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Lily raised her eyebrows.
“Gabriel knows about them? About the relics?”
Claire nodded and went on.
“He had been groomed to be the alpha ever since his father's failure. He had to know about both imminent threats as well as far-reaching ones. The relics weren’t just fun stories anymore. They were real. And it seems like they have become painfully real to humans also.”
Lily's hands felt abruptly shaky, so she placed her tea on the table before her. Claire remained solid, her fingers hooked within the handle of the mug, her eyes glued to Lily and awaiting her response.
She tried to keep her voice from trembling. Lily wasn't interested in letting Claire see her so vulnerable. But it was near impossible. Those glowing hazel eyes felt like lasers on her skull.
"The relics," she began. “What are they? And why haven't the shifters gotten to them first?”
Claire sighed. “The whole relic is called The Lantern’s Eye,” she began, shifting in closer and lowering her voice to a whisper. “The lore goes that it was broken into several pieces hundreds of years ago by one of the first shifters here on Earth to make the possible use of it extremely difficult.”
"Why not destroy it completely?” Lily asked with a scrutinizing glare.
Claire shook her head, as even and unfazed as could be.
“It can't be destroyed. All it can do is cause destruction to our kind.”
Lily had a thousand questions rushing through her head, and she could barely sort them out.
She had landed herself in some dark fairy tale with men that could turn into beasts and some ancient mystical trinket that could return them all to dust. It was exciting in a way a story was exciting, but she couldn’t deny that she was afraid. For Gabriel and his family.
Lily leaned forward on the couch and rubbed her face hard. The moon was cresting on the horizon, a pinkish hue pouring through the front window.
“So, you're telling me that you think these humans are trying to find the pieces of this Lantern’s Eye?”
Claire nodded, offering nothing else in response.
“And it can't be destroyed?”
She shook her head again silently.
“But after hundreds of years of existence, shifters haven't been able to find it?” Lily tried to say without scoffing. "Wouldn't it have been prudent to find it before it fell into the wrong hands?"
Claire gave Lily a dashing smile. She was beautiful in a way that was beguiling.
“As I said, the relics were all stories at first. Tales told by the light of the fire to children before bedtime. It is only within the past fifty years that we realized it was all true.”
Lily's head spun. Just as she was about to ask another question, the front door burst open.
Her heart crawled into her throat in fear. She swallowed it back down when she saw him, Gabriel.
He looked grim as ever, leading the way for Lucas and two other of his enforcers inside. Claire shot up to her feet as Lily knelt against the couch, unable to contain her relief that Gabriel was in one piece.
“Son,” Claire said, approaching the men in the hallway.
Lily watched as he nodded at his mother, who gave the most animated response she had seen since meeting the matriarch. Claire ran a hand through her hair, then trailed into the kitchen.
“I will get some more tea,” Claire mumbled.
The moment Gabriel found her gaze, he retreated into her arms. He fell to his knees and engulfed her, his body as hot as the fire that crackled nearby.
“Are you okay? What happened?” she said into the shell of his ear, his grip around her torso tightening like a python.
For a second, he said nothing, his face buried into the nape of her neck the way he did when they made love. She felt reborn holding him like that, her fear crushed by the power of his affection.
