Page 17 of Fire Bound

She’s silent for a moment before in a low, authoritative tone, she bites out, “You went to six of these placesalone? Without telling anyone?”

My foot digs into the carpet and my merry spinning comes to an abrupt halt as my beast snarls in my head. He claws at the steel door he’s kept behind. His anger becomes my own as I meet Beau’s arctic stare. “I don’t need your permission to go, Isabeau. You may be the beta female of this pack, but your authority holds no weight with me. I’m not a member of this pack and you are not my boss. I can come and go as I fucking please.” I point to the whiteboard bolted to the wall. For the past six months, we’ve been working on adding information about Sterling and Kaius to it. Isabeau’s office is like our very own war room. “I’m working with you and this pack because I think it gives us the best shot at finding Sterling, but I am by no meansobligatedto report my findings to you. And I sure as hell don’t need yourapproval.”

My wolf bows to no one. Not even me. The years I spent being pushed around by Nicolai were the hardest I’ve ever endured. I did it because I thought it would allow me to get close to Sterling, but in the end, it was for nothing. By the age of ten, I was strong enough to kill Nicolai, but I allowed myself to be abused because I had my end goal in mind.

The goal is the same, but I no longer have to make myself seem small to placate the people around me to reach it.

“I don’t think it’s smart to go alone,” she pushes. “We can’t afford to lose anyone. We need every able-bodied person if Sterling is going to bring the fight here. We especially need you alive if we are going to stand a chance.”

Grinding my teeth, I push my wolf back down, but after my time with Remington tonight, it’s harder than usual. She has a way of riling him up. He wants to kill everyone he comes across, but she interests him to an extent I find worrisome. “Contrary to popular belief, I’m not an idiot. If I truly thought going alone was going to put me in danger, I wouldn’t go.” But if she continues to piss off my wolf,she’sthe one who will be in danger.

“Fine,” Beau relents. “But I want it noted that I don’t like it.”

Standing from the chair, I toss the bag of peas onto the desk. “I want it noted that I’m not sure I care.” I grin widely at her. “You missed out tonight though. It got bloody.Gloriously bloody.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s where you and I differ, Jax. You like to leave a mess. Meanwhile, my kills are clean.Organized, if you will.”

“Sounds boring.” I scrunch my nose in distaste.

“Nicolai really failed in your training.” She leans against the wall, crossing her arms across her chest. Even in her own home, she’s dressed like she’s going on a job with the black leather pants and the daggers strapped to her thigh. Her waist-length black hair is tied back from her face in a complicated braid. She used to hide her face with her hair, using it as another layer of armor, but since finding Ransom, she has to hide less. “Sterling’s the worst, but he at least trained me right.”

Sterling shipped me, his biological son, off to be trained by another but he kept Isabeau and her brother, Alexandre, around to train himself. She became his prized creation.

I think after I failed to harness the hellfire flames again, he grew frustrated with me and moved onto stronger prospects. I can’t blame him entirely, Isabeau is half vampire and half fae, her unbridled strength and ability to melt into shadows makes her the perfect assassin.

“Yeah, he did a bang-up job with Alexandre,” I remind her with an exasperated look. Her brother was a hot mess. He was overcome by bloodlust and became nothing but a hungry monster.

“That wasn’t all Sterling. Nessa played a role in what he became as well.”

Laughing coldly, I rake my hand through my hair. “We really got screwed over in the parent department, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, we did,” she reluctantly admits.

“At least your evil parent is dead,” I attempt to lighten the mood.

“It’s hard to believe that she’s only been gone for six months. It should’ve happened years ago. I don’t know why I waited so long.”

“We were raised to fear them, to think that they were stronger than us.” For many years, Sterling was the monster under my bed, the demon on my back, but as I got older, I figured out that he’s just a man. He worked tirelessly to make beings like Isabeau and myself, but ultimately it will be his downfall. His creations are going to be the things that kill him.“They’ll learn soon enough that they were wrong.”

Once we fucking find him.

“Yeah...”Isabeau worries her bottom lip like her mind has suddenly wandered off topic. By nature, the vampire isn’t a worrier and that’s mostly due to the fact she’s come across very few situations she doesn’t know how to handle. Very few things scare her.

Shuffling slowly around Beau’s desk, I snag the small dagger she keeps in her pen holder by her laptop. Only she would mix her writing utensils with weapons. Pressing the sharp pointed end into the fleshy part of my palm just hard enough that it hurts, but doesn’t break the skin, I watch the way her brows pull ever so slightly. “What’s wrong with you?” I finally demand.

She stares at me, not blinking like she’s considering her next moves. Finally, she pushes off the wall and moves closer to where I stand. “I was dealing with Nessa and Alexandre when Gage died.” The knife presses harder into my skin at the mention of his name. “I didn’t see him die, I’m not sure anyone did.”

“There was a lot going on,” I remind her even though I know there’s no way she’s forgotten what happened six months ago. In an attempt to wipe out the pack, Nessa unleashed a couple dozen feral rogue wolves and starving vampires on pack land. A move that was no doubt authorized by Sterling. “I was too busy fighting to pay attention to what Gage was doing. One second, he was fighting not far from me, the next he was dead on the ground. What happened then is a mystery to me.”

I was knocked to the ground and when I got back up, Remington stood over him in her wolf form. The sound of her pained howl is something I still hear when I try to fall asleep at night. That howl symbolized the moment she broke into pieces I don’t have the right to put back together.

Beau’s quiet for a moment, thinking over what I just said.

When she still hasn’t said anything after a minute and her eyes have a faraway look to them, I stop twirling the knife between my fingers and I tilt my head. “What do you know?”

“Nothing,” she answers quickly. “I just have suspicions.”

“Are you going to share them with the class?” I drawl slowly.

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