A Warrior’s Fate (Wolves of Morai #1)

Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

I t wasn’t hard to get away. Eli was just a bit too drunk and disoriented from whatever had happened to follow her body weaving through the crowd, and Kai, the only person who could maybe track her as she’d masked her scent, couldn’t rush off without making it obvious. She found herself in the courtyard again, fighting a chill in the air. The shawl she had didn’t do much.

Her eyes trailed over the expanse of the stone, hedges, flowers, and grass and then over the doors of the multiple buildings. It was possible she’d get in trouble for it, but she went for the one that caught her attention most, the fourth door of the Eastern Hall, and walked through it. From there, she found some stairs and walked up those, too. She ended up in one of the suspended hallways, the one that connected the East and the North Halls.

She could see down into the city from one of the windows here. Nearly all of it if she craned her neck enough. For a minute, she almost felt like she was home again. In Io. In her apartment window, watching the bright lights of the Imperial City gleam against its gold.

She remained like that, staring out the window and drawing patterns over the stone’s edge for nearly twenty minutes before that pull came.

Not the alpha.

Just Kai .

“You’re never going to change, are you?” His voice had come from a different angle than the one she’d climbed from. He knew this hall, obviously. He must’ve gone a faster way. One that didn’t venture through the cold courtyard.

She glanced at him and then back down at the city. “You should be thankful I left.”

“And why is that?”

She rolled her eyes at his smugness. There was no point in hiding; she knew he could feel it.

“If you were ready to kill a man when there was no chance of anything happening between us, I can have feelings about someone you apparently have quite a history with and know very intimately.”

Kai stopped a few feet away. “Who told you about Amalie?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, turning to face him now. “Why did you meet with her?” She narrowed her eyes as if daring him to utter the words “ pack business”.

“It’s really something that wouldn’t interest you. Unless you care about the state of our trade with Mimas.”

“I could.”

She didn’t.

Crossing her arms, Isla lifted herself from the window and paced a few steps away. She didn’t know if she could go back there. Do this. Watch Kai dance with and entertain all of these—

“You look beautiful.”

Isla froze, her heart stumbling a beat. She spun to examine his face. The words had been nearly breathless.

“Davina is a miracle worker,” she joked before gesturing down to her gown and jewels. “And you have good taste.”

Kai laughed. “I really didn’t think it through.”

“How so?”

“All I can think when I look at you, all I can think when I’m down there, is what I would do if it weren’t for the bond.”

Isla felt that tether tremble just the slightest bit. Felt a cruel rise beneath her skin. She bit down on her lip.

“Like what?”

“What? ”

“What would you do if it weren’t for the bond?” Her voice was as silken as the fabric upon her skin. “Tell me.”

Kai’s brows raised, a challenge, and Isla swore uncertainty crossed his face. They hadn’t played this game in a while. It was dangerous. So, so dangerous.

But she didn’t care.

It had been so long since she’d been taken to bed. So long since she’d been able to feel…this. The heat, the need, the want without the nagging of wrongness in the back of her mind. She’d take advantage of what lay between them, what he did to her. Just for this moment, she’d embrace the tension, the pull. Let it drag her deeper and deeper into the chasm it was. She’d worry about the consequences later.

Kai, bless the Goddess, seemed to think the same.

He took one step.

Then another.

Isla’s breath hitched as she moved backwards until she collided with the stone wall. The coolness on her exposed back and arms did little to put a damper on the fire torching her skin.

She watched as Kai’s throat bobbed and resisted the urge to lean forward and run her lips over the column of his neck. Where she would make her mark on him. Maybe that was another reason she’d craved this. To make a point for those who would never see it. A selfish, stupid point. The alpha was hers—even if he wasn’t.

Kai braced his arms on either side of her head, trapping her in. He felt so much bigger than her like this, and her senses were flooded with all of him there was. She had nowhere to go. No way to escape without touching him.

Kai drew a long, considerate stare up her body, snagging between her breasts, and Isla could see as his mind worked while he devised what to say. What mattered. As if he’d thought about it frequently and didn’t want to bother her with the extraneous details.

“Maybe I wouldn’t take off the dress,” he pondered in a gruff whisper. “Or the diamonds.”

Her insides grew molten as she trailed her eyes over his face, his mouth, but she played it coy. “No? ”

“No—waste of time.”

Isla swallowed, and Kai clocked the movement. “So, you’d just have me like this, then? Right here.”

Kai shook his head, his mouth twitching up again as he leaned forward a fraction of an inch. “I’d get on my knees first— only for you —and see how ready you were for me. Feel it…taste it. I can already scent it off you.”

Isla squeezed her thighs together, her heart slamming in her chest. The thought of his head buried between her legs. Of feeling his stubble scratching along her skin. Of his hands, his lips, his tongue…

“And then?” She struggled to keep her voice full.

“Then.” Kai leaned closer, and she craned her neck. Baring it to him. “Then after I had you begging me to fuck you, I’d bring you to the window, so you could look out at what’s yours while I take you from behind.”

She couldn’t pay mind to what his words truly alluded to—her, the queen of this kingdom. She was too wrapped in the idea of his fingers digging into her hips, fisting in her hair. Of his breath on the back of her neck, his teeth grazing her skin as he drove into her. As she tried her hardest not to cry out. Not to let anyone hear what they were doing. Again, again—

“I don’t beg.”

“You would.”

Isla almost whined when he moved closer.

“We wouldn’t go back to the ballroom after that.”

“What about dinner?”

Kai smirked, and she knew where his mind had gone without him saying it.

As he continued, he mimicked that tone she’d used on him oh so long ago. Letting her savor the words, the images they brought. “I’d want to take my time with you next. Peel off that dress and map every inch of you with my tongue. Then I’d take you again. Slower…deeper. And then again. Harder, against the wall. And then I’d have you ride me.”

Isla felt her core throb with each word, slickness building between her thighs.

Everything ached. Her breasts felt heavy, pebbled, and pained against the fabric of her gown. Her knees were about to give out. Her hips arched forward—dangerously close. Waiting. Wanting. Eager.

Her self-restraint was dwindling.

Even still, she hummed a laugh. But it took nearly everything in her not to whimper. “You really want me on top, huh?”

“I can think of no better view.”

Isla was desperate for any friction, rubbing her legs in a way that gave just the right pressure. But not enough. She wanted more. Needed more.

“Kai.”

His name off her lips, breathless, made him shudder. Made him move in a way that Isla wondered…

She dared a look down, not moving her head, only her eyes, to find him hard and straining against his pants. Her fingers twitched, and her mouth went dry as she greedily traced the shape of him. The thought of him inside her…

“Isla.”

She looked back up. His eyes were endless depths of a stormy night, and she imagined the crystal-blue had vanished from hers, too.

He leaned in again, and Isla was about to scream; she could hardly stand it.

Maybe she would beg. Just for him to touch her , for Goddess’s sake. Forget fucking her senseless. That would come later. Right now, she just wanted to feel his skin against her own, have the taste of him on her mouth.

One. More. Fraction.

He moved the closest he could ever get without throwing all their efforts away.

“I am the keeper of a burden I was never meant to bear,” he began, speaking near her collarbone, sending a hot breath along it and up her neck as he continued up to her ear. “But resisting you all this time may be the truest test the Goddess has given me.”

Isla couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think about anything else.

She pressed her head to the wall and turned to look him in the eyes again. He was so close. So close. Her fingers constricted around the fabric of her gown. So, she wouldn’t reach. Wouldn’t touch …

She drove her hips backward.

No. No.

But, Goddess , he was…

Just as she was about to brashly throw caution to the wind and propel forward, abandon Kai’s plans, and just take him right there on the floor, the sound of a closing door echoed from far down the hallway.

He pushed off the wall and stepped back, and Isla let out a soft gasp like she’d been drowning. As he focused down the corridor, she brought a hand to her chest, feeling her heart thrumming wildly beneath the ruby pendant.

“Maids,” Kai said, turning back around.

“Do you think they saw us?” Isla asked. “Or…heard us?”

Oh, Goddess.

“Maybe saw us—but they don’t know who you are. It will be enough for the staff to gossip, but it won’t go far. No reporting for the columns.”

“Okay,” Isla breathed. “We should get back.”

“Wait.” Kai held up a hand. “Maybe we should take a walk first, and then we can debrief on what you’ve heard.”

“Aren’t they wondering where you are?”

“I told them I needed to step away for a while. No one will miss me—and no one will want to deal with me if I don’t take a walk. Especially if you’re still in that ballroom.”

Isla coughed and smoothed her dress. Judging by how flushed they both were, by the outline of him she was trying her hardest not to look down at and by how dazed she still was—still drunk on him, on her thoughts—a walk with some fresh air may have been a good idea.

“Where do you want to go?”

Kai shoved his hands in his pockets, pulling them outward a bit, maybe trying to get some relief. He glanced up. “I want to show you something.”

“I’m not going in there.”

The declaration that fell from Isla’s lips was met by the flattening of Kai’s brows. The alpha leaned against the edge of the opening he’d revealed behind a thick tapestry and hidden door in one of the sitting rooms of the Front Hall. “You’re a warrior , right?”

Isla met his with an equally deadpan expression and nodded forward. “What even is this?”

They stood before an empty…was it a hallway?

Isla could barely tell with how dark it was. Only faint crystals buried in the drab stone walls were present to light what was a shoddy path. The musty scent and slightest chill had smacked her in the face the second Kai had exposed it. She didn’t know where it ledorwhat it connected to.

They’d gone down a plethora of corridors to get to this point, turning various corners and up two more flights of stairs. Though Kai was the alpha and could technically do whatever he wanted and not dare be questioned, they tried their hardest not to get caught. The long walk, along with the spike of adrenaline in avoiding lurking guards or working staff, provided a decent distraction from their talk .

Kai blew out a breath. “Do you trust me?”

“Enough that I know the quality of your life hinges on the preservation of mine.”

“That’s a yes.” He gestured to the opening again. “After you, my gift .”

Isla rolled her eyes at the endearment. “Why can’t you go first?” Kai gestured again wordlessly, and she glowered, offering over her shoulder, “You just want to stare at my ass.”

Kai didn’t deny it.

With his laugh echoing behind her, Isla entered the cavern. The click of her heels and the hush of her breath reverberated off the walls as she moved through it. She shivered, hearing the heavy wood of the hidden door fall back into place.

“Kai, I swear to the—”

“Just keep going, Warrior.”

Grumbling, Isla lifted her hand and flipped him off.

His chuckling continued.

She could sense him trailing behind her, could hear his heavy steps until they eventually reached an opening that sat before a set of stone stairs. They were narrow, nearly a foot high, and splattered like paint with the same crystals of the wall. Isla leaned forward to find where they ended, but they were so closed inthatthey just seemed to spiral on and on to Goddess knew where.

She opened her mouth to protest but then closed it.

One step, then another, then another. Up and up and up. Around and around and around.

A chorus of their breath and the hits of their shoes was all Isla could hear as they continued for what felt like an eternity on her legs, feet, and stability. The circles were making her unbelievably dizzy—especially when she sped up after feeling the need to prove a point following Kai’s jeer of how slow she was—and eventually, she’d halted them to take off her shoes.

Her body was coated in a light sheen of sweat—and she wasn’t sure how that boded for the silk of her dress—but she was grateful for the exercise. Just another way to redirect any of the leftover tension.

At last, they reached a large oak door. Steadying her breath, Isla traced her eyes along the inscriptions on its surface—the two wolves and the orb. She hesitated before running her hand over it, and then, without prompting from Kai, she pushed. The force needed was much more than she’d expected, the muscles in one arm straining enough that she used a second.

A gasp fell from her mouth as she stepped inside, but it wasn’t for the furniture—a large mahogany desk, some chairs, bookshelves, an old dry bar, and easels with maps, slightly covered by cloth and dust—or for the high sloped ceiling that dissipated into blackness. It was the pool of color that would’ve engulfed everything if the pieces had been set further into the room. A cast of rich, deep purples and arrays of blues that seemed to ripple on the wooden floor.

The stained-glass window. The eye of the beast.

No wonder there had been so many stairs.

It only took a few patters of her footsteps for Isla to find herself bathed in the hues. She’d stopped right at the cusp of the window’s shadow, taking in its glory, her eyes wide with wonder. She felt a strain as she lifted her head to catch sight of it all.

“Goddess,” Isla breathed, and she felt it. In the way the moonbeams amidst the color fed through the glass, she felt kissed by something divine. She looked around the room. “What is this place?”

She didn’t turn to Kai but could hear him closing the door and moving towards her. He was so proud, reveling in her awe, that she could practically feel it through their jilted bond. “My great, great, great, great…” He trailed off before simply saying, “My ancestor’s study.”

A study all the way up here?

“Which one?” she asked, bringing her eyes back to the window.

“Alpha Orin, I think. At least, that’s what I found on some papers in the desk. Letters between him and Alpha Aneurin—who would’ve been the Alpha of Phobos at the time. They’re written in our native dialect, so I can only pick out his name. I wish I paid more attention to those lessons in the academy, but I’ve been trying to learn what I can now to decipher them.” Kai walked by Isla to the window, and she found herself becoming entranced by the way his shadow danced amongst the colors. When he turned back to look at her, a suspicious look was plastered on his face. “Why are you so curious about Phobos? And don’t feed me that bullshit about wanting to learn more after being in the Wilds. Hate it all you want, but I know you better than that now.”

Any wonder Isla had been disillusioned by faded.

She swallowed, Lukas’s words and warnings playing through her head as she stared at Kai’s form backlit by the moonlight. Even in her contemplative silence, the tense seconds that passed, he didn’t press but waited. Patiently. He had trusted her with so much so far and most of it had been personal. Was it bad that she felt that she could trust him with this? Should she not have?

Before she could put anymore thought into it, Isla asked, “Have you ever heard of the Ares Pass?”

Kai jerked back, stunned. “How do you know about Ares?”

It was a reaction Isla hadn’t been expecting. “So, you do know.”

“I’ve never heard of a Pass, but…” Kai paused, eyes shifting around the room as if he was wondering if he should speak. “The history of Ares is something no one else is taught as fact but those of my bloodline, but seeing that you’re my fated, I suppose it’s your legacy, too.” He loosed a breath before explaining, “Before there was Deimos and Phobos, we were just Ares . It was some time after the War of Realms concluded that Ares’s alpha divided the land between his two sons, and each of them was granted power by the Goddess.”

The War of Realms ?

Isla had heard pieces of those battles oh-so-long ago that had changed the tides of the world. When wolves, witches, and all other beings banded together, aided by the deities from their divine lands, against the cruel, immortal fae. What was left after the “original keepers of magic” had lost and retreated to their ethereal domain was their mortal ruins beyond the witch’s western border and “other stains on the world” that everyone who’d passed on the tale didn’t know the true meaning of.

Your legacy, too.

Isla suddenly felt a weight press on her chest, her shoulders. A burden of centuries, a millennium. She was interwoven into this long line of destined rulers; the goddesses had wound her in there, whether she’d accepted the bond or not.

“Why try to hide the pack’s existencefrom everyone?” she asked.

“From what I understand, our times amidst the fae were dark, and a lot of the history doesn’t reflect well on us. We want it brought up as little as apparently the Imperial Alpha does,” Kai said. “Our packs—or rather, my bloodline and the Imperial line—have been at odds from what seems like the dawn of wolves to the point we’ve dragged the whole continent into our bullshit on a few occasions. It’s better to be seen as peaceful. The only way you and me being fated could’ve been a crueler joke is if you were the Imperial Alpha’s daughter instead.”

Isla supposed that was true.

“Now, I ask again,” any joviality in his features faded, and the vast study suddenly felt so, so small, “why and how do you know about it?”

She braced herself before saying, “Lukas.”

“Lukas? The hunter from Tethys?” Kai, again, looked stunned. At Isla’s nod, he asked, “How would he know about it?”

“I wondered the same thing.” Isla found herself picking her nails. There was more that she needed to say, especially about Lukas, but she wasn’t sure how Kai would react. “I—I have a lot to tell you.”

Kai placed a hand on the glass and ran his fingers on the metal panes of the window before pressing flatly on them. There was a click and then a whine as the glass loosened and freed. A whip of cool breeze moved through the space. “We can talk outside. This is what I really wanted to show you.”

Isla gnawed on her lip, and hesitantly, she approached him. She wouldn’t look up until she’d stepped over the shallow edge of stained glass rising from the floor onto a small stone balcony.

And when she finally let her eyes behold what was before her, it stole her breath away.

She was one with the mountains, on top of the world as she looked upon the entire city of Mavec rolling down hills to its faint glow of star-fallen streets. The river was an inky-black passage leading to tiny dots like the flicker of the eyes of beasts in the forest at its end. Surely, Abalys. Isla scoured for what she knew. The top of the hotel. The Bookshoppe. Any of the stores and squares she’d desired to visit. From here, she discovered game parks she’d never crossed. Some open fields. The train that shot through another mountain.

She moved back and forth along the balcony, her eyes hungry to take in everything she could, barely blinking as if it all would disappear if she closed them.

She didn’t know how to speak. What to say. How to say it. What to ask.

As she stammered over her words in an almost embarrassing fashion, she could sense Kai watching her. Could see him moving in her periphery to remove his suit jacket. She hadn’t even realized she’d been shivering—the air even more frigid so high up—until its warmth enveloped her. She couldn’t get thank you to even escape her mouth, only one simple word that seemed to be the only one she could use to describe this place. “Beautiful.”

Kai hummed in agreement, but his eyes never left her.

She moved to the railing, a black metal that leveled off at her chest, and placed her hands upon it as she looked down. She mapped the path they’d traveled to get to the hall. All the spectators had departed now. Guards hung about, two of the half dozen sparring while the others watched and chortled, surely having placed bets.

“So, what do you have for me from the party?”

Isla turned to Kai, who’d since paced backwards to lean against the thick glass of the window. He’d surely been up here many times and wasn’t nearly as enthralled by the view.Apparently, he wanted to get off the topic of Ares, at least for a little while.

“I overheard quite a few women talk about how your ass looks great in those pants,” Isla offered, sliding her arms into the too-long sleeves of the jacket, subtly breathing in the scent of him that it held.

Kai snickered. “No wonder you were ready to jump me. They had you going from the beginning of the night.”

Isla narrowed her eyes, not bothering to refute those feelings of hers. Instead, she crossed her arms, turning serious. “My presence was really a hit or miss. People either wanted nothing to do with me or were courteous enough to ask questions and entertain conversations. A lot of people asked if I was the general’s mate.”

Kai met her last sentence with the unamused reaction she’d expected before rolling up the sleeves of his dark dress shirt, stopping them just at his elbows. Isla’s eyes honed in on the ink that cut a bit over one of his forearms she’d never noticed before. The patterns of the tattoo didn’t look like those of any lumerosi she’d seen.

“Who fell in what category?”

She flicked her gaze back to Kai’s and then began rattling off names—at least those she could remember—and then covered the rest with very vague descriptions. By the time she’d gone through each of her accounts, through every detail she picked up, big or small, she felt winded. But Kai had listened to every word, eyes focused on the ground, brows drawn, and jaw clenched. Isla had tried to mark every twitch of any muscle to glean what mattered most and what didn’t, but her mate was unreadable.

Except for the fact that he knew what he wanted to hear.

“You know what you’re looking for,” she said. “What is it? Why am I here?”

Kai looked up and adjusted himself against the glass, a picture of aloofness. “I told you before, I want to see how members of my pack act towards those of others. Seeing how much they’re willing to say. What they say. We don’t get visitors often, you know.”

Isla didn’t buy it.

“And how does that help you figure out who you can trust?”

Kai pushed himself up. “You said it yourself: Delta Croan doesn’t like my push to funnel more resources into re-evaluating the Wall. My Head of Trade wants more say in what can be distributed—even if she has all control besides the need for my approvals. If they’re willing to share that around you, who knows what else they’ll say?”

More bullshit.

He wouldn’t have her here for spats of trade and resources. Back in Callisto, he’d wanted to keep her as far away from Deimos and its higher-ups as possible because he feared their lives at risk.But instead of going right at him to cut out the act, part of her wanted to wrench it out of him, to catch him off-guard.

“Why do you want to look at the Wall?” she asked.

Kai leaned on the railing beside her. For a split second, a grimace crossed his face. “Because it borders my territory—more than any other on this continent—and if wards are failing, if the bak are acting strange, I need to ensure my pack’s safety.”

At the reminder of the bak and the great structure that caged them, Isla found her gaze drawing outward, her eyes narrowing at the distance as if she could see the behemoth rising from where she stood.

There was so much more she needed to tell him. That she needed to get off her chest from her time in Callisto.

“Someone tried to have me killed,” Isla blurted before she could stop herself.

“Someone what ?” Kai whipped around to face her, eyes wide and face twisted in a mix of confusion and budding rage.

Isla took a breath, quickly running through the best way to divulge the information. “Back in Callisto after you left, Lukas, he—”

“ Lukas ?” Kai stood, his fists clenched at his sides.

“Yes,” she said softly in a futile attempt to ease him. “I went to see him— after the few hours you’d asked for—and he had a dagger with him. Someone had given it to him and told…told him to kill me . That they’d let him out if he did. It’s fine now. I’m okay. I got away.”

Kai paced away from her, and Isla could practically feel him on the edge of a shift. She wasn’t sure if it was a consequence of what had occurred in the hall getting in the way—the bond tighter, stronger—but she felt her own body start to react.

“I felt something that day,” he growled. “But I thought it was just from the bond and being away from you. I should have never left.”

“You needed to be here with your pack,” she said, still trying to abate him.

“I needed to be with you.” He raked a hand over his hair. “Where is he now?”

Fury still tinged his voice.

“You’re not going to try—”

“Isla, where is he now ?”

She swore the faintest hint of red fought over the gray of his eyes.

“In a prison in Io,” she told him, stepping towards him and finding her hand reaching out, just like in Callisto as they stood before the message. A phantom touch. A reminder. She was here. She was safe. Everything was fine.

But Kai had stepped back, his face contorting as if that had bothered him more than anything else. “Why would he be taken to Io? An attempt on another’s life warrants trial within one’s home pack—or the one it occurred in.”

“Because he still doesn’t remember anything,” Isla said, trying to keep her own aggravation out of her voice so as not to feed his. “And the Imperial Alpha doesn’t want anyone knowing what happened during the Hunt. I thought you knew that.”

“I do, believe me,” Kai said through gritted teeth. Then he went quiet, pensive. “Who was still in Callisto when he attacked you?”

Isla forced her shoulders to rise and fall. “My family, Adrien, some other members of my pack, other packs, nurses…I don’t know. People. Why?”

“ Which members of your pack?”

Isla blinked, something in her gut twisting. Which members of her pack…why did that matter? “Why do you want to kn ow?”Kai didn’t answer right away, which was enough time for Isla’s mind to contemplate the possibility that had been lingering just out of reach and out of sight since it had happened. “You…do you think it was someone from my pack that tried to have me killed?” More silence. Isla scoffed and moved back. “Are you insane? That—that’s my pack, my family. Why would they want me dead?”

But Kai didn’t need to answer.

The pieces began to come together despite how much she fought against them, despite how she mentally clawed at the figments to destroy them before they came to be.

Kai didn’t trust people in his pack. Thought ill of their intentions for him. Had wanted to keep her away and keep her safe— them both safe—for that reason.But now she was here despite that fact. Because she deserved it, maybe, but there was something else.

“I’m not a spy. I’m bait, aren’t I?” The woman of Io, the daughter of a high-ranking member within a hierarchy that certainly had a history of questionable actions in its past. Actions that seemed far more far-fetched than conspiring to kill an alpha and heir to maintain its order.“You think Io has something to do with what happened to your family? That they’re conspiring with people here.”

This meant, in his eyes, thather pack thought so little of her that she was an expendable means to an end. A way to get to him.

Isla felt a sting at the corners of her eyes, and she backed away from him until she hit the railing. With only a glance, she could catch the sympathy on Kai’s face. “Isla,” he said gently, reluctantly. He hadn’t wanted her to know. For her own sake or his?

She shook her head. “No.”

“Isla.”

“No.” More forceful now. “No, you’re wrong.”

She heard him step forward. “Isla.”

Grinding her teeth to hold back a scream, Isla lifted her head. “ Kai .” It was a mix of desperation and anger. “You have to be wrong.” Even closer. She was nearly trapped by him again, but he didn’t extend his arms. “Why? Why now? I get that we have a bad history, but committing murder like that out of nowhere doesn’t make sense. ”

Kai sighed, and Isla could sense his aggravation. “I have my reasons to believe it.”

She felt guilty for pressing on him. “Explain them to me.”

“It may take a while.”

“We have time,” she said, even if she wasn’t sure they did. “ We’re making the time. ”

Kai’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. As he relented. “The night my father and brother died…I was supposed to die, too.”

Isla’s eyes widened, but she tried her best to keep her surprise contained.

Kai opened his mouth to continue—but then looked away. “What is that?”

Isla spun, careful not to touch him, and followed his line of sight to the horde of vehicles barreling up the drive towards the hall.

“The gates should’ve been closed,” Kai said, retreating from her.

As Isla turned fully to face the streets, the cars came to a screeching halt. Doors on either side, doors in the back, flew open. Out of them poured over three dozen wolves—from those in full shifts to those baring claws, teeth, and weapons in hand. Even from so high up above, their pungent stench made her stomach curdle.

“Rogues,” Isla choked.

Kai had already set off back through the entryway to the room and the stairs. Down below, Isla heard a rogue’s howl and the squelching scream of a fallen guard before she followed right behind him.

Down, down, down.

They were so far away from the party. They had too long to go.

Around, around, around.

There were guards—a lot of guards. Everything would be fine. They could handle them.

Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall.

Isla felt nauseous and dizzy by the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, but she pressed forward, urged by the screams of the banquet, so loud they carried even in the dank, hidden space.

Kai was much faster than she was, and she nearly lost him a few times as they curved through the halls, riddled with cowering staff members and guards charging towards the western building. Through the windows they had shot past on their run through the connecting passages, Isla could see the courtyard in pandemoniumandcould practically smell the putrid odor of rogues, blood, and fear in the air.

How had they gotten into Mavec? How had they gotten all the way up to the hall?

Maybe it was the sight or scent that had struck him, but Kai had slowed enough to stick by her. And with a glance her way, she knew the plan. They’d shift the second they stepped outside and take down whoever they could.

As they broke out into the courtyard, Isla took a few moments of pause and surveyed the scene to ensure it was safe to leave herself vulnerable for those small seconds.

But it was moments too long.

Isla let out a yelp as she was pushed by a fleeing guest. She stumbled back, flailing to stay upright, waiting to meet the unforgiving ground, just about to go into a shift before she hit it.

But she couldn’t.

Because she’d collided with something.

And though the surface she’d met was solid…it wasn’t a wall.

Walls didn’t have hands. Didn’t grip tight.

One thought.

Only one thought rolled through her mind.

One word that reeled over and over and over again as her wolf writhed within her. As her blood rushed and fire erupted over her skin, through her body.

Mate.