“Do you care about her, Vi?” Cora asks again.
I catch the scent of fear wafting off Vi, but she masks it quickly and stands taller.
“What are you insinuating?” she asks.
Cora’s smile is thin and dangerous. “You knew Fee was going to go ask Grayson to mate with her. You knew two weeks ago.”
She knew? “Vi?”
Vi makes a sound of exasperation. “So what? I knew. I just hoped she’d change her mind, so it’s still a shock.” She gives me a shaky smile.
I want to believe her. I’ve known her for a long time. We’re friends, lovers, confidants, but there’s something in her eyes that sets alarm bells ringing inside me.
“Azazel can’t connect with her,” Cora says. “We think her reaper power must be muted somehow, or she’d have used her scythe to escape by now.”
“Hunter has access to a witch,” Vi says. “You know that.” She looks from Cora to me, and I catch a whiff of desperation.
Cora is close now, only a meter away from me and Vi. She places Fee’s top on the kitchen island, and I recognize it as the one Fee wore on our fake clubbing date. A fist squeezes my heart. She’d looked beautiful that night.
“Yes. Hunter has access to a witch,” Cora says. “That witch could have blocked off Fee’s reaper power somehow, no dispute. But you see, Fee and I have a special connection. I can always find her wherever she is. Because I’m her tulpa. She created me.”
What the fuck?
Cora’s expression hardens. “And only a handful of people know that. Azazel, Mal, Conah, and…you.” She winks out, and then she’s right in front of me, her hand around Vi’s throat. “I warned you. I fucking warned you if you hurt her, I’d make you pay, didn’t I?”
I act on instinct, grabbing Cora’s wrists to pry her off Vi.
She doesn’t make it easy. Fuck, she’s strong, but Dean is there to wrap his arms around her waist and pull her away.
Cora’s chest heaves, her eyes lethal daggers. “You bitch,” she says. “You selfish fucking bitch. He doesn’t even love you.”
Vi stares at me, hands clutching at her throat, eyes welling with tears. What does she want me to say, for fucksake? She betrayed me. Still, anger wars with pity, leaving me torn between punching a hole in the wall or pulling her to me for comfort.
Pity wins.
She must see it on my face because she lets out a strangled sob. “Don’t look at me like that.”
My Loup surround us, their displeasure a palpable force as their glowing eyes fix on Vi.
“You need to leave now, witch,” Bastian says.
Vi looks to me. “Grayson?”
I stare coolly at her. “I respected you, Vi. I cared about you. You were more than a lover. You were my friend. But by handing Fee to Hunter, you’ve put the fate of the Regency Pack in jeopardy. You leave me no choice but to exile you from my territory.”
She stares at me. “After everything we’ve been through?”
We had an arrangement. A purely physical one, but somewhere along the way, she fell in love with me. I should have stopped it. I didn’t. “I take part of the blame, Vi. I should have put an end to our relationship as soon as your heart became involved, and mine didn’t. It was unfair.”
She shakes her head slowly. “No…Don’t…” She squeezes her eyes closed. “This is on me. I don’t know what came over me. As soon as I did it, I regretted it. I tried to call Fee, but she didn’t pick up, and then…Then it was too late.” She tears her gaze from me and implores Cora. “Please, you have to give me a chance to fix this. You have to let me help. This pack…it means too much to me. I didn’t know about Eldrick’s plan, I didn’t think.”
The alpha in me wants to say no, to make her leave, but the friend in me accepts that I owe her one more chance.
She exhales in relief, reading my face even before I utter the words.
“You can stay and help but, Vi, if Hunter claims Fee, or if he hurts her, then any connection you and I ever had will be severed.”
She’s quick to nod and accept the terms, but the grunts and growls of dissent around me tell me my Loup aren’t happy about this.
Fee’s found a place in their hearts in a way that Vi never could, and if she doesn’t come back to us untainted, then exile will be the only thing keeping Vi safe.
Chapter Three
Mal
Azazel’s about to lose his shit. He’s barely holding it together, and now this trumped-up Loup receptionist is plucking at his last nerve. The vein in Az’s temple looks fit to explode, and I’m right there with him.
“Call up and tell Eldrick Azazel is here. Do it. Now,” Azazel orders.
“Like I said,” the receptionist replies, “Eldrick isn’t taking unscheduled visitors today.”
Fee is gone, and every second counts, and my usually controlled Dominus brother is standing at the lip of a precipice.
Azazel lunges across the desk and grabs the receptionist’s lapels. “Make the fucking call!”
Oh, shit. No longer on the edge. Rage stirs inside me, wanting out, but I tamp down on it. Right now, I need to hold my shit together and haul Azazel back.
The Loup is blinking up at Az with the first glimmer of doubt on his face as he realizes that being a Loup in his own territory isn’t going to protect him from Azazel’s wrath today.
I grip Azazel’s shoulder. “Az, let him go.”
Azazel’s grip tightens on the now frightened Loup whose hand is inching across the desk, probably headed for an alarm.
“Az! Not fucking helping here.”
The last thing we needed was to get on the wrong side of Eldrick and his pack. This place was crawling with Loup eager to give a Dominus a beat-down. If Grayson’s confirmation is true, then Eldrick is in on Fee’s disappearance. We need to play the nice guys to have the opportunity to interrogate him and hope he lets something slip. Pissing him off by attacking his Loup is not the way forward.
Azazel comes to his senses and releases the Loup.
I slip between Az and the receptionist counter. “Listen”—I glance at the Loup’s name tag—“Jeffery. I’m sorry about Azazel. He takes his job very seriously, and this is a matter of life and death that concerns Eldrick’s daughter. Your alpha will want to see us.”
Jeffery shoots Azazel an annoyed glance and then picks up the phone. “Maybe lead with that next time,” he mutters.
Azazel growls, and I grab his bicep. “Calm the fuck down. You can’t do this if you let your emotions get in the way.”
He clenches his jaw, nostrils flaring. “How can you be so fucking calm?”
He has no idea how hard this is. “Because calm is the only thing that’ll help us save Fee. I have no choice but to keep my shit together.”
“He’ll see you now,” Jeffery says.
Azazel gives him a final glare for good measure, and then we’re striding across the foyer to the special lift reserved for Eldrick’s guests.
Eldrick meets us at the lift. “What’s happened? What’s wrong with Fee?”