Chapter 1 #3
A nice person would want that for him. I, on the other hand, was happy to kick the baby bird out of the nest and see if he learned to fly on his own. This world was sink or swim. You figured it out fast, or it would eat you up.
“Half of the guards he didn’t recognize,” Birdie spoke for him again. Caden stared at the table, his hands clenching and unclenching.
“They’re Ukrainian,” Caden muttered under his breath.
“You know that for sure?” Mykel asked.
Caden nodded. “A few I recognized from my engagement party. They were with Ivanenko.”
That had to twist a knife even deeper in his chest. Not only had Istvan forced Caden to get engaged to Olena, but behind Caden’s back, he had ruthlessly been fucking her, seeding a child, to make sure he covered all his bases.
Istvan could pass it off as Caden’s or claim it depending on what happened.
Caden’s half-brother would now take his place as the true heir, Istvan disowning his previous family for this one. All for power.
“That means Ukraine leaders are still in a partnership with Markos.” Mykel rubbed his beard. “I just don’t know why he’s been so quiet for the last few weeks. Why would he even give Sonya a chance to take the palace?”
“He lost the prison and a lot of his men that day.” I folded my arms. The elephant in the room, which was always there, grew.
We all knew who killed them. Even Mykel’s men.
“Also, his labs, the nectar, any relationship with Romania were gone, and he destroyed his only alliance in Czech. He doesn’t have a lot to stand on right now.
Probably hiding under his desk with a bottle of pálinka. ”
“He’d be in Kyiv.” A woman’s voice spun us around.
Thin, tall, and radiantly elegant, countering the cheap pants and sweater she had on, Rebeka held herself like an elite.
She was bred for it; it was in her DNA, her bone structure.
She still carried the bruises from her time in the labs and was painstakingly thin, but she looked far healthier than she had two weeks ago.
Her shiny, long brown hair was down, softening her regal demeanor.
The woman was beautiful, and human or not, you couldn’t disagree she looked nowhere near her age.
“What?” Mykel swung sharply to her.
“Anya . . .” Mother. Caden went to her, taking her arm.
This was the first time I had seen Rebeka out of bed.
Being human, her body reacted and healed slowly to all the torment, starvation, and grief she had been through, almost putting her in a coma-like state.
The healers had to force food into her through tubes.
A few times, they thought they might lose her. “You should be resting.”
“I’m fine. It’s good for me to start walking around.” She patted his arm. “I need to do something. I can’t sit back.”
Killian nodded at a chair, but she stayed standing.
“The lab you destroyed. It wasn’t the only one.”
The room went utterly still.
“What?” Killian’s mouth parted.
“There’s another one in Ukraine. He started building it about the same time he started his lab here.”
Fuck.
The entire room hissed with the same sentiment.
“I guarantee Istvan is there.” She swallowed, her hands reaching for the back of the chair to keep her steady. Caden was right on her. “I know how he thinks. He would go there to reestablish himself and come back with an army.”
“And you are just telling us now?” Killian exclaimed.
“I’ve had my mind on other things when I was lucid,” she snipped back. The woman watched her best friend of years get gruesomely murdered right in front of her while feral monsters, who she knew as kids, tried to tear into us while her husband and his pregnant fiancé watched cheerfully from above.
“Do you know where exactly?” Killian pressed his palms on the map covering the table.
“No.” She wagged her head.
“Are you sure you didn’t hear anything? Any inkling where it would be in Kyiv?” Killian pushed.
“Killian.” Mykel’s tone was full of warning.
“You don’t want to know where this other lab is? Where Markos is creating more of those monsters? You weren’t there. You haven’t seen what these pills can do . . . what these creatures become.”
“Badgering her isn’t going to help us learn anything more, either.” Mykel volleyed, both yelling back at each other.
“Shut up!” Rebeka quieted them like schoolboys. “I don’t know where it is. However . . .” She paused. “I know where he keeps all his plans. Every single important document he has. Where the documents for this other lab would be.”
“Where?” Mykel stepped closer to her, his gaze moving over her.
Caden blew out, his head lowering. He knew exactly what Rebeka was talking about.
And I knew that . . . because he did.
I shouldn’t. There was no way I should be aware of this information. But I could see the exact spot, every detail of the room, though I had never been in Marko’s office.
“Fuck,” I mumbled. “In the safe behind his desk at HDF.”
Caden’s head jerked up to me, his eyes widening. “How did you know that?”
My lids closed, hating the words coming from me because it was something I didn’t want to be true.
“Because you know.”