This was a conversation long coming.
He knew the vamp understood why he insisted on some privacy, his dark eyes glittering with anticipation.
Once outside, Ryder cut to the chase. “Why are you still here?”
Reuben laughed. “You know I actually like your forthrightness, lykan. It makes your unnecessary jealousy a little less tedious.”
“Unnecessary. You sure? Why. Are. You. Still. Here?”
The vampyre shrugged and moved further into the darkening back yard, his face tilted up towards the sky. “For Jaeden. I want to make sure she’s OK before I leave.”
“She’s fine. She’s got me.”
Reuben chuckled. “As if you’re enough against what’s coming.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
The vamp seemed to remember himself, and he shook his head, a smile of apology on his lips. “Nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing. What the hell is coming?”
Holding his hands up in surrender, Reuben approached Ryder slowly. “I didn’t mean anything you don’t already know. I know about Caia that’s all. Jaeden told me everything. I can keep a secret. But we all know that Caia’s presence in this war is only the beginning of the end of a very old story. The penultimate episode is encroaching, and the action in that is always as bloody for the minor characters as it is for the major ones in the finale. Who knows how bad it will get. Jae - all of you - will need all the friends you can get.”
The vampyre brushed past Ryder and into the house, leaving him feeling incredibly unsettled. That guy was so weird.
Sighing in frustration, Ryder turned and followed him back into the house. Immediately he went on alert at the silence that greeted him, and raced towards the sitting room to find Jae. She was there, safe and sound with her family and Reuben, but everyone was gazing towards the doorway on the other side of the room, where a familiar being leaned against the doorframe.
Saffron.
“What’s going on?” he demanded, striding into the room to stand by Jae.
Saffron’s mouth immediately twisted into a moue when she saw him. “Ryder.” She heaved a sigh. “I should have guessed you would be here. Always sticking your nose in.”
He ignored that, knowing her propensity for arguing childishly rather than getting to the point. “Why are you here?”
She seemed surprised by his complete disregard of her attempt to rile him but straightened and gazed at Dimitri. “I’m here to kill two birds with one stone. Lucien wanted to convey a message to the pack, and find out if Jaeden was returned safely home.”
“I’m Jaeden.” She wiggled her fingers at the faerie.
Saffron rolled her eyes at her. “I’m aware. I killed the spy that was pretending to be you.”
He bristled at her blasé tone and the way the blood drained from Jaeden’s face. He growled in annoyance, as did Dimitri.
The faerie raised a delicate eyebrow. “Was that insensitive?”
“Just a little,” Julia sniffed.
Saffron snorted. “Sorry. Old habits and all that. Anyhoo, she’s safe and sound and hunky dory. I’ll tell Lucien. And Lucien wants you to know that the attack against the MacLachlans has been stopped by the Regent of the Midnight Coven. However, he and Caia will be remaining at the Center for a few days more as Caia considers a position Marita has offered her.”
Position? Ryder shook his head in confusion. What the hell kind of position would Caia possibly consider taking after she had promised Lucien she was staying with the pack? That didn’t sound right.
Something was up.
“Position?” Reuben asked quietly. Ryder frowned, wondering why the vampyre wanted to know.
Saffron blinked and Ryder was sure he saw a flash of familiarity flit across her eyes as she gazed at Reuben. When he stared harder, however, all he found was the polite mask frozen on her face whenever she was talking to a stranger… hell, when she was talking to anybody.
“What position?” The vamp repeated.
Ryder was surprised that the faerie didn’t take offence at Reuben’s authoritative tone. Instead Saffron shrugged. “Leader of some elite force of lykans, apparently.”
“What?” Ryder snapped. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m surprised anything makes sense to you, what with your brain being the size of a peanut.”
Jae growled and stepped towards the faerie. “Watch it, Tinkerbell.”
He smiled smugly at her protectiveness and the look of astonishment on the faerie’s face.
“That’s the thanks I get for unmasking the bitch that was pretending to be you?” She sulked and looked back at him. “Well, the little ones will be double the morons when you two mate.”
“Hey!” Julia took offence.
Saffron shrugged. “Looks like I’ve outstayed my welcome then.” And just like that she disappeared before their eyes.
“What a snotty-”
“Pain-”
“In the ass,” Dimitri finished.
He rushed from the bathroom at the sound of his cell ringing and snatched it up, his heart faltering at the caller ID. What had happened now?
“Nikolai. Problem?”
The Russian sighed down the other end of the phone. “Why do you think so? You’re always looking at the bad in everything, Kirios.”
“Something has happened.”
“Da. It’s that insect Du Bois.”
“I thought you’d handled that.”
“So did I. He’s more powerful than I thought, and his hand reaches further than I thought also.”
“Where is he?”
“I can only imagine at this moment he is on his way to attack the MacLachlans.”
“Then Caia knows. She’ll be preparing for war.”
“Da.”
His heart thudded at the thought of what that could do to their plans. “Do you not realize how disastrous this is, Nikolai?”
The magik cleared his throat. “Actually, I was thinking we have been looking at this all the wrong way. This attack, this defense... is it not the perfect opportunity to test Caia? To see just exactly what it is she is capable of?”
“If we start thinking that way, we will be just like them. That is not what we want for the future, Nikolai.”
“I know. But to win this war we must know exactly what our weaponry and the enemy’s weaponry is capable of.”
He squeezed his eyes closed, feeling a metaphorical headache coming on.
“Very well. Send in a spy.”
15 - Breaking Out
A trickle of sweat slid down her back, hidden from the view of the others around her. Thankfully, they were all aware she had rushed to this meeting and she hoped that the lykans who could smell the sweat would mistake the cause of it. Caia held her breath as her gaze swept Marita and Vanne’s sitting room, battle plan central as it was now. She coached herself to remain outwardly calm, to keep her eyes from widening, her chest from heaving. Instead her face was a frozen mask. She could tell because all of them – Marita, Vanne, Marion, Lucien, Rose, Mordecai, Anders, Michael and Phoebe – were staring back at her in frustrated confusion, wondering why they had been called, probably guessing, but still annoyed by her silence. She was silent because she was preparing her voice to come out steady, not high and squeaky like she felt inside.
Finally, she drew a breath and announced, “Pierre Du Bois has escaped imprisonment. Petrovksy has no clue as to his whereabouts, but I’ve picked him up with a few of his rebels that have remained faithful. The attack against the MacLachlans is going ahead. Which means the attack is tomorrow evening in Remnant Forest.”
There were a number of growls, hissing and expletives as they received confirmation of the news that had been clear the moment they had been called together. To them this would be the reason for Caia’s frozen anxiety, to the lykans, the reason they could smell the sweat that trickled under her shirt, to the vampyre, the reason he could detect the quickening of the pulse in her neck with his razor-sharp eyes.
They would be wrong.
Suddenly the double doors to Marita’s suite banged open, and in hurried a worried looking magik. At the same moment a feeling of triumph mixed with fear rushed through Caia when the trace she was holding on to disappeared from the Center.
The magik’s eyes swung wildly until they found Marita, who rounded the table with a look of outrage pasted on her face.
“How dare you barge in here uninvited?” she exclaimed, glancing behind the magik to find Noble pale and beseeching. “How did she get in here?”
He blanched and gestured to her. “This is Blair, the warden at the containment center. She said it was an emergency.”
Marita whipped back towards her. “What is it?”
Blair gulped, smoothing her hair back into its severe bun with shaking hands. “Madam, I’m afraid it has come to my attention that the prisoner has escaped.”
Marita snapped back as if she had been slapped. “Prisoner? You mean the girl? The Midnight?”
Blair nodded frantically.
“Have you searched the entire Center?”
“All of it Madam. There is no sign of her.”
Marita shook her head in disgust and then closed her eyes. “Caia?”
Her heart sped up and she willed it to slow so that the lykans present would not hear it. “Yes?”
“Can you feel the girl?”
She pretended to take a moment, and then shook her head gravely. “No. She’s not at the Center.”
“Well, where is she?”
OK, Cy, time to draw on your best acting skills. Channel Meryl Streep. “I-I don’t know. I-I can’t feel her,” she said, pretending to be panicked by the thought.
“What do you mean you can’t feel her? You told me you could find anyone in the trace?”
She pushed a few tears into the corner of her eyes, brushing her hair off her face, making her hands tremble. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why…”
“Argh!” Marita threw up her hands in exasperation. Then she took a calming breath, turning back into the ice queen as she menacingly glanced at Blair, her voice low and terrifying. “How on Gaia’s green earth did this happen?”
48 hours earlier
Avoiding Lucien was proving easy. Avoiding everyone else?
Not so much.
It was easy with Lucien because he was really, kind of, completely, insanely angry at her right now, and he had a reason to be because she had promised she would stay with the pack rather than fight at the Center. On the other hand, if he wasn’t being such an idiot he would realize that she would never go back on her word and know that something was up. At the moment, his misunderstanding was working more in her favor than if he was questioning her motives. She needed him well and truly out of this.
This being...
Her, trying to build up the courage to confront Vilhelm. The idea of encouraging someone to break a Midnight out of prison and out of the Center was insane.
I mean maybe I’ve got Marita all wrong. Maybe it’s me with my stupid trace. Maybe being a half-Midnight means my trace is broken. Maybe I’m the delusional one and should seek a mental health professional immediately.