Chapter 62 Ivy #2
Elias took my hand, entwining our fingers. I could admit that the simple intimacy of just getting to hold his hand felt good. Relieving. Even just walking close to Maeve brought me a sense of comfort I’d lost in my cell.
“Not a single one,” he said, glancing down at me. “I don’t think it was pack owned.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked, looking around. It was a huge manor. Probably had a lot of rooms, not just the ones Orion had finished.
“Because if it were pack owned, it would be a much different structure. Not contained to a single manor,” Maeve said, walking in beside me.
“We would likely see more buildings. But I didn’t notice any when we came in.
Other than the boat house, though there may be more structures hidden in the forest.”
“That makes sense,” I replied, nodding. Packs were usually big.
Even the smallest pack had over fifty shifters in its ranks.
And there would be multiple mate groups, children, a beta, and the Alpha.
The manor, while huge, probably wouldn’t fit a whole pack comfortably.
Packs might have lived together, but they didn’t live on top of one another.
“It’s probably an old vampire manor,” Elias said, drawing my attention back to him. “Or it could be Fae. Demon. Black probably got rid of anything left by the old owners.”
A shiver rolled down my spine as we continued.
Thor walked beside me, somehow keeping that ridiculous towel around his waist. He didn’t seem too bothered by it, but I still couldn’t help but feel bad about having him walk around basically naked.
At least I had a better idea of the wounds covering his body.
They were far more extensive than Elias’s, built upon over the last couple of decades. The newest were the two bullet wounds in his chest, but both were healed, pink and raised. To my relief, there were no other recent scars on his body.
As if sensing my stare, Thor looked down at me. I couldn’t quite read him, especially now that he was shifted, but the look he gave me made my stomach flutter with a familiar warmth.
I felt like I should push against that in some sort of way.
That I shouldn’t feel anything for the male.
Not because I had enough mates on my plate—I definitely did—but because he likely didn’t understand the feeling.
He’d been shifted for so long, how much did he really know? What could he understand?
I pressed my lips together and looked away as we walked into another large, open room.
This one also had a few trunks sitting in the middle of the floor, but there were floor to ceiling windows lining most of the back wall leading to a stone patio flooded from the rain.
Then there were double doors, off to the right.
“Kitchen?” I asked, looking to Elias, then Maeve who had started for the trunks.
“I’ll check these,” she said, meeting my stare. “You keep going.”
I blew out a breath. It felt like we were in some sort of horror movie, checking all the rooms and trunks. I kept waiting for a body to pop out—or worse.
I doubted Ry would leave a body for us to find, but still.
There looked to be another room hidden behind the wall to my right, though I couldn’t see a door to it. As we passed Maeve and her new stack of trunks, I couldn’t help but look inside the one she was opening.
I expected a large stack of weapons, maybe something worse. But instead, there were books.
Maeve closed the lid without looking further, despite my interest being piqued. She moved onto another trunk as we made it to the double doors.
This time, Thor was the one to push them open, and as he did, I drew in a sharp breath.
Orion had taken some time to clean it up.
The kitchen looked antique, but nicely refinished, with deep wood cabinets and marble countertops.
There was even an adorable black and white checker tile that looked freshly polished.
The kitchen was huge, almost galley style, with rows of counters on either wall, upper cabinets, and the far wall also had the same, except for two huge full-length cabinets that looked like a pantry.
There was an island of counters running the length of the kitchen, with a massive sink set within.
“Wow,” I whispered, noticing the skylight above our heads and the rain running off the glass. “This would be a dream come true for Thea.”
Elias squeezed my hand reassuringly. “When we can, Adrian could call on his brother to bring them here.”
The thought of them here made my heart soar, but I immediately shook my head. “If they’re safe with Griffon on his island, then I want them to stay there until we know Dante is no longer a threat.”
“This place might be safer, though,” he replied, meeting my stare. “The glamour and wards here are powerful.”
Still, the thought of taking them away from the safety they have with Griffon and his mates made my stomach twist painfully. “I’ll think about it.”
Elias nodded once. I needed to know how long we could stay here undetected, how long the glamour would hide us before we were forced out.
“We took a good chunk of his army,” Elias murmured, eyes flickering to Thor. “A lot of shifters were taken back to the Underworld.”
Relief flooded me at that, but it didn’t stop the worry or fear. “He has more than just the shifters. There were a lot of soldiers down there, Elias. Even more that I didn’t see.”
“We know,” he replied. “Avalon is full of them. But his main source of power is gone. We know where it is, and we’re flushing him out. Once we’ve cleared our agents, they’ll go in.”
“Cleared?” I asked, turning to him. “Why would our agents need to be cleared?”
“Over ninety percent of our Phoenix agents were compromised at some point in the last six months,” Maeve said as she entered. “They’d been hit with the sickness you noticed.”
My stomach turned again threateningly. I remembered the way my magic rose within me to get rid of the darkness burrowing within the agents who found us. I remembered pulling it out of their magic, healing their power and restoring them to health.
“How was it so many?” I asked, looking back at her. “How did he do it?”
“We don’t know,” Maeve replied. “Elara Blackwood is working with a small group of healers. They are working as fast as they can, but it takes them hours to do what you did in minutes.”
A new kind of guilt hit me like a tidal wave. A despair and anguish I would never escape.
If I had my power, I’d be able to help them. I could be there curing them of the sickness now.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Dante made sure of that.
It was yet another one of his plays that we hadn’t seen coming.