“Uri is a celestial, not a Loup.”
“I can smell that, but why is he here.”
Her tone rankled, and the impudence nudged my alpha. “He’s with me.” My voice came out thick and gravelly.
She flinched and her jaw hardened.
Shit, I hadn’t come here to piss her off. I needed her help. I took a deep breath and smiled. “Look, I wouldn’t have come, but I need your help.”
She looked me up and down. “Pack business?”
“Yes, and I know how you feel about pack mentality. I get it, and I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t desperate.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m listening.”
I filled her in on the situation with Eldrick. And gave her brief details on Ulrich and his actions, the rogue Loup and their intentions. “If he wins, if he’s allowed to wrest control then his influence will spread. The Loup who join him thrive on inflicting pain and debasing the weak. I have to stop him, and I need your help to do it. I need you to stand with me.”
The Loup around her, still dressed in their fur, snapped at me. Yeah, they weren’t liking this.
“You want us to walk into a den of male Loup?” she asked. “Males who wish to own us. Claim us. Breed us.”
It was my turn to lift my chin. “Yes, because together we are powerful. They can’t touch us. I’m one third of a Tribus and heir to the Rising pack alphahood. I have a claim, but I don’t have the numbers. I need you.”
Once again, the wolves around her began to snarl and yip as if arguing amongst themselves.
She sighed and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I told you before, we don’t get involved in pack affairs, and we don’t leave our sanctuary.”
Fuck, I hated to do this but… “And what if the pack world came for you? Larson sent Loup here before. He gave them this territory, remember? What’s to say Ulrich won’t do the same? How long will you be able to hide then?”
She looked to her left at a huge gray wolf. They locked gazes for a long beat, and it was obvious they were communicating. Then she nodded and turned back to me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We can’t help you.”
Shit. “Please reconsider.” But they were already turning away and slipping into the shadows.
The conversation was over.
I’d failed.
What the fuck were we going to do now?
Chapter Six
“You did your best,” Grayson said down the phone. “Now let me see what I can do with Crimson pack.”
“You got a meeting?”
“Yes, in an hour.” He sounded strange.
“Grayson…what is it?”
“I’ll be going into their territory alone. Mitchum’s terms.”
The Crimson alpha a-hole? He wanted Grayson alone?
Panic bloomed in my chest. “Wait, what? No, you said you have a good relationship with them, why won’t they let you bring a second?”
“I said I had a relationship. We’ve communicated before, which is why I was able to reach out, but anything can happen.”
Unease writhed in the pit of my stomach. “Why does he want you to go alone?”
“To exert his power. Intimidation? Who knows?”
I didn’t like this. “Don’t do it. We don’t need them.”
He sighed. “Yes Fee, we do. I have to do this for all the Loup. We can’t let Ulrich win.”
My stomach twisted into knots. I felt sick. “Let me come with you. I want to come with you.”
God, I sounded plaintive, but I didn’t care. All I knew was that my gut was going haywire and that was a bad sign.
“You’re Eldrick’s heir. You need to stay put,” Grayson said. “The deal is that I go alone.”
“But—"
“I love you.” He hung up.
I looked up into Hunter’s dark eyes and saw the conflict churning in them, saw the resolve and comprehended what he was about to do a split second before he made a beeline for the door.
“Hunter, no.” I ran after him, but he was too quick.
The front door slammed. He was already gone.
Uri came up behind me. “I’ll go after him.” He kissed my temple and winked out.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Fee!” Petra’s voice rose in alarm.
I rushed into the lounge to find her trying desperately to hold Eldrick down as his body convulsed.
I joined her, taking over while she rummaged in her herb pouch. She pressed a paste into his mouth, trying to get her fingers past his clenched teeth and then settled for rubbing it into his gums.
I held on to him while his body spasmed. Seconds dragged by. Finally the spasms weakened, and he relaxed back into unconsciousness.
I released him cautiously, hands hovering above his body just in case the convulsions started again.
“He’ll be fine now,” Petra said. She packed her herbs away and sat back down.
My hands trembled. “What just happened?”
“His body has been severely traumatize. The seizure is simply a reaction to that, but his wounds are healing.”
But she didn’t look too sure. “Petra?”
She sighed. “There’s no more we can do. Yes, there may be internal damage that his Loup can’t heal, the silver may have gone so deep my herbs were unable to remove it all. I can’t know for sure, and hospitals are not an option for us.”
Oh god. “He could still…die?”
“We have to hope he can fight this.”
I looked down at my father. The man I was only just coming to know and care about. We hadn’t had enough time. I wanted—needed—more time.
“He’s a fighter. He’s tough. He’ll make it.”
“Yes, I believe he will,” Petra said.
I noted the dark circles under her eyes for the first time. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes, Hunter gave me some of the delicious pasta bake you put in the oven earlier.”
I’d completely forgotten about the food, but now she’d mentioned it my stomach grumbled.
She chuckled. “You should eat.”
“I can’t, not while the guys are out there in potential danger.”
All my guys.
Azazel and Mal were up against Mammon in the Underealm, and Grayson, Hunter and Uri were in Crimson pack territory.
The sick feeling in my stomach grew stronger.
Petra took my hand. “You must be prepared to be strong if you’re needed. Eat. Trust me. You’ll need the energy for what’s to come.”
I didn’t question her further. She was a shaman, a different kind of outlier, and her gut instincts had guided Grayson’s father, when he wasn’t being a dick to his youngest son.
If she said I needed to be ready, I’d damn well make sure I was.
I made my way into the kitchen. Hunter had taken the pasta bake out of the oven and covered the top with foil to keep it warm. I was about to dish up when the cuff on my wrist began to tingle.
My vision blurred and the kitchen vanished.
I was on a street. The sun was setting, and people walked by arm in arm.
Normal. So normal.
The voice was a thought projected into my mind in a male voice. A voice I recognized from my memory of Purgatory.