’d make him suffer. My bones ground as they moved before shifting back to how they had always been.
He was so close now. I didn’t think I’d make it to the night.
“Dean!”
My head snapped in Ryder’s direction, and I saw the concern on his face. It was enough to calm my simmering temper away from the inevitable explosion it had been building towards.
“What?” I gritted out, the gravelly tone of my voice proof of how much I was struggling with the wolf inside.
And then she walked into the room. A calm that only she could inspire swept over me and the wolf was finally quiet, slinking into the back of my mind, content to watch the woman in front of us. His obsession. His mate.
Alyssa walked straight towards me, stepping into my side as my arms closed around her. I dipped my head, running my nose along the length of her neck and inhaling her scent like I always seemed to do. It was like a drug to me now. I wanted to bathe in it just so I could keep it close. The wolf approved.
“What were you thinking about that had you so lost in your own head?”
“I was thinking about killing Rhidian,” I admitted, not even slightly ashamed to admit it aloud.
Maddox snorted in amusement. This, unfortunately, wasn’t all that different to how I’d always been, no matter how much I wanted to blame it on the wolf.
“You’re not the only one,” Tank muttered as he reached for another armful of books and moved them over to the desk he’d been working from. “The boy needs to be shown his place, and then he needs to beg at Lys’ feet for forgiveness. Right before I tear off his head.” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one struggling with my animal.
It was nice to not be the only violent one in the group. Comforting even.
Alyssa shook her head, and it just made me cling to her tighter. She wasn’t angry enough about this whole thing and it worried me that she was just accepting her fate rather than fighting it. Didn’t she realise that there was no way we were going to let this happen? Even if I had to smuggle her out of this realm against her will, there was no way she was stepping foot onto any battlefield. I didn’t care how strong she was. The risk was completely unacceptable.
“I found something,” Maddox shouted before pulling out the book again and slamming it in with more force.
“Is it an anger problem? Because I can only cope with one Dean at a time,” Ryder quipped.
My wolf practically grinned in glee. He couldn’t wait for Ryder to shift so he could put his wolf in his place, and it was worrying me.
Maddox glared over his shoulder at our friend before pulling out the book again and slamming it back onto the shelf. I heard it that time, but from how Alyssa winced, she hadn’t realised what Maddox was trying to get at.
“It’s hollow behind here,” Maddox added.
Alyssa immediately drifted from my side, and I hated every second of it. It made my teeth ache with a need to bite, to claim, but I held onto my wolf with the ironclad restraint I’d been building for the past couple of days.
It wasn’t time yet.
She wasn’t ready.
Tank and Ryder moved with her, crowding around Maddox as they started to excitedly remove the books from the surrounding shelves. I should help too, but instead I drifted further away. Their close proximity made it harder to keep the wolf in check, and the last thing we needed now was for him to finally get his wish and tear this place apart. We couldn’t risk damaging whatever Maddox had found. Not if it was going to give us the answers on how to keep her safe.
That thought gave the wolf pause. He stalked to the edge of my mind, frustrated but at least willing to hold back for now. My gaze darted to Alyssa, knowing I needed her back at my side to stay calm but also not being willing to admit it aloud. I couldn’t show that weakness. I couldn’t attach that label to her and put her at an even greater risk. We didn’t know who we could trust here, and even if it made no sense, I’d take every precaution to keep her safe. Because who was I? Definitely not someone important enough for anyone to consider fucking with. I was just a weapon, waiting to be wielded by the woman who held my soul.
“There has to be some kind of latch…” Alyssa started as Tank punched his fist through the back of the bookcase where Maddox had been standing before. “Or we could just do that.”
Tank pulled his fist out of the wall with a shrug, swiping away the shards of wood that were embedded in his skin, not even bothering to look at the wounds. They’d heal quickly, especially if my own situation was anything to go by.
My hand drifted to my stomach as I searched through my shirt for any sign of what had happened. I still remembered the burning feeling as the blade was wrenched from my side. The betrayal had stung just as much when I saw the blank look in Damon’s eyes. I’d known he was lost to us then. He wasn’t the man we knew from back in the human world.
But now there was nothing. Not a single trace of the knife was on my skin. And there was something disconcerting about that. To come so close to death and then have nothing to show for it. Perhaps not the thought of a normal person, but when had I ever been that?
“I think I can feel something,” Ryder said, drawing my attention back to the others, only to find Ryder up to his shoulder with his arm inside the wall.
“Did you not even consider that there could be something on the other side which could separate that arm from your body?” I asked calmly, already knowing there wasn’t because it probably would have happened before now.
“Nah, it’s fine. I’ve probably got super healing like you.” Ryder didn’t even look at me as he spoke. He was that caught up in his task. He’d always been like this, obsessive to a fault sometimes.
“I’m not sure it works like that,” Tank pointed out, making Ryder bark with laughter.
Then he wrenched out his arm, a small package in his hand that was definitely a book wrapped in some kind of cloth.
“Huh, that feels somewhat anticlimactic,” he complained as he passed it over to Alyssa and then tried to shove his face through the hole. “Maybe there’s something else in here.”
At that point, a click reverberated around the room, and the bookcase swung loose from the wall. “Found the catch,” Maddox added, much to Ryder’s displeasure.
“Boooo, that’s the boring way.”
Alyssa left the squabbling pair, who were now struggling to get the bookcase fully open, the hinges long since having rusted over from lack of use. She moved to the desk Tank had been using and slowly sat in the seat; her gaze locked on the parcel in her hands.
I could tell that she recognised it, but couldn’t figure out if that was a good thing or not. If she’d seen this before, it seemed unlikely that it would hold the answers we were looking for. Alyssa had never heard of this prophecy before or we wouldn’t be in this room searching for information.
Tank went to her side at the same time as I. Part of me thought about hanging back, letting them have this moment together. She’d chosen him first. They needed time to be together. But I couldn’t make my feet move me away. Because I needed her too, and I didn’t have the luxury of a bond to look to as reassurance that she would always be mine.
Not yet, anyway.
The strangest part was that he didn’t even seem bothered to see me standing on her other side. I knew his feelings about Alyssa taking us all as mates. I’d developed an intriguing habit of listening to conversations. Mainly because my wolf kept fucking about with my hearing and it meant I could hear things I wasn’t supposed to. I wasn’t exactly going to stop him, though. Because knowing Tank wanted us all to be with Alyssa meant claiming her would be all that much easier.
All I was waiting for was a sign that she was ready. It was the only thing holding me back. I wouldn’t take her until she was begging me for it. That way, her surrender would be all the sweeter. For me and for her.
Alyssa slowly slipped the material from the book, revealing the leather bound tome beneath. It bore no markings on the cover with a thick cord wrapped around it, holding the pages closed.
“This is my father’s journal.” She looked up, her gaze moving around the office as she took in every surface. “I didn’t think to look for it. It was never hidden away like this. He was always scribbling something inside.”
“This is it then? He’d write it in here, right? Especially if he was looking into what it meant.” It seemed like the answer to all the questions we had right now, but it also seemed far too convenient for it to be true.
It couldn’t be this easy.
I almost held my breath as she unwound the leather cord. The leather creaked with age as she opened the cover. The paper inside had yellowed, but the writing was still clear enough to read. Especially on the loose piece of paper that was slipped inside the cover.
I took a step back when I saw Alyssa’s name at the top. This was a letter from her father. One that he’d written knowing that one day she’d find this and he would already be gone. It wasn’t meant for me, and she shouldn’t have to read this in front of us all.
Tank looked at me in confusion as my hand came to his shoulder, but he moved back with me without me even needing to put any pressure on him. Interesting. He’d said before that his bear wouldn’t be able to stand down to my wolf, but he didn’t seem to question looking to me when he wanted to know what to do.
“Why don’t we see if we can find Rhidian?” I suggested.
Alyssa’s spine snapped straight, and her gaze darted to me before I could even finish my thought. Thinking about it, I could see why she’d be concerned, considering my earlier statement.
I gave her the softest smile I could manage and knew I fell short by a long shot. “We should look at getting our weapons back and see about where we can start training. Maybe look for a spot for tonight while we’re at it. Somewhere away from the other people in the palace who we haven’t seen any sign of yet,” I explained.
It was a thought that needed following up later, but for now, all I could think about was getting Alyssa the privacy she needed and didn’t seem to want to ask for. Because where the hell was everyone and were they keeping them away from us on purpose or just giving us time to get used to the idea of all of us dying in this place before we had to interact with them?
“Maybe we should head back to the water. It’s far enough from the palace that we shouldn’t pose a risk to anyone here and we didn’t have any trouble from the trees before,” Ryder suggested.
“No, just the people coming out of them,” Tank muttered.
I could get on board with his whole pissed off bear thing. It made sense to me on an almost spiritual level. I never understood the need to pacify people you didn’t care about.
“It’s not a terrible idea,” Alyssa muttered, but I could see that her mind was elsewhere. She didn’t need to be worrying about stuff like this. What kind of mates were we if we weren’t able to take something like this off her hands?