Thoughts flitted through her mind. Did Vlad know Nadia was her twin sister, or was he just using her to barter with? Vlad must have realized Prince was a powerful Packmaster who would turn this city upside down to find her, so revenge didn’t seem likely. Kat was certain Vlad wanted something from her father, and he assumed she had it in her possession. But what?
She sat back and circled her fingers across the strap that went over her left shoulder. Would Vlad accept money in exchange for her sister? That left her with hope, but if he had her father, he wasn’t going to let go as easily. Just thinking about her father in captivity, starving to death, made her want to break something. Worse, she’d been in the very house Vlad might have been holding her father in. He could have been right beneath her feet the whole time she was messing around on the stupid computer!
“Ouch!” Kat snapped her hand back and looked at the tip of her finger, rubbing away the sting. It felt similar to static shock, and she looked at the strap to make sure it wasn’t damaged.
After rubbing her finger over the same spot a few times, she didn’t feel anything unusual. Might have been a splinter stuck in the weave. Yet this felt different.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Prince said from across the room. He stalked over the grass and put one foot on the rock where she sat. “What are you doing?”
Kat stripped off her shirt.
“So soon?”
She cut him a sharp glare. “Something’s wrong.”
“That bra looks becoming on you,” he said with smooth satisfaction, looking more handsome than he had a right to. “I’m just disappointed it was Reno who got the first glimpse.”
Kat preferred to be braless because her wolf couldn’t slip out of a bra during the shift when she was wearing the harness. That meant her wolf would be prancing around in a bra, which had happened once in a bar down in El Paso.
She took off the holster and ran the strap between her fingers, turning it over. It was thickly padded on the side that lay against her body, and there were several pouches sewn across the outside.
“My father was the one who customized this for me. He told me to always wear it, and he knows I’m a sentimental person.”
“He did nice work,” Prince said, kneeling down and giving it a closer inspection.
“Yeah, it’s actually comfy.” Kat pulled out the dagger and ran the pointy tip beneath one of the pouches.
“What are you doing, Kat?”
Once she made the cut wide enough, she set down the blade and pushed her pinky finger inside. Within the space was something cool to the touch, so she hooked her finger until she got a grip on it.
Kat slid out a ring and held it in the palm of her hand.
Prince took it between two fingers and examined the ruby stone. “This… this belongs to Vlad. His companions used to joke that someone would cut his throat for the stone, so he often wore it with the stone facing down.”
Kat looked closely at her harness where a pocket had been made to conceal the ring. Her father was clever to have hidden the piece so it wouldn’t be in his possession.
“What was my father doing with Vlad’s ring?”
Prince furrowed his dark brows, his hair neatly pulled back, much to her dismay. “I think it’s infused with magic. In Russia, the Mageri—who uphold the laws for his kind—didn’t exist. Creators held more power and chose human warriors to put their first spark into—strong men who would not only remain loyal to them in order to learn the Mage ways, but who would also protect them as an army of men would a king. But the average Mage is not a Creator, and once granted independence, they go off to wreak whatever havoc they desire.”
“They’re not all bad,” Kat added. “They were smart to form the Mageri early on because it set the tone for the other Breeds to establish some kind of order. Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Men like Vlad created their own law, aligning with others and mirroring the military organizations they saw in the human world. They preyed on weak men and those who didn’t have protection. So you can imagine the number of enemies they made. Certain metals and stones can hold Mage energy, and in those times, they considered these trinkets invaluable.”
“But why a ring instead of a dagger?”
“What could be more innocuous?” He turned the gold band between his fingers, a glint of light reflecting off the edge. “They didn’t have the communication devices we do now to form a black market, so it wasn’t easy to obtain stunners and other weapons infused with magic. In those times, a select few had the rare talent to lock large amounts of energy into metal. A Mage could pull from it for a boost of strength, but I’ve heard stories of some containing dark magic. Most were probably tall tales meant to strike fear about what a Mage could do, but I suspect there was a sliver of truth to some of it.”
“Like what?”
“Knowing what I know now about their gifts, the possibilities of what they can infuse in metals are infinite. What happened that made you notice it?”
She shook her head, trying to remember. “I was just sitting here being pissed off at Vlad. I must have been rubbing my finger along the edge.”
“Did it move?”
She took the ring from him and let the oversized piece swallow her index finger. “No, it felt like a tiny electric shock. Do you think it reacted to my anger?”
