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The thought of walking away made my chest feel as if it were being torn in two. On the other hand, potentially facing off with a bunch of pissed-the-fuck-off wolf shifters… Well, that actually didn’t sound like the worst thing I’d ever done.
I’d been drawn to the coven forest nearly every night back in Earth and Emerald. Lia had found me and led us here. Grayson hadn’t walked away from me when I knew he could have, despite our bond. A bond he hadn’t been seeking out before he’d met me.
All of these things had happened for a reason.
Either way, I faced what was happening here or I left and stayed hidden for the rest of my life.
The latter made me want to vomit, and I felt confident in my next words.
“I want to stay and fight,” I said in response to Grayson’s previous question. “I’m not afraid of a bunch of cocky wolf shifters who don’t know that fear isn’t the right way to lead people.”
Grayson glowered but nodded. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”
Ryder let out a heavy sigh. “This is going to get messy. Like really fucking messy. In the form of bloodshed. Are you all prepared for that?”
I might not have killed anyone before, but I knew right from wrong. I knew that the people here didn’t deserve to live in fear, worrying if their children or mates were going to come home at the end of the day.
So if I had to get comfortable with a bunch of fucked-up shit really quickly, then that was what I’d do, because walking away wasn’t an option.
“We’re more than prepared,” I answered with my chin held high.
“Yeah, I’m beginning to see that.” Ryder glanced at the four of us and then back at me. “Let’s figure out where we want to begin.”
Chapter19
GRAYSON
The four of us followed Ryder to a warehouse-type building. The outside was sided in ribbed metal with rust stains running down intermittently from exposed nail heads. White doors without windows were at the side we approached, and I was hesitant to follow this particular leader inside, but I knew that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Kinsley.
The more I was around her, the more she talked about being okay with putting herself in danger, the more my need to mark and protect her rose.
Kinsley was mine, but she wasn’t a woman to be claimed easily. Even if I knew she wanted me in return.
No, if I was going to make her my mate officially, then I needed to show her that I was more than what she’d seen so far. I needed to show her that I could stand by her side and be the partner she needed to fight the battles to come.
I hadn’t been sure that was what I wanted, but seeing how unafraid she was to face other wolves in a battle for a House she didn’t know? That made me realize I needed to quit hiding behind my own strength.
Ever since my baby sister Addie had been murdered, I’d used my aggression to destroy any soft emotion I dared to feel. I didn’t want to ever let anyone get close to me, because losing them wasn’t worth whatever happiness they might have brought me.
Except Kinsley wasn’t just anyone. She was the one created for me. The one the fates deemed my perfect balance.
Even if I wanted to deny her again, I knew I couldn’t.
I was done for, and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. Not when time wasn’t on our side.
We entered the warehouse, and I could see stairs immediately to our right that led to two other floors, but Ryder kept left, leading us farther into the first floor.
There were rooms made from plywood with curtains for doors that prevented us from seeing inside. The concrete ground was cracked with grotesque stains, ones I didn’t need to know the origins of.
There was a chill in the air as we continued, but given wolf shifters ran hot, I wasn’t surprised they kept the place cooler.
Kinsley glanced up at me when we went through another door and entered a dark hallway. Her eyes were bright, and her body remained relaxed with her breathing even. I shouldn’t have been surprised about that, considering how she’d responded to being kidnapped, but still, I thought at some point, this whole shitshow might start to weigh down on her.
“We’ll start out here,” Ryder said before opening one last door that brought us back outside. The light from the sun was bright, and I squinted a bit before taking in the area.
It was a small alleyway between two warehouses, the one we’d just left and another I hadn’t seen before entering.
Connecting both buildings were brick fence-like structures at least twenty feet in height. There was no way out from this space unless someone could scale walls.
