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“Very diplomatic answer.” Rhydian twisted his head in the opposite way to where Isla and Kai had come from. “So, you took Meera’s tip then. Do you think Eli’s up to the same shit Callan was?”
Kai opened his mouth to answer but then closed it. As if he’d caught an animal on a snare, his senses snagged on something beyond the borders.
Go see.
Either his own natural inclination or that power beckoned. He took a few careful steps forward, avoiding the crunch of the drying grass. Rhydian didn’t even bother questioning, only followed.
“I don’t know what else Cassius would have him gather that he didn’t have Callan get already.” Kai lowered his voice as he approached the wall’s weathered stone. “He has to know about the tunnels. He knows what my father was planning, to an extent at least. He knows we’re dealing with a witch, and the witch came from him.”He moved along the wall until he reached a small fissure, enough for one to slip through. Where his scouts were meant to slip through.
Another breath. He closed his eyes, focusing.
Thunder rumbled—but not loud enough for Kai to miss the sound of a branch cracking beneath a foot. Someone was out there waiting…watching.
His nostrils flared as his eyes snapped open—and then the Alpha of Deimos entered the rogue lands.
CHAPTER3
KAI
Behind the border wall, the forest was still, silent but for the sound of water pattering off bare branches of trees and onto the leaf-littered floor. A vapor swirled around Kai’s legs, a fog in the distance by whatever uncharted body of water lay beyond.
Rogue territory was unclaimed by any of the kingdoms for one reason or another, undesirable and nearly uninhabitable, but enough to survive. The wolves who ended up here could’ve easily tried building their own societies, unchecked by the Imperial Alpha, but it wasn’t in their nature. Rogues had become so mostly due to their heinous actions against fellow wolves or their desire to be free from a pack’s constraints.
Kai paused just before the fog’s edge, clocking Rhydian close behind him. He could sense so much of his brother’s feelings—the doubt, confusion, and apprehensiveness at being in here—but he still guarded Kai’s back. Always had.
“Something’s out here,” Kai finally enlightened him, and as if the Goddess had made it a point to spear her dwindling light through the clouds for him to notice, he caught a glittering within the leaf litter. Too perfectly piled.
Kai advanced, mindful of the still-muted forest and guided by instinct, he carefully brushed the perimeter of the spot until he revealed a chain. He tugged it and then beheld a brutal spike meant to tear through flesh and bone. Several spikes. A hunter’s trap, not unusual, used mainly by those who couldn’t shift to score game.
But here…
He crouched to examine it closer and then twisted, noticing the trajectory the trap hoped for its prey. It had been perfectly placed so that anyone approaching the fissure in the border would be snared; anyone going out or trying to get in.
There was a whisper of an unsheathing blade followed by heavy breathing and footsteps. A rattled battle cry was cut short as Kai’s hand, extracted claws digging into flesh, clamped around the charging man’s scrawny neck. Not enough to kill, but enough that the warmth of blood coated his skin. He brought him to the ground rough enough to knock the wind from his lungs and wrench the dagger from his hand.
His wolf howled within him, that power singing a war song as Kai breathed raggedly through clenched teeth. This man, whoever he was, couldn’t shift. The doorway of his mind, unused, was more difficult to find, but somehow, Kai had traced it, and the void rose, spearing for unfortified walls before Kai could leash it.
Thoughts that weren’t his own assaulted him along with shrieking, overwhelming emotions of fear, aggravation. The sensation of pain that wasn’t his felt like pinpricks on his own consciousness. It should’ve hurt. There should’ve been some consequence to something as vile and intrusive as this. As he glimpsed people he did not know, heard words that were never meant for his ears, and felt joy and horror and pleasure and suffering that wasn’t his.
Pull. Fucking. Back.
He couldn’t let this consume him entirely.Never again. No matter who this was.
A weak tug of something inside him, a glimmer of a dimmed light. A better part of him.
Kai breathed, then released.
The man ripped a panicked, frustrated scream so violently from his lungs that Kai wondered if he’d taken away that ability, too. His body squirmed amongst blood-matted leaves, his feet kicking and his nose leaking crimson from Kai’s unintended assault.
Kai released his grip on his neck, leaving his claws out and dripping gore onto the man’s chest as he pressed his foot to his throat instead. He could feel Rhydian behind him, sense the rise of his power and Rhydian’s apprehension that he hoped wasn’t towards him.
“You have two seconds to explain why you’re laying traps by my borders before I crush your windpipe,” Kai growled, bringing his wolf forward and allowing his eyes and lumerosi to glow their signature blood-red.
The man, a rogue, Kai could only assume, gurgled a curse through the blood in his mouth.
Not a mindlessly brash rogue, then. He knew to be afraid.
The man braced his hands on either side of Kai’s booted foot, pushing up to lessen some pressure, but Kai only pressed harder. “This isn’t your territory,” he wheezed, “you have no jurisdiction here, Alpha.”
