AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She dropped her hand over his, delicately trailing her fingers over his skin. She turned to whisper back, her mouth close enough that her lips brushed against him. “Don’t kid yourself.Youwouldn’t have made it two minutes before needing to leave the room. I’m sure just touching me right now is killing you.”
He breathed a laugh, and his hand peeled away, flexing. “You’re not wrong.” He hadn’t bothered quieting the murmur.
Isla could feel different sets of eyes watching them. Thankfully, it felt like only one had been looking at them with ill will.
Verena took a deep drink from her tea. “I’m sure you’re both sick of telling this story, but how did you two meet?”
A careful, calculating question despite its wholesome package.
Given that the rebels of her pack had known when they’d met, Isla had no doubt Verena knew, too. She’dbeenat the Hunt with the both of them, though Isla was sure, back then, she hadn’t even been on the alpha’s radar.
“At the feast before the Hunt,” Kai said.
So, they were going with the truth approach. Isla allowed Kai to carry on, nodding every so often, curious how much he planned to divulge.
“We had both been entered—we both ended up succeeding, too. Apparently, it was one of the highest counts in history or something. Isla got two. She was close.” That disarmingly smug charm slipped into his voice as he looked at her, and she clenched her fists to keep from touching him. That damn tone, even if it annoyed her, was always the quickest way to get her straddling him.
“I knew we were mates before she did, being an alpha, but you felt me?” he invited her into the storytelling.
“I did. You keptpullingat me. Needy from the beginning.” Isla regretted the small taunt right after she’d said it. Maybe it wasn’t best to reaffirm just how vital she was to him.
They could spare them the fact they’d wanted to jump each other when they first locked eyes and spare them the garden where they’d made their deal; they needed to frame the next part of the story carefully.
It was Isla who took over and began. “He wanted to protect me. His family had just been killed.” Kai flinched. “And they hadn’t caught the killer in Deimos yet.” Now, she winced. “So, we had to pretend we weren’t mates, so no one would try to use me against him.”
Kai met her eyes and said, “Even if it killed me to be away from her.”
Verena’s face had been pensive, solemn. Isla wondered if they’d been breaking through that analytical mask, finding something genuine. “Did you ever catch your father's killer?” Hurt and rage for the loss of a close friend laced her voice.
Kai’s voice lowered. “No. We know it was a witch, but to our knowledge, she’s still out there.”
“A witch,” she breathed bitterly. “I wonder how she got in.”
Awkward stares between each person at the tableclued Isla into enough of what they were thinking.
Kai’s hand went to Isla’s thigh, closer to her knee, and she covered it with her own.It’s fine,she tried to say.
It was Jax who leaned forward and asked, truly interested, “If you hadn’t caught her, what made you change your mind and stop hiding your bond?”
Isla glanced at Jax, finding some guilt creeping across his face. A sorry in his eyes…maybe for what had happened yesterday. Perhaps he hadn’t been trying to keep the rebel meeting secret from her. Maybe he’d genuinely wanted to protect her and allow her to have a good time all along. He seemed harmless.
“That’s a little bit my fault,” Isla said and twisted back, locking her eyes with Kai’s, letting all her adoration forhimspill into her gaze. “I realized I loved him more than I feared anything else.”
* * *
The subsequent meeting with Verena didn’t occur in her office. Instead, the alpha, Isla, Kai, and Ameera traveled down, down, and down through a winding tunnel system until they reached the dungeons and catacombs beneath the hall. Isla may have clung to Kai a bit tighter than she would’ve liked, but she got a small joy at the thought of rubbing in she’d beaten Adrien here in the Heir’s face later.
Unlike Deimos, there were no crystals to light their path as their steps echoed across the stone. Instead, torches cast menacing shadows around them, and Isla blinked every so often when she found herself seeking her wolf within them, even if she felt it tucked away safely inside her.
She timed her pace with the thudding of the creature’s head against the side of its box that Ameera held.
They’d shown Verena and Theon in Verena’s office after breakfast, and upon seeing it, they’d paled—and told them they show them something. So, Theon had taken over any other obligations for the morning while Verena had rushed them down here.
When they came to a halt before a solid iron door—which Isla knew from the way her wolf, now laced with faerie magic, recoiled—Verena placed her hand atop it. “Four nights ago, on the night of the Equinox, this was caught in Ciryn. It slaughtered several of my citizens, destroyed their homes, and killed my guards before it could be subdued.”
Fear struck Isla’s heart before Verena had even opened the entrance. It only faded to confusion when they all stepped inside and beheld what lay upon a metal worktable, illuminated by more torchlight. A creature just like the one that had attacked them last night, this one similarly was missing its head, the cranium perched on a separate table. But unlike the creature Ameera held—or at least the part—this one had been carved open.
Every organ, its oddly shaped heart and lungs, eyes, tongue, and every other part Isla had trouble identifying, had been stored in different glass jars perched on various rusted iron shelves. Even its blood—a pearly goo that seemed to shimmer in the fire’s glow—had been collected.
