Page 68 of Wild Wolf

Max straightened. “Alright…I think I need to make a few calls and then-”

“They’ll send me back,” Sin said darkly. “You call up your prissy friends and tell them any of this and they’ll all say the same thing; that I’m bad to the bone, rotten to the core, corrupted all the way to my roots and that no matter how handsome I am, I can’t be left free.”

“You’re a convicted murderer,” Max muttered and I tensed, expecting Sin to leap at him, for lemons and water to fly everywhere and for Aunt Bianca’s prized kitchen to fall prey to their collision, but instead a deep intensity fell over my Incubus and he replied in a low purr.

“Tell me, Maximus, how many Fae did you kill in that pretty little war you fought while I was rotting away underground like some forgotten turnip?”

“My name is Max. Just Ma-”

“Answer me!” Sin roared and Crow-thing squawked, leaping up onto the counter beside the sink.

I pushed to my feet, preparing to get between them even as Ethan, Roary and Cain stood, clearly planning to move in front of me in turn.

“Fine.” Max held a hand out to us, asking us to stay out of it and I slowly lowered myself. If anyone understood the delicate and often combustible dance of family politics, then it was me. “You wanna know how many Fae I killed in the war? Well I can’t answer you. It was utter bloodshed, brutal and horrifying in every way. I blasted my power across the battlefield in ferocious arcs and I couldn’t possibly have kept track of my kills even if I’d tried.”

“And can you tell me that every Fae who died by your hand deserved it, kitten?” Sin asked him. “Are you certain they were all rotten fruit? Hateful and evil in every way? Can you be sure that none of them were just caught up on the wrong side of that battle? Or maybe even forced to fight against you for fear of what might happen if they didn’t?”

Max swallowed thickly but said nothing. A chill crept through the room, the horrors of war seeped over us, thickening the air and making me shiver as the screams I was usually so good at keeping at bay found their way closer. Sin’s accusations could just as easily have been made at me. I fought in that war too. I tore out throats and blasted magic across the battlefield with wild abandon, caring only that those I killed fought for Lionel Acrux against me. Their reasons for joining his ranks hadn’t mattered at the time. Only victory had.

“Because I can name every kill of mine if you’d like me to,” Sin went on, the only one of us who seemed wholly unaffected by the horrors which had permeated the room and with a shudder I realised that I was feeling what Max was. His Siren Order gifts were slipping from him, his own memories and feelings about the war now spilling into the air itself until it threatened to choke us all. “I can tell you what made them bad, bad Fae. I can list off their crimes and tell you their stories and I’m certain even you would have to agree that their deaths were well earned.”

“Stop it,” I growled, my eyes on Max who blinked at me in surprise as he realised it, clearly having expected my berating to be aimed at Sin. “None of us need to feel your shit. We have our own demons to haunt us.”

It took him another moment to take in what I’d meant and with a suddenness that felt like a rubber band snapping against the air, the cold horror of the war abandoned us, his emotions pulled tightly under his grasp once more and the balmy summer breeze washed around us again.

“Alright,” Max sighed. “I get it. I won’t speak to anyone other than making that call to lay the false trail for the FIB. But you aren’t the only Fae who want Vard dead.”

“He is dead,” I pointed out. “If you think that they would want you to let them know he lives after they finally got to move on, after they were able to find solace in the knowledge of him parting ways with this world then go ahead and tell them. But you know better than I do if it would cause more harm than good.”

If the others were confused by my declaration they didn’t ask for more details on who I was referring to. Max clearly understood who I meant though and he nodded slowly, seeming to agree with me that Vard was best left dead in theory until we could make it the truth.

“Fine,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone else about any of this – for now. But if it gets out of hand-”

“It won’t,” I assured him. “But if we’re all agreed, I think we should go now. We have a location and every moment wasted is another where my mate suffers without his Lion.”

“We can’t go yet,” Cain said, surprising us all and I looked to him with a frown.

“Why not?”

“Because Roary is about as useless as a lemon in a prison riot,” he growled.

“Hey,” Sin barked while Max looked utterly confused and Roary scowled.

“He needs to get in touch with his Vampire. It doesn’t matter if he wants it or not. It doesn’t even matter if he won’t be a Vampire for much longer. He needs to be able to use his speed and his strength to his full capabilities or he will just be a liability when we go after Vard and Benjamin and I’m not risking them getting away from us again.”

I softened at the raw pain in his voice, knowing that this was as personal for him as it was for Roary.

“So what do you suggest?” I asked him.

His eyes flashed with darkness, reminding me that he was no law-abiding guard. “That we go to the Hellion Hunt.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

The Hellion Hunt was a place so illegal that the atmosphere was like walking into Darkmore on the night of our escape. It was ripe with excitement, the air electrified as the masked members of this underground sport let out their inner fiends.

The masks all represented different predatory animals, hiding the identities of those in attendance and we each wore one of our own as we walked deeper into the sandstone cave system. I took in the wolf mask covering Rosalie’s face, the thing carefully crafted by her earth magic with silver rivulets running through the painted fur.

She had made one for each of us, mine a bronze Lion that reminded me of my former self, while Ethan wore the face of a white bear and Cain wore a black snake with a shimmering jade gleam between the scales. Max wore the face of a savage-looking raven and Hastings hid behind the face of a donkey. Sin’s was the most ostentatious of course, his vision for the mask driving Rosalie to snap at him several times while he’d crouched on the kitchen table and kept making wild suggestions while she forged it. The mask looked to be part crocodile and part eagle with sharp teeth protruding from a golden beak that were made from pure diamonds. It should have looked ridiculous on him, but between his easy swagger and endless confidence, he somehow pulled the thing off.

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