“Good.” Ulric rubbed his wide jaw. “Don’t forget. I need the Intended in one piece.”
Drake brought up the picture of Destiny Applegate-Kayrs. She was such a little thing to be both a Key and Ulric’s Intended. “The squads have her picture.” Although he didn’t really care. If she died, another Intended would take her place, and fate would stamp another female with Ulric’s mark. “Legend says the three Keys will have the ability to destroy you. I’d think you’d want to kill all three of them rather than mating one.” The other two were also at Seven headquarters, which made it all so convenient.
“If the other two are dead, her power as a Key is ended.” Ulric stared at the stunning brunette. “Mine.”
The door opened again, and Vero walked in. He and his unit had just returned to headquarters the day before, having been stationed outside of Homer for the last year, first creating and then using a training facility for soldiers. “Harold just took another complaint from the women we have here in storage. They need to be put into warmer quarters. The cabins we’ve been using aren’t insulated well enough.”
Drake looked at his cousin. “Then insulate them.” He didn’t have time for this, and Harold did nothing but irritate him. Why hadn’t Vero left the loser in Homer?
Vero stood tall. “If it were that easy, I would. Humans aren’t the only ones affected by the supply chain problem, cousin.” Anger and something deeper glowed in Vero’s blue eyes. He was an anomaly amongst the Kurjans, who never had even a hint of blue in their eyes. After Vero’s father had been killed, he’d spent a lot of time with the females, which might’ve softened him. He had a kindness that didn’t belong in their world.
He’d finally grown to almost six and a half feet, still short for a Kurjan male. Although his chest was broader than Drake’s. They had trained long hours with every weapon until Vero was as fierce a warrior as Drake could make him. It was either that or let Ulric kill the guy, and Drake needed family support. He liked that Vero had created an excellent fighting force for the Kurjans. It was needed.
Ulric snorted. “Why are you so worried about human females? We mate a couple to our people, we inject the rest, then let them go. The hypnosis works, right?”
“Yes,” Vero said. “The hypnosis works. They don’t know that they were taken once we let them go.” His face was stone cold, and his eyes had gone flat, but Drake could still feel the emotion coming from him. The young warrior didn’t like the current campaign, but that was too bad. He would follow orders.
Drake looked back at the screen. “Find them blankets and then send a squad to Spokane.”
Hope sat in the conference room and looked at her team of four, trying to focus even though her head ached from the nightmares that had plagued her. She needed to see Paxton. Her focus shot back into the room as Collin’s report concluded.
Why hadn’t anybody told her this news yesterday? Sure, she’d been unconscious all day and then went on her own mission to deal with Paxton, but her team should’ve checked in. “We lost them?” she asked.
Collin’s face was impassive but fury glowed in his eyes. “We did. The other team got there as soon as they could, but the Kurjans got the two enhanced females in Paris.”
“The sisters?” Libby whispered.
A muscle ticked in Liam’s jaw. “Yeah. Our team was about fifteen minutes behind the Kurjan squad.”
Guilt swamped Hope. “Those women should have been our priority.”
“Maybe not,” Liam said. “Paxton’s been working among us freely, and we didn’t know it. I’m not saying that those women aren’t important and we won’t go find them, because we will.” His jaw hardened. “But we needed to know about Paxton.”
Libby plucked at a piece of paper on the heavy onyx table. “I didn’t have any idea,” she mumbled, her gaze down.
“Neither did I,” Hope said.
Collin shook his head. “I was pissed when we first saw him but, I mean, it’s Paxton.”
Derrick leaned back, looking more like his father, Jase, than ever. “Well, exactly, it’s Paxton. I mean, what do we really know about him? He was friends with Hope and Libby as a kid. With all of us, really. Then he went off with his uncle to study butterflies and the history of ancient cultures. That’s what we thought, anyway.”
“We were wrong,” Collin said.
“Yeah, we were,” Derrick agreed. “So it begs the question, do any of us really know him? We are all surprised, and our first instinct is to defend the guy and say something’s going on that we don’t understand, but we don’t really know him.” He emphasized each word.
Hope sat back, her mind reeling. “I know him.”
“Do you?” Derrick asked, leaning forward. “Why? Because you were buddies as kids? Because he stepped in front of you when his psycho dad tried to hurt you? That was a long time ago, Hope. He’s been with Santino and his group longer than he was without them, and apparently he’s been training, and training hard, while he’s been away.”
Liam’s shoulders went back. “Yeah, the male can fight. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat after he took down those two Kurjans. I’m not sure we could have contained him without the darts.”
“Speaking of which,” Libby said softly, “has Emma figured out what’s in them?”
Hope’s head was still aching. “Not yet.” She’d called her aunt first thing in the morning, but Emma didn’t have news.
“That’s not good,” Derrick muttered. “Kurjans with a concoction we can’t trace.” He dropped his gaze to the sling holding Hope’s set arm against her body. “So you can’t take any blood until we know for sure how the blood will react to whatever is still in your system, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
Libby slid a bottle of pills across the table to Hope.
Hope reached and turned it around. “Advil?”
Libby stared at the bottle. “After you texted us about this new theory, I ran to the pharmacy at the nearest town, and the clerk helped me choose the right painkiller for you. She said that one would help.”
Derrick’s eyebrows rose. “She didn’t think it was odd that a twenty-something female had to ask about human painkillers?”
“I told her I was Amish,” Libby murmured, her tawny gaze directed at Hope. “Take the pills. If you’re human, we’ll figure out how to keep you alive. It’s okay to be human.”
No, it wasn’t. She shouldn’t be mortal. “I’m a prophet, with the marking and all, and I also have vampiric chromosomal pairs, so I don’t see how I could be completely mortal.” Hope opened the bottle. “Do I take them all?”
Libby wrinkled her nose. “The clerk said to start with two, and if that doesn’t work, up the dosage but never take more than what the directions say.”
Hope tossed two of the round pills into her mouth and swallowed.
Liam leaned forward. “Do you feel better?”
“Not yet,” Hope said. While the Realm hospital had some serious painkillers that would probably kill a human, simple ones like these were unnecessary and thus not stocked.