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Nathaniel just shook his head, a faint smile on his face. “It costs me nothing to apologize when I have behaved in a way that hurt my pack. That impacted the stability of that pack.”
Ryker just grinned. “You think our foundation’s that shaky? We just thought you were finding your new status as a mate a little…difficult.” He slid me a sly look, and I couldn’t help but grin. “Look, it was the book. The pack understands exactly what that disgusting fae object did. And thankfully, our Alpha’s mate was strong enough to save you and, by extension, the rest of us.”
I flipped my hair over my shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, say it with chocolate.”
He laughed. Since Nathaniel seemed to need it, Ryker bowed his head. “I accept your unnecessary apology.”
Nathaniel sighed. I took that moment to gesture to the pictures. “This is sweet and all, but can you please tell me who these men are?”
Ryker ambled over to the desk. All the amusement left his face. “You were right,” he told Nathaniel. “This is one of the ten.”
“The ten mages under Gabriel?”
Ryker nodded, pulling out another picture of a dark-haired Latino guy. “Our spies already pinpointed this guy as the replacement for Albert.” He glanced at my whiteboards. “You got any spare room?”
Kyla and Rose had brought in a few more whiteboards to account for all of our notes. The closest board had wheels, and I turned it, waving my hand at the empty space. Ryker got to work, taping up each photo, along with the names and cities. He glanced at his phone a few times, nodding when he checked his work against whatever notes he was keeping. Finally, he stepped back.
“Jay Bolton. Donovan Downs. Maxton Gardner. Bruno Stafford.” He continued listing the names, his expression tight.
“All of them are Mage Council members, aren’t they?” I murmured.
“Yes.”
I could feel the blood draining from my face. Could feel my hands shaking, could feel ice-cold sweat gathering at the nape of my neck. But everything else was numb.
“Eachann found out they’re all working with HFE. He came here to warn me, and when I wasn’t here, he dumped the file.” I took a deep breath. “We need to check the recordings from any cameras in the area. He got too close, and they either took him or killed him.”
“Evie.Evie.”
I met Nathaniel’s eyes. They were dark with concern. But the concern was for me. He was still radiating that calm confidence.
“We’ll find him,” I said. It sounded like a question, and Nathaniel nodded.
“I think we need to pull in our allies and discuss our plan.” He gestured to the board. “No more labs have been added since the last time I checked. This might be all of them.”
I sucked in a breath. “Okay. When we raid the main lab, we’ll have access to their systems. We’ll also keep as many HFE members alive as we can, so they can be questioned. As soon as they transport Hellaphine, we’ll know which lab is the most important head of our hydra. But we need to be prepared to move. If they don’t take her through a portal in the next few days, we need to go with what we’ve got so far. I’m not leaving Eachann to be tortured.”
Nathaniel rubbed his hands up and down my arms, warming skin that had become chilled. “If we have to break in to Taraghlan’s castle to rescue Hellaphine, we will. It’ll be a date.”
“Okay. But then I want dinner, a movie, and an awkward kiss at the door.”
Ryker winked at me and stepped away from the board. “Time to gather our people.”
* * *
Evie
We worked lateinto the night, until Nathaniel finally hauled me upstairs. I was asleep before he laid me down on our bed.
The next morning, I was up with the sun while all our allies negotiated a time and place to meet.
We had a lot of people to gather. And many of them were currently in various other realms, which meant we couldn’t exactly call them. Maybe I just needed to think outside the box…
In the meantime, since we had time to kill while we waited, we were going to try to heal Virtus.
“Evie?”
I turned.
