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“Callan,” I said, turning to him. A theory was forming in my mind, something that I wouldn’t be able to shake if I didn’t ask. “What pack did Lexi come from when you were mated? Was she in the Clover pack?”
“No, the Clover pack was already my pack,” he said, sharing a serious look with Wolfe, who would have been his beta at the time. “Our mate bond was discovered at the annual shifter summit in Montana. She was in the Supreme’s pack, and I brought her back with me.”
“Motherfucker!” Wolfe exploded, standing up and punching the wall behind him in his anger. “I knew he was a piece of shit, but this? That’s taking it too far!”
“What would he have to gain from spelling me a fake mate bond?” Callan asked, the cogs in his mind churning as he thought.
“You were strong, Callan. He was one of the strongest Alphas in centuries, and you did not like conforming to his rules. Don’t you remember? You butted heads constantly.”
“So maybe he was afraid of your power?” Nia offered, her strategic mind already working out the details of what would make the most sense. “She killed your whole pack, didn’t she? The catalyst of you being outcast?” I raised my eyebrow at her, and she smiled sheepishly. “Lily likes to gossip.”
“If he went in league with dark witches just to knock Callan out, then he’s an idiot. Messing with mate bonds is seriously dark magic, forbidden among our kind. To do that is . . . disgusting. Unforgivable,” Oliver said.
“So what do we do?”
“I need to go there and talk to him. Get to the bottom of this.” Wolfe was pacing back and forth now, his hulking figure already taking up much of the sparse free space there was in the small waiting room.
“We also have my psycho Fae family trying to hunt me down for the ring.” Something occurred to me, and I frowned. “How did I get the ring anyway? It was in the dagger you gave me, Callan. Did you know it was there this whole time?”
It seemed the only likely explanation. He’d made the dagger out of the gearshift of my old car, so he had to have known something was inside of it. “No, I had no idea.” I used one end of my bond, and this time his emotions did surge through. Confusion, but no deceit.
“What urged you to make the knife?” Oliver asked intently.
“I . . . dreamt about it. After that day you told me how much the car meant to you.” I blushed, looking away like a giddy schoolgirl and hating myself for it. His hand stayed hot against my back. “I dreamt exactly how to make it, and when I woke up, I did.”
Oliver scratched his bearded chin. “It's most likely spelled to you then, Rowan. I’m not sure how you managed that, but the ring is powerful, stronger than all of us combined. If the ring wanted to be near you, it would find a way. That would explain why Olette didn’t feel the need to remember where it was.”
“Who could have put such a spell on it?”
“I don’t know. To spell something of this magnitude, you’d need an incredibly powerful magic user.”
“Cas will need time to recover. Now that you know how to wield the ring, you are significantly more powerful than he is. They need to think very carefully about their next move, as we have the upper hand.” This came from Finn, who had been fairly quiet since the fight. I often felt his eyes on me, but when I met them, I couldn’t fathom his expression, his light eyes shuttered.
“I don’t think any of us should stay in the pack for now,” Wolfe said seriously, the sorrow of his losses etching a pattern in his face. “I’ve arranged for the remaining members to stay with the other nearby packs, at least until this is all over so we can stay here until we recover. If Cas comes back, we won’t have to worry about them getting hurt.”
“I’m so sorry,” I told him, my eyes pleading with him for forgiveness even though my heart told me I didn’t deserve it. “If it wasn’t for me, this never would have happened.”
“Never be sorry, Rowan.” He gave me a kind smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’d repeat every choice we made. We fight for our own, and you are one of ours for as long as you want to be.”
“Now that we have them regrouping,” Nia said, her voice soft yet commanding, “we should go on the offensive. We have the ring. We have Rowan. Let’s kill Queen Tantaii.”
“It won’t be that easy,” Finn countered, playing devil’s advocate. “Now that Rowan has the means, the Queen isn’t going to be easy to access. She has Cas, who we failed to kill might I add, and Primoris is not an easy stronghold to penetrate. We got there easy enough through the tunnels, but that was just the outskirts. We’d never be able to tunnel our way close enough to reach the castle. No, we’d need to draw her out somehow.”
“If we can trick her into thinking she can get the ring, she’ll come out,” I said, and I knew that was true. I couldn’t remember any interactions with the Queen besides the one, but I knew she was power-hungry, and hopefully overconfident. If she thought she had me beat, she would show. But we needed to be sure we could kill her when she did. We weren’t ready.
“We need to figure this out first,” Wolfe said. “That witch is connected to the Supreme Alpha. And if the Supreme Alpha is in line with Cas’s forces, then we need to nip that shit in the bud. It will be much harder to beat them if they can turn our own forces against us too, if we’re corrupt from the top down. We’re going to Montana.”
ChapterTwenty-Eight
When Lily’s beautiful brown eyes opened again, I was the only one in the room. I’d kicked everyone out, including a livid Nia, and sent them all to get some sleep. She’d been swaying on her feet with all the people she was healing. Any longer and we might have had eleven casualties.
“Rowan?” she asked weakly as she gingerly sat herself up in the bed.
A grin split my face as I looked at my friend, just grateful she was even alive. “Hey there.”
“I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck,” she groaned. “What happened?”
“Lexi happened, that’s what. She almost killed you.”
