Until I saw what it was hiding.
A cache of weapons. Knives, guns, and rune stones filled with magic.
“I believe he was preparing for more than just your stay here,” Maeve murmured. “I think he also prepared for war.”
No sheets—yet—butmore trunks scattered throughout the house. I avoided Orion’s room, but we’d checked in with Hawk, who was still asleep.
There was no sign of the others, though every so oftenbetween the cracks of thunder, I was sure I heard them talking somewhere in the house. Every time I did, I couldn’t help but shiver.
“This place is a little creepy,” I murmured, looking up at the tall ceiling in the massive room at the front of the house. It was either meant to be a dining room or a living room, but without furniture, it just felt…eerie.
Elias moved to a set of pocket sliding doors leading into the other end of the house, opening them with a gentle push. “It still needs some work, but otherwise, he did a damned good job restoring it.”
A flicker of warmth appeared in my chest for Orion. He’d likely brush off the compliment and move along. But Elias was right; Orion had done an amazing job, and he’d done it all alone during time he had to steal.
Elias stepped aside so I could enter a hallway separating the empty room from the rest of the house. The hall itself was dark, one end submerged in thick shallows, the other opening up beneath the stairs. There was another set of doors that I opened, eyes widening as I took in the obvious dining room.
Obvious because there was a long table surrounded by chairs. But the room was in disarray.
“We found something he never got to,” Elias muttered, moving in behind me. Over the smell of rotten wood and decay, the scent of pine and earth that I associated with Elias tickled my nose. “Don’t walk any further, just in case.”
I could almost imagine myself stepping on a rusty nail. “I can’t remember the last time I had a tetanus shot,” I replied, stepping back into his embrace. “I don’t think it’d be good for…”
Was it too early to make jokes about the babies? Probably. If Thea were here, it would be my coping mechanism. She was probably the only person who would understand the internal war playing out within me.
One side tentatively happy to be pregnant, the other in absolute denial because it shouldn’t have happened this way. She would get it.
Elias, though, snorted. He might not hear my thoughts anymore, he seemed to know what I was thinking anyway. “Let’s go that way,” he said, pointing to the space under the stairs.
I looked around him towards the darkened end of the hall, shuddering. “Yeah, I’ve seen this movie. There’s probably a poltergeist hanging out down there, waiting…” With Thea, I’d make a joke aboutRosemary’s Baby, but alas, I doubted Elias, Maeve, or Thor would understand it.
Again, Elias snorted, pushing me down the hall away from the darkness. I had a feeling that was why Orion had left the doors closed. For all we knew, there was a creepy basement. Maybe even an even creepier crypt somewhere on the island.
“Do you have any idea who might have had this place before Orion?” I asked as we moved into the larger space under the stairs.
Elias took my hand, entwining our fingers. I could admit that the simple intimacy of just getting to hold his hand felt good. Relieving. Even just walking close to Maeve brought me a sense of comfort I’d lost in my cell.
“Not a single one,” he said, glancing down at me. “I don’t think it was pack owned.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked, looking around. It was a huge manor. Probably had a lot of rooms, not just the ones Orion had finished.
“Because if it were pack owned, it would be a much different structure. Not contained to a single manor,” Maeve said, walking in beside me. “We would likely see more buildings. But I didn’t notice any when we came in. Other than the boat house, though there may be more structures hidden in the forest.”
“That makes sense,” I replied, nodding. Packs were usually big. Even the smallest pack had over fifty shifters in its ranks. And there would be multiple mate groups, children, a beta, and the Alpha. The manor, while huge, probably wouldn’t fit a whole pack comfortably. Packs might have lived together, but they didn’t live on top of one another.
“It’s probably an old vampire manor,” Elias said, drawing my attention back to him. “Or it could be Fae. Demon. Black probably got rid of anything left by the old owners.”
A shiver rolled down my spine as we continued. Thor walked beside me, somehow keeping that ridiculous towel around his waist. He didn’t seem too bothered by it, but I still couldn’t help but feel bad about having him walk around basically naked. At least I had a better idea of the wounds covering his body.
They were far more extensive than Elias’s, built upon over the last couple of decades. The newest were the two bullet wounds in his chest, but both were healed, pink and raised. To my relief, there were no other recent scars on his body.
As if sensing my stare, Thor looked down at me. I couldn’t quite read him, especially now that he was shifted, but the look he gave me made my stomach flutter with a familiar warmth.
I felt like I should push against that in some sort of way. That I shouldn’t feel anything for the male. Not because I had enough mates on my plate—I definitely did—but because he likely didn’t understand the feeling. He’d been shifted for so long, how much did he really know? What could he understand?
I pressed my lips together and looked away as we walked into another large, open room. This one also had a few trunks sitting in the middle of the floor, but there were floor to ceiling windows lining most of the back wall leading to a stone patio flooded from the rain. Then there were double doors, off to the right.
“Kitchen?” I asked, looking to Elias, then Maeve who had started for the trunks.
