Stefan’s POV
When I get to the briefing room, Hanna, Max, and Andreas are waiting. As I walk to my seat, Hanna rises from hers.
“Gwen is gone,” she tells me.
I take my seat. “I know.”
All three pairs of eyes in the room follow me, as if awaiting further comment. When I offer none, Hanna adds, “Like she is gone gone. She took her car and I checked her room. Her things are gone.”
“Let’s talk about Blackrise.”
While Hanna looks at me as if I’ve grown a second head, Levi appears at the door. He is using crutches. While our kind heals fast, fractures take a while.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” he asks as he hobbles into the room. He doesn’t wait for my reply as he walks right past the table and towards the door to my private office.
I rise and go to him. After I’ve let us in and closed the door behind me, I ask, “What is it?”
“What happened back there?” he asks as he settles in a chair and puts his crutches aside.
“What?” If he too wants to interrogate me about Gwen, it’s not happening. I don’t have any answers to give him.
“Why were you not in your wolf form?”
Oh. That.
I go around to my chair and sit down. “He was not bluffing. Without him, I don’t have a wolf. I had to take off the talisman and bargain with him.”
“What are you going to do? You need your wolf, especially now.”
“I can’t think about that right now. I have to get that bastard first.”
“How will you do that without a wolf?”
Yeah, I haven’t figured that out yet. The only reason he agreed to help me today was because I lied about rescuing Gwen.
He has been silent since the battle, but he must have found out I was lying. Who knows what he’ll say when he shows up again? Especially now that I’ve let Gwen go.
“I get it,” I tell him, avoiding his penetrating gaze, “you are concerned. But I’ve got it.”
“Have you?”
His tone of voice has me looking back at him. Now that I look at him clearly, he seems…mad? Is he pissed at me? Why?
“Why did you let Gwen leave?” he demands.
I clench my jaw. I should have known he’d come around to this. Of course he’d want an explanation from me. He has been involved from the beginning, from when I abducted her from that night club. And every time there was an issue with her, he’s the one I confided in.
“It’s complicated,” I say.
“Complicated?” His tone suggests that he thinks I sound ridiculous. “So you are going to let her go, just like that?”
“It’s none of your business,” I tell him.
He keeps on as if I didn’t say a word. “It’s all him, isn’t it? You couldn’t shift, and now, you let Gwen leave on her own.”
“Levi–”
“Or is it her?” His voice becomes heated. “That woman comes out of nowhere and suddenly everything goes to shit!”
“What? Are you talking about Mari?”
“Yes. What if Theodore sent her?”
“What?” My hands ball into fists. “What are you talking about? He bought her and used her like a slave for years. She barely got away!”
His gaze doesn’t waver from mine. “How did they know we were transporting her? How did they know to find you at your old pack house?”
“They are obviously watching us.” Just like we are watching them. “He wants to take me down. He must have scouts watching us.”
“And our guards didn’t notice them?”
“Are you suggesting that I don’t know what I’m doing?”
“I’m just saying maybe you shouldn’t trust her blindly.” He clears his throat. “Is she the one who asked you to send Gwen away?”
I rise from my seat, having had enough of this. I get it if he doubts my ability to take down Theodore without my wolf. But he has no right to make such accusations against Mari.
“You don’t know anything about her. She is my destined mate, and it’s my duty to protect her. If you don’t have anything to say about how to go about taking down Blackrise, you can go back to your room and rest. You won’t be part of the ambush, anyway.”
He reaches for his crutches and pushes to his feet. “Destined mates screw each other over all the time. Not to mention she is not a werewolf, so you cannot be sure about her loyalty.”
“She is my friend! I know her–”
“Do you?” He hobbles closer to me. “She was ten the last time you saw her. It’s been thirteen years! She is not the same person you knew back then. I’d say you also don’t know anything about her.”
Levi and I have never fought. Not verbally or physically, unless you count training. But we’ve never been so pissed off at each other that we got to blows.
Right now, every time he opens his mouth to suggest that Mari is working with Theodore, I want to punch him. I would have shut him up already if he wasn’t on crutches.
I do the wisest thing I can right now–I head for the door.
“Did Gwen mean nothing to you?” he asks just as I wrap my fingers around the handle. “Don’t you even feel bad for her? You uprooted her from her life, made her a werewolf, and now you just turn her out because Mari came back? Shouldn’t you have done that before you turned her life upside down? Why did you bond with her? Does any of this make any sense to you?”
I want to say that no, it doesn’t.
But after what happened earlier today, I cannot pretend to not know what’s going on.
Levi is wrong. This is not Mari. It’s about him–the werewolf inside me.
He didn’t lie about the wolf. Which means he probably also didn’t lie about Gwen.
He said he wanted her. That she was the reason he needed a host. He said she was his.
I once thought about the possibility of the two of us being destined to two different females. Back then, I thought it sounded too crazy to be true. But now…with everything that has happened, it no longer seems so crazy.
When I started using the talisman, I didn’t just lose some of my abilities. I didn’t mark Gwen when I was with her, and the mate pull between me and Mari grew stronger.
So, all this time, has Gwen really been his mate, and not mine? Is he the one who bonded to her, and not me? Was he the one marking her?
Even when I bit her…that was all him. I blanked out, he took over, and claimed her. The night of our bonding ceremony, he kicked me out and served her body. And when I finally subdued him with the talisman, I couldn’t mark her.
Did she ever belong to me?
I open the door and get back into the briefing room without answering him. Max, Andreas, and Hanna are poring over a tablet when I appear.
Max looks up at me. “Alpha, you should see this.”
My mind snaps back to focus. “What?”
‘Where is she?’
The sudden voice in my head makes it impossible to hear what Max is talking about.
‘You lied to me.’
The three of them are looking at me expectantly, as if awaiting my response to whatever Max just said. The door to my office opens and Levi appears.
‘Where is she?’
I flinch. His voice is no longer a weak whisper. It cracks across my brain like a whip. I hold up a finger to the others and head back into my office.
“Shut up,” I order as soon as I’m alone.
‘You lied to me. Where’s my mate?’
I shut my eyes tight and pace. I can’t deal with this right now. Where did I leave the bracelet? It looks like Max has useful information. I can deal with him when I’m done looking into that.
“I need to kill a werewolf right now. So it’s either you shut up or I’ll shut you up.”
He has one over me with his wolf, but I happen to have a talisman that can send him to sleep. I’m guessing he doesn’t want to risk never seeing her again.
‘Let me see Gwen, and I’ll help you–’
“I don’t need you,” I interrupt. “Just stay quiet and let me do my fucking job. We’ll talk about her later.”
He grumbles but shuts up anyway. I head back outside. “What is it?” I ask Max.
“There’s movement at Blackrise,” he says. “Lots of it. As if they are leaving or something.”
“What?”
Leaving? Why would he do that? He was confident about taking the throne from me, so it couldn’t be that he gave up after losing a handful of warriors, right?
“Are you sure he is not mobilising warriors for another attack?”
“They are moving north.”
North, away from us.
“Let’s go,” I say, already heading for the exit. “He’s not disappearing on my watch.”
It takes us half an hour to get to his house, breaking every speed limit along the way. Even before we barge into the house, I can tell the place is empty.
There’s no living soul around, but everything else is in place. That could mean he plans to come back, but…wouldn’t he leave a few guards behind?
When Max gets back to me from searching the property and announces that they’ve taken all personal belongings, my frustration bubbles over. He wouldn’t have run if he had been strong enough to come after me. If only I’d come after him right after we were done at Red Creek…
‘Do you really think you can defeat him without me?’
He is back.
‘Help me find Gwen, and I’ll help you track him down and kill him.’
I stop pacing and think. Think? As if I have any other option!
“Deal.”
‘My name’s Eric, by the way. In case you were wondering.’
I suppress a groan. How the fuck did it get to this?