Page 117 of Bound to Three Fae Beasts

“Time to find the others,” I murmured.

We both took our wolf forms and raced into the forest. My nose was as dull as it was when I was human, but Seb caught their scent and led the way. I followed, my heart pounding in my chest. I needed to get back to my mates. Right now, before anything else bad happened.

Chapter 51 - Gareth

His name was Albert of Court Xandes, Savannah’s cousin who had sometimes hung out with us from time to time. A quiet kid, mostly harmless, obsessed with bugs. Now he hung upside down from a tree, suspended by the spell I’d woven around him when I caught him. Jasper stood guard, making sure we weren’t disturbed while I interrogated Albert.

My knuckles were bruised and split open from punching him in the face. Blood dripped down his forehead, and he kept choking it out as he swung back and forth. His eyes were wide with fear and he struggled against the spell, despite already knowing it wasn’t possible.

“What did you see?” I asked him again.

“Nothing,” Albert shrieked. “I didn’t see anything. I don’t have anything to tell anyone. I can’t reveal your secrets.”

The stench of fear wafted off him. His breathing came in choked sobs, because he knew what was coming. He could say he didn’t see anything all he wanted, but even if I believed him, how could I trust he was telling the truth? If he really saw nothing, would he be this terrified?

He claimed that he’d only stumbled on the scene, but there had been times during our forest jaunt that I’d thought I noticed something, but whenever I looked, there was nothing. Now I knew. Albert had been following us from the start. And since he was still only nineteen, he wasn’t a student here. He didn’t undergo the Surrender, and had been in full control of himself this whole time.

“Gareth, please let me go,” he begged. “I didn’t see anything, honest.”

I shook my head, keeping my expression hard. When it came to Azriel’s safety, all sacrifices were necessary. “You know I can’t do that, Al. I am sorry that you got sucked into this, but you know. Don’t you? You saw enough.”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t understand what I saw, I…” he trailed off, shuddering. “I’m sorry.”

Damn, this was cruel. You had to be cruel in the fae world, but this was especially cruel for this kid. And I wasn’t sure if what I was about to do was even crueler or not. I released him from the magic, and caught him before he hit the ground, then steadied him on his feet.

Relief and hope shone so clearly from his eyes. I softened my expression, so he’d believe I was actually letting him go. “Did you really not see anything?”

He shook his head eagerly.

“Right, then. You have to tell me something, Al. Who got you here? You must have been smuggled in somehow. Who wanted you to follow us?”

Alberta shifted from foot to foot, grimacing.

“Was it Savannah?”

“No!” He shook his head hard. “No. It was Redmund. He said that girl cast a spell on you and he wanted to know how to break it. He said it was her fault that Lady Flora is so distressed and that Lord Seb was acting the fool because of that girl. He just wants her to be taken care of.”

I nodded slowly. So it was Red targeting Azriel again. I thought I’d taken care of that, but apparently his devotion to Flora was stronger than his fear of me. It seemed that I was going to have to deal with him again.

“Get out of here,” I told Albert, gesturing.

He scrambled away. I waited just long enough before I pounced on him and snapped his neck. Albert didn’t see it coming. I supposed that was a kindness, of sorts. His body went limp in my arms, and I dropped him to the forest floor. Jasper had already taken his dragon form, and I stepped back for him to cover the body in venom. The skin bubbled and broke, the venom breaking down the flesh.

Within moments, the body was gone. I kicked dirt over the traces of venom left.

Movement came through the trees and I joined Jasper, shifting to my jaguar to prepare for an attack. Instead, Seb and Azriel emerged from the foliage. Azriel slipped back to her human form and ran to us. She threw one arm around my neck and the other around Jasper’s leg and clung to us, shivering.

I shifted to human form, my stomach cramping. Her softness, the vulnerability I felt in her body, was such a stark difference from the violence that I had just performed. Not just on anyone, but someone I knew. A harmless kid who didn’t know what he’d been pulled into.

Had I ever felt this conflict inside of me before? Or had the violence in our world been normalized to the point I never thought of it before?

I rubbed my hands up and down Azriel’s back soothingly as Jasper and Seb stood close by, also comforting her.

She was my mate, but she didn’t know me. I’d hidden my true, violent self from her. Even when I’d threatened her, held a knife to her throat, she had reached out to ask me to protect Freta and Silas. Gods. If she really knew me, she’d have begged me to stay far, far away from them. And if she didn’t want to live in a world where life is meaningless, how could she want to be with me when she did learn the truth?

She was my mate. I was to cherish and protect her. There was nothing in the rules that said she had to stay with me if I horrified her.

Then again, she was the one who promised to burn this world down if her friend died. So maybe I was the one that couldn’t see clearly.