Chapter 165: Many Steps Closer

Riven's POV

The name hung in the damp, freezing air of the alleyway like a drop of poison suspended in oil.

Madame Vespa.

My wolf dropped its shoulders, its ears pinning flat against my skull in a sudden, defensive crouch that had nothing to do with weakness and everything to do with a pure, instinctual revulsion.

Beside me, Zayden didn't move a single muscle, but I could hear the sharp, sudden click of his jaw locking so tight the bone beneath his ear turned stark white.

"She's dead," I rasped, my forearm pressing just a fraction harder against Abby’s throat, my fingers digging into the rough brickwork beside her skull. "Don't play games with me, Abby."

"She isn't dead!" Abby screamed, her voice cracking as a fresh wave of hysterical tears spilled over her eyelids, cutting clean lines through the red brick dust on her cheeks. "She came to me, Riven! She appeared in the lower gardens three weeks ago... like a shadow walking in broad daylight. She knew everything. She knew about my father’s registry debt. She knew about the false logs I kept for the southern quad."

Abby’s chest was heaving violently beneath her gray wool uniform, her breath coming in ragged, suffocating gasps that rattled through the narrow space between us.

"She threatened me," she whimpered, her eyes rolling back as she relived the memory. "She didn't use a blade, Riven. She didn't even drop her frequency. She just touched the skin of my wrist, and it felt like my blood turned to liquid frost. She told me if I didn't bring her Kathy, she would erase my entire family line from the provincial ledger. She said she’d make it so we never existed. What was I supposed to do?"

"And you didn't think to let anyone know?" Zayden said. His voice wasn't loud, but the sheer, freezing density of his tone made the loose gravel near his boots vibrate.

He stepped closer, his shadow completely swallowing Abby’s lower frame.

"I had to!" Abby shrieked, her hands twitching in my grip. "I waited until the midnight shift rounds when the library ward was resetting its ink. I drugged her and took her straight to where she told me to and Vespa was already there waiting in the mist."

A sickening wave of pure fury rolled over my brain, my wolf roaring so loud behind my ribs that a low, animalistic snarl slipped past my teeth.

"What did she do to her?" I demanded, my face inches from Abby's, the bright green of my alpha aura surging back to the surface until the brick wall began to creak under the pressure of my weight. "What did she put inside her?"

"I don't know!" Abby wept, her head shaking violently against the masonry. "I swear to God, Riven, I don't know! The moment I handed Kathy over, the air in the cellar went completely dead. The lamps blew out, and this... this freezing, metallic hum started screaming inside my skull. Vespa told me to leaven. She told me if I looked back, she’d harvest my core instead. I ran! I don't know what that thing is inside her!"

I let go of her wrists, my hand coming down to grab the lapels of her gray coat, hoisting her up until her boots were dangling inches above the damp cobblestones.

"How do we find her?" I growled, the silver wire inside my chest pulsing with a frantic, desperate rhythm. Kathy was sitting in that infirmary right now with a blank ledger for a mind, and if we didn't find the source of the binding script soon, the entity would drown her completely. "Where is Vespa hiding her circle?"

Abby started shaking violently, her hands coming up to clutch at my forearms as if she were trying to pull my strength away.

"No... no, don't ask me that," she begged, her voice dropping into a frantic, breathless whisper. "You shouldn't think about it. You shouldn't even say her name out loud in the open. She is powerful, Riven. More powerful than you can possibly comprehend. You think because you carry an Alphas blood that you can just hunt down anything that moves in the dark? She isn't a normal rogue wolf. She doesn't follow the biological laws of the packs."

"We don't care about her power," Zayden cut in, his golden eyes flashing with a lethal, unyielding intent as he reached out, his large fingers clamping onto Abby’s jaw, forcing her to look at him. "Give us the location, Abby. Now."

"You don't understand!" she cried, her jaw clicking against Zayden's grip as she pleaded with us. "Madame Vespa will erase my family if she finds out I spoke the words! She has an eye in every shadow! She... she isn't just a werewolf, Zayden. She has a rogue demon in her core. An ancient, unaligned aberration from before the First Treaty was signed. It doesn't have a name, but it feeds on the latent frequency. That's why she wanted Kathy. She’s using Kathy’s empty house to build a second vessel!"

The words matched the grimoire exactly.

A parasitic force that predates the alignment of the first Alphas. The reality of the nightmare was settling over us like a burial shroud, but the fear only made my blood boil hotter. I didn't have time for her warnings. I didn't have time for her terror.

"Where is she?" Zayden demanded again, his voice dropping into the crushing register of a command that made Abby’s inner beta wolf let out a sharp, involuntary whimper.

Abby let out a strange, uneasy laugh—a dry, rattling sound that was completely undone by the sheer horror of her situation. She looked at Zayden, then at me, her eyes wild.

"Where?" she whispered, her lips stretching into a terrified, erratic smile. "She is like the air, Zayden. She’s everywhere the mist touches. She moves through the old, structural drainage tunnels beneath the mountain—the ones the architects abandoned when they built the primary foundations. You can't just map her coordinates."

I didn't want poetry. I didn't want metaphors about the wind.

With a sharp, fluid movement, I shifted my grip from her lapels to her upper arms, my fingers digging through the scratchy wool until they found the bone.

I twisted her shoulders back against the rough brickwork, applying just enough leverage to make the joints pop with a sickening, muffled sound.

Abby let out a sharp, agonized groan, her spine arching as her face turned an ashen shade of white.

"I don't have time for the riddles, Abby," I muttered, my alpha aura flaring so violently that the red brick dust around our boots began to lift into the air in tiny, spinning vortexes. "You're going to take us to her. Or I will personal log your family's debt with the proctor-general before the afternoon lock is finished."

The threat to her line was the final breaking point. The last of her reservation collapsed, her head falling forward against my chest as she let out a long, broken sob of pure defeat.

"Fine!" she gasped, her breath hot and wet against my jacket. "Stop! I’ll take you! I can take you to the entrance in the lower boiler cellars... the old iron overflow grate where the mountain runoff hits the deep tunnels. But that’s it! I can only take you to the threshold and that's it, Riven. I can't go in. If I cross that line, the demon inside her will smell my treason before I can even drop my boots. I won't go into the dark with you."

Zayden slowly released his grip on her jaw, his golden eyes shifting across the narrow space to lock onto mine.

The silent communication between us was instantaneous. We didn't need a guide to walk us through the dark; we didn't need a beta wolf freezing up behind us when the silver started to fly.

We just needed a doorway. We just needed a physical point to sink our claws into.

I slowly let go of her shoulders, letting her boots drop back onto the damp cobblestones of the alleyway, though I kept my hand wrapped tight around her cuff so she couldn't bolt into the mist again.

I looked at her pale, ruined face, and my jaw set into a final, unyielding line.

"Fair enough.”