Chapter 104
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“You’ll never get in there without being spotted, Ren, my wolf, growled in my chest, itching to move
from our hiding ce beneath the brush. “Those guards are on high alert. They’ll stop us immediately.”
*Well, what do you suggest we do then?” I grumbled irritably. My knees were aching from crouching for
so long, and my stomach grumbled about the few days it had been empty
I had spent the past few weeks searching high and low for signs of Johan. But while the rumors of his
return were rife throughout the packs, I hadn’t found any clear evidence of Johan himself, only an
rmingly vast collection of dedicated
supporters.
After trying again and again to infiltrate the inner circle of followers, I decided to turn my attention
elsewhere. There had been no reports of Johan in the Khall park whatsoever, and I didn’t have any real
reason to go there other than a hunch and a gut feeling. Ken was in agreement with this decision, and
so we made our way over to Johan’s former pack.
Only, I came to realize upon arrival, that getting into the Khall pack would be harder than we could have
anticipated.
-What’s with the tight security anyway? I muttered, squatting even lower in the dirt when a shifter
turned his gaze towards our hiding ce. “And why are they all so skittish?”
“Because they have something to hide,” Ren retorted matter-of-factly. “See how they jump at every little
sound? They’re afraid of something, or someone.”
Another guard looked over at where we were concealed. I was entirely sure of my ability to conceal
myself, and I wasn’t too worried about making a quick escape should they decide to investigate the
area. Afterall, Ren and I had outrun our Tally attackers for a good while before they finally caught up
with us.
But these guards made me uneasy. There was a crazed look in their eyes that made the hairs on the
back of my neck stand up. Unlike the wild yellow eyes of the infected Tally shifters, these men weren’t
bloodthirsty or deranged. They were merely fanatics, frightened beyond reason by what they had
witnessed and driven to worship whatever had inspired such fear.
“We should go Ren stated when a third shifter looked towards us. “We’ll have to find another way to
enter.”
“Yeah,” I agreed and shuffled back into the woods, shifting in the shadows and allowing Ren to carry us
back to safety. I had no idea what the Khall were hiding on their territory, but I was certain I hade
to the right ce.
-Dorothy-
Ignatius carefully lifted the notebook out from its tomb. The pages were flimsy, and corners of the
journal crumbled and fell away where he touched them. The journal was bound with openblood leather,
red and weathered. Ignatius sank to his haunches and I stood at his shoulder. We both poured over the
ckened pages, Ignatius sifting through them as delicately as he could manage. I scanned the inky
lines, a barely legible scrawl that must have been written in a hurry.
“That’s Elliot’s handwriting, Ingatius breathed, barely more than a whisper. “These are his notes,
My stomach dropped at that and I clutched Ignatius’s shoulder, digging my nails in A small part of me
had hoped that we would turn up nothing in our searches. If there was nothing to find, there would be
nothing to worry about. Then the alleged threat would have to be a farce. But Elliots hurried scraw was
clear evidence of a problem. There was a mystery i be solved, one I wasn’t sure Ignatius was ready to
tackle alone.
to
“What does it say?” I tilted my head, trying to read the spindly handwriting, Elliot had pressed so hard
against the paper it had turn in ces. Whatever he had been writing it had clearly caused him
distress.
Ignatius’s eyes darted across the page, skimming Elliots notes with an unreadable expression.
“It’s very cryptic, Ignatius sand finally, fully immersed in whatever tale his father had spun with this
journal. “Something about a woman, he was trying to resist her control”
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1 frowned. “Moirah?”
%m
“No.” Ignatius said ndly, “he mentions dark hair, ck as night. Moirah’s hair was white, and she
was long gone by then. This is about someone else, someone who was toying with his mind, trying to
control him. But he’s feeling guilty. Whoever it is, Elliot seems to have willingly opened the Bielke doors
to her
I swallowed the stone in my throat. “A vampire? Some legends say they had strange powers. This isn’t
the first time we’ve heard of cold-skins wielding mind-control abilities,”
Ignatius frowned, holding the journal close to his nose and squinting. “Elliot wrote this in an attempt to
regain control of his mind. He was keeping records to help himself remember. There’s also a crazy rant
about some kind of prophecy”
I was growing more and more confused by the minute. My brow furrowed and I peered over Ignatius’s
shoulder, crouched behind him as I scanned the pages. “What kind of prophecy?”
Ignatius thumbed past a severely burned page, the writingpletely illegible, the ckened paper
withholding the whole truth. “I’m not sure. But here, he says he was able to get free from her, to gain
some rity after-”
Ignatius froze and I felt his shoulders tense like he was about to shift then and there. But he didn’t shift.
He merely stood up, so abruptly he nearly knocked me over in the process. He dropped the journal on
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the ground, ity open on the page he’d been reading
“Ignanus, what is it?” I tried to grab his hand, but he pulled away Without a word, he strode out of the
library, pulling on his coat and mming the door shut behind him. The entire structure rocked with the
force of the door mming, and I stared after my mate in shocked silence.
When it was clear Ignatius wasn’ting back. I looked over my shoulder at the open journal. I walked
over and, reaching out a hand to touch the burnt pages, I picked it up, afraid that the book would burn
me even though the mes that had licked its pages were long gone.
I scanned over the page that Ignatius had been reading, my mind racing through all the possibilities
that could have driven my mate to leave so suddenly.
“I finally broke free-Elliot wrote. I squinted at the scribbled mess. “I finally broke free from her control,
and I was furious. She had a hold on me on my mind…”
1 sucked in a sharp breath, the pages quivering as my hands shook
-She had a hold on me, on my mind,” Elliot had written with vehemence, “until the child was born.”
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11:04 Fri, Jan 26