Page 212 of A Warrior's Fate

“For an extended time, likely not,” Kai said, his face drawn in grave seriousness. “But if they had a means of getting in and out, somewhere safe to return to.” His teeth flashed. “Shit.”

Isla knew where he meant. “The house.”

“It explains the warded door.”

It did, but—“Why? How? When?”

Kai sat upright. “I don’t know how a witch would get here or what desire they’d have to go into the Wilds, but if there was one in there during the Hunt, if Lukas saw them, what better reason to get rid of his memories?”

Isla’s gut twisted. “But how? I don’t understand the laws of magic, but wiping memories to that extent sounds really potent, especially against us.”

“Lukas can’t shift, which means his susceptibility is higher than it would be for wolves like you and me.”

Isla opened and closed her mouth, not knowing where to even begin—or end. “So that’s what the runes are for in the messages. That’s what the killer’s pointing us to, warning us about. There’s a witch here.” She shook her head. “But the house was empty when we went. There were some signs that someone had been there, but not recently—though also definitely not ten years ago. Do you think they’re…back in the Wilds? Or somewhere in the pack?”

“I’m not sure.” Kai nudged his plate away as if he’d suddenly become sick. “But they’re a bigger problem than I thought.”

“Why?”

He met Isla’s stare. “Because they can survive the Wilds, which means they’ve found a way to conquer the bak.”

Isla couldn’t even entertain the question of how, she’d already doubled back to what it meant. There had been a witch in the Wilds. A witch had cursed Lukas. Made him act as he had. He had no reason to be in Valkeric, no reason to be wiped from the realm. He should’ve been a warrior, been home with his family.

“We have to tell someone,” she said, her rapid heartbeat leaving her breathless. “The Imperial Alpha, if he knew—”

“We can’t do that.”

Isla jerked back before pressing her hands into the counter. She narrowed her eyes at her mate. “Kai, he’s in prison, and it’s not even his fault. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

A bit of sympathy shone in his stare but still, he said, “I’m hoping Alpha Cassius doesn’t declare war over refugees here building a non-existent army. If he thought we were harboring a witch, too?”

Isla’s gaze was pleading as she reached across the table, taking hold of his forearm. “But you didn’t know about the witch.”

Kai’s eyes dropped to her touch, and his shoulders relaxed, a sigh slipping through his mouth.

Suddenly his features shifted, and he slowly pulled away. “What if we did?”

Kai had been pacing the floor of his office—back and forth, back and forth—so much, so fast, that Isla had to stop tracking him to abate her oncoming headache. Not his fault, but…everything.

Right now, she had to resist the urge to scale the entire continent to get to Valkeric. To somehow break Lukas out of their land’s highest security prison. Her fingers twitched as she stared at the phone on Kai’s desk certainly capable of reaching Io. Sebastian and Adrien may have been up to assist in a jailbreak.

But first things first, they needed to talk to Ezekiel. It was Kai’s first meeting of the day anyway, a quick thirty-minute brief as it always had been. She wasn’t sure how it would turn out, though. Kai was seeing red by the time they’d finished struggling through the rest of their breakfast. Because if Ezekiel had known about the tunnels, about the house, then he could’ve very well known about the witch.

The grandfather clock chimed, the hands set perfectly to the left and the sky—nine o’clock.

A knock came at the door. Right on time.

Like the flick of a switch, Kai ceased his pacing, and Isla felt his power yawning awake through the room. No efforts were made to mask it. “Come in.”

The entrance creaked open to reveal Ezekiel. As yesterday, a look at Isla sitting in a chair that had been pulled beside Kai’s desk prompted a disconcerting smile.

He took a step in. “Back aga—”

“Sit.”

Ezekiel stuttered and looked at Kai, who’d settled against the front of his desk. He gestured to the chair before him—before them—before crossing his arms.

Isla honed in on the beta’s heartbeat, the way it skipped, and listened to how his breath hitched. But he kept his shoulders back as he closed the door behind him and strode through the room.

---