The woman tenses and then rips off the blindfold. Her gaze zeroes in on the exact spot I’m standing.

The guards leave, chuckling to themselves.

She pulls herself to her feet slowly. “Listen, fucker, you try and put your hand on me, and I will rip off your balls, you got that?”

“Loud and clear.” My voice sounds strange, raspy and alien, to my ears. It’s been days since I spoke.

Her eyes narrow. “Step into the light.”

There isn’t much of that. Just a single bulb fixed to the wall a few meters up the corridor outside my cell.

I roll my shoulders and oblige.

She stares at me for a long beat, and then her shoulders sag. “You have the same bone structure.”

“Excuse me?”

“You and Grayson. I didn’t notice it last time we met, but I see it now.”

The last time we met? “Who are you?”

“The woman who’s going to get you out of here.” She shrugs sheepishly. “Fine. That’s not true, but it sounded good. I’m Cora, Fee’s—”

“Tulpa.”

She glares at me. “Best friend. I’m her best friend. We met at your kidnapper’s hideout, remember? I came for Fee, and now she’ll be coming for us.”

Of course…I recall now. Hope blooms in my chest.

Not for you, for her. She’ll come for her.

I push the voice aside. “How did they get hold of you? They’re after humans. I was a lucky mistake.”

“They didn’t catch me; well, not until I got here. Fee sent me to scope out a location. The plan was for me to gather intel and go back so we could plan an extraction.” She sighs and leans against the wall. “Things didn’t go how they were meant to, but my partner will have reported back. They’ll find us. They’ll come. Fee won’t give up on us.”

“On you.” The words were out before I could stop them.

She frowns at me. “Hey, I’m only here because we were looking for you. That symbol you left… Yeah, we used that to find this place.”

Fee was looking for me. The hope flares again. She cared enough to look.

“Only problem is when they do come, they’ll be completely defenseless because I don’t think magic works on this island,” she says.

She has that right. “It doesn’t. Even the Loup is suppressed.”

“The humans have guns and super vamps.” Cora begins to pace. “Fee will be walking into a trap. With this ward running, they’ll be fucked.”

With the ward running… The door with the buzz of power radiating out from it…Could it be?

A plan forms in my mind, risky as fuck, but our only option.

“Then we need to make sure the wards are turned off.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Fee

The farmhouse was crawling with Magiguard. They had the whole place under lockdown. They’d even found a second portal and put it under guard.

We stood at the foot of the staircase, ready to head inside.

Me, Grayson, Uriel, and Bastian along with six other Loup and a team of six Magiguard.

“You remember how to use the comm?” Ursula asked me.

I tapped the tiny radio clipped to my hip. “Yes. Are you sure this will work?”

“Positive. We use them for portal-link communication all the time.” She stared at the portal, lit up bright now because of the activation runes her guards had drawn into the air. “Whoever did this knows their stuff.” She jerked her chin at the Magiguard team. “Bring them in if you can. If the perpetrators are human, use non-lethal force, otherwise…whatever goes.”

Non-lethal force if the bad guys were human. They couldn’t be… Could they?

“Remember,” Ursula said. “Activate the tracker as soon as you go through. It’s the only way we’ll be able to find you.” She tapped the gun at my hip. “Red for lethal, green for stun.”

“I’ve got it.” I also had my daggers and scythe for any non-human wankers who got in my way.

Grayson and I started up the steps together. He took my hand as we reached the top.

“You ready?” he asked.

His face was lit up by the bright light of the portal, golden hair ablaze as if he was backlit by a halo. My heart squeezed with love for him.

“I’m ready.”

We stepped through together and landed on dark rocks slick with water. The wind howled, and the air had bite.

“What the fuck?” Grayson said.

The crash of waves mingled with the moaning of the wind, and the sea churned below, dark and forbidding.

“It’s an island!” Uri called out from above us.

He was on a higher outcrop of rocks just above us, and then he vanished.

“Uri!” I ran toward the rock face, scrambling to get up it.

“I’m all right!” His voice was whipped away by the wind. “I can’t jump, though. The wards must be tampering with my ability.”

Unease prickled my nape. I held out my hand and summoned my scythe, waiting for the tell-tale heat that signaled its arrival.

Nothing. “Um…Grayson, I can’t access my scythe.”

But Grayson was rubbing his chest, his expression grim. “My Loup…It feels…distant.”

One of the Magiguards ran toward us, her black ponytail whipping about in the wind. “Magic is down,” she said. “Looks like a suppressor spell is woven into the wards.”

Fuck. “This is bad.”

“It is,” she said. “But if we don’t have magic, then neither do they.”

They, the perpetrators. “An even playing field?”

She gave me a closed-lipped smile. “Exactly. Use the guns, stick together, and let’s get this done.” Her gaze dropped to my hip. “Put the tracker on.”

I flipped the switch on my radio. “Done.”

“It’ll take a couple of seconds for the signal to transmit, but we can get moving. I see a track up ahead. I say we split into two teams and follow the trail, sticking to cover.”

“Sounds like a good—”

“Fee!” Uri cried out.

My head jerked up to see a man a few feet away with a gun pointed right at me. I caught movement in the periphery of my vision—Grayson leaping toward me to shove me out of the way. But I didn’t need my outlier powers to know it was too late. There would be no bullet dodgery for me this time.

The slug hit me hard, and the world went black.

Cora

Hunter’s pacing is driving me insane.

“Will you please stop pacing.”

“It helps me think,” he says.

“You know what helps me think? People who don’t pace.”

“They’ll be coming for me any minute,” Hunter growls.

“Uh-huh?” I cross my arms under my breasts and look up at him from the ground. I’m leaning against the wall, legs stretched out in front of me. “You said that an hour ago.” He glares at me, dark eyes like obsidian shards. This is Fee’s other fated mate. “I would never have put you two together, you know.”

“What?”

“You and Fee. I’d say this fated mate shit was bollocks, but then Grayson is also her fated mate, and that kinda makes sense to me, so there’s got to be something to it.”

He goes very still, his eyes narrowing. “What did you say.”

His voice is lower, almost threatening. Thing is, he doesn’t scare me. Only one entity does that, and he’s not here. “Grayson is also Fee’s fated mate. You guys are in something called a Tribus.”

His brows flick up as he absorbs this. “They’ve completed the full mating?”

“Pfft, I dunno, they mate…a lot.”

His mouth tightens, and his hands curl into fists at his sides. Maybe I shouldn’t goad him.

“This explains things.” He begins pacing again.

I want to kick him. Instead, I fix my gaze on the cell door. Any minute now. “Run me through the plan again.”

“I get into the lab and get hold of a vial of super juice and inject myself. Then I kick ass, get to the door where I believe the wards are being powered from, and shut them down.”

“Uh-huh. And you know all about magic wand wards, right?”

He glares at me again.

“Oh, for fucksake, I’m not trying to needle you. It’s a genuine question.”

“No,” he admits. “I know nothing about magical wards.”

“So, let’s amend your plan. You kick ass, then you come get me out and we go to the room together, and I shut down the wards.”

“That could waste precious minutes.”

“And so could you not knowing how to deactivate a ward.”

“And you do?”

“I’ve been doing my research. Reading the books. I think I’ll have more of a shot at it than you.”

“Fine. Be ready.”

The echo of boot falls tells us that our time is now.

Any minute now.

Fee

Fire ate at my side. I couldn’t breathe. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. I was dying.

I clutched the wound, wet and warm.

Hands were on me. The tear of fabric was followed by pressure.

“It’s a flesh wound. The bullet grazed her. We just need to patch it up.”

The voice was familiar…The Magiguard with the ponytail.

“Argh!” Sobs wracked my body as she pressed down on my wound. “Fuck!”

“Derek, med kit. Now.”

“Grayson? Where’s Grayson?”

“He’s okay. He took down the gunman. “You’re going to be okay, Fee, just breathe.”

“Mother forker, that hurts!”

“Good. If it hurts, it means you’re alive,” she said with a grim smile. “All patched up.” She held out a hand to me. “Can you stand?”

I gritted my teeth and allowed her to pull me up. Fire lanced through me, making me wish for my Loup healing.