Chapter 92 Too peaceful
Chapter 92 Too peaceful
/Luca/
Edlyn was finally asleep.
I stood beside the bed with my arms folded across my chest, watching her breathe quietly beneath the blankets. For the first time since everything had started, there was no tension in her face, no fear in her eyes, and no trace of that stubborn little expression she wore whenever she was about to argue with one of us. She looked peaceful.
Too peaceful.
That was what bothered me, because outside this room, kingdoms were burning, packs were disappearing, dragons were tearing through our people, and something powerful enough to break ancient protection spells was moving through the world without leaving behind enough evidence for us to understand what we were even fighting. Yet here she was, sleeping like the world wasn’t falling apart around her, and some part of me wanted to let her have that, even knowing it couldn’t last.
Nelson stood on the other side of the bed, staring at her just as I was, his expression carrying the same quiet weight mine did. Neither of us spoke for several seconds, the silence stretching out between two men who had spent most of their lives as enemies and now found themselves bound by the same fear.
Then I finally broke it.
“We need to talk.”
His eyes moved toward me. “About what?”
I looked back at Edlyn, at the slow rise and fall of her chest. “Strategies. Our kingdoms. The attacks. Everything.”
Nelson nodded slowly, something resigned settling into his features. “Yeah. We can’t keep reacting after every attack happens. We’re always a step behind.”
“Exactly.”
I walked toward the window and looked out over the pack lands. The moon hung high and full above us, and where it should have felt beautiful, it only reminded me of how exposed everyone below it truly was. “We need to unite our people before the enemy attacks again.”
Nelson moved to stand beside me, his shoulder nearly brushing mine. “Temporarily?”
I glanced at him. “For now.”
He considered that, his jaw working like he was chewing on the word itself. “Until the war is over.”
“Until we understand who we’re fighting,” I corrected.
His jaw tightened visibly. “Assuming we survive long enough to figure that out.”
I gave him a cold, level look. “We will.”
“You sound very confident.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever is doing this has made one mistake.”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“They made us angry.”
Nelson let out a quiet laugh, though there was no real humor in it. “That’s your strategy?”
“No. My strategy is much better than that.”
“Good, because I was about to start questioning our chances.”
I ignored the jab and walked toward the large table in the corner of the room, where a map of the surrounding territories had been spread out earlier that day. I pulled it closer, studying the markings we’d made.
“The attacks aren’t random,” I said.
Nelson joined me at the table. “We already know that.”
“No, I mean look at the pattern.” I pointed toward the territories marked across the parchment. “First, my kingdom was attacked. Then your pack. The Northern Pack disappeared entirely. Dragons hit both territories. The vampire barrier was destroyed.”
Nelson leaned over the map, studying it with the kind of focus I hadn’t seen from him before. “And whatever happened to the Northern Pack doesn’t look like the other attacks.”
“Exactly.”
I tapped my finger against the map, right over the marking for the Northern territory. “The dragons want destruction. Whoever took that pack wanted something else.”
“People,” he said quietly.
“Exactly.”
His expression darkened, something grim settling behind his eyes. “They didn’t kill them.”
“No.”
“They took them alive.”
“Which means they’re useful to whoever took them.”
He stared at the map for several long seconds, his hands braced against the table’s edge. “Prisoners.”
“Possibly.”
“Experiments,” he said, and the word came out low, almost reluctant to leave his mouth.
I looked at him. “That thought crossed my mind too.”
The room suddenly felt colder. Neither of us wanted to imagine what someone would need an entire pack of living wolves for, but the silence that followed told me we were both picturing it anyway.
Nelson leaned further over the table. “What if the attacks are distractions?”
I looked at him, something sharpening in my focus. “Explain.”
“What if the dragons aren’t the main attack? What if they’re being used to keep everyone focused on destruction while someone else moves around behind them, unnoticed?”
I stared at the map, turning the idea over. For once, the wolf had a genuinely good point. “That would explain the Northern Pack.”
“And the barrier.”
I nodded slowly, the pieces beginning to align into something far more unsettling than a simple war. “They aren’t trying to conquer our kingdoms.”
“They’re weakening them.”
“Exactly.”
The realization settled heavily between us, pressing down like something physical.
Nelson straightened, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “They want us exhausted before the real attack comes.”
“Or they want us fighting each other instead of them.”
His eyes met mine, and I didn’t need to explain further. The vision Edlyn had described came back to both of us at once, unspoken but unmistakably shared. Her standing between us. Blood everywhere. Nelson and I tearing into each other while some voice told her to choose.
“They know about her,” he said quietly, the words heavier than I’d ever heard from him.
“I think they know more about her than we do,” I admitted, and that was the part that truly frightened me.
Edlyn wasn’t simply some unfortunate woman caught between two kingdoms at war. She was powerful, far more powerful than she understood or was willing to accept. She carried a wolf capable of sealing bonds, a vampire bloodline connected to mine, and abilities neither of us could fully explain even after everything we’d witnessed. She had visions that seemed to predict events before they happened, and now there was some mysterious presence slipping into her mind uninvited.
Whoever was behind this knew all of that.
And they were using it against her.
“We need to protect her,” Nelson said, his voice rough with something that sounded almost like desperation.
“We need to protect her without turning her into a prisoner,” I said carefully.
He looked at me sharply. “I wasn’t suggesting that.”
“Good.”
“I know how stubborn she is.”
I almost smiled despite everything. “Stubborn isn’t even the word.”
Nelson let out a short laugh, some of the tension easing from his shoulders. “She’s going to hate the security plan.”
“She’ll complain.”
“Definitely.”
“She’ll threaten us.”
“Absolutely.”
“And she’ll probably find a way around whatever guards we put outside her door within the first night.”