Page 102 of Hybrid Heroics

We all turned to gaze at her, but her heather gray eyes were glued to the charred and dripping remains of Aoiden. None of us dared ask who she was referring to. Alric would be dead soon, too.

“The battle is winding down,” Mills continued, picking up where Murph left off. “There are injuries, but no deaths on our side. We all charged straight ahead to meet an opponent…”

She glanced up at me, numbers whirling behind her sunny gray eyes. “Sloane called us in a particular order, didn’t she? We were placed on the chessboard exactly where we needed to be. She’d already calculated all the moves, made adjustments for all the outcomes.”

I nodded. “I don’t know, but that sounds like her. She can think of contracts and mergers while also planning mutiny. We never know, even when Novak drags us into her head to hear her thoughts. It’s like she thinks in a code we can’t read.”

When nothing was left of Aoiden but a pile of bone fragments and ash, we turned to survey the yard.

I whistled low. “Sloane’s going to be pissed about her grass.”

Ma chuckled. “Not the missing wall?”

“No,” I told her, grinning at her confusion. “She’s taking that out on Alric already. It looks like that because she threw him out of the dining-room window after he flipped the table.”

Murphy barked with shocked laughter. “How did she get him to make the first move?”

“You know how we were in the fae realm last week?”

“Yeah,” Miller and Murphy drawled at the same time.

“Vaughn killed the queen, who wasn’t actually the queen, just like Anahien said…” I grimaced at Ma when she raised a brow. “That’s a twisted story. Anyway, turns out Alania was Alric's mate.”

“You guys killed his mate?” Ma inquired, not giving anything away.

I shrugged. “Well, yeah, but that’s not what started the fight.”

“Palmer,” Mills snapped. “Get to the point.”

“After the fight, Sloane cut a big chunk of meat out of Alania’s thigh and handed it to Franklin. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, you know? It was weird, but she does weird shit daily.”

“No,” Murph sang, a frowning smile fixed on his mouth. “No.”

I picked at the loose button on my shirt, then tipped my head. “She invited Alric over for dinner.”

“No,” he repeated.

“And fed him his mate.”

“I don’t know why I let her surprise me anymore,” my brother mumbled.

Millie cackled. “I think I’m in love with Lo.”

“You keep your hands to yourself,” I warned.

Ma was silent for a moment. “That’s how she got this started?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s disturbing, but genius,” she acknowledged, dipping her chin. “I’m sure Amelia was impressed.”

I sighed. “Sloane doesn’t do anything to impress people. Quite the opposite, actually. She just enjoys pressing buttons and playing games.”

“That sounds like Alric,” Ma mumbled.

“She was meant to be the perfect counterpart to fight against him,” I confessed. “She’s too unpredictable for anyone to guess what she’ll do next. When it comes to battles and fights, anyway... The smaller things that are predictable, though? She’s done that by design.”

“How do you know that?” Murphy challenged.