Page 72 of Stargazer

And in that moment, there was just him.

No Zander.

No unconscious wolves.

No remnants of blood on his hands that cupped my face.

Just his eyes. Alight in silver flames.

He commanded my attention. And I obeyed. He told me not to look and all I saw was him instead.

And the way my body reacted to his command scared me; how readily I responded to him. I was in his trance.

When he didn’t follow through on that unproclaimed promise of the taste of his lips, I could have sworn the pit that hollowed out my stomach felt a lot like disappointment.

Our emotions had just been heightened from the adrenaline pounding in our veins. That’s what it was.

At least that's what I told myself. Not that it mattered right now.

But the rogues we’d left alive … they were a message. They would return as two and not three. A symbol of what we were capable of. What lengths we would go to in order to stop them.

If by some miracle we were lucky, it might even deter them from coming back. From trying again.

Zander had informed us that the communication channels of the rogues we had encountered had been closed to him. They were not willing to interact more than physically. So hopefully the tangible message of a fallen soldier would be enough.

I didn’t want us to have to kill more. But if we had to, we would. I had learned that about myself today.

The rest of the day went by in a weird haze, one that I was sure I wouldn’t really remember.

CHAPTER 25

VENUS

Amelia’s voice rang through the strategy room from the speaker of River’s phone. She was calling for one of her routine check-ins and apparently had big news to share with us.

In the few weeks since the last full moon, not much had progressed. Patrols continued as normal with the pack and our Knights rotating through a roster. Apart from that, we took some time to recoup, using the lull to continue attempting to plot the rogues’ future movements.

Most of the Gray Knight task forces sent out the last full moon were successful. Most … but not all.

Which meant the rogues were still growing their army.

Knights across the state were working on observing their movements, figuring out where the rogues were doing the most of their hunting and trying to predict who their targets were. Or at the very least, what areas might be targeted.

Other task forces weren’t as lucky as ours to have direct help from the wolves or a smaller region to narrow it down to. Especially in the city—it was anyone’s guess where the next attack would occur, particularly as the rogues weren’t just sticking to the outskirts anymore.

Meanwhile, Carter had been heading back to the compound for a few days at a time to work on the Restorer amalgamation, with Kit joining him every so often. So far, it was proving harder to successfully alter the Deviator formula than they had initially expected. But they weren’t planning on giving up any time soon and were getting closer and closer to cracking it with every passing day.

Testing it was a whole other issue. We wouldn’t know for sure if it would work until it was tested in the field—it’s not like we had any newly shifted wolves to try it out on.

It was risky, but hopefully, if we were lucky, the drug would be ready to go out to each task force in small amounts on the next full moon. That was the only way to see if it would work. Although, a lot of factors needed to play out in our favour for it to prove effective.

Ideally, we’d stop the rogues before it got to the point of an actual attack. But if not, the Restorer should do the trick. The theory was sound, there was no reason it should fail once the chemical compound was right.

Personally, it was something I didn’t totally understand and was absolutely leaving to the alchemy geniuses like Car and Major Harper.

Deep in my thoughts, I had fully blanked out on the conversation that the others were having with our secret weapon.

“It turns out that our plan might work for a little longer,” Amelia admitted, sounding relieved and nervous all at the same time. Yet a hint of determination still coated her voice.

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