Nell abandons her seat, nudging me behind her.Oh, shit.
Qinnu snarls, fangs dropping into place. “This changes everything, Axe. You know it. She’s not just our enemy. She’s thefucking apocalypse.”
Axe quickly crosses the room to grab onto his other shoulder. Pinned against the wall by the Alpha and Beta, the male thrashes, casting a spiteful gaze upon me.
“Colton was right,” the Sentinel sneers. “We’d be better off killing her.”
A gasp falls from Nell’s lips. Across the room, Axe goes still. Lethally still.
“I’m going to give you five seconds to take that back,” he whispers.
Qinnu’s mouth clamps shut.Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .
“He’s right!” I blurt. "You all deserve to live in peace. You should end this. Before my curse reaps any more misery.”
I would much rather give my life now than surrender it to my betrothed and end up shackled to him for eternity.
“Vessa,” Maurleen croaks. “This bloodshed started well before you?—"
Axe cuts her off, staring her down. “Tell me there’s a way to revoke it.”
“It cannot be undone. Your only option is to destroy the prince of Somnium before his ascension. Kill the Blood Master, and you will be rid of the curse, as well as his offspring.”
“With what?” asks Nell. “He’s a demigod. Silver bullets and black oak stakes might work on first generations, but no one has ever been able to kill him.”
Maurleen hangs her head. “My sisters have been tortured by his minions for centuries over the same question."
Qinnu rolls his eyes. “This is bullshit. For three years, this pack has worked tirelessly to push vampires out of wolf country. They killed our own! Why should she get to live? Put a blade to her throat and the Blood Master would fold in aninstant.”
Axe detonates, throwing his fist. I flinch at the gruesome crunch of Qinnu’s nose. The sound of his roar as his piercing is ripped from his septum. He drops like a brick.
The Alpha’s knuckles are battered and bloody. Not an ounce of mercy in those cobalt eyes. “Take. It. Back.”
“I’m sorry,” Qinnu wheezes.
Blinking through my queasiness, I sit up straight. “It isn’t just vampires. I saw what killed my mother. It was a rogue lycan. Part of a crew that had been paid to find me.”
Wyatt dips his head. “The truth is that bloodhounds are far better trackers than bloodsuckers are. And that, for the right price, criminals will abandon loyalty to their own kind. I trailed those rogues for days before they located Vessa’s family.”
I tried to warn them back at the task force meeting. Somnium’s monstrous adversaries are aligning, which is a clear testament to how desperate the Blood Master is to find me.
Axe furrows his brows at Wyatt. “You’re an Auxiliary?”
“I was,” he mumbles.
Finally, Jabir’s cool exterior cracks, lashing out at him. “We should’ve been informed of this the moment Vessa stepped foot on our land. If one rogue had the scent, then a dozen others likely picked up where he left off. If omegas are being recruited by our mortal enemies, then putting down that threat becomes our number one priority.”
Nell nods, rubbing her stomach. To my shock, she remains the only one who is sympathetic. “That could explain why things have quieted down lately on our reports out of Alban. Vampires could be turning Auxes on us.”
“Lorray,” Axe says with unsettling calmness.
Qinnu spews blood onto the floor.
“When did you last make contact with Tesni’s unit?”
He glances down at his phone. “Wednesday.”
Axe mutters a curse. It’s been over forty-eight hours.
