Page 161 of A Warrior's Fate

“I didn’t just see this.”

Whatever look had been on her face made it easy for Kai to figure out what she was alluding to. He stepped back as if to go search the room, but Isla reached out a hand to stop him. “They’re gone too. I don’t know where. They just vanished…or they were never there.”

That sounded ridiculous.

“Maybe they went out the window,” she offered.

She let him fall from her grasp as he went to the opening, looking at the three-story drop to the ground—manageable—before pulling down the frame and flipping the latch to lock it. “Why can’t I sense them anymore?”

Isla shrugged. “We’re wolves, we mask our scents and auras all the time.”

“But every time before?”

Too many questions.

Isla rubbed her forehead, grimacing as she felt the flecks of blood scrape her skin. “I don’t know. Something’s obviously changed. They’re getting bolder. I think they whispered in my ear.”

“For the love of fuck.” Kai heaved a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What’d they say?”

Her lips turned further downwards, the word hitting a weak part of her. “Traitor.”

Kai’s brows lifted, the remark potentially feeding into his theory that Io was behind all of it. But something still didn’t feel right. Isla knew there was more.

“I have the other half of this in my room,” she said. “Everything else is with Jonah. It’ll make more sense, and I can better explain once we have it.”

Another look of surprise from her mate. “You told Jonah before you told me?”

Isla sighed. “I wanted to know more before I just started throwing theories at you. This is the person who murdered your family and tried to kill you. Me. I couldn’t just…” She trailed off, looking off as her face screwed in perplexity.

Kai waved his hand in front of her. “Isla?”

“Why do all this?” She met his eyes again. “If this person is skilled enough to kill an alpha and his heir, nearly kill his scion—why toy with us? Why send Lukas to kill me at all when they could do it themselves so easily? They were at my back, and we can barely detect when they’re around anymore. We only see them when they want us to.” She cast her gaze back to the papers on the bed. “Why the messages? Why all the random things? Why…”

She lost herself again, squinting down at a specific torn parchment on the mattress. Its contents didn’t matter, but what did were the four words staring back at her—Warrior Callan of Io.

Warrior. Io.

“What if they’re trying to tell us something?” She thought back to the message they’d just gotten. Warrior. Io. Charon. The crest of Kai’s family, which could essentially mean Deimos. She turned to Kai once more. “What if this was a warning? For us. For me in the alley. Trying to warn me about Callan. He’s as much a warrior as I am.”

Kai’s face looked considerate, but doubt—serious doubt—still lingered. Understandably. It was a different approach and exactly why she’d wanted more information before she tossed things at him.

This wasn’t a game. A murderer waited somewhere along this web. One who’d taken nearly everything from him and altered his life forever.

“Then what were the rest of the words and symbols? And why use things we can understand now? I didn’t recognize any of this in what I’d gotten before.”

“I’m not sure.” A surge of adrenaline took to Isla’s veins. “But Jonah has the marker and the book, maybe he’s figured out how he could decipher the language.”

Kai’s brows furrowed. “The what and the what?”

Right.

“Let’s go to my room,” Isla said, waving her hand for him to follow her. “I’ll explain the best I can.”

The crisp air Mavec offered was welcomed as Isla and Kai took to the cobblestone walkways. No longer inside in an enclosed space—with more room to run if anything appeared from the darkness and a moonlit path to guide them—was almost calming.

Almost.

They didn’t trek through the hidden paths of the forest as they had nights ago, and the patter of their footsteps was more hurried than it had been then. But what Isla could see of the lower city—of the river and the rolling hills—was still as wondrous as she remembered. Fallen star streets and the patrons that occupied them, the faint sound of music—not particularly cheerful, but not morose—and boats with their bow lights cast along the water’s surface and dancing amidst a smudge left by the Goddess.

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