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sina
One day had passedsince Thayer and Gaian had left. I stood in the doorway to my bedroom, watching Calder sleep soundly for the first time in what must’ve been almost half a decade now. His eyes were shut softly, his lips parted.
“Hate to interrupt, but you’re going to want to hear this,” Darius said, grabbing my arm and tugging me out the door. Instead of shutting the door and speaking to me in the pack house, he continued to the back door. “One of our warriors caught the scent of Hellana’s baby.”
My eyes widened. “Wh-what? Are you serious?”
“If we hurry, we might be able to find her. She’s closer than expected.”
“But it’s been a few days since she was taken,” I said, furrowing my brows and trying to make sense of this. “Myfather’s men should’ve taken her back to his estate by now. Why are they still hanging around here?”
“I don’t know. Now, come on.”
As he pulled me along through the woods, I desperately tried to figure out what his plan was. Why would they leave the baby close to our property? What were they trying to do? Were they going to—
I stopped and snatched his elbow to force him to halt. We stood in the quiet forest.
“What if this is a trap?”
“What if it’s not?” Darius asked. “This is Hellana’s baby, a newborn Paragon.”
I pressed my lips together and glanced at the ground. “Don’t do that to me. You know I want to find the baby, but if this is a trap and we walk right into it, then we’re all going to be screwed. I made a promise to Calder that I’d be your luna and protect this pack.”
While I wanted to badly break that promise in order to find the baby, I couldn’t. I had to think logically, not emotionally. We wouldn’t be prepared for a full-blown attack. I didn’t know how many warriors myfatherhad.
“We’ll meet up with my contact,” Darius said. “See what he has to say. If we conclude that the information leads to a surprise attack or that your father is waiting for you to find the baby so he can snatch you, we’ll turn right back around. I promise.”
My stomach twisted, but I nodded. “Okay.”
This was the least I could do for Hellana. I’d promised I’d do everything in my power to return her family back to normal. She had lost her baby the same way that Mom had lost hers in my daydream-reality thing that had happened.
So, we snuck through the woods, careful not to step on twigs or branches or crunchy fall leaves. We couldn’t draw any attention to ourselves, and we needed to be on full alert at all times. I couldn’t risk having that man capture me too.
Everyone was depending on me to survive. Mom. Dad. Hellana. Calder.
Suddenly, before we could even make it to Darius’s contact, voices echoed through the woods along with a baby’s cry. A familiar voice that I would never be able to forget. A voice that haunted every last one of my dreams and nightmares.
Darius covered my mouth with his hand, pulled me behind a large rock, and held me tightly to him. He sniffed the air and tensed behind me.“Don’t say a word, Sina. Don’t even take a sharp breath. They’ll know that you’re here, that we’ve found them and we are onto them. You were right. This looks like a setup.”
Thank the fucking gods that we had a mind link or else I would’ve been losing it by now, going absolutely insane. They were using a baby to lure me out because Dad knew that I’d try to find it, that I’d be looking. He knew I’d do anything to protect the innocent because nobody had protected me.
“You can’t do anything by your-fucking-self,”Dadsneered at one of his men who must’ve stolen Hellana’s baby. “You’re fucking useless.”
When nothing happened and the silent moments passed quickly, I knew deep down that this really was a setup.Fatherwanted me to come out and show myself—to try to save the baby and the helpless men he had brainwashed, who he had let rape me.
He was sick and twisted.
I swallowed hard and tensed in Darius’s arms, biting my lip to attempt to stay in control. All my monster wanted to do was rip that man’s head off and feast on his body. He deserved every minute of pain, every moment of torture that I would one day give him.
But I didn’t know how many guards thatFatherhad in this forest, how many men he’d be willing to risk in order to capture me again. Who the fuck knew what he was up to or what his plans were?
“Give me the needle,”Dadordered one of his men.
The needle had to be filled with poisonous liquid that’d paralyze the guard whocouldn’t do anything by himself. I squeezed my eyes closed and wanted to shut my ears, too, because I knew thatFatherhad more than just paralyzing him up his sleeve.
After a horrid scream from the guard went through the forest, his body smacked onto the ground with a hard thump. A shiver ran down my spine as the feelings of paralyzation rushed through me. I knew what was going through that man’s head, how helpless he must be feeling. He might’ve been the one to steal Hellana’s baby and do horrible things to me, but it was underFather’scontrol.
“Release the Paragon,”Fathersaid. “Let her feast.”
