Chapter 115
The painting on the wall was an immaculately detailed part of the Council. It was beyond anything I knew, that you could open a portal through a painting, step through it, and then appear in another place so far away from where you stood at the present moment.
“My head hurts,” I said and poured myself another drink.
Gabe nodded and downed his glass. If we continued like this the both of us- or at least 1- would be too drunk to be of any help to anyone.
Just when I thought that I was finally standing on firm ground, everything flipped out of balance. Of course, I felt for him, he lost his wife and his daughter and now the girl was being used as a chip against him by her evil Queen mother.
My sister was alive somewhere and Darian was locked up in the Council or…or worse and I’m the reason he’s there.
“That’s why he chose me at the Hunt, for this game,”
Gabe’s eyes narrowed in dark remembrance and he scoffed.
“He chose you because the Council said ‘choose her’,”
I whipped my head to the side and stared at him.
What had I ever done to offend the Council?
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“Why me?”
“Because of the challenge. You were the only one there who didn’t want to be there. Everyone else was eager to be chosen and marked but not you,” he wiggled his finger and put the glass to his lips, “it’s no fun to break a mind that’s already broken by years of manipulation; you were the perfect plaything,”
That explained some but not all. Fine, I was the play-piece for this twisted game but what part did everyone else play?
“So, it was Darian who told Mr. Bates to be a nasty old creep in my seduction class?”
Great, good to know that it was a staged affair. But Gabe seemed reluctant to confirm; his brows hunched together and he dragged the side of his finger over his lips, drying them from the remanence of scotch.
“How many more classes did you have with him after your first day?”
I raised my shoulders to my ears and thought back.
“None it was just one, I don’t know where he’s been after that,” not that I minded the lack of education with that ghoul but Gabe lifted a shoulder and raised a brow, a devil glint shone in his eyes, and the crystal glimmered in his hand.
“I can tell you where his head is,”
He seemed, for some reason, unprepared for the shock on my face after hearing that a man who’d been part of the palace staff for decades, was dead- most likely killed.
“Are you honestly surprised?”
“Am I supposed to think that’s normal?” I countered.
His eyes twisted in a darkness I knew all too well and they both seemed at home in that corner of their being, hiding from the humanity that I myself saw a beauty in.
He stepped closer and I stepped back, it was a dance I usually did with Darian but there was something poetic in continuing the dance with his brother now that he was gone. Fear was an everlasting emotion in this palace it would seem.
“Darian would never allow anyone to live who has ever laid a hurtful hand on you,” his voice was low and dark as he continued towards me.
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Chapter 115
“Except for himself,” I reminded him and Gabe stopped in his path before he reached me.
Gabe chugged the last drops without taking his eyes from mine and it was clear as day, the inner turmoil he fought with, but in the end the love he had for his brother would always win and I couldn’t forget that. By the time we were ready to leave, the carafe was bone dry, and even as he shook it over his open mouth, not a single drop fell. I sighed and shook my head trying to arrange the scrambled pieces of my mind but it was in dire need of a renovation up there.
“Tell me again why you need my help you’re a Lycan, you can bust him out on your own,”
The gold ring was big and oddly shaped with a vent on top and three layers that could all be twisted around. He turned the middle piece two times and pushed it down.
“Because if I break Darian out without living-breathing proof that you’re okay, he’ll slaughter every last person in the Council and then he’ll head straight to hell to find your demon,”
“My demon?” I didn’t have a demon.
“The devil’s right hand, a nasty piece of work, but he slithered his way into your mind pretty easily I hear,” Gabe flicked his tongue and the portal opened up in front of us.
If he would give some details instead of vague innuendos I would be glad to put him in his place.
Nobody has slithered their way into…oh…oh no.
“Zade really is a demon?”
Gabe winked and grabbed my hand, he entwined our fingers and held me close to his side.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go. If anything happens to you in there, my head is next to go,”
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The Alpha’s Hunt
