I felt it as soon as she left, the… emptiness around me even though my men are with me. She’s lost weight. Her face is gaunt, her cheekbones more defined, and she looks exhausted. Angry. So fucking angry and resigned that the hard thing in my chest gave an extra beat at the sight. I couldn’t take my eyes off her nonetheless. Her fucking blue eyes that look like ice, penetrating mine in a way only she can. Only she ever could.
And when her Heir power touched mine… I clench my hands into fists.
A howl comes from behind me again and I can’t seem to move, can’t get my feet to lift, and turn and fight as her words run through my mind.
I was a child when they came to the lands.
That’s what she said at Wolvorn Castle.
She’s right. The rogures appeared more than twenty years ago, she would have been around seven.
“Brother,” Leo says, coming to stand in front of me. I see him, but not really. “Shit,” he curses harshly and looks toward the others. “What she said,” he trails off, and that gets me out of my frozen state.
“Fuck,” I growl, rolling my shoulder and feeling the pain through my back. I do it again, just to make it worse as I look in the direction she went.
“We have to follow her,” Damian says, already moving.
I grab his arm. “She’s gone.” He goes to open his mouth, but then he frowns, scrubbing a hand down his face.
I spin and face my men, their faces saying it all. Confusion, realization, and then worry.
“We fucked up, didn’t we?” Damian mutters, putting his hands on his hips. “I can’t believe it.” He shakes his head. “I can’t…” he trails off, not knowing what to say.
Zaide looks behind him, no doubt watching for rogures. “But you saw her in the memory crystal,” he says before looking back at me. “They cannot be altered. She could be lying, now, like she could have been at the castle.”
“She said it was wrong,” I murmur, looking down to the ground, my thoughts running rampant in my mind. “The memory crystal showed her plain as day, performing a ritual and the rogures clawing out of the ground. How can I see her do that but yet she was a child at the time? Where did that crystal even come from? Aldus gave it to me the first time, but he never mentioned how he came to have it other than it was in Eridian, and I also didn’t ask.”
“None of us asked anything,” Leo sighs.
“We knew something didn’t add up, that something wasn’t right, we just didn’t know what.” The feeling of wrongness when Charles was asking her questions, the things he said in the great hall. I just thought it was more lies, more bullshit. At the back of my mind, I did have some doubts, but now? What if what she said was true?
The pain she went through, the pain that I felt as my own, was caused for nothing.
“We didn’t know anything,” Leo agrees. “But I think now we do.”
I nod. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would Aldus give me that crystal, and why would it show Rhea?”
“She still could be lying,” Jerrod questions and I shake my head.
“She can’t lie about her age. We have all seen her.” There is no way to lie about that. “For all the lies she told me, us. That is true, she’s twenty-eight.”
We’ve all seen her dragged into the great hall, interrogated by the Highers, watched as two of her pack members were slain, the pup breaking the blood link, and… being whipped by me.
“She didn’t cause the curse,” Damian whispers aloud what I don’t dare to. What I don’t want to think about. “She didn’t do it.” His eyes are wide, shock filling them.
“Fuck,” I snarl, pacing back and forth. “Fuck!” I roar, my power slithering over my skin. Drax growls low inside of me, feeling the turmoil.
“Brother,” Leo starts, but I shake my head and continue to pace, my hands clenching with fury.
What have we done. What have I done?
I look down at my fists and realize Rhea was right about one thing. My own anger caused me not to ask questions, and when she tried to talk to me back at Wolvorn Castle, I refused to listen.
“The memory stone wasn’t right, how the fuck is that possible?” Leo asks, his brow pinched together in confusion.
My jaw ticks. “I don’t know.” I’m not sure I know anything anymore.
We were told memory stones couldn’t be altered, Charles and the other Highers were adamant about it, especially Aldus, who can infiltrate memories himself. He said it was impossible. Memory stones are hard to come by, they take years to charge before they can be used because once they are, they can’t be changed.
Aldus already tried to erase my memories of being an Heir, but the question is, why? And does he have the power to change a memory stone? He’s nowhere to be found though to ask these questions, too busy with the people, as Charles said. He wasn’t happy when I mentioned that Aldus was there before my memory of being an Heir was gone. I need to find him to speak with him myself.
With all this information churning in my mind, I know we fucked up.
I fucked up.
Charles is another one I need to be wary of. Something’s not right, he lied to me when we spoke in his office about Rhea’s mother. There was a glint in his eye that I didn’t like, and now I’m questioning what he’s hiding, what he knows. He hid the fact that Rhea’s mother was an Heir and they kept her alive, yet he upheld the law all the time he has been in power, to capture all Heirs on sight. That, along with him all of a sudden wanting me to produce some powerful pups, to rape Rhea?
I’m missing something, and considering I didn’t even connect that Rhea would be too young for the curse, I need to speak to Rhea about Charles. Right fucking now.
“It could have been Rhea when she was an adult performing the ritual,” Leo says, scratching his chin. “It could be why their numbers are growing? But then, who performed the ritual originally?”
I wipe my hands down my face, hearing the rogures in the distance getting closer. “We need to find Rhea and take her back to Vokheim. We need to talk to her, ask her directly if she performed a ritual when she was older and if she did, then who did she learn it from. She did erase Kade’s memories, she did take people into Eridian against their will, Sarah said so herself. I need the full story. No more lies, no fucking bullshit. Then we will take her back to Wolvorn to have her sentenced if she deserves to be.”
“How are you going to make sure she tells the truth?” Damian asks, looking behind him as another howl sounds.
“Any way I can. I need answers and I need them now.”
“And what if the truth is that she’s innocent in all of this?” Zaide asks, his eyes on me as he voices something I refuse to believe. I can’t believe it, because that means what I did…
I look over at him, glaring. “Not possible.”
She killed some of my Elites’ trainees, and wanted to kill us all in The Deadlands. She lied repeatedly to my fucking face. She held Sarah in Eridian against her will. She threatened anyone that wanted to leave and not be under her paw. Innocent, she’s so fucking far from that…but maybe in this, she is.
“How do we find her?” Jerrod asks, throwing his braid over his shoulder.
“I don’t know, but I will.”
“The blood witch was with her when they escaped,” Zaide says, and my eyes snap to him. “I saw her on the hill.” He nods at the hill at my back.
I spin this information over in my mind until it clicks. “Where is the one place we haven’t looked?” I ask aloud.
“Oh fuck, were going to get boiled alive,” Damian mutters.
“No,” I tell him. “We’re going to get a little wolf.”
At my words, a pack of rogures break through the tree line and I unsheathe my blade, preparing to make quick work of them.
Run, little wolf, your time is up and it won’t be long until I clamp my teeth down, and drag you with me back to Vokheim with me.
