Page 55 of A Warrior's Fate

CHAPTER 15

“Murdered?”

Kai's words tolled Isla like a bell, clanging through every part of her mind, her body. The sentence running rounds as if on the seventh repetition, it would be less jarring. It would make more sense.

Her arm had gone stiff at the side of his face, her fingers trembling a mere inch from his cheek. So close that one wrong move, one spasmed muscle, one particularly strong gust of wind, and she’d touch him. Finally know what had eluded her—what would forever elude her—in the true feel of his skin against her own.

Still possessing some coherence—even though she craved feeling something warm and real to tell her this wasn’t all some other waking nightmare—she lowered it shakily to her side. Fear played menacingly at her feet like a feral cat circling its prey.

There was a killer here.

There was a killer here in these woods.

One who’d taken down not just an alpha but also his heir and had gotten away with it. Unseen, unscathed.

“H—how do you know?” Isla choked out the question. “What is this?”

And, Goddess, why were they still standing out here?

Kai’s eyes returned to her face. He took in her stunned silence, her surely aghast expression, and for it, his own features shifted. Steel and iron reforged as if him masking the rage and grief from the surface would do anything when she so freely felt it through what linked them. What had been twining with every second they spent in proximity.

“It’s a message,” he said. There was a strain in his voice. A hesitance.

Isla whirled to take in the tree’s surface again. She clocked every curve and symbol etched into the bark, doing what she could to see beyond the claw marks made, she was sure, by her mate’s hand. But she couldn’t discern a thing. Not one bend or loop or—were these even supposed to be letters?

Her hand lifted to graze the timber, but she halted. “What does it say?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“You’re certain, Alpha?” Ezekiel’s question was spoken so evenly, it nearly rang as a statement. The beta hadn’t moved from his spot. His face, like Kai’s, was set in stone, and Isla wondered if all who hailed from Deimos were specialized at wearing this mask when chaos was upon them.

“Yes,” Kai said.

“Did you see them?”

“No. I just—I heard—I felt…I knew.”

Kai’s jaw tensed and his lips threatened to rise in a snarl as anger shone in his eyes. It was as if the moment was about to consume him again, the realization of who and what this was. Isla could feel it bubbling, burning through her in a way that almost made her want to keel over, but she weathered it and wouldn’t let it show that it was having any effect.

“Kai.”

At her voice, Kai met her gaze again, and his eyes scoured her face for what felt like forever before, thankfully, he relaxed. Isla could’ve sworn there was a flash of guilt across his features.

The words “are you okay” sat on the tip of her tongue, but they felt trivial at this point. Instead, she asked, “Should we still be out here?”

Kai dragged his hands over his face before moving to push his hair back to no avail. “They’re gone.”

Relief and doubt collided in a way that made her dizzy. “How do you know that?”

Kai lowered his arms. “Because I do.”

Isla kept her features from twisting into a scowl.

Here he was being vague again, but before she could be annoyed by it, she saw his reasons. Kai had been right in his assumptions earlier. If she’d known who he was going after, there wasn’t a chance she’d have left his side, and she probably wasn’t equipped in her state to take on one capable of killing an alpha. But why was he being so ominous now? What was it about how he knew that still put her at risk?

As if he could see the inner workings of her mind, Kai’s eyes hardened in the same way they had before as if saying yet again, I need you to trust me.

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