A Warrior’s Fate (Wolves of Morai #1)

Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33

I sla inched back to the edge of the mattress. There was a scent coming from the blood on the diadem, but it wasn’t one she recognized. It was dry and flecked onto her skin as she picked it up, just as gently as she had its twin in the alleyway. Flakes of red fell like snow across the white of the blankets. As its other half, the crown was silver and gold and bejeweled with black crystal, sister to the dagger. It was clear where the two pieces had been severed, the metal jagged and caved in.

Isla pictured bringing the two pieces together, envisioning them whole—but that image was still incomplete. Another piece was missing. One last ornament, another large jewel perhaps, was absent from its center.

There was a creak, and Isla snapped her head in the doorway’s direction. At first, she was shocked when Kai peeked his head through, but then itall faded and washed away. It was just him and the way she felt for him.

But the moment was brief.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked, worry edging his voice. He trained his eyes across the room. When he broke the threshold inside, Isla motioned to close the door behind him, to which he obliged. “Are you okay? I felt you when I was walking up.”

So, he’d gotten here early .

“I was going to my room when I noticed his door was open, and then I caught the blood,” Isla said.

“Where is he?” Kai’s voice was just as soft as hers. He took a glance back at the bathroom—nose twitching at the wafting of smoke—before his eyes honed on the papers strewn along the bed.

“I don’t know. All of his stuff is still here,” Isla said, hating that worry rose in her chest. She cradled the crown, nearly hiding it in her clasped hands as if she felt the subconscious urge to protect it. Like it was calling her to. “Look at the bureau.”

Kai glanced up at her and then did as she said.

“It’s a map,” she added, trailing his movement. “Of here. Do you know what those lines mean? Are they roads or paths? Or anything about why those spots are circled?”

Before he picked up the map, Kai lifted the identification card for “Edriel” and cursed under his breath. The parchment crinkled as he took it in his hands and turned to her, leaning against the furniture as he read it over. “Nothing strange comes to mind. Just land, roads, shops, houses, temples.”

“And they all lead to the Wall.”

A muscle feathered Kai’s jaw. “It looks that way.”

Isla spun to face him fully. “What are you thinking?”

“That I trust a bak more than I trust Alpha Cassius.”

Alpha Cassius—no longer her alpha , as he used to say.

“What is that?”

Isla lifted her gaze to Kai. He focused on the piece in her hand, glinting with a singular stream of light.

“It’s a diadem—or half of one,” she answered.

Kai pushed off the bureau to come closer. “You found this in here?” Isla nodded. “And seeing this scared you so much that I could feel it?”

“I didn’t just see this.”

Whatever look had been on her face made it easy for Kai to figure out what she was alluding to. He stepped back as if to search the room, but Isla reached out a hand to stop him. “They’re gone, too. I don’t know where. They just vanished…or they were never there.”

That sounded ridiculous.

“Maybe they went out the window,” she offered .

She let him fall from her grasp as he went to the opening, looking at the three-story drop to the ground—manageable—before pulling down the frame and flipping the latch to lock it. “Why can’t I sense them anymore?”

Isla shrugged. “We’re wolves. We mask our scents and auras all the time.”

“But every time before?”

Too many questions.

Isla rubbed her forehead, grimacing as she felt the flecks of blood scrape her skin. “I don’t know. Something’s obviously changed. They’re getting bolder. I think they whispered in my ear.”

“For the love of fuck.” Kai heaved a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What’d they say?”

Her lips turned further downwards, the word hitting a weak part of her. “Traitor.”

Kai’s brows lifted, the remark potentially feeding into his theory that Io was behind all of it. But something still didn’t feel right. Isla knew there was more.

“I have the other half of this in my room,” she said. “Everything else is with Jonah. It’ll make more sense, and I can better explain once we have it.”

Another look of surprise from her mate. “You told Jonah before you told me?”

Isla sighed. “I wanted to know more before I just started throwing theories at you. This is the person who murdered your family and tried to kill you. Me. I couldn’t just…” She trailed off, looking off as her face screwed in perplexity.

Kai waved his hand in front of her. “Isla?”

“Why do all this?” She met his eyes again. “If this person is skilled enough to kill an alpha and his heir, nearly kill his scion—why toy with us? Why send Lukas to kill me at all when they could do it themselves so easily? They were at my back, and we can barely detect when they’re around anymore. We only see them when they want us to.” She cast her gaze back to the papers on the bed. “Why the messages? Why all the random things? Why…”

She lost herself again, squinting down at a specific torn parchment on the mattress. Its contents didn’t matter, but what did were the four words staring back at her— Warrior Callan of Io .

Warrior. Io.

“What if they’re trying to tell us something?” She thought back to the message they’d just gotten. Warrior. Io. Charon. The crest of Kai’s familycould essentially mean Deimos. She turned to Kai once more. “What if this was a warning? For us. For me in the alley. Trying to warn me about Callan. He’s as much a warrior as I am.”

Kai’s face looked considerate, but doubt—serious doubt—still lingered. Understandably. It was a different approach and exactly why she’d wanted more information before she tossed things at him.

This wasn’t a game. A murderer waited somewhere along this web. One who’d taken nearly everything from him and altered his life forever.

“Then what were the rest of the words and symbols? And why use things we can understand now? I didn’t recognize any of this in what I’d gotten before.”

“I’m not sure.” A surge of adrenaline took to Isla’s veins. “But Jonah has the marker and the book, maybe he’s figured out how he could decipher the language.”

Kai’s brows furrowed. “The what and the what?”

Right.

“Let’s go to the Bookshoppe,” Isla said, waving her hand for him to follow her. Their talk would have to wait. “I’ll explain the best I can on the way.”

When Isla and Kai eventually made it to The Bookshoppe’s door, there was a faint light glowing on the other side through the opaque glass, though the sign on it clearly read CLOSED. Sounds of yelling and laughter carried into the night air.

Was Jonah not alone?

Kai looked at her and the bag dangling on her shoulder, containing the pieces of the diadem and the dagger, before lifting his hand to the wood. He knocked on it several times in an off-beat, peculiar cadence. Three quick taps, three quicker ones, before the last hit that seemed to linger and leave stillness on the other side.

A few seconds passed, a wind sweeping across and displacing Isla’s hood when darkness rippled across the window. Then came a clicking sound—just one lock this time—before the door swung open.

The scent of booze practically thwacked Isla in the face, and much of it came from Davina.

The hotel secretary’s green doe-eyes, glazed over from what Isla assumed was the source of her potent scent of wine, were wide as she shifted her gaze between their two intruders. She wasn’t the only one here at the shop. Jonah, Rhydian, and Ameera stood around one of the study tables, bottles of liquor in front of them. The four of them wore equal expressions of shock, though she was sure it was for Kai’s surprise visit rather than hers.

“You assholes, did you forget to invite us?” Kai heckled, pushing his hood back on his head. His happiness to see them practically radiated from him. She didn’t even need the bond to feel it.

From any of them.

It was the first time she’d ever seen their “family” all together.

Davina, still dazed with her eyes turning glossy, took a step back to allow them inside, and Isla followed Kai’s suit, taking down her hood. He kicked the door closed behind them.

Ameera was obviously fighting to keep too-wide a grin off her face. “And what did we do to deserve this honor, Your Majesty?”

At the address, Kai scoffed, but before he could answer, there was a strangled sound. He barely had time to react before Davina, on the brink of tears, launched herself at him.

Isla recalled this morning and how devastated Davina had been with the news of the challenge. She hadn’t seen Kai since the announcement, not like Rhydian, Ameera, and she had. Jonah hadn’t seen him either, but he remained in his spot beside Ameera. Watching. Observing as Jonah seemed to do.

Kai chuckled, wrapping his arms around the smallest of the bunch. “Hey, Davi.”

He scrunched his nose, getting a full whiff of her, and lifted his eyes, directing an inquisitive stare at the rest of the group.

“Lightweight,” Ameera whispered, gesturing towards the empty bottle of red wine. On her other side, Rhydian was shaking his head.

Davina nearly fell over with how fast she pulled away from Kai and whipped around. A lazy scowl crossed her face. “I may not be some super shifting wolf—” She jutted her finger in Ameera’s direction. “But I have ears!”

The female general waved her off, and Isla couldn’t hold back a laugh. She’d never pictured what a drunk Davina would be like.

Her sound had drawn the redhead’s attention her way, and even if unwarranted, Davina jumped at her, too. The difference in their heights had the smaller woman’s head right at her shoulder. Isla greeted her as Kai had with her laughter persisting.

“Why are you guys here?” Davina asked once she’d released Isla.

Isla tightened her grip on her bag, turning to Kai, who was able to read the question in her eyes. Was it safe to get everyone else involved? As she’d given him the rundown of everything on the way, she’d also informed him of Jonah’s reluctance to let the others know, too. But still, Kai nodded. A clearance…if she was okay with it, too.

Isla affirmed her stance by looking at Jonah, who lifted a brow in return. A nod to him was all he needed to understand. His features fell, and his eyes went to Kai in question; his brother inclined his head, signaling he knew as well.

“Okay, what’s happening?” Ameera had thrown her hands up, zeroing her stare on Jonah. “Are you in on this?”

Jonah didn’t answer. He just gulped down the rest of his liquor and descended behind the shelves to his back room. Kai had since gone to secure every lock on the door, while Isla cleared some of the booze off the table to make room for her bag. Carefully, she removed each item and placed them in the wood’s center. How garish the embellishments of gold and silver, crystal and gemstone, looked against its worn surface.

“What the hell? Who did you rob?” Rhydian asked, pushing around the pile of blood-red jewels and jabbing at a piece of the diadem as if it would bite him.

Nothing would surprise Isla at this point.

“Get comfortable,” she told them all, gesturing to the seats Kai was now dragging over. “And ask Jonah if he has more whiskey.”

Isla hated whiskey, quite frankly, but she needed something strong. She downed a glass, the liquid burning her throat, as she waited for everyone to settle.

Like a display at a museum, the marker, the book, the dagger, the two halves of the diadem, a pile of ruby jewels, the sheets bearing the copied messages, and the map Kai had apparently stolen from Callan’s room sat atop the study table. The six of them circled it, staring down at it, features contorted in iterations of awe and disturbance. Kai and Isla exchanged a glance, a silent conversation about who would go first.

Kai took the lead and began with the night he was supposed to die.

That fact alone was enough to shake the room.

Despite their shock, they remained silent, letting him recount everything he remembered. Everything he’d already told Isla before they’d come.

About how he’d been in an inn with Amalie in Abalys that night.

About they’d been asleep before there was a scent, a feeling that woke him up, but Amalie didn’t seem to notice. And then something had hit him—not literally, but he’d remembered feeling stuck, and like he was disconnected from his body. From his wolf. And then there was a pain in his side…everywhere…and he swore he was dying.

He’d blacked out, and when he woke up, Ezekiel and Sol were knocking at the room door, ready to tell him of the tragedies that had unfolded. He recounted the messages he’d found carved, not only into the nightstand beside him, but also within his brother’s townhouse.

Even if Kai attempted to appear the vision of strength, Isla felt each word breaking something in him, especially when he recounted walking through his brother’s apartment, empty and eerily quiet after they’d taken his body away. She grabbed his hand beneath the table and stroked her thumb reassuringly over his skin as he explained how he’d never gotten to say a proper goodbye to his sibling before he’d been burned alongside their father.

After Kai had brought up the message in Callisto—the last piece of the puzzle he wanted to offer before Isla would jump in—Ameera put her hand up. A vein throbbed at her temple. “ You’re telling me that you’ve had a psychopath after you for months , and you never said anything?”

Kai had no answer for her but, “Yes.”

“ Yes ?” the general repeated. “Why wouldn’t you tell us? We could’ve—”

“What?” Kai cut her off, and Isla had a feeling them going head-to-head like this was a common occurrence. “Could’ve what? Gone after them? They killed my father and Jaden. I wasn’t getting you guys involved.”

Ameera gritted her teeth. “That’s not your call to make.”

“Yes, it is.”

Isla could feel guilt simmering within him, hear the nuances of it in his tone, but it wasn’t because he hadn’t told them. Grief twined within it.

But before she could put much thought as to why, Rhydian chimed in. “Does anyone else know about them going after you, too?” He tried to keep his voice even, masking any anger he felt, but his nostrils flared.

“Ezekiel.”

“You told my dad?” Ameera asked.

“He’s my beta,” Kai said.

Her features curled in a snarl, and she said nothing else.

“Does Amalie know?” Davina offered weakly, sipping from the water they were forcing her to drink. She was fading fast, leaning against Rhydian’s shoulder, heavy-lidded. “She was sleeping right next to you.”

Kai shook his head, casting a quick eye towards Isla at the mention of his former lover. She responded by running her fingers lazily and dangerously up his leg, stopping at the hinge of his hips and trailing back down. A reminder and reassurance.

You’re mine now.

Kai said, “She didn’t even wake up.”

“Your mother didn’t either,” Jonah said. “Right?”

Kai nodded, whatever exhilaration or joy he’d been feeling fading away. “She doesn’t talk a lot about that night, but I know she woke up because she felt their bond snap, and then my father was dead. I might not have thought there was foul play if it weren’t for what happened to me. There were no wounds. There was no blood. No scent of wolfsbane or even mistletoe or mountain ash. They were just—dead.”

Isla felt a shudder whenever he said the word, the guilt grew stronger.

Dead— they were dead. And he wasn’t.

“What about magic?” Ameera said, folding her arms across her chest. “I remember the weeks before it happened, they were doing a lot close to the Wall. Maybe he got too close or spent too much time in the wasteland. I mean, it was like they lived there. My dad was never at my parents’ house when I’d visit.”

Isla rose a brow. “What wasteland?”

“Along the Wall’s border, there are patches of land where forest used to be,” Kai explained. “It’s almost like the Wilds, but without the bak. Everything around there started dying about a decade ago. It never recovered, but thankfully, it never expanded either.”

Isla hummed, something about it now hitting a vague place in her memory.

“Death by magic would give off a scent,” Jonah said, adjusting himself to lean back in his chair. “That’s why the Wilds smell so horrible. It’s just a cesspool of death and destruction.”

Isla frowned, her heart clenching. What a catastrophe that must’ve been. She couldn’t imagine being there that day of the decimation, feeling the curse ripple through the earth, taking hold of the pack’s inhabitants and ending their lives.

As she shook away the grisly images of how she envisioned the past and recalled the ghosts that lingered about in the Wilds, she also noticed Jonah was eyeing her. “What?”

The shop owner nodded towards the table. “Where did you get those?”

Isla followed his eyes to the dagger and the broken diadem. She reached for the weapon and lifted it in her hand. Everyone recoiled just an inch. “Someone gave this to Lukas to kill me.” She used the tip of the blade to point back at the table. “With the book.”

“Lukas?” Rhydian asked.

Right, she hadn’t gotten there yet.

“A hunter from Tethys,” Isla said before continuing through an explanation of how Lukas had lost his memory, “lashed out”, and found himself restrained in the infirmary .

As she went on about how she’d gone to visit him and he pulled the knife on her, Kai tensed at her side.

A suspicious look had crossed Jonah’s face, but he also seemed…perturbed.

“What’s wrong?” Isla hated to have to ask.

“That crystal wedged in the blade and in the crown.”

“What about it?”

He heaved a breath as if he knew what he was about to say would elicit some negative reaction.

“Crystals like that are known to be conduits for certain types of witch magic.”

He was right.

The dagger clanked to the table as Isla took in a sharp breath, and almost all of them instinctually crept back.

Jonah hadn’t moved. “If it was cursed, despite our tolerance, I think you’d feel the effects. I’m just making an observation. It could just be crafted jewelry and a weapon.”

Davina had gone a ghostly white with a tinge of green. “How do you know it’s witch crystals?”

“I don’t. I just know the witches use crystals to better focus their power. It’s one of many methods used in their craft.”

“How do you know so much about witches, brother?” Rhydian prodded.

“Pick up a book, brother ,” Jonah countered. “Our continent isn’t the only one in this realm. Our realm isn’t even the only realm.”

“I know that.” Rhydian brushed him off before nodding at him, Kai, and Ameera. “I went to the academy, same as you three.”

Jonah narrowed his eyes in challenge. “Name them, then.”

Ameera put her hands up between the twins. “Can we focus please, the two of you?"

Isla heard Kai laugh through his nose beside her before Jonah’s attention turned her way.

“What about the crown? Where’d you find that?”

She opened and closed her mouth, her face paling. “The pieces were left for me—given to me—by whoever is trying to kill us.”

“Oh, of course. How kind.” That vein still pulsed in Ameera’s forehead as she leaned forward to pick up the map. “What’s this? ”

“Callan had that,” Kai said after having gone oddly quiet. “You were tailing him. What was he doing?”

Isla’s brows shot up. Ameera had been the one following Callan around the city?

Ameera placed the map back on the table. “I told you, it looked like a lot of nothing, even when he went down to Abalys. He was just looking at things.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know—storefronts, waterways, trees? I was watching him, not everything around him.”

“Certainly not a spymaster,” Jonah muttered under his breath, earning a swat at his arm.

Beside him, Rhydian peered at the map. “And he obviously saw something—many somethings.”

Ameera growled, snatching the map off the table and rising to her feet.

“Where are you going?” Davina questioned, her voice nearly a whisper as she fought sleep.

“To find the somethings .” Ameera’s voice was saccharine, though she glowered at the men of the table.

Isla perked up in her seat. “I want to go with you.” Kai made a sound of confusion, and she looked at him. “I want to know what he was doing. Maybe figure out if the messages are really supposed to be warnings about him.” A wary look appeared on his face. “Go to the hall and take care of the pack. I have us,” she assured before he could offer himself to go, too. Her fingers went up to brush his cheek. “I’ll be safe, and I’ll have Ameera to protect me.”

“Me, too,” Rhydian said, nodding towards the passed-out Davina on his shoulder. Carefully, he rose, picking her up effortlessly in his arms. “She’d kill me if I brought her on a train like this.”

Kai watched them disappear behind the stacks, avoiding the eye contact Isla kept fixated on him. Eventually, he let loose a breath and met her gaze. “Okay.”

Isla smiled, getting to her feet. Her eyes snagged on the diadem and dagger on the table. A sinking feeling lingered in her stomach. She looked to Jonah, who’d since picked up the book and one of the scribbled messages to compare. “Do you think you can figure it out? ”

Jonah glanced at her and then at Kai. “Can you get me into any of the royal archives?”

Kai raised a brow. “How far back?”

“As far back as it goes.”

His expression flattened, and they seemed to share their own unspoken communication. But before Isla could ask, she heard from behind her, “Let’s go, new blood.”

Isla spun to find Ameera and Rhydian—large but somehow deceptively quick and quiet—standing by the door.

She gave Kai one last squeeze on the shoulder, but he grabbed her hand before she could let go. “Don’t forget, we still need to have our talk. Come back in one piece.”

Isla gave him a soft smile. He wasn’t stopping her. He trusted her. They were a team.

She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”