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“Or he’s unhinged,” Hades pointed out. “That much is obvious.”
“Meira might be enough. You defied him. They likely wanted you too but you caused a scene and became a liability,” Callum said.
“It doesn’t matter what he has on you, Vanya,” Nyx promised me. “He doesn’t get to win. We’re going to find him.”
“Damn straight we are,” Carlo and Antonio said in unison.
“And then we’re going to put him down like the rabid dog he is,” Leven said vehemently.
I just fucking hoped he was right. Meira told me to fight, to focus on saving myself. But at the end of the day, this man had taken down full covens and packs before he reached us. I was one twenty-five-year-old with enough trauma to fuck up the average person.
What the fuck could I do?
ChapterTen
Vanya
The smell of smoke had me rushing forward, glancing around to see where the blaze was coming from. My heart dropped at the sight of Waylen and Brent pulling Emma and Ava out of the burning building, the one community building we had left. All four were coughing and I could hear Emma’s protests before I even got closer.
The guys ran back in with fire extinguishers. Callum had made sure to buy extra with all the bad luck and fires we’d seen recently but they were no match for the building. Soon the pack was on it, more men rushing in as I rushed to Emma, Ava, Harlan, and Stella to make sure they were all right.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Is anyone hurt?”
“Just my babies,” Emma wailed, gesturing to the kitchen like actual babies were stuck inside and not equipment.
“I should have stuck to sick folks, healing was less stressful,” Stella muttered. She’d stuck by her brother’s side since they got here and I wasn’t about to push her. Nyx was a great healer and so far, we hadn’t needed the extra hands.
“The whole fucking kitchen just caught fire. It doesn’t make sense. I wasn’t even cooking, I was planning. I had papers at the counter. Everyone was just sitting around, throwing out meal ideas and bam, smoke and full flames,” Emma continued on like there hadn’t been an interruption.
“Emma!” Hades’s voice rang out and we moved away so he could grab her, holding her at arm’s length as he looked her over, making sure she wasn’t hurt before crushing her in his embrace.
“I’m fine,” she protested. “I’m just pissed off. The kitchen just spontaneously combusted.”
Hades didn’t even look shocked. Likely because we’d been battling this kind of shit nonstop since trying to rebuild. Something seemed to always be going wrong.
“This whole place is cursed,” he said. There was truth in that. Maybe it was more than hex traps and sending me hallucinations. I wouldn’t put it past those assholes.
A crash in the distance had us all sharing a wary look before running to the street, glancing over toward the edge of town where they were working on building a community bathroom. They laid out the plan yesterday and started breaking ground today. The foundation was already there so they were putting up the first of the wall framing, and it seemed it had backfired, horribly. The boards were now in a pile of jagged edges, wolves buried underneath.
“Come on,” I growled, running toward the chaos and calling on my wolf to help lift the heavy beams and wooden planks off of our people. “Stella, go get Nyx, we need healers!”
Emma ran off with her, which gave Hades and me a chance to focus on freeing the remaining wolf. One more was buried under the rubble, everyone pitching in to get what was left of the framing off of him.
“We need to get them to the healing tent, this isn’t the place to treat them,” Torryn said. Everyone listened to his words and I saw a bit of relief on his face. Torryn and Hades grabbed the poor wolf underneath, and I was horrified to see it was one of our newer wolves. He was still breathing so I took that as a good sign.
My chest tightened at the sight of wounded wolves being carried away. This was our moment to breathe, to grow stronger, and yet we were still failing. After the vision yesterday and the kitchen fire, this just felt like the icing on the fucking cake.
“What is it, Luna?” Callum asked. I startled at his voice. I’d been so lost in my head I hadn’t heard him walking up.
“Alpha… I don’t think it’s safe here for us anymore,” I admitted.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “We’re just not professional builders, this stuff can happen.” I gaped at his genuine confusion. How could he not fucking see all of this?!
“No, she’s right,” Holt came to my defense. “I’ve had the same feeling for days, I just didn’t feel like it was my place.”
Hades was back now and interjected. “The entire kitchen caught fire unexplainably. Everything is gone. All of our equipment, food, everything we’ve just bought to replace the old.”
Callum’s face paled as he took it all in, glancing around at the chaos that had unfolded in just one day. I don’t know if he was being willfully ignorant or if he truly was just that optimistic. It was almost sad to see it drain away, but reality was what would keep us safe and grounded at this point. We were fighting both seen and unseen forces.
