Page 16 of A Dawn Of Blood

“So I’m looking for a vampire now?”

He shakes his head. “You went back in time, remember? You were never even supposed to meet Grimm. Your last mate was Bane. The next one should be a fae.”

“I see,” I say as I turn my focus back onto Dryden.

It’s just at that moment that he glances at me and smiles.

The next thing I know, Nuala is drawing everyone’s attention to herself and saying it’s time to initiate the new members.

She does Raven and Lorcan.

When it’s time to do me, Dryden steps in.

I smile at him as he puts the pin on my shirt.

Everyone claps, we do a toast and everyone keeps mingling, much more merrily than before.

De Groot almost immediately leaves and Jaeger turns a bit sour, but it puts a smile on my face, when I notice Raven looking perfectly reassured.

My smile grows even wider, when I see Lorcan take Nuala aside and the expression on his daughter’s face become softer.

It’s all good. We’ll be leaving on the mission soon, and I won’t be able to contribute, but this right here is family, and I’ll make sure I add my mate to it. And together, we’ll beat that bastard once and for all.

Chapter 11

It’s in the dead of night, in absolute silence and in the tightest formation ever that we make our way to the top of the cliff — Nuala at the front, Dryden in the middle, and Jaeger and myself to the back.

Even before we come to a stop, my heart plummets to my stomach. Nuala’s blueprints seem to match the sight before me precisely.

The place we’re infiltrating is a huge building complex perched on the edge of a cliff, with a high, heavily manned wall and a flat, stony terrain for hundreds of meters to the front.

No place to hide, at least not without powerful magic. And Dryden’s magic really is powerful, I think as I fix my eyes on the strong back right in front of me. We need to be as close to him as possible, but he’s successfully using his Tension Magic to keep us all hidden from view.

It’s what’s keeping me hopeful, despite everything. That and the fact that I honestly believe the plan is quite clever.

Once she’s ready, Nuala executes the first step. From where we’re still standing, she uses her earth bending to get rocks shoot out of the ground.

We take cover behind them, my wolf almost immediately hearing the sound of the main gate opening.

Then four pairs of footsteps coming to investigate.

We pull all four guards behind the rocks, Jaeger taking control of them using her Mind Magic.

She finds out how they identify each other, we put their uniforms on and step out of the cover.

Calmly, we walk to the main gate, where Jaeger uses Mind Magic to get us in and tells the soldiers manning the gate, “It’s nothing urgent, a minor Nature Magic mishap, but we’ll need to consult with the groundskeeper.”

“Alright.”

We enter the complex and head straight for the lab.

So far, so good.

Now all we need to do is find the scientist in charge of developing the shadow curse, erase his memory and burn his papers.

But once we get to the lab, we find no scientist there. We start searching the place and Dryden digs out his log.

“Sent the finished sample,” he reads once we gather around him.

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