Page 162 of Cursed Heirs

“I don’t see him,” Alena said, looking all around as we reached the gates.

Talon unfurled his wings and shot up into the sky, scanning the area too.

When he dropped back down and tucked them away, he reported the same, “He’s nowhere to be seen.”

“Alena, look for an illusion. You can see through them, remember?”

As she did just that, I saw myself shoving Talon into her.

He instinctively grabbed hold of her to steady himself and her.

The moment he did, I shoved them through the ward, Alena being able to walk through it because of her blood link to her mom allowing it easily and Talon too with him holding onto her.

And then it all slipped away.

I blinked back to myself, the control over me gone.

“No!” I cried as I saw them outside the ward, scrambling to get to their feet.

I must have pushed them with my vampiric strength.

“He made me do it! Constantine used the sire bond to take control! Get back inside now!”

Alena’s eyes went wide.

“What the—” Talon started.

But a violent rush of wind whipped through the area, a second before I caught a glimpse of Constantine vamp-speeding at them.

He snatched them up before they could draw in their next breaths.

And then they were gone.

“No! No!No!”

35

~Orpheus~

Xavier was absolutely distraught.

He was slumped against the wall inside the gates asExemplarmembers rushed around him, examining him and the scene where Alena and Talon had been snatched from a half hour ago.

He’d come running to me telling me what had happened as I’d been conferring with my army, and I’d reached out to Abigail atExemplarimmediately.

While the idea of storming Constantine’s location to bring Alena and Talon back had been at the forefront of my mind and my desired response, I’d resisted, knowing that with theHellbornin play we would have only failed and likely lost a lot of my soldiers too.

As much as it killed me to stand around and delay a rescue attempt, the tactician in me, the leader, knew we had to be smart about this.

We had to wait.

We had to do it right.

Abigail finally returned to me after pacing up and down on the phone for the last several minutes since she’d arrived here.She’d gotten word from herExemplarmembers in the field. I just didn’t know what that word was yet. Whatever it was, it had her in a state. As if that hadn’t already been the case with her daughter having been taken again. Normally, she barely showed a reaction to anything, let alone emotion. But lately, I’d noticed cracks.

“Taking Alena and Talon wasn’t the only big move Constantine made tonight,” she informed me as soon as she reached me right inside the gates.

“Why? What has he done?”

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