“Yes, I’m sorry,” Luce said with a shaky exhale.
Kass frowned at me in displeasure. He probably knew that me snapping at Luce and my previous bad mood were connected somehow.
“Our camp was attacked last night,” Luce began. “By a creature I can only describe as a dragon.”
Kass and I exchanged alert glances.
“What kind of dragon?” I pressed.
“It didn’t have front arms,” one of the omegas piped up. “Just wings and back legs.”
“A wyvern,” Kass and I said at the same time.
“He demanded to know your location, but I didn’t know what to tell him. Even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell him,” Luce said, eyes lowered. “He got angry and went on a rampage on our camp.”
“Was he a purple wyvern?” I asked.
Luce nodded.
Kass frowned deeply. “Silas. It has to be.”
“Someone you know, I presume?”
“Unfortunately,” Kass muttered.
The fox omega named Halo stopped crying long enough to huddle near Luce. “Oh, please, alpha, you have to save James! He can’t fight one dragon alone, let alone two!”
“Two?” I asked. “There was another one?”
“Well, no,” the other Halo murmured, pushing his knuckles together anxiously. “But Silas mentioned…” He paused, trying not to cry again. “He mentioned feeding James to his master if you two didn’t show up fast enough, so I assumed his master was a dragon, too…”
Kass and I exchanged horrified looks.
“Will you help him?” the fox omega begged.
I knew what Kass was thinking. We couldn’t leave James to die in exchange for our lives, but we didn’t know what kind of trap we would be walking into.
Not only that, but since Kass and I had sex during my heat, I was probably…
“You should all enter town,” Kass said firmly, sidestepping the question. “It’s safe. We’ve been there for the past week, and it’s a great place.”
Luce’s brows raised with cautious optimism. “So you found Henry?”
“Yeah,” I said. Trying to smile and hide the anger in my voice at the same time was nearly impossible. “He’s alive and well.”
“Oh, what a relief!” Luce cried. “Well, if you two say it’s okay and Henry is fine, I suppose we can move on.”
“What about James?” fox Halo asked. “We have to wait for him!”
The fox shifters looked torn. Many of them seemed eager to escape from the wrecked campsite as soon as possible, while others shared the omega’s desire to ensure James’ safety. Luce didn’t know what to decide - he gazed at us, helpless and desperate.
My bad mood made me want to snap at him again. Why couldn’thego and find James? Then I felt annoyed with myself for being angry. He didn’t deserve the brunt of it just because I was frustrated.
“Fine, whatever, let’s just go save James,” I muttered to Kass.
“Oh, thank gods!” Luce cried. “Thank you, alpha Kassius, and Halo.”
So I’m just an afterthought now?I crushed the negative thought and tried to ignore it. I waved Luce off and began in the opposite direction of the fox’s camp, to where the old cabin stood - and beyond that, the Death’s Peak caverns.
Kass lagged behind, presumably to apologize to the foxes, before he caught up with me. “Halo, seriously, what’s wrong? You’ve been acting strangely since we left.”
I grit my teeth. I was definitely not going to tell him that our child had been abducted by the fox shifter we’d agreed to find, and now we had to go save one of their other skulk members from Silas, the very man we were trying to avoid, and now had to fight?
Instead, I settled for, “Nothing.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder, trying to comfort me. “I know things are rough right now. But wewillget James back. And we’ll deal with whatever Silas has in store. We can do it together, Halo.”
I shut my eyes and forced myself to accept Kass’s words, even though they were of little help. “Yeah.”
