“You already killed him,” he seethes. “Wasn’t that enough?”
“No.”
His nostrils flare. “You should have let the Aureal Council deal with it, Iris.”
I huff. “And have them bury everything? Yeah, no, thank you.”
“They would never do that.”
“Oh, trust me, they would.”
His eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t have time for this right now, dammit. I need to tell you something. It’s urgent—”
“Did you at least take care of the evidence tying you to Erik?” he inquires.
“I did, yeah. I spent two days in that fucking storage unit.”
“And what did you do with it?”
“It’s still at my apartment.”
“Good,” he sighs, plopping down on the bed and resting his elbows on top of his knees. “What’s so urgent?”
Nerves strung high, I start to pace the length of the room. “You’re going to think I’m crazy for saying this.” A manic laugh bubbles out of me as if trying to convince Noah that I, indeed, am losing my marbles. I halt in the middle of the room before spilling the words, “I need your help to break someone out of the compound.”
His eyes widen. “What?”
I suck in a lungful of calming air.C’mon, Iris, just get it over with! Emily needs you.“Okay…so, um, you know how Erik went missing because he followed me to a club in the Raven district?”
“Yeah.”
“That club is owned by the Obsidian Conclave. Before you chastise me for it, I wasn’t aware of that, okay? Anyway, Tim tracked Erik’s phone there.”
He interlocks his fingers while narrowing his eyes at me. “How do you know all of this?”
“I overheard Grayson talking about it earlier. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that they kidnapped a woman working at the club. She’s a dark creature.”
“And?”
My eyebrows furrow at his question. “They are torturing her. They brought in Cain to interrogate her, and he is doing all these horrible things to her—”
“So? Why do you care what happens to a lesser being?” he says flippantly.
I recoil. He sounds exactly like Grayson. “What do you mean,why do I care? Why don’t you? Being a wolf shifter doesn’t grant her this kind of treatment; she’s still a person, Noah. How can you even say that? And it’s a fucking violation of the Celestial Treaty. She’s under the protection of the Obsidian Conclave,” I snap.
He raises a nonchalant shoulder. “Just use her as a scapegoat, then. Maybe they think she has something to do with his disappearance.”
The iciness in his tone only adds fuel to my fire. I don’t know what the fuck happened with Noah in the past five years because I don’t recognize him in this moment. Balling my hands at my sides, I throw him a withering glare. “But she did nothing wrong! And what if she saw me with Erik? If she did and tells Cain, I’m next in the torture chair.”
“Fuck,” Noah mutters under his breath.
“So, are you willing to help me get”—shit, I almost said Emily—“that dark creature out?”
He works his jaw. I wait with bated breath for his response. He finally nods after a few moments of blistering silence. “There’s this charity gala. It’s an event my parents used to attend every year. They were big donors. They extended the invitation to me over the years, but of course, I couldn’t attend until this year. If I do this for you, I want you to come with me. And no more fucking lies. I mean it.”
“Fine,” I clip out, and tell him my plan.
