Chapter 67
MAXIM POV
So I might have lost my cool a little.
The way Marshails face sharpened with sourness tells me I’ve made a catalogue of mistakes. Briggs rolls, forehead now a series of red, angry, blisters and welts. Marshall throws the empty kettle to the floor and gestures towards the door.
Following Prince Remy for a time out like a naughty child.
My wolf curdles angrily in my stomach wishing we could have done more to Briggs..
So why don’t I feel better about it? Prick wanted my position. Didn’t even give a shit about Tessa, not really. I should be proud that he didn’t manage it. That we loved each other.
Still love each other.
But she isn’t here, I didn’t manage to hold onto her like I should have done.
This shitty set–up with Remy is all I have in the fucking world now. Because Tessa is somewhere else entirely. I try not to think of her running straight to a waiting Luca, betraying us like the rest of her village like Donlon hinted she was capable of. Thats not my firecracker. No way.
“Fucking hell,” I hiss to nobody, smacking the back of my head gently against the red brick wall.
Error one, letting that prick get to me in the first place.
The big lump. All hazel eyes and country bumpkin innocence. I knew he had something else going on.
Donlon promised my life and career away to some nobody first year. Built me up like the future golden boy only to spur others on to steal it in the end?
I hate the fact that it boils my piss that I won’t know why my mentor stopped believing in me. I know it’s like wanting to win the biggest fucking idiot in the village award. But at one point, I was heading to the very top. When did he stop being proud of me?
The amount of skills and extra training I went through only to discover I’m the fucking sash–wearing pig in a raffle. A prize for someone to win.
How many are watching still? Paranoia will get me nowhere, giving my head second and third hits to the wall.
Error two, I should have asked him if he loved her. Not if he was in love with her. Implying Tessa is alive. My only hope is that the chaos of the pouring scalding water over the top of Briggs‘ rage–flushed head was distraction enough. Her safety lies in in her fake death.
I need some air.
Winding out of the lower levels underneath the packhouse, I arrive at the spiral granite staircase. This then leads to the main tower and its huge arched
wooden door.
Fresh, grassy air hits me and it’s sweet. Surprisingly sweet. Fuck me I smell oran
My heart does a thousand somersaults in the space of a single beat.
It’s just Prince Remy sitting on the wall eating one, paring away the gleaming segments with his blade.
Noticing me and my scowl, Remy points his slim blade my way. “What the hell is
matter with you?”
“Poured boiling water on Briggs‘ face, Marshall booted me,” I sigh, taking a seat next to him on the thick granite slope, propping one leg up, almost touching, and accepting a slice of orange. I’m not hungry but I close my eyes and bask in the gentle, sweet aroma.
The one that makes me think of copper hair clashing against porcelain skin peppered with the most adorable, pale freckles. Nothing like Irene’s rich patina, just her own little smattering of hidden colours.
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Tessa’s serious little face, even as her eyes burn with soulful brown thoughts and feelings. The way my lips felt brushing against the back of her neck a those nights I got to hold her sleeping body. The rush it gives me to put my hands on that soft waist of hers and yank her right where I need her. Under me. On top of me. Everywhere.
That deceptive orange scent smahes me with pang of longing harsh enough to make me adjust my position and cough.
For a few seconds I’m right back with her. And it’s heartbreaking.
“Dare I ask why Briggs got that?” Remy chuckles dourly.
“Donlon told him to just wait it out. That I was going to fuck it up eventually. With Tessa or some other way and then he could swoop in and take my place.”
“Well that was fucking stupid of him. You only got this job by the skin of your teeth.”
“Oh.”
Remy grins wickedly. Then I chuckle and accept another sweet segment of orange. I didn’t expect the Prince to be cracking jokes at my expense.
“Shut the hell up, Your Highness,” I growl. But his idiocy helps. I’m not alone.
Remy switches into mindlink, when a group of Healer girls all titter and bow before us both. Nearly two months is apparently more than enough grieving. I must be ready to fuck some random herb–stirrers.
I’d rather sit under that kettle.
/I don’t want to do this anymore. Especially not the older ranks/ Remy opens, his, voice exhausted yet wary. /We’d have to make them physically useless for fighting to get anything out of them and even then they probably wouldn’t tell the whole truth./
I think for a few seconds. /Amnesty? They won’t be exiled, no matter the testimony they give?/
lean a little closer to Remy. Whispering, preferring that to a voice bouncing around my skull, “Has anyone spoken to any soldiers from the front?”
“What about?”
“Are these rebels trained or just batshit farmers who’ve got themselves some armour?”
“You think they’re made up of our own?”
Justice and enforcement was Donlon’s area. We all know that. Marshall heads training. Brock is stock. There are Wardens for food, defences, buildings. Everything.
“Where are all the men Donlon had exiled? He said we had to wait and see, what if this whole time he’s been making a fucking army on the outside, he just got caught out before they could break through?”
“Fucking hell Maxim. You really do jump to the worse–case scenario.”
“Well…I think I’m right.”
Remy nodded, looking surprisingly like his father for a change, his icy blue eyes narrowing, focusing on the green, peaceful horizon ahead. His huge body, almost double the breadth of mine tenses. Like a stack of dominos the implications are clear and rattling through his mind.
“Hey!” Marshall shouts, “I didn’t realise you two made time for special little picnics together! Alpha’s waiting!” before his white and gray uniform vanished into the dark stone doorway.
Taking a final segment of orange I try to hang on to the taste of scented joy for a few minutes more. Waiting in the pale blue parlour I wonder why that damn butterfly painting remains, tilted on its side, like a burglary is mid–process.
Alpha Hale strides into the room, dark bags under his eyes There is no sign of Luna Sabrina. She sits in the throne room alone I’ve heard from Remy. Even
Chapter 67
though it is ruined and the red drapes hang disjointedly.
Apart from when he was nakedly swinging his scary dick around in the steam rooms you would never see the two of them apart before. Before Donlon, mushrooms and betrayal.
Now he roams like a huge, lonely iceberg. Too quick to anger, overreacting to every new piece of information.
“I’m sending a batch of Wardens to eradicate that village. The devious little fuckers who grew that filth. They’re dead. Burn it all.”
Tessa’s home.
“But we don’t know which villagers were involved yet?” I check, gaining a cold glare from the huge Alpha. Wearing even more armour today, huge plates strapped to his shins, glinting like something the Goddess dropped from the sky.
“It’s a clean up operation, Maxim. Anyway, you have no issue with getting your own back, a kettle to the face I heard?” grinning a detached, nasty little smile my way.
I grimace, fighting back the flush of annoyance. I’m not Alpha Hale. Neither is Remy. A silent vow forms in my chest. As solemn as the one I made to protect Tessa no matter what.
No more losing control. No more random acts of hatred. I need to be smarter. I’m a mouse in a maze with forces set in place long before I even arrived in Ravenbow. I need to start spotting the shifts underfoot.
Swaggering between us, towards the fire the Alpha mutters darkly. “I’ll be helping Warden Marshall now. I think it might do me some good,” flexing and crunching his fingers, crunches rippling down his knuckles.
“That fucking painting,” he growls, finally taking the huge butterfly artworks frame and snapping it over his knee like a twig before hurling it out of the window.
/Tell him about the exiles, our idea!/ I link Remy.
/It’s your idea/ he snaps back but this isn’t the time to be pissing about. His father will listen to his son over me. I hope anyway.
“Father…”
“What! Make it good, you’re fucking useless at interrogation!”
I’m proud to see Remy does not waver. “I’ve been thinking we might have missed an area. Donlon and the exiles…” his voice clear and composed. To see his omnipotent father slowly lose more of his majestic aura every day, broken by facts he cannot change or accept. It looks like Remy is refusing to buckle
the same way.
Alpha Hale listened to Remy’s plan, his jaw slackening at the realization he had been blind to so much beneath his feet.
Soon a plan has been set in place. Five minor wardens alongside will be heading to Tessa’s home village. the inevitable will occur.
“You. You’re going to go and check out some dead rebels bodies. Exiles always have scars a few inches long between the shoulder blades.”
I try not to look as thrilled as I am at the idea. I’ll happily look at a rotting stack of traitors if it gives me the chance to find her.
“You’ve got a week then get back here before the troop train. Use all those…skills,” drawling the last word in mockery.
“Hmm. I’m going to go steam? Remy?”
“Yes father.”
I make some quick excuses about preparing to leave. Twenty–four hours later Lfind myself stalking the lines of the train track, dressed in black armour, armed to the fucking teeth.
For farewells, Remy simply shook my hand, looking concerned. Pawesome was deposited with a snuffling, wide–eyed with worry Princess Hazel. Maybe
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Chapter 67
thinking about something other than her own situation will snap her out of her current state. Pawesome scratching her was a poor start.
Allette spotted me gathering up a newly sharpened set of blades and begged for information. I suggested she continues being number one. Her time will come. No sign of Kai and Silas.
Now I’m out on the other side of Ravenbow. No more rolling green fields and simple safety. I’m out.
Except I have an urgent, additional need that must be fulfilled as soon as possible. Leaving the train tracks, I head to a nearby den of notoriety. A sleazy hanging red lantern beckons me in.
Crossing the miserable, plump woman’s hand with a solitary gold coin, I wonder what the barely dressed young servant waiting for me in her grimy room will make of my unusual request. I tell myself it’s not betraying Tessa.
But unfortunately, a bite doesn’t heal with the death of a mate and if that big–dicked lunatic calls me to the steam room again, I’ll be ruined without that mark on my skin.
AD
