Chapter 216 Crossed Knife
ADRIANA
She was wrapped in a dirty cloth, laid on the bare floor outside our room.
I was on my knees before I’d finished processing it and I pulled her against my chest and her smell hit me so hard my whole body shook. She was cold. Her skin was cold through the cloth and she was thin, something savage move through my chest, her face sharper than it had any right to be at three weeks old, and the cloth over her mouth came away and she screamed.
She screamed with absolutely everything she had and I held her and held her and pressed my face against the top of her head.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You’re here. I’ve got you.”
I got up off the floor and carried her into the room and walked because she needed movement and warmth and I needed a moment to look at her properly. Marks on her head, small and healing but there. A dirty bandage wrapped around her tiny wrist. I pulled it away carefully and looked at her foot — another cut on the sole, shallow, already closing, but my jaw clenched so hard it ached.
She had done nothing to any of them. She was three weeks old.
I was still walking with her when footsteps in the hallway made me pull the door open.
Elijah almost walked into me. He stopped and his eyes went to Lana and his face did something I had never seen it do before — every single wall came down at once, completely, just raw relief with nothing behind it to hold it up.
“Where—” His voice broke. He cleared it. “Where did you find her? Adriana, where—”
“On the floor outside our door. Right there.” I kept my voice level because one of us had to. “Someone left her there, which means they’ve been in this house. They’re here, Elijah.”
He took her from me and she objected loudly at being separated from her food source and even now the sound of her being furious made both of us breathe out at the same time.
“She’s hungry and cold and she’s lost weight but she’s screaming. She’s here,” I said. “She’s going to be fine.”
“Go back in the room.” He was already scanning the corridor over my head, scanning the shadows at both ends. “Lock the door. I’m bringing Leo and the twins to you right now and you all stay in there. Do not open it for anyone except me or Hazel.”
“What’s happening downstairs? I heard—”
“I’ll explain everything. I promise you I will explain everything.” He put one hand against my face. “I love you. I need you to know that right now. Whatever happens in the next few minutes. Tell Leo—” His voice caught.
“Don’t.” Mine broke on the word. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Tell him he’s going to be an incredible Alpha. Make sure he knows.”
He kissed me and then Hazel was at the end of the corridor with Leo, Elijah junior, Liam and Lorian in front of her and Elijah was kissing each of them on the forehead and directing them through the door and then it closed and I heard the lock from the outside.
“Mum.” Leo was staring at Lana over my shoulder with something in his face that he would never call relief out loud but that’s exactly what it was. “She’s actually here.”
“She’s here.” I sat on the bed and got her feeding and my hands were shaking now that there was nothing left to hold them still. “Leo, sit next to me.”
He sat immediately and pressed his shoulder hard against mine and the twins climbed up on the other side and we sat in the locked room and listened to the sounds downstairs shift from shouting to something sharper. Something breaking. A voice I knew even through the floor.
Mark was in the house.
I got up and placed Lana carefully in Leo’s arms and looked at him.
“Hold her exactly like that. Do not put her down. If anyone knocks except your father or Hazel, you stay completely silent.” I looked at all three of them. “You understand me?”
“Mum—”
“Leo.” I waited until he looked at me directly. “You are going to be an Alpha. Be one right now.”
His jaw set. He pulled his sister closer and nodded.
I found the spare key under the edge of the carpet, stepped out, locked the door behind me and slid the key back underneath. Then I went to the kitchen and took a knife from the block by the stove and kept it low against my leg as I moved to the stairs.
I went down slowly, staying against the wall, and stopped where I could see the main hall without being seen.
Mark had a knife at Elijah’s throat.
Peter had Hazel in a chokehold behind them. The guards in the room were completely still. Their hands all visible, standing down, because their Alpha had a blade against his skin and any wrong move ended it. Mark was talking in that conversational tone that was somehow more frightening than shouting.
“All this, and I’ve got you with one hand. I almost finished the baby when I had her, you know. But you’re the better prize.”
“I left the throne.” Elijah’s voice was absolutely controlled. “You have what you wanted. Let my family go.”
“Did she cry when we cut her?” Mark tilted his head slightly. “She did. Almost the whole first day. Funny how much sound something that small can make—”
I was already moving.
I came across the room fast and got the knife up under his jaw from behind before he finished the sentence.
“Drop it.” My voice came out low and cold and completely steady. “Tell Peter to release her. Right now.”
Elijah’s eyes found mine across the space between us and widened for just one second. I shook my head — don’t react — and mouthed turn around.
He shifted his weight to the left. Mark’s attention followed.
I pressed the knife harder.
Then everything collapsed into the same moment.
The knife at Elijah’s throat drove in.