Chapter 214 The Storm is Here
ELIJAH
I couldn’t help myself, I went back to the room and headed straight for Dave.
“You had no idea what he wanted to do with her.” I felt the last of my patience leave the room entirely as I saw his face. “A man breaks into your quarters in the middle of the night with a gun to your head, asks you to clear a path through my house, and not once did you think to ask why? What exactly did you think he needed that corridor cleared for?”
Dave kept his eyes on the table. The other two were doing the same thing.
“What else did you do for him? Everything. From the beginning.”
“I found the other two and told them what he needed. He said he’d pay us when it was done.” Dave’s voice was flat. He’d moved past shame into something more like defeat.
“And when they came through — the people who took her — you were both on the second floor.” I looked at the other two. “You saw them.”
The one on the left spoke without looking up. “They told us to step away from the corridor. Their faces were covered. We moved back and they passed and — we didn’t know it was the princess. We only found out after.”
“You were standing in that hallway,” I said slowly, “while my daughter was carried out of this house. You were ten feet away and you moved aside and let it happen.”
Nobody spoke.
“You said he would pay you.” I leaned forward. “How much is a child worth to you? What number did he give you?”
Still nothing.
I stormed out, feeling a whole rage follow after me.
Lana had been carried out while the corridor was deliberately emptied, which meant at minimum two people on the inside and at least one person working with him outside. This had been planned carefully and from a distance and for longer than I wanted to sit with.
The door opened. I assumed it was Hazel.
“They found something.”
I turned. Adriana was standing in the doorway and the look on her face hit me before the words did.
“What did they find? Did they find her?”
“Adriana—”
“Don’t say my name like that.” Her voice cracked and her eyes filled immediately. “Tell me what they found. Right now.”
Hazel appeared behind her and the look she gave me over Adriana’s shoulder told me everything about how bad the next few minutes were going to be.
“Lana’s clothes,” I said. “And a box. Peter brought them in before he disappeared.”
Adriana’s hand went out and found the table beside her.
“Is it her blood?”
“Hazel doesn’t think they’re even Lana’s clothes. The sizing is wrong, it’s too big. They were planted.”
I watched her absorb that. She blinked twice and something recalibrated behind her eyes — not relief exactly but a sharpening. She pushed off the table.
“What’s in the box?”
“I haven’t opened it.”
“Then let’s open it.”
We went to my office. The clothes were on the desk. The box sat beside them, small and unlocked. Hazel held the clothing up and turned it over.
“These wouldn’t fit Lana. Adriana didn’t dress her in these.”
I opened the box. Inside was an envelope. The letter was long, written in neat handwriting that told me everything about the state of mind it had been written in.
I read it through fully. Then I passed it to Hazel without a word.
Mark wanted me to abdicate. Publicly, within three hours, with a declaration that I was handing the throne to him by name. If I didn’t, he would kill Lana and scatter her body through the forest where we would never find her. He also mentioned Peter — said it had taken almost nothing to turn him. A few lies, he wrote, and the man had been ready.
“This is insane,” Hazel said, dropping the letter. “He cannot seriously expect you to stand up and hand him everything.”
“He has my daughter.” I said it simply. “She has been outside this house for days without food, without warmth, without anyone who gives a damn whether she survives. She’s a newborn.” I looked at Hazel directly. “I’m not gambling with that.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
“Then what’s the plan?” she said finally.
The door opened and Aiden walked in.
“You needed me. What’s going on?”
I looked at him standing in the doorway and the plan came together in about four seconds, clean and simple and entirely dependent on him saying yes.
“Sit down,” I said. “I have two minutes.”
I told him everything. His face went through several things and settled on an expression I could only describe as deeply unhappy but committed.
“You want me to take the throne.”
“Temporarily. His people are watching this house right now. They’ll report back that a man named Mark took over and he’ll release her. The second she’s home the arrangement ends.”
“The elders will lose their minds, Elijah. The pack—”
“Can be managed. My daughter cannot be replaced.” I held his gaze. “Your name is Mark for the next hour. That’s all I’m asking.”
A long pause.
“If this goes wrong—”
“Then we deal with what comes next together. But she comes home first.”
He let out a breath. “Fine. But the second she’s back, this ends. That’s not negotiable.”
“Agreed.”
I turned to Hazel. “I need everyone gathered outside in ten minutes. Plain clothes. Reach out to as many pack members as you can get here quickly and tell them there’s an urgent public announcement. Don’t use my name.”
She was already moving before I finished the sentence.
I went to the balcony and looked at the crowd forming below, household staff, pack members who lived close enough to arrive fast, the faces all turned upward with a mixture of confusion and dread that gatherings like this always produced.
The elders were near the back and I saw them clock me and start moving forward and I knew I was going to have a very long conversation with all of them before the week was out.
I kept the announcement short. I had wronged my people. I was stepping down. A man named Mark would lead them forward. I said it without flinching and I walked back inside before the noise could fully build.
It built anyway. I could hear it through the walls of the house, loud and angry and growing.
Aiden appeared beside me in the hallway.
“The storm is here,” he said.
“Good. Let it be loud enough for Mark to hear it from wherever he’s standing.” I started walking. “She comes home first. Everything else comes after.”