Page 75 of The Dark Rising
“We’ll look over them and see if we recognize a name. Then I’ll go and get the pack records and bring them here and we can see if any names match.”
“Where are the pack records?” I ask.
“At Wolvorn.” My heart stops. With the Highers.
“How will you be able to look at them? Won’t the Highers know?” Will he tell them I’m here with my pack? I pinch my lower lip between my fingers.
“I’m allowed access, but if I’m questioned, I will just tell them a member of a pack has gone missing and I’m checking if they have moved packs without informing them. It won’t matter, but if we find names, the same names that are on these papers, I can go to their home and ask about them. See if they are around.” I nod, still pinching my lip. “We will know more about what these names mean then.” It can’t be anything good if Sarah’s name is on there.
Fuck it. “Will you tell them we are here?” The least he can do is tell me so I can prepare. So we can leave.
Tension fills the room and I know the others heard my question as they quieten down. I look over at Darius and into his furious eyes while he rolls his shoulders. “Why would I do that?” I give him a pointed stare and he growls. “I said I believe you. What more do you want?”
I shrug. “You could easily hand me over and then continue on your way, doing what you have been doing since whenever.”
“I wont do that,” he says, taking my hand away from my mouth so I can’t pinch my lip anymore. I pull out of his grip and rest my hand on my thigh. “Things have changed, but I have to tread carefully. If the Highers, specifically Charles, become suspicious of my actions, we will never find out what he’s up to, where he has taken people and what he wants.”
“If you can find where he has taken the people, children… What will you do? Can you find out where my pack members are?”
“I will try to find where they were taken to, and we will get all of them somehow, bring them back here.”
“Kade?”
He shifts. “The same still stands, I will try and get information.”
I squeeze my hands together in my lap. “The Highers will know then, Charles will know.”
“He will,” he agrees, and stares at me determinedly. “But I can’t ignore what he’s doing, none of us can. That is what an Elite is, a protector and we won’t turn our backs on the lands.”
I look him over before looking at the rest of his men in the room who nod their heads in agreement. “When will you go?”
“Tomorrow. The sooner the better, and then we can figure shit out.”
“What about the rest of the Elites here?” I question and stand, moving back over to the table.
“They are mine, I will tell them their orders.”
I eye Darius skeptically. “Are they loyal to you or the Highers?”
He growls. “That’s what we will eventually find out.”
Thirty Eight
Darius
“Letmein,mychildren are starving. Please!” We watch a woman plead amongst the large crowd that has gathered outside Wolvorn Castle. The Highers’s Guards are trying to attempt to calm them, pushing them back from getting within the walls. Up on the battlements, more of them have their arrows notched in their bows, ready to fire if it gets out of hand. I growl beneath my breath when I see bodies hung from there, limply. Sometimes those who are sentenced to death get hung there to warn others what will happen if the law is broken, but over twenty of them? That’s too many in a short amount of time, what is going on?
“They should let them in, they have enough room,” Leo snarls, standing at my side as we watch a male in tattered clothes swing at a guard. He shouts for food for his children, and he’s soon detained by another and taken away as the crowd shouts and cries for help. A child stands a little further back from the crowd, a bucket in one hand and clutching the hand of who appears to be her younger brother. I clench my jaw at their dirtied appearance. “This isn’t right.”
“It’s not,” I agree as a male knocks over the child and her brother. I move over to them, snarling at the male before crouching at their side, gritting my teeth at the burning that shoots up my back. The girl looks up at me with fear in her eyes, holding her brother close as they huddle, seemingly wanting to have the ground swallow them to protect them. “I won’t hurt you,” I tell her as softly as I can manage, but she grabs her brother’s hand and runs off into the crowd, scooting in between people. I release a sigh and watch on.
“You tried,” Jerrod says, watching the crowd as I am. “They fear us with what we are capable of, destroying creatures of all manner.”
“It shouldn’t be like this.” I shake my head at how wrong all this is. “Elites. Protectors, that’s who we are, what we have trained for. Yet everyone is scared of us. How have we gone so long to let it be this way?”
“It didn’t matter what people thought of us,” Jerrod says as I rise and scan the crowd. “Now, it’s different.”
“We really have had our eyes closed, haven’t we?” Leo asks quietly, and Damian nods.
