Page 106 of Fated Exile

Or it could be something else. I pull back from him a moment, letting him relax as I look deeper into Maura's mind. She's completely open to me now, her eyes half-closed, the calming influence of Roarke's alpha pheromones working easily on her hormonal state. The pregnant wolf beneath her skin wants a strong leader, and is more than willing to help me see her hopes, dreams, fears, and memories in exchange for fierce protection during birth.

I spot a few dark spots in her mind, mostly places where she said something she regrets, occasionally lustful feelings for those other than her mate. But she's proud of herself for living on her own for so long, and she's ready now to settle down. She doesn't pose a threat to the pack at all.

Before we can accept her in, Peter needs to let me see more of his mind. So I shift fully to him, stepping over to face him head-on. His mouth thins as I settle my eyes on his gaze and reach out to skim my fingers across his forehead.

"You're still resisting," I point out. "Trying to let me seesomeof your past but not all of it."

"I'm not trying to. It's instinct. I'll try to let you in."

"Don't try anything," Roarke suggests. "Just relax and think calming thoughts. The less effort, the better."

After a moment, Peter does, and I slide into his mind with my awareness fully. Here is the moment when he realized the pack had left him, and he panicked, shamefully considering abandoning his pregnant mate. This is the time his anger got the best of him in a human bar, and he punched a man so violently that he broke his jaw.

There are other memories. Fights with the alpha when his pack was in disarray. An aborted attempt to overthrow him, only to have the magic of their Mating Temple resist the attempt.

Another, more recent dark memory surfaces but evades me. Gritting my teeth, I press my fingers into his temple and focus hard on it alone.

For a moment it slides from my grip.

But then I grab it firmer, unfurling it and watching it closely. This is Peter from a few days ago, out hunting for a safe place for his mate to give birth. Here he is following a scent trail. Then listening to an instinct within him that whisperedsafe.

Here's Ambrosia's face, clever and smug as the cat with the canary.

Darkness. A strange, woozy feeling. He went out cold, then woke up to find himself alone in the dark.

Cool fingers pressed into his temple, and a soothing female voice whispered, "That's it, weak one. Let me be your eyes and ears. What you see, I will see, and what you hear, I will hear. Now, once you're awake you'll go north with your mate until you find a pack with a Mating Circle, and whisper this word to yourself:visnaya.That will awaken me, but don't do it any sooner. Wait until the right moment."

There's a brief flash of smug, feminine cat-like eyes in an upside-down face above him. Dark hair slides towards him across thin shoulders. Then a fingernail trails down his cheeks, leaving red smears of blood behind, and a spell is whispered into the smoky air.

I pull out of the memory as soon as it's done playing, jerking my eyes open to find Peter in a trance. He's gone completely boneless from head to toe, even though Maura is tugging at his hand and whispering his name. There's no gaze left in his eyes, and his jaw is slack, his mouth slightly parted.

"Get the other recruits out of here," I tell Roarke, jerking away from Peter's horrifyingly blank face. "Delphine has been inside his mind."

Thirty-Nine

Delilah

"What do we do?" Roarke re-enters the civic center after getting our recruits, including an upset Maura, out and under the protection of Lance, who was patrolling nearby. "Is this like when you undid what happened to Bastian? Or is it something different?"

"I'm not sure," I admit. "Did Kerry not pick up the phone?"

"Cat said she was in town doing some errands. Apparently, she left her cell behind." Roarke paces around behind Peter, who is standing stock still and slack, and puts cautious hands on his shoulders. The werewolf doesn't react to his touch. "I think you should try to go ahead and do whatever you cannow,before something worse happens. We don't know how long it'll take for Kerry to get back home."

That's what happens when your witchy aunt has recently left a lifetime of living inside a sacred cave: she does things like leave her cell phone behind. Bastian has the same habit, neither one of them attached to the chime of text alerts or the dopamine of apps and games. I thought it was cute until this moment just now, when I'm in over my depth and all alone.

"Okay." I take a deep breath and cautiously approach Peter, placing my fingertips on his forehead again. He stirs, his eyes slicing open to stare at me, his gaze unfocused and strange. "I think Delphine put some kind of spell in him to use his senses as her own. Like some kind of spy or something. But I only saw it in a memory, and I don't sense her inside him, so maybe I can undo the spell."

"I'll be here while you try to figure it out."

I root around inside his mind again, finding it disturbingly easy to get inside this time. His memories are loose and unmoored, his mind unfocused, as if he's dreaming while awake. The lack of resisting is more disturbing than his slack mouth and unfocused eyes.

Going back into the memory of his encounter with Delphine, I play it over again. The dark space where he fell unconscious catches my attention most of all. His memory is hazy and dark there, but often our unconscious minds pick up more than we realize. Without Peter's conscious mind resisting me, maybe I can discover more.

As I focus in on that spot, I slip into his memory fully, and nearly flinch when I hear Ambrosia's silken voice. "This one has been hovering near the edge of the territory with his mate for weeks. I think they would've gone inside already if he didn't have wounded male pride. He'll be wide open and easy to spell now that we've put him under and injected him with venom."

"Perfect." The voice is the same as the one that invaded my mind several days ago: Delphine. "I need much more than just blood to get this done. I have to know where they'll be, or it'll be futile to make an attempt."

The hair raises on the back of my neck.Make an attempt.I knew that she had plans to attack soon. But what blood is she talking about? Whose, and where did she get it?

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