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The man blinked. “What?”
“Walk,”Kai repeated, and echoing throughout the skies, there was the boom of thunder. The rain hadn’t fallen, but he could feel it. “I’m giving you the option of someone hearing you before you bleed out.” He took another step back. “Make me say it again, and I’ll leave you gutted here.”
The man barely deliberated.
He rose, keeping his hands where Kai could observe, and began his walk towards where Rhydian stood, his head low. He knew if he ran, they’d catch him. But what Kai should’ve expected, maybe had in the back of his mind, is the man would use his distance between them to reach into his pocket and pull out what looked like a small capsule. Before either of them could react, he shoved it in his mouth. One bite, one bob of his throat, and he fell into a writhing heap on the dirt, foam forming at the corners of his chapped lips.
Kai didn’t move; he just watched as Rhydian ran up to him, checking for a pulse at the side of his neck. “He’s dead.” Shock laced each word. “He’s dead. What do we do?”
Wordlessly, with veins filled with both fire and ice, Kai wrenched the man’s dagger from the dirt, then took hold of the man’s collar, dragging his limp body to the base of one of his marked trees. Above him, in the bark, Kai carved his family’s sigil as an acknowledgment, a warning.
He tossed the blade in the leaves beside the corpse and turned for home.
Then the rain began.
CHAPTER4
ISLA
Isla parted the shade of the inn room with two fingers, watching the fat drops of rain pour over Abalys’s streets. Lightning struck across the darkened sky in an amethyst whip, followed by a heavy crash of thunder that rattled the brick building’s foundations.A small bliss—for her, at least.After speaking with Nefel, the father of the family who’d fled from Charon, she needed something to pacify the rage and guilt warring in her heart.
He hadn’t initially been open to talking, but Isla had come offering food and comfort, a listening ear, and a sturdy shoulder. Isla, Alpha Kai’s mate and the future queen. While their daughter was being soothed by his wife—the poor thingafraidof the storm, even with all she’d just endured—Isla learned of what they’d gone through for theweekit took them to trek the rogue lands to make it to Deimos. The rogues they’d run from, who Nefel had needed to kill, the decline and instability of Charon, and the hell they’d endured in what was once their home that sounded so much like Davina’s experience but was uniquely horrible.
Grimacing, Isla turned to where Kai lay in the small bed, blankets slouched low on his hips, his muscled body bare but for that fabric as he studied the ceiling. His hair draped in loose waves over his forehead, drying from having been in the storm. With his brow pinched and his jaw tensed, he was clearly deep in thought.
In his hand, he twirled her dagger with expert ease that shouldn’t have been as attractive as it was. The absent action served as a small reminder that even if he didn’t bear the mark as she did or the official title, he was a warrior by rite all the same.
As if he’d felt her stare, Kai’s focus shifted, the hard edges of his face smoothing as he took her in. His eyes drew up and down her body, clad in only her tunic skimming the tops of her thighs, the rest of her clothes left on the vanity.
He threw an arm across the covers, an invitation and request.
Isla gave him a soft smile.
The bed creaked as she joined him on the hard mattress, and when she leaned over to kiss him once, he threaded his fingers through her hair and kept her there for a few moments, lips gliding smoothly over hers. Not a fiery embrace but a grateful one.
I’m happy I have you. I’m happy you’re here—words he didn’t need to say for her to understand.
When he’d arrived at the inn alone and entirely drenched, she had known something had happened back at the borders. She’d even felt it before she saw him, nearly leaving Nefel because of it. But even without that otherworldly sense, she would’ve known from the way he’d embraced her when she met him in the lobby, the way he’d kissed her like he needed her tobreathe. Magnus, Thyra, and the concierge at the desk had been forgotten. All that existed was her, his grounding force.
He hadn’t been ready to talk then. Not while they made their decision to spend the night here rather than trek for hours through the downpour to get back to the House. And not while he started up a fire in the small wood stove in the room’s corner or stripped and left his clothes near its steady heat to dry.
So, Isla waited, accepting every gentle graze of his hands and soft wordless kiss he stole until he tucked into their bed, her knife in his hands, spinning and spinning like his mind must’ve been.
Shadows had clouded his eyes, but now, as she settled cross-legged beside him, she could see that storm had cleared just enough.
So, voice so low it nearly got lost in the crackle and pop of the flames, she asked, “What happens now that they haven’t made it back?”
Notwhat happened, notwhat did you do. They were too accusatory.
Kai let out a heavy breath, his hand drifting over her bare leg, mapping patterns over her skin. “There’s only so many options. We either continue to wait, hoping they’ll make it back tomorrow, the next day…maybe.” Thenext daywas her coronation. “Or we send out more scouts to trackthem,but given the circumstances, it could just be a suicide mission. With Eli sneaking around here, and Locke with his own spies in rogue territory.”
Isla jerked back. “Locke’s what?”
“Spies, bounty hunters. They’re setting up traps by our borders to either get back his people or find proof of ours drifting out. He knows we’re taking members in, figures we’d send out people to watch him, and if he can prove it…” Kai swallowed hard, darkness creeping over his face. “Goddess, I have a headache.”
“We don’t have to talk about it now,” Isla said, not wanting to push him. “Everything’s clearer when the sun’s up. I’m convinced our wolves take too much control at night.” She combed her fingers through his hair. “Tonight definitely didn’t go as planned.”
Kai scoffed. “I don’t think anything will ever ‘go as planned’for us.”
