“Okay, good. We’ll leave in half an hour,” Hunter warns us, and the rest of us finish eating as he disappears, probably to brief his dad on our departure.
ChapterTwenty-Three
Colbie
We move quickly through the neutral zone, keeping to the back alleys and arriving at the checkpoint without too many hassles. A human man is waiting for us there. He hands us the keys to a car and an access pass to open the gate to the parking structure. He nods his head at me and wishes us a safe trip to visit my grandparents, though I can see by the speculation in his gaze that he knows we are doing something completely different.
Of course he does. There would be a record of my grandparents entering the neutral zone and staying, but it seems like General Bryson’s counterpart is going to look the other way. Hopefully that means he isn’t in on the plan to take me out before I can accept the crown. He disappears into the checkpoint office as we climb into a large black car that fits all seven of us. Hunter takes the wheel, and Micah is in the passenger seat. Brodie, Gem, and Gryffin are in the middle row, then Liam and I are in the back. Liam looks a little squashed, and I wrinkle my nose.
“Maybe we should take two cars. Nox isn’t going to be able to fit in here with us if we find him,” I reason as Hunter pulls the car out of the parking structure and onto the road. It’s clear, with no other traffic coming and going from the neutral zone.
“Hunter or I can fly if we find him, but probably me because I can cloak myself from human view.”
“Gem’s right. I’d rather us all stick together than worry about being separated if we are attacked,” Gryffin says, and the car falls silent. Only the quiet sound of music playing over the radio can be heard above the sound of the tires on the road as we make our way to the city. The roads stay relatively empty, and it takes a lot less time to get to my grandparents’ village than it did on the bus. There’s no constant stopping and starting to let people on and off.
When we get to the village, I give him directions to Nox’s off-road track to get to his cottage. When Hunter pulls in behind it, there are no lights shining through any of the windows, but then again, he wouldn’t expect company at almost three in the morning. We pile out of the car, but I hold up my hand as the others head toward the house.
“Whoa,” I hiss at them. “The last thing Nox needs is to be ambushed by a group of you. He’s obviously hiding for a reason, and seeing all of you on his front porch is a good way to send him running out the back door. Hold back and let me speak to him first,” I order them, and Gryffin goes to argue, but Brodie doesn’t let him.
“Gryff, the queen gave an order, and your mate is asking nicely.” He turns to me and smiles.
“Call out if you need us. We’ll be there in seconds.”
“Actually, I’ll be there quicker.” Gem fades out of view, and I sigh. I guess one of them is coming with me after all, but it seems to make the other guys less anxious. Gryff nods and leans against the front bumper of the car, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Be careful.” Liam kisses me on the temple, and I start toward the front steps. The salty smell of the ocean reaches my nose as I get farther away from my mates, but I can still smell Gem’s ashy whiskey scent, even though I can’t see him. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore muffles the sound of our feet. I mount the steps, and in the moonlight that shines through the thick cloud cover, I notice the chairs that used to be there are gone, as are the surfboards and surfing paraphernalia. The deck is completely empty, and my heart sinks. I have a feeling when I knock on the door, I’m not going to get an answer.
Taking a deep breath, I do just that, but like I assumed, Nox doesn’t come stumbling to the door, sleepy and sexy like I imagined. There’s nothing but silence and the sound of the crashing waves. Gem fades into view and puts his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
I sigh. “I should have known that once he saw I was the shifter queen, he wasn’t going to stick around for me to find him. Now what? He could be anywhere in the kingdom. Hell, he could have fled to another kingdom. That’s what I would do. That’s what I contemplated when I was first marked with these.” I shove my wrists out, showing the marks on them.
He frowns. “Yeah, but you realized there was no running away and stepped up to accept your responsibilities. This dude just keeps running. Being marked as part of a bond is supposed to be a privilege. It’s an instant family.”
I scowl. “I only stopped running after being given a stern talking to by the goddess who told me there was nowhere I could escape to. Don’t be angry with him, we don’t know what Nox has been through. There must be a reason he felt like he couldn’t be a part of something like that. Maybe he thought he didn’t deserve it.” I think about something he said to me. “But I have a feeling it wasn’t his family that made him that way. He mentioned his sister visiting.”
“Well, if he has a sister, then the equine village should be our next stop,” Gem says as we walk back to the car. “He’s not here,” he tells the others when we get there.
“We guessed he might not be, and I heard what you guys were saying. The equine village will be the best place for us to look next. Zalfari is quite a distance. It sits at the base of the Aramis Rift.”
“Can we take the car?” I look at it with hope, not relishing the idea of flying all the way there on Hunter’s back. It’s probably going to be pretty damn cold.
Hunter nods. “Yes. The neutral zone doesn’t actually separate the two zones completely. We can drive around it and go through one of the other checkpoints along the divide closer to the village.”
“We will have to stop when the snow gets too thick, since the roads aren’t plowed that far out, and go on foot. It’s already quite thick at that elevation, or it was when I was there last,” Gryffin tells me, and I frown.
“When were you there?” I ask. I remember him mentioning something when I told them about being their mate, but I had so many other things running through my head, I didn’t really pay attention.
“That night when I saw you in the stables, I had just returned from there. I was looking for our sixth, but it was weird. The alpha of the village was cagey, and you said it is supposed to be an equine village, but he’s a lion shifter, and I didn’t scent any equines close by.”
A rumble comes out of Liam’s chest. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“He said there was a curfew because of feral shifters hiding out in the Aramis Rift, but something just seemed to feel wrong about it. There is something off about that village. It was like they were just trying to get rid of me, and I had to get back so I didn’t really question it.”
“So we need to go in expecting trouble then? We didn’t bring any weapons with us.” Brodie shifts uncomfortably. “Should we return to watch headquarters and grab some?”
Micah shakes his head. “If we go through the checkpoint on the way there, then there is a military base where we can grab what we need.”
