Page 146 of Cursed Bonds: An Alpha's Destiny

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jace led me in through the back door, and before we even had time to open the fridge, a knock came at the front door.

“Who is it?” Jace called.

“Us,” Waylan’s familiar voice called out. “You locked the damn door, Jace.”

He strode over to the foyer. “Well, yeah. A crazy asshole is trying to kidnap my mate.”

He unlocked and opened the door. Waylan and Langston both stepped in. From the looks on their faces, I knew they had bad news. Jace must have seen it, too.

“What’s happened?” he asked as we all convened in the kitchen.

“Stephanie called.”

“Really?” Jace looked completely surprised. “I’ll be honest, I really didn’t have a lot of faith in her. What did she say?”

“She’s frantic, Jace,” Waylan said, taking a seat at a barstool. “She said Eren is still raging and pissed about Kirsten escaping, and Morgan getting away sent him into a blaze. She sounded like she was afraid for her life. Whispering, on the verge of tears. It’s bad, man.”

“Did she say what Eren wants?” I asked.

“A witch,” Langston said. “He’s still desperate for a witch. Apparently, it takes too long to turn the wolves feral. After turning them, he still needs to train them to obey his commands. He wants a witch to make a spell to make the work happen faster.”

“Yeah, but that still doesn’t tell us anything,” Jace said. “Why is he doing this?”

Waylan and Langston exchanged a look. “He wants Crestwood,” Waylan said. “So, our hunch was right He wants to expand his territory. Steph said he’s been obsessing over expansion for a while. The people she’s spoken to say he’s been trying to figure out how to do it for years. He wants a witch, he wants our land and our pack as well as an army of ferals. He plans on using every wolf he can. Even children.”

Jace’s face paled. “He’s a fucking psychopath.”

“We knew that already,” Waylan said. “Worse still, I’m not sure Ivy’s idea about a full-frontal assault will work. Eren’s amped up his security since Morgan escaped. No one is allowed in or out of Scottsdale. Not even humans. They stopped a church bus yesterday and forced them to turn around. Bunch of Baptists got lost on the way to some conference. They’re lucky as hell Eren didn’t slaughter them all.

“That’s probably the extent of the info we’ll get from Steph,” Waylan continued. “The last thing she said is that Eren has sequestered everyone in their homes—including her. As of now, the kids are still with their parents, but who knows how long that will last. Eren may decide it’s better to keep them together.”

“If we’re going to save those kids, we have to move fast,” Langston said. “We can do it, I know we can, but…” He sighed, glancing at me. “It’s going to take a hell of a lot of stealth, as many hands as we can spare, and probably some magic.”

“I’ll do whatever you need,” I said without hesitation. The thought of what Eren would do to those children was more than I could bear.

Jace’s face clouded with anger and worry. He eyed me, and I thought he was going to try and talk me out of it, but he eventually gave me a slow nod. As much as he wanted me safe, he remembered how terrified and broken Morgan had been. We couldn’t allow that to happen to anyone else, no matter what.

Jace let out a long, slow sigh. “What’s your plan, Langston?”

“We use Stephanie. Sounds like she has a pretty good grasp on the situation, and she knows which houses the kids are in. She can make contact and let them know we plan on extracting their children. We’ll have her only focus on the children who’ve undergone their first shift. Any younger than that will be of no use to Eren for now.”

Waylan nodded his agreement. “We give her forty-eight hours to organize it, then we take in our extraction team, pull the kids out, and move. All under the cover of darkness.”

“What’s my role?” I asked.

“Cover,” Langston said. “If this works as planned, you won’t need to do anything. If not, you can provide cover as we retreat with your spells.”

“If you’re doing this,” Jace added, “you run if things go bad. Do you understand me?”

I wasn’t a coward, could barely stomach the thought of running while others were left behind, but I knew I would risk getting captured by Eren again. Reluctantly, I agreed.

“Fair enough,” I said.

“Make the call to Stephanie,” Jace said to Waylan. “Forty-eight hours. Not a moment more.”

Two days. Not a lot of time. Hopefully, we could pull it off. Regardless, I was determined to help in whatever way I could.

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