Chapter 122 An Oden?
Adrian’s POV
I stared at James like he’d just grown a second head. The parking lot felt smaller now, the evening thicker with every shadow stretching longer than it had any right to.
My wolf was clawing at my insides, screaming that this rat…whatever she was…could be a threat judging by the look on James’ face.
“Take me to her,” I growled, voice low enough to make the streetlights flicker. “Now.”
James didn’t hesitate. We loaded into the black SUVs, tires screeching as we peeled out. Five minutes felt like five hours. No one spoke. My phone stayed silent in my pocket… Thomas was still MIA…and every second that ticked by fed the storm in my chest.
What if this girl wasn’t just some curious human? What if she is a part of some elaborate plan to infiltrate our world?
I’d tear her apart myself if she was in any way a link to harm my mate.
The warehouse loomed at the edge of the industrial district…our private holding spot, no cameras, no questions.
We parked in the back alley and I shoved the door open before the SUV even stopped rolling, my men flanking me like ghosts. James led the way down a flight of concrete stairs to the basement level. The air grew colder, heavier, the kind of chill that settles in your bones and whispers something’s wrong.
He unlocked a heavy steel door and it creaked open.
Inside, under a single swinging bulb, sat the girl.
She looked maybe twenty-one, or the same age as Kira. Jet-black hair tangled around her face, sharp black eyes darting everywhere like a cornered animal. Hands zip-tied to the chair, legs bound. She was shaking…visibly terrified out of her mind.
But it was her scent that slammed into me first.
Not faint. Not hidden. Pure, wild wolf…layered with something darker, something that smelled like midnight forests and old blood.
Why the hell hadn’t I noticed it before back in the woods?
Maybe, I’d been too wrapped up in Kira’s safety, too blinded by rage that I’d missed it completely.
My wolf went rigid inside me. This wasn’t some random human snooping for gossip. This was something else. Something that would make the entire kingdom pause for a second.
I took one step closer.
The girl’s eyes locked on mine and she broke instantly. Tears spilled down her cheeks, voice cracking into full sobs.
“P-please! I’m just a student…I swear! I’m drowning in loans, I can barely afford sandwiches, I didn’t mean anything! I was just hiking through the woods and I saw… I saw things I shouldn’t have. Please, you can delete every picture on my phone…here, take it!”
She jerked her chin toward a cracked iPhone on the metal table. “I won’t tell a single soul, I promise! I don’t even know who you people are! Just let me go, I’ll disappear, I’ll never come back, please don’t kill me, I’m an orphan…”
Her words dissolved into ugly, terrified crying. Shoulders heaving. Snot and tears mixing on her face. She looked so small, so breakable. She looked nothing like who I suspect she might be.
I didn’t move. My gaze flicked to James.
He gave one sharp nod, stepped in close, and whispered right against my ear so only I could hear. “You feel it too right? You need to see the mark on her back, Your Majesty.”
My blood turned to ice when he said that. It meant my suspicions were right. She is one.
I took another step forward.
My men moved without a word…efficient, silent. One cut the zip-ties just enough to spin her chair around. The other gathered her long black hair and lifted it slowly over one shoulder, exposing the pale skin of her upper back.
There it was.
The mark of the Oden.
Oh my god.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even blink. That silver spiral on her upper back…ancient runes twisting around a crescent moon and a wolf’s paw…glowed faintly under the swinging bulb like it was alive.
I’d memorized every line from the old scrolls Thomas and I kept hidden in the palace vaults. No mistake. This was it.
This is what I’ve been searching for!
My wolf slammed into my ribs so hard my vision tunneled. Hope and terror crashed through me at the same time.
The Oden weren’t legends. They were the greatest healers our kind had ever known. Blessed straight from the Moon Goddess centuries ago.
Normal wolves healed cuts and broken bones in hours…Oden could do the impossible. One touch and fatal wounds closed. Poisons vanished. Even the darkest curses that ate an alpha alive from the inside out could be burned away.
Their bloodline had saved kings, ended wars, kept entire packs breathing when everything else failed. That mark on their backs meant life itself.
Everyone believed they were gone.
Eighteen years ago that evil blood sucking sorceress, Morgana, wiped them out. She had tracked their last hidden sanctuary deep in the northern mountains. She didn’t just attack…she erased them. Unleashed shadows that tore people apart while they slept, dark fire that burned without smoke.
The entire clan…elders, mothers, pups…slaughtered in one night before news got to us. Bodies left smoking so no one could ever bring the bloodline back.
The stories said not a single Oden survived. Extinct. Dead. End of story.
But now, it seems one made it out alive.
This girl.
Her scent hit me again… she’s an oden wolf, a real one…but buried so deep it was like it had been sleeping since birth.
Has she been hiding among humans this whole time? Living like one of them. A broke college student, from the way she was sobbing?
But what were the chances? That I would just stumble upon an Oden…in the middle of the woods… in a human city… after years of searching for even a single survivor?
My mind refused to accept it.
For years there had been nothing. No traces. No whispers. No scent. Just ashes of a past that was supposed to be gone forever.
And now… this?
My jaw tightened as a cold realization crept up my spine.
Coincidences like this didn’t exist.
So what was it?
A miracle?
…Or a carefully laid trap I had just walked straight into?