Did we have any time? Of course not. I got the sense Virginia was on her way long before I heard the clip-clop of her high heels. The door was open, likely because the doctor had beat a quick retreat. Now I clenched my teeth.

  My eyesight worked perfectly after the delivery of that drug. Good enough to see that Jace winced even worse than I did.

  He left his hand lingering there, then tucked it beside him.

  Virginia walked in. It was like the she-wolf couldn’t even see me. Her gaze flicked toward me once, dismissive, despite the fact dirty great big black wings had now burst up over my back. Her attention locked on her Alpha. “The preparations are made. My father has given his blessing. His soldiers are on the way.”

  “What are you talking about?” I hissed.

  “You will be told everything relevant to you in time. After you have paid for your crimes—” Virginia snapped.

  “Enough,” Jace said. If he’d treated Virginia politely previously, now he was making his feelings clear. His face crumpled like a fist, voice a whip.

  “Discipline is now both of our duties. I understand you have a soft spot for this,” Virginia wanted to say something else, but she bit her tongue, “individual. However, her continued reckless behavior has put the Mythos Pack at risk. It is unacceptable.”

  “I’m not part of the Mythos Pack anymore, though, am I?” I asked. It wasn’t an insult. Just a fact.

  Jace winced. Virginia had turned away. Slowly, crumpling her arms over her chest, she spun back. Her eyes practically pinned me against the wall. “What pack are you a part of, then? The Kings’?”

  “Excuse me?” I could barely move my lips.

  “Do not think I haven’t noticed the pattern in your actions. Every time you go against your Alpha, it is to make contact with the Kings.”

  “Are you,” I emphasized that with a sneer, “accusing me of working with the Kings? They kidnapped me. I’ve stripped one King of their power. There is ample evidence to prove my only intention with them is to stop them.” I needed to finish the second part of the sentence, to compare the two of us. It sat in the air, like a bomb ready to explode.

  Virginia had absolutely no intention of lighting the fuse. Her superior gaze flicked up and down me again. “Considering your current situation, I would learn to hold your tongue.”

  “I’ve just been through the battle of my life. It proved the Kings are ready to attack. If you want to hold your position,” I snapped back, my voice hard, “I would listen to everything I have to say.”

  I was pushing Virginia too far. The wolf’s lips spread thin over her perfect white teeth. I hadn’t noticed this before, but her canines were unusually curved. When a shifter was using their full power, their teeth resembled more of a wolf’s. Perhaps Virginia tapped into her force more than I’d realized. Or maybe she was born with a set of teeth more attuned to ripping up her prey. It would only be appropriate.

  “Enough,” Jace rumbled.

  Virginia didn’t even hear him. He was like a big decoration talking in the corner of the room. He was there when she wanted to look at something pretty. But certainly not there to respect.

  She waded over to me as if through hip-high sand. I was propped up in a bed, as best as I could be. The wings made it pretty hard. I seriously hoped I could make them disappear. That or I’d never be able to sleep on my back again.

  Right now, I had other problems. Virginia leaned in close. She slowly planted her knuckles down against the mattress, and it pushed in as if she’d shoved her finger through plastic wrap. Her eyes met mine, scooped them up, and tried to crush them in my skull. “Know your place.”

  “Where’s that? Below you as you take over the pack—”

  “This is a merger. And if we do not merge, then everyone dies. While you’ve been running around creating more trouble, I have been solidifying this pack’s position. If I hadn’t, there would be no head anymore. He would’ve been replaced. The pack would’ve been thrown into even more chaos—”

  Yeah. It was precisely what she wanted. Because if there was chaos, she could paint herself as the single solution.

  I still didn’t have evidence pointing to her culpability, but as I stared into her eyes, I knew she had a much larger hand in this. And I would freaking find out what it was.

  Turns out it wasn’t a great idea to challenge one of the most powerful she-wolves in the country. Her lips flicked up over her teeth, a chase of magic racing across them.

  I had pushed too far.

  “Get out of the room, Virginia,” Jace said in a tone that spoke of authority.

  Virginia twitched. Her eyes flicked up and down her apparent mate. “You have other things to attend to. I should discipline her—”

  “Enough, Virginia.”

  “It is my role beside you—”

  “There are still many things you need to organize. If we’re meant to wed tomorrow, I expect everything to be perfect.”

  There we go. Bingo. Virginia had gotten what she wanted. They had dragged the wedding forward, huh?

  I should’ve controlled my expression. How could I? It dropped like I was holding onto too many things at once. Virginia saw, and victory flashed across her lips.

  It satisfied her for now. Grabbing her phone from her pocket, she walked out. It nominally left Jace and me alone, but I could tell she hadn’t walked far. Without relying on my sense of smell, I knew she was a few steps down the corridor.

  It meant I could only share a look with Jace, even though I wanted to wrap my lips around his and pull him close. I didn’t even try to hide it. My eyes flashed up and locked on his mouth.

  Jace wouldn’t do anything, not with his future wife outside. But he reached out, his fingers hesitating for only one second before they snapped forward. He caught a few strands of my hair, rubbed them between his fingers, then tucked them behind my ear. It sent an exhilarating burst of attraction sizzling through me. The needy kind, the one that wanted me to get closer for more than some brief distraction. The floor was falling out from underneath me; the city was crumbling from behind. I desperately needed something strong to hold onto.

  Your gaze can communicate more than a thousand words when you need it to. Mine downloaded a whole encyclopedia.

  Jace pushed close. I thought he’d whisper in my ear, but his eyes traced left. Virginia’s conversation on the phone had abruptly paused.

  He let out a half-hearted breath. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” he mouthed, his voice barely carrying.

  He was close enough that I had to pull back to stare at his mouth. I did it openly. Me. The repressed one who hid from human contact. I gazed right at his lips, letting him know I wanted to kiss him.

  I sat there as the Alpha stood over me, close enough to embrace, but so far away we could never really be together.

  “How’s Kelsey?” I asked, distracting myself.

  “We’ve stabilized her. We’re keeping her where I work. There’s a small clinic there.”

  I frowned. “I don’t even know where you work.”

  If Virginia was in the room, she would’ve remonstrated with me for not knowing enough about my Alpha. When had I found the time?

  A small smile whipped across his lips. It soon disappeared. He might be proud of where he worked. He probably didn’t think it would exist much longer. “It’s in the Magic District.”

  “In one of the towers?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Further in. A small, old building. Nothing particularly fancy, not compared to the rest of the Magic District.”

  “I like old,” I began, about to say it had more character, but my back stiffened.

  “What is it?”

  When I’d flown with him in the helicopter, my far more conscious sister had told him everything about the underground city. Now my mind traced back to it, and my hackles snapped up high enough to strangle me.

  “You’re thinking about the Kings’ domain, aren’t you?” he asked perceptively.

  My eyes distractedly slid to the side. They found the window. It was tiny, more of a suggestion than a reality. Let’s put it this way: nobody could climb through it. Only scant sunlight could make it through. It was already going on dusk. I got this sinking feeling I might never see another sunrise again.

  “We’ve already got people scouring the forest. We found one entrance and shut it down. We’re gathering forces from across the country. We’ll make an assault soon.”

  “Where the hell did it come from? What kind of power do the Kings have that they can build a magical city right underneath us?”

  “Technically, it’s under the forest. As to where it comes from….” He was at a loss but tried to answer anyway, “If it’s as old as you describe, I imagine it’s a relic from a time when magic was a lot darker. Your sister described the architecture as being primarily from about 200 years ago. That puts it squarely in one of magic’s darkest, most reactionary times. A time where different species sank everything they had into solidifying their position, creating secret weapons, and placing bunkers everywhere.”

  “It’s massive,” I defaulted to saying, my hand lurching out wide as I tried to emphasize how big it was.

  Jace looked like he wanted to collapse my hands together and hold them still. Maybe he thought it would soothe me. He didn’t understand. Nobody would until they saw precisely how huge and sophisticated the Kings’ operation was. I had gone from thinking they were a bunch of rogue magicians to understanding they’d probably planned this for centuries. My jaw hardened, my brow twitching with a cold rush.

  Jace didn’t try to soothe me with words. He leaned forward, gave the door one quick look, then pecked me on the head. It was a slight kiss. Just his lips and breath. Nothing more. But it did crazy things to me. A rush of attraction, fear, relief, and everything in between burst through me.

  I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed his face and went to lock my lips around his, but his jaw hardened. He shook his head.

  So I turned away, tears welling in my eyes.

  Jace was the one who snapped.

  Kelsey had said I didn’t understand a single thing about wolf attraction. He went from being completely in control to seeing my distress and breaking. He grabbed the side of my face, moved it around, and locked his lips on mine. What transpired next was the sharpest, quickest, hardest, and most desperate kiss of my freaking life. It made every other moment of intimacy pale in comparison, even when he had plucked me up by the hips and taken me into his bedroom.

  Immediately, I heard Virginia’s heels. Jace moved away, but before he did, he thrust against me a little harder, his eyes opening until I saw the look in them. There was a tinge of the famous wolf lust. But high above and wrapped around it was Jace’s soul – the Alpha, the protector, a man who would live and die by his values, and would do it willingly.

  It left me wanting more. My mouth opened, a hand reaching out to him. Virginia arrived at the door. “Perhaps you will have your wish,” she said, her lips shut tight.

  She immediately looked at Jace, who was still looming over me. His hand was even reaching out to me. I knew it took wild effort for him to pin his fingers close and let his palm slide down to his side. He turned, looking like a soldier on parade. With hooked shoulders and a hard brow, he said, “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I have informed Velos.”

  Jace looked like she’d punched him. “What?”

  “He’s on his way.”

  “What do you mean you have informed him?”

  “The appearance of those,” Virginia casually flicked her hand at my back, “is important information that must be shared with the head.”

  Jace looked like he would blow a gasket. If he could say what he wanted, I imagine he’d scream at her that there were no other real heads. Everybody was running around in chaos. Who knows what had happened to Theodore by now? I heard somebody mention that the vampires were in tumult. As for Celestine, everybody knew that the witches would take any opportunity to stab one another in the back.

  But Velos….

  “You went behind my back,” Jace began.

  “Many people saw her wings, my dear. I acted preemptively to ensure our colleague,” she said carefully, “believes we are still trustworthy. He will meet us at your office.”

  I wanted to see that place. And maybe find a place to hide there.

  Velos had helped me so much, but the thought of him staring at my wings… it made my skin prickle.

  I don’t know what that doc had given me, but I was feeling better. Looking down at my left arm, I saw a cannula. It must’ve delivered some kind of magical liquid sustenance. My stomach was no longer gnawing a hole in the pit of my gut. I wasn’t dehydrated, and I could open my lips without them cracking.

  A nurse soon came in, flicked my wings a worried glance, pulled out the cannula, slapped a dressing on it, and ran away.

  Jace didn’t leave my side as we left the clinic. Virginia always walked behind, her eyes drilling into the back of my neck. I longed to turn, snatch up her gaze, and meet the challenge. Instead, my brain pitched left and right from one problem to another.

  Jace said people were coming from outside the city to help with an attack on the Kings. Something told me it was too good to be true. They either wouldn’t get here fast enough, or they’d be the wrong kinds of forces. If the city was this compromised, surely the other cities around the country would be, too.

  It was the strangest feeling walking behind Jace. I should be running, screaming, doing something. Instead, it was like casually striding up to the gallows.

  It turns out we weren’t far from Jace’s office. He said it was quaint. It was cuter than that. We were in some kind of private clinic on the same street. It was in a small borough. Though I knew I was in the magical district, this little area was a place unto itself. Huge, towering trees lined the median strip. It might be spring, but a lot of them had already gotten their leaves back. They were small and stunted, but of a vibrant, beautiful green. I should’ve reveled in the beauty. Instead, I wondered how easy it would be to burn them. I wasn’t a pyromaniac. But I knew some kind of chaos would face them sooner rather than later.

  Jace’s office was a small, three-story, old sandstone abode. It looked like it came from the early 1900s, a little before Art Deco. It experimented with touches of the same grand style, and the windows were long. The garden out front was small, with white roses and lavender. Worn steps led up to a red-painted door. Jace strode up them, but he never let me fall far behind. His hand hovered over my shoulder. If I fell against it, I’d get to feel his heat. He could calm my nervous system. Maybe I could even align with him more.

  My eyes slid left as I watched him intricately undo a magical lock by sliding his finger down the door, then tracing a complicated pattern. If I’d figured out we were aligning, did he know? He was the Alpha. Maybe the process felt mysterious to him, but what had Kelsey said? In rare cases, strong magical practitioners could align without physically knowing it. Their magic would seek out one another long before their bodies did. Kelsey had painted it as an extreme kind of reaction. That meant Jace felt for me what I felt for him, right? Which meant it was equally as torturous for him not to touch me as Virginia’s gaze drilled into the back of our necks.

  The door unlocked. As it swung to, I stared inside the quaint corridor. It didn’t have any of the gargantuan features of the modern magical towers. That meant it certainly didn’t feel like I was walking into the future. It didn’t particularly feel like the past either. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it had a genuinely supportive quality.

  If you could ignore Virginia. She pushed in close behind us and slammed the door closed with her heel. A gust of wind fought her. The she-wolf once more won. “Let us make this quick. Velos is on his way.”

  I had already asked about my sister on the way over. Apparently, she was here. She, like Kelsey, was being dealt with in a small clinic. I imagine they either had no room for me – or they hadn’t had the equipment.

  This was the first narrow corridor I’d entered since becoming an Engelos, or whatever I was. I had at least learned to tuck my wings slightly. I couldn’t do what Velos did and fold them neatly behind my back yet. That felt like an incredibly athletic feat. At least I didn’t bang into any of the numerous hall tables. At one point, my folded wing joint did strike a painting and almost pulled it off the wall.

  “Watch yourself,” Virginia snapped.

  “It’s just a painting,” Jace growled back.

  If this was the beginning of their relationship, I’d hate to see them in 20 years. It’d be utter torture for Jace. Though it was kind of bold of me to suggest this, I was starting to know his heart. It would crush him. If he or the Mythos Pack made it that far.

  “Do the heads know everything about the Kings yet?” I asked, knowing Jace would most definitely have shared all the pertinent facts.

  “Of course they do,” Virginia snapped.

  “Did you do what I suggested? Have you gone around to all of the cemeteries and locked down the crypts of old heads?” I demanded.

  “An irrelevant suggestion. Nobody can be raised from the dead,” Virginia said. She used that same snide tone I’d heard so many times.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d been through almost literal hell to bring them this information. My feet ground against the floor, and I spun, jaw clenching. “Are you out of your mind?”

  Her eyes flashed dangerously, willing me to say that again.

  So I spat in a hard voice, “Are you out of your mind?” My teeth locked together. “I fought the Kings with my own hands. I don’t care if you don’t think anyone can be raised from the dead. I’ve seen it.”

  “It’s impossible. You’re delusional—”

  “Delusional?” Right. I’d learned how to hold my magic in. But now it wanted to burst out and shove Virginia against the wall.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102