I blew out a long breath, straightening up slowly.
It didn’t matter. I was stronger than this. I had worked my whole life on developing my iron-clad will. She’d taken me by surprise—fine. Now I knew. Now I could prepare. I could get my head in order. She would not derail me.
“And if she runs like you advised?”my animal asked.
Oh. That.
I grimaced and nearly shouted out my frustration.
I definitely shouldn’t have told her to run. That had been one slip-up of many. She was the one we were sent here to find, there was no doubt.
I’d just been so thoroughly in the moment that my primal sense had kicked in—my need to protect what was mine. Because shewasmine. There could be no denying that fact, as shitty as this situation was.
Fuck, why me? Why her? Of all the people in the entire world, whyher?
Time to do damage control.
In halting steps, I headed for the little cottage far removed from the village and all its people. Granny, they called the owner. Just a lovely, sweet older lady who baked pies and hooked people on drugs. Killed them, sometimes. Ruined them, other times. If it wasn’t for Finley, the dragon queen, we would’ve lost a great many in our kingdom. Others already had. It was inexcusable, what was coming out of this village. Unconscionable. For anyone to be okay with it...
My resolve hardened, remembering who we’d lost.
True mates didn’t matter; she needed to be taken down. It was my duty to see this through, and I would fulfill my task regardless of the obstacles. Maybe I was being punished for past wrongs, maybe I was being challenged by the Gods, but whatever it was, I would not stray again.
“We’ll hunt her down if she runs,”I told my wolf. “Just like we hunted her and Granny to this hidden village. She will not escape me.”
I rolled my shoulders, taking another moment to collect myself. I’d need to shift and connect with my pack. If the woman got to Granny’s cottage and sounded the alarm, we’d need to move in fast.
The only good news was that there didn’t seem to be any of Granny’s people roaming the internal territory. The perimeter had been well fortified. Granny had a very thorough setup, with an alert sentry line and a well-scheduled patrol. They couldn’t be everywhere at once, of course, so Granny had applied faeriespells and potions to the vulnerable areas, blocking admittance. In one space she’d even set up a demon gate requiring a magical key of demon origins to get through. They were the best systems criminal gold could buy.
Too bad for her I had connections to more powerful faeries and demons than she did. There wasn’t a door I couldn’t get through, and when Granny’s people came after us, I’d steal their will and render them immobile. She had no idea the caliber of enemy she’d made, and I wasn’t even talking about the dragons.
I’d been blindsided just now, but soon it would be them who’d get a helluva shock. I’d make sure of it.
“We will not engage with that woman again,”I told my wolf, restless within me. “She is the enemy. She has done terrible things and she must stand in judgment for her sins, as must we all. Do you understand?”
He did the equivalent of pacing. “You won’t be able to ignore her.”
“We can and we must. Promise me before I give you back control.”
He didn’t answer for a moment. In the past, he would’ve outright refused. He would’ve thought that he knew best. It was just such a judgment that had landed us in a demon dungeon, separated from each other for countless years. He’d been absent for the misery and degradation I’d endured in that place, only knowing the devastation and pain second-hand when we’d reconnected and he’d been privy to my memories. I’d thought I’d die there, the demon magic drugging me to accept the abuse. To like it, most times. But the magic did nothing to stop me from retching when I remembered it all the next day. I’d been powerless. Used for pleasure against my will.
Bile rose in the back of my throat and my hands shook as I fought to shove those memories down, locking them away and harnessing the misery to sharpen my resolve.
It had been a sort of drug to make all that possible—demon-made and administered through magic. It hadn’t been my choice, just like the drugs being slipped into people’s drinks and food now weren’t their choice, nor the ones sold to them under false pretenses. Granny had no boundaries. She had no reservations. The faster she could get people hooked, the better. She didn’t care what happened to people along the way.
I’d wasted no time in signing up for this detail. I hated everything these people stood for.
Now, thankfully, my wolf was a bit more cautious. Or maybe I was just that much harder, having grown brittle in that dungeon. Having lost my humor and sometimes my will to keep going.
Knowing my head space, he relented.
“For now,”he said, a good enough compromise. I had no doubt he’d soon see that I was right. This whole place was vile. The things they did were beyond excuse.
I gave up control and my wolf instigated the shift. His four paws touched down onto the ground and he started forward.
We could feel everyone’s location through the pack bond as they scouted the area undetected. Granny’s cottage wasn’t much to look at, just a small dwelling with a curling trail of smoke winding from the chimney. It was nothing like her huge estate near the castle where she made her connections and paid off guards and royals. The village was equally humble, showing none of the extravagance she was known for outside of this rural place. She clearly hadn’t distributed the gold these people had helped her accrue.
I worked with my wolf to feed emotions, scents, and various other information through those bonds to the pack while willing them instructions, indicating which direction they needed to go or where they should stop. It was a complex magical system that I naturally excelled at, my alpha magic stronger than any otherI’d yet met. It would ensure Granny’s people were rendered ineffective when they realized our presence. It meant she would be snared by me the moment she shifted into her wolf form.
