Epilogue
Maren
“Here’s your pointless letter.” I slap the chest of the wolfblood guarding me with the letter he made me write to my sister. My shackles jingle as I shuffle away from him. “When I don’t show up as expected, Runa will worry. She worries with the best of them, so your ruse won’t last long.”
My sister’s alpha boyfriend rescued her from the Peacebroker who wrenched her from us. I almost lost my parents that same night, when the alchemist army seized our castle. I haven’t seen my parents yet. Soren is in a coma, so he can’t retaliate.
I shuffle back to the male, who dragged me here after I ran away. The heavy restraints make me slow and unstable, and I wobble. He catches my elbow and prevents a fall.
I pull back my arm. “What do you want with me, huh?”
The man steps back and closes my bedroom door with a soft thud. The lock turns.
I bang on the door. “Hey, I’m talking to you!”
He’s wolfblood, this one. Part wolf, part human, with the hazel eyes of his omega mother. I’m sure she’s real proud of him now. Not.
When I escaped the castle, he chased me down in the Midlands and brought me back here. Now he’s parked his ass right outside my bedroom door and restrained me with chains around my wrists and ankles. I can only move around with great difficulty.
“I hear you,” he says, voice annoyingly measured and calm. “Your sister also hears you all the way in Fireborn territory.”
“Smartass,” I mumble, getting another whiff of him through the crack in the door. “Your scent is getting stronger. Are you sure you don’t want to let that wolf out for a run? I could show you a way to the sea where you can drown.”
“You’re so gracious,” he says.
“I hate you.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
“You can go home now and take your buddies with you. Ash Fireborn is gone and your guys will never catch him again. You all blew it. Just you wait till Soren finds out how you treated us.” I peek thought the crack in the door.
The man stands guard in his black-on-black uniform, his long muscular legs spread shoulder-width apart, a rifle in his arms. But his head is tilted back, revealing corded muscles. Eyes focused on the ceiling, his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows.
“Do you have a family?” I ask.
He ignores me.
“I’m only asking because I want to be sure you get to write your own letter saying goodbye to them. My brother will kill you. Drowning, I hear, is an awful way to die.”
“Go to bed,” he says. “You’ll need your beauty sleep.”
“Whatever for?”
“The new Peacebroker arrives tomorrow.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to your Peacebroker. New or old.”
The guard shrugs. “Peacebroker Olsen wants you to welcome him back when he arrives. Get some sleep.”
“Sven Olsen is a Regulator, not a Peacebroker.”
“He got promoted.”
Fuck. Sven is returning to kill me.