He hummed, his head resting against mine. “Life is a mess. But now we will never be alone to face it ever again. You have me, and I have you. Forever. If you feel like I need to be reined in, I trust you to do that. As will I with you, if you once again spike the beverages of our unsuspecting visitors.” His tone was amused, which helped my feelings of guilt and unease.
“Just you and I. Forever,” I agreed.
“Look,” Sev handed me his phone where a text was opened.
Reminia:I’m sorry for how I behaved yesterday. It was uncalled for and I’m deeply ashamed of myself. I fear I won’t be able to face either you or Peter for the next century, but I hope this information I have gathered for you will help how you see me. Best wishes. Reminia.
Another text followed, then another. Both of them held information on the Silver Lock Coven, neither of them good.
“Five thousand?!” I gasped in disbelief. Reminia’s contact had confirmed that the coven numbered at five thousand members, and all were living close to the city, a radius of a maximum of one hour away from city center. Which meant. “They all live four hours away from here, some only three hours.”
“I know,” Sev replied, his voice annoyed by this. “We have five thousand witches against us, all within a short driving distanceof our castle.”
Unease spread across my body, settling in my stomach. I pushed my half-eaten plate of lunch away from me, and gave the others a forced smile. We sat together to discuss yesterday’s misgivings, or Giro’s and I’s mistake, as it were. They weren’t mad, thankfully, but they would’ve been had Reminia figured out why she’d acted like that.
It hadn’t helped my guilty conscience when Sev told me she likely would’ve never considered us to do something that horrible to her. Yeah, we’d royally fucked up.
Dina had called her coven over and soon we would have everyone gathered in the yard to discuss what to do. The pack had called their allies, too, and they would be here in an hour or so. We were done waiting.
Sev’s phone dinged with another text and from the look of horror on his face, I really didn’t want to know.
Chapter 32
Severin
Reminia:Four hundred and forty-three deaths are linked to the Silver Lock Coven, all seemingly deleted from the online archives, but I managed to get them all from a backup. It doesn’t look good. All were supernatural species, most of them vampires. And considering how rare vampires are, that seems less like an accident and more like they intended to kill off vampires. I have the file for every death,their names and age. Reminia, this is some corrupted shit you’ve gotten yourself into. They have people working for the supe police, meaning all of this should’ve been under the rug stuff, but because I’m awesome like that, I still found it.
Another text popped in and it seemed Reminia had forwarded them directly from her contact.
Reminia:I found information on the three coven leaders, too, and did some digging. One of them, a woman named Lirissa Welmon, lost her family to a vampire attack. The other female leader, Calma Fren, lost her sister to transitioning, meaning she was trying to turn into a vampire, but didn’t survive it. The only male leader, a man called Theodore Lendon, was the only survivor of a vampire territory feud. Fifty people were killed in the fight, most were humans. According to the file, the two vampires were in disagreement of who owned the territory, turning it into a huge fight involving their allies in the area. Many buildings burned down, leaving several families without homes. Theodore was bitten and forced to turn, but because he was a witch, the venom couldn’t turn him, leaving him to almost bleed out on the street. His healing crystals healed him enough so he could make it to a hospital.
Reminia:I get their dislike for vampires, but killing off so many? This doesn’t make sense. I’m looking into their covenmembers to see if they share the same history with vampires or not, but so far, they seem like normal witches without any background trauma. I’ll be in touch.
I handed my phone to Felix who read aloud for the room to hear. When he was done, we all shared worried glances. This was not good.
Samantha spoke first. “Why would they attack other species, too, if they all had a problem with vampires? I get the whole trauma and wanting to off vampires, no offense, but other species, too?”
I shrugged, looking over the messages again. There were a few pictures, one with the total of deaths per species. “Fifty-seven werewolves were killed by the coven. They even killed nineteen witches. Then there’s an unknown number for other species, meaning they have likely killed lesser-known species, too.”
“There’s others?” Giro asked, curiously.
I nodded. “Sirens, shapeshifters, demons, and angels. But all of them are rare, sirens not so much, they just keep in deep waters so they seem rare, but no one except them know their total number. I have met one shapeshifter in my life and they tend to travel alone. Demons and angels only visit earth when they have a job to do, and always wear glamour to hide their nature from others. I have no ideaif I have ever met one, but Peter met a demon once.” I looked to Peter, who nodded.
“He was my lover for a few months while he worked here,” Peter explained.
“You had a demon lover?!” Giro gasped. It seemed he was more interested than appalled by it.
Peter smirked. “I sure did.”
They shared a look between them, so I figured I needed to steer the conversation away from that. “If we are to trust this information, then they have reason to hate vampires, but even so they still attack other species, too, making them dangerous for all of us.”
Samatha huffed. “Like we would let you deal with them alone even if they hadn’t killed werewolves. Killing innocent vampires just because of their nature isn’t okay. We haven’t changed our mind regarding our allegiance with you. We will fight. Our pack and our allies. This has to stop.”
Liam sent her a look of admiration, which he quickly schooled before she noticed.
Giro opened his mouth to say something, but before a word got out, his branded tattoo started pulsing a yellow color on his wrist. He eyed it with shock and quickly closed his mouth, his skin paling.Whatever he was about to say, would come too close to what he was not allowed to divulge.
“Please do not speak of it,” Peter pleaded. “Whatever it is, will have to stay inside you. I am sorry for this. For not being able to free you of your shackles.” I felt Peter’s anguish. If it had been Felix, I, too, would have felt powerless. An emotion vampires rarely felt, and when we did, we fought it as hard as we could. But Peter could not fight this evil, none of us could. We would face the coven, and hopefully that would give us answers, but Giro would never truly be free.
