Chapter 159
DANE
Get out of there.
I strode out of the pack house with my wolves around me and the Nameless in my head. While there were werewolves traveling with me, that wasn’t the form the Nameless took. Instead, he appeared beside me as a massive wolf made of smoke and shadow with golden eyes.
She got to you.
“She didn’t,” I growled.
Let me see your memories.
As time had gone on, I pulled my own mind further and further back from the being I served. Not because I particularly cared, either way, but because it was harder to strategize and make decisions when it felt like I was only functioning with half a
brain.
After as much loyal service as I had given him, the Nameless allowed it. But I wasn’t stupid enough to think he wouldn’t rip it all away from me and turn me into a mindless, deadly puppet if he thought I was lying to him.
But another part of me–a deeper part–knew that what had
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happened between me and the Luna and the children had to be protected at all costs, even if I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything about it right now.
So I wrapped up the memory tight, like a concentrated ball of light, swathed it in my own shadows, and tucked it away, so far deep down in my brain it almost might have been forgotten
anyway.
Almost, but not quite.
“She spoke to me. She wanted me, like you said,” I replied.
The scent of her drifted through my mind again. Sweet, like flowers. And then the delicate musk of feminine arousal.
Fuck.
I re–wrapped the memory in shadows and tucked it away again.
“Go ahead and look if you like,” I told the avatar of the Nameless that walked beside me.
The wolf huffed. I felt the entity shuffle things around in my mind, and I forced myself to stay relaxed. I showed him my initial meeting with Aurora, then the dance. I let him see me get seduced by her.
He pulled back and didn’t dig any further. I told you to be cautious. You didn’t listen.
He was right. “I know better, now. I won’t let her get to me
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again. But you pulled me out before I could find the old man or see where they were hiding the relic.”
The Nameless shadow wolf huffed. Don’t worry. This was only
the first meeting. The true battle comes soon. Don’t forget, I want the relic, and I want that old man.
*****
EVANDER
“Piper. Who did this to you?”
My hand was on her face and the words were out before I could catch myself. All around, wolves attending the gala were muttering. Staring.
Shit. I pulled my hand away from her and stepped back. Her cheeks were red, except where one was turning dark and bruised.
I tried to quell the rage inside me at the sight of it. I wasn’t Piper’s protector. I wasn’t even someone she wanted to be around.
I was a freak. A werewolf covered in scars from head toe, courtesy of the Reeds and a few silver knives.
Most wolves healed before scars could form. Only silver left lasting damage.
None of them had been quite as damaged as me. At least, not on
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Anyway, even if I wasn’t scarred, why would Piper choose the company of a lowly pack warrior and spy when she was engaged to an Alpha?
Though “warrior” was a loose term. These days, I was more like Aurora’s chosen assassin.
That was fine with me. I preferred moving around in the dark. Fewer people stared.
Piper looked up at me with big, brown eyes that made my heart thrash against the cage of my ribs like a bird that wanted to be free.
Piper cleared her throat. Her cheeks were still pink.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I forgot myself.”
“No, it’s all right. Come on. I can’t silence all of these people with a stare like Aurora can. Come up to the balcony. There’s only pack up there, now. You’re home early.”
I was. I’d completed my mission faster than I’d anticipated. Warmth filled my chest at the realization that Piper must have known when I was supposed to return if she knew I was early
now.
But that warmth was a dangerous spark, so I smothered it.
I wanted with all my heart to follow Piper up those stairs and sit
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with her. To share a drink and talk like we used to do not too
long ago.
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But I’d been stupid then, wishing for things I couldn’t have. I gave her a smile, but it faded as I remembered what I’d barged in the front doors in the middle of a gala–even though I was still exhausted and rumpled from travel–to do.
“I can’t,” I said. “I have news for Aurora, and she needs to hear it.”
