Page 54 of A Warrior's Fate

It felt as if he’d stabbed her in the gut and twisted. Her jaw had unhinged as she blinked, staring blankly at him.

The one they need, and the one they deserve.

The one they need, and the one they deserve.

Now Kai can find the perfect luna…

She shook her head to get the sentences to stop playing over and over and over again. Taunting her. Reminding her. But there was no right for her to feel agitated. He was…right about what they deserved. About what her choice meant. And this was her choice, but—

Isla suddenly felt like she’d been slammed by a mountain of sheer force. She sensed an aura like a beacon. Not a reaction through the bond, but the simple reach of an alpha to any surrounding wolves. Pure power. Rage.

Kai.

Ezekiel had felt it too, she could tell, and it was only a split second before they both took off. She buzzed through the trees and thickets and swamps as quickly as she could, feelings through their bond now ebbing and flowing. They were all over the place. Anger and fear and sadness and back to enraged again. She gripped the limb tighter in her hand as a new wave of panic overtook her. Even her wolf grew restless, and that nagging feeling of being watched returned. But she brushed it away and pressed forward, following the beacon and the bond until she finally found—

“Kai.” She let his name out in a relieved sigh when she came upon him. As before, his back was to her, only this time, instead of scoping a clearing, he was facing a tree with a base twice the width of the one she’d climbed up. Once again, he didn’t bother turning as she approached him, her steps were small and slow as she used the time to compose herself, her wolf.

She could relax. He was here. He was alive. He was—

Isla’s eyebrows shot up when she noticed the tears in his shirt, the black ink of lumerosi on the muscles of his back, his arms, his shoulders, a low, simmering red. He’d nearly shifted, but—stopped himself?

“Oh, Goddess.” She hadn’t realized Ezekiel had continued to follow her path, even up to Kai himself. The older man’s face was pale when she looked upon it, and she followed his gaze.

“What the hell?” she muttered, examining the tree’s bark. Freshly carved, it seemed, were symbols, markings, and—words? She didn’t understand a single bit of it. The only thing that she could recognize were claw marks slashed right through them.

“What is this?” she asked and was met by silence. She tried again. “What does it say?”

Silence.

Isla bit her lip, stomach turning as she moved to get a better look at Kai’s face. She held in her gasp as she took in the hard lines, the faint glow of his eyes, and once she dropped her gaze down, the drops of blood leaking from his clenched fists. His chest was heaving as he battled what seemed like himself, his wolf. And she could feel it—his pain. From what, she wasn’t certain. But instinct kicked in, and she stepped forward, getting as close as she could, not caring about Ezekiel watching a few feet away.

She couldn’t touch him, but she didn’t need to.

Isla reached out and hovered a hand around his, hoping to pull whatever cord or thread she needed to. Kai’s grip loosened, if only slightly, and crimson dripped from his hands, muddying the soaked earth. But his features remained hard, his lumerosi and his eyes still alight.

Isla swallowed. “Kai,” she said his name gently before raising her arm, sending the same absent touch over his cheek, the cut of his jaw. “Kai, look at me.”

He did, and the power radiating from him was suffocating. So intense that it would’ve made any other wolf bow in respect, in fear. But not her; she wasn’t afraid.

Another deep breath. Isla mustered a small smile. “That was your ten minutes, asshole.”

Somehow, that had done it. Kai’s eyes softened until she was staring into the storm she’d grown accustomed to. The one she didn’t mind getting stuck in sometimes. But something was different, off. In a way she’d never seen. There was pain. Not physical but emotional, and deep and buried. All-consuming and unrefined.

His features twitched as he was unable to fight off a frown, and Isla realized he’d had his own mask on this entire time she’d known him. A beautiful one made of iron and steel and everything damn near unbreakable. Nothing had gotten through it. Not completely. Not like this.

But whatever was written here—that’s what did him in.

Part of her didn’t want to know what it meant, but she kept her hand steady, close to his cheek, fingertips so close to running through his hair that curled at the nape of his neck. “What’s going on? What is this?”

“Alpha.”

Isla’s eyes darted back to Ezekiel whose tone was heavy with warning. He knew what this was and didn’t want her to.

Biting her lip and holding back a glare—because it wasn’t the time—she looked back at Kai. His eyes had never left her face, not at all as she’d looked away. As if he’d needed her as an anchor, needed whatever lay between them to keep himself together.

“Kai.” The name was so faint, it nearly got lost in a crash of thunder. She sent the next words out through their link. “Tell me.”

Kai swallowed before drawing his eyes back to the etchings in the bark. She didn’t know if he’d heard her, or if he’d decided on his own, but his voice was gravelly and Isla’s blood ran cold as he said, “Whoever murdered my brother and father—they’re here.”

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