Soren
Blake’s suite, essentially a private apartment within the castle, is on the far eastern side of the palace. His view is of the more rural, affluent neighborhoods of Moonrise and the thick forest beyond–quieter and more secluded compared to Maeve’s suite overlooking the lake and city center.
I take in the gray walls and modern furniture before turning to the man sipping a glass of scotch as the sun fades from view, the sunset broken by dark clouds promising another snowstorm, but it’s warmer today. Humid. I can almost taste the rain on the horizon.
It’s nearly spring.
I hope it’s a good summer.
Maeve stares Blake down from the far side of the room, her eyes briefly flicking to mine before she clears her throat, “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” She taps her foot impatiently, but Blake just looks her up and down before turning to me.
“Patton didn’t have a tracker in his upper arm like you did. Misty checked. He’s clean, otherwise.” I grit my teeth, unsure what to say to that, but Blake swishes his drink and drains it, setting the crystal glass on a black glass side table between two dark gray leather couches. He looks at Maeve then, his expression tightening as he continues, “I looked into Soren’s timeline–”
“Blake,” Maeve snarls, taking several waddling steps in his direction as molten rage plays behind her eyes.
I step into the space between them, prepared to separate them, but Blake says, “He is, in fact, your mate. I just wanted to confirm he wasn’t a lying, cheating bastard going after your wealth and power.” His eyes flicker to mine before locking back on Maeve’s face, which is murderous. “You’re fated, which I found hard to believe, so I… dug a little deeper–”
“How dare you!” she snarls.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I cut in, grabbing Maeve by the arm as she tries to rush past me toward her cousin. I pull her back, stepping between her and Blake once more. “What do you mean by my timeline?”
“Your future,” Blake says matter-of-factly.
I open my mouth to laugh, or say something, anything, I suppose, but nothing comes out.
“You had no right to do that,” Maeve says, trembling with rage.
“I had to. There were things that weren’t adding up–”
“Future?” I say so quietly I’m not sure I said it out loud, but Blake looks right at me with those deep, starlit wells of violet lighting from within. What a freak. He is, I notice for the hundredth time, a very powerful man. A scary one. The only man, other than Alpha King Ryatt, I surmise, that I would… tread carefully around… if I were smarter.
“You can see my future?”
“A bit,” he replies with a shrug of one shoulder. “Your timeline is murky because Maeve has a fucking chokehold on you. She’s been shielding you with her powers for months–”
I turn to Maeve, and she purses her lips, glaring at Blake. “I haven’t been.”
“It’s the mate bond between you. I can’t see your timeline, Maeve, because you and I are from different power groups, as far as I know. We are not compatible. We have magic on the opposite end of the spectrum, so while I was trying to figure out–”
“You will stay out of his head from now on!” I’ve never heard Maeve use this tone before, even with me. She’s… absolutely livid–trembling with righteous fury.
But I’m curious. “What did you see, exactly? How many kids I’ll have? Whether Maeve kills me in my sleep one day? The day I die?”
Maeve growls low in her throat, but Blake… smirks. It’s a secret kind of smile that briefly flashes behind his eyes as he meets my gaze. “No. I had to look deeper than that. Your timeline is static. You’ve only had one, and all points led to her. It would’ve happened regardless of if you’d met here, in Moonrise, or during her grand tour after she was crowned. You were meant to fall in step with Maeve. You were meant to be the father of her daughters. Your blood is… royal, somehow. You have an ancestor from the time of the Old Kings, possibly an Old King, prior to Kane. Slave blood, on your mother’s side.”
Maeve goes completely still and quiet, but my heart begins to race. “You can see all of this?” I ask, dumbfounded.
“It’s not… seeing, necessarily,” he replies, pacing away from us to pour himself another drink–a heavy pour this time. He moves a second glass toward the edge of the bar cart but pauses, continuing, “Our world is woven in a tapestry that has no beginning and no end. Everyone born carries a piece of thread. Some are short. Some are long. Some fray and bend, weaving where they don’t belong. Other’s tangle. You’ve been perfectly woven with Maeve’s thread for years, and I’m not the only one who’s seen that.”
Maeve makes a small noise in her throat while pressing her hand to her lower back. I absently guide her to one of the couches, forcing her down, and she obeys like her legs were already on the verge of giving out.
“Who?” I ask. “Who else has the ability to see these things?”
“It used to be just me,” he says, pouring a glass of scotch for me, I hope. He turns with both glasses in hand and extends one in my direction, which I take without hesitation. “The Mystics see these things, but… it’s like looking at our world upside down and underwater, through a thick layer of fog. They can pull prophecies from their visions and from the stars, but they can’t read the stars like I can. They can’t look into the heavens, passing the sacred veil of the living and the dead, like I can. They can’t decipher the fabric of our world, and others, like I can. But he… he can. And he found you, and her, years ago.”
“You’re talking about Hannibal.” The words leave my lips in a resigned exhale.
Maeve pales, her eyes going wide as our words sink in.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“So he’s a Mystic?” Maeve says from the couch.
“No,” Blake and I say in tandem then look at each other. Blake continues, “No, he is not. He’s something else. Something… not from here.”
I look at Maeve then back at Blake. “The Viper as well.”
“Then you’re aware of their differences to us? Not like us shifters, or witches, and Mystics, and… what my family is.”
An echo of pain laces through my bond with Maeve. She’s having another contraction, a strong one. Even Blake looks at her as she suffers in silence on the couch just a few feet away. But she asks, “How long have you known this, Blake? Did you know Soren was my mate years ago?”
“No,” he says quickly, shaking his head. “I never looked into his timeline because… because I didn’t care. I was going to kill him, you know, when I was done with him.”
“Of course you were,” I grumble into my drink before draining half of it.
“But after… this mess,” he continues, motioning to us, “I had to. I had to confirm, and when I did, I felt someone else with me. Like someone had been there before, picking through the same frays of thread. It isn’t something Hannibal can do naturally. I felt another force there. Magic. Perhaps a spell. Then, Cole pulled that silver ball out of Soren’s arm, and when I destroyed it, I felt that same magic. Soren is the only one who had that in his body.”
Blake moves to the window where wet snow is starting to fall, on the verge of turning to rain. “Years ago, when Hannibal’s operation caught the attention of our fathers and grandfathers, they couldn’t track him. It was obvious he was some kind of magical being. At first, my grandfather Isaac and Ryatt deduced we were dealing with another witch, like Gabriel of Draven Coven, someone with Old King blood or a stolen relic they were using to summon ancient magic. But I got involved, and the more we were able to find and interrogate his people, the more I realized Hannibal was two steps ahead of us, like he knew what we were looking for and when we’d find it. I had to stay a step ahead of my family from that point on. The people we’d find were lower soldiers employed by his den leaders. They were… weak. None of them wore bands.” He glances at me before turning back to the window.
“Four years ago, the Viper fell onto my radar, and so did Soren. Hannibal was protecting them both using whatever powers he had, but he didn’t anticipate me.”
I can feel Maeve watching me, but my eyes are locked on the back of Blake’s head.
“The Viper was different. I couldn’t find her thread in the tapestry, nor Hannibal’s. The other den leaders were easy to find there because they belonged here; they don’t. They’re from somewhere else.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Maeve says, shaking her head. “They’re not… part of our world?”
“No, and they’re here to disrupt it.” Blake turns to us, his eyes downcast on his drink. “The murders began, and I realized no one else in the family was going to be able to get to Hannibal, or even his… stronger den leaders, like the Viper. She was, and still is, a huge obstacle in our way when it comes to tracking Hannibal down. So, without the family’s knowledge, I used my powers to start tracking her people and putting our own people, any high-ranking wolves at risk, into hiding. It worked, with Soren’s help. She kept her men in bands, and each was chosen for specific skills. Her men were the strongest, the ones Hannibal selected by hand, it seemed. Soren was one of them, but Hannibal’s interest in Soren began after the two of you met for the first time, when your threads began to intertwine.”
“The tea shop,” Maeve says under breath.
I close my eyes, finding it hard to fill my lungs.
“He knew Soren was bound to Maeve as mates. That made Soren invaluable.”
“Did you know?” I ask Blake. “When you found me and offered me a way out?”
“No. But I knew you were something neither the Viper or Hannibal wanted to lose, which made our scheme doable. When I inspected that ball from your arm, I realized it was more than a tracking device. It wasn’t meant to track your movements but your progress. It was meant to ignite and lead him back to you once the mate bond clicked into place. I believe he meant it as more of a timer, giving him the green light to begin whatever plot he’s working on. But even I don’t know what that is.”
“But they know I’m here now,” I say, taking a much needed breath. “The Viper knew I’d come straight here, I know that much. She knew I wouldn’t kill my own child.”
“Yes, they’re aware you’re here.”
I turn to Maeve. “This is why you need to be in Veiled Valley–”
“No,” Blake cuts in, shaking his head. “That’s what they want to happen. They want Moonrise to be vulnerable. If Maeve leaves, Moonrise will be ripe for the taking. If they’re planning an attack on Moonrise, they don’t want Maeve here for it. She is at her most powerful right now, pregnant, and once the baby is born, her powers will fully mature. That’s why they gave you that mark. It’s why I sent you to kill her, knowing full well you couldn’t, but I needed you in her way. I knew something was happening. My powers… pushed me in this direction, but I didn’t know it would lead you back to Maeve. I didn’t know you were mates like my gifts were trying to show me, and for that, I’m sorry. But whatever Hannibal and the Viper are, they aren’t a match for her, and they know it. They see this as a window of opportunity. They knew you’d come here trying to save her, hide her, because you are devoted, Soren. They know your loyalty is no longer, and has never been, with them. Hannibal needs Moonrise for something, and he’s waiting for you to leave with her to take it.” Blake moves in my direction, looking down at Maeve, who looks tired and wary.
I run my tongue over my bottom teeth, sucking in a breath, “We need your family involved now.”
“Yes,” Blake agrees, even if Maeve pales. “We do. Which is why you and I are going on a little trip. Hang on tight.”
“What?” I ask, but Blake grabs my arm, and the world erupts, fracturing, then shattering like glass all around me.
Maeve’s shout of protest echoes through my mind before everything goes black. My eardrums swell, on the verge of bursting. Pain explodes through my body as I’m pulled apart, but just as quickly as it began, the pain ceases, and the floor beneath my feet turns from soft, pristine gray carpet to hard, ancient stone.
I blink, then double over, bracing my hands on my knees, my glass of scotch shattered at my feet.
“Not bad for your first time,” Blake says under his breath as I slowly straighten, an unfamiliar room spinning around me–all dark stone and tall stained glass windows letting in soft starlight. “Ready to meet the parents?”
“You fucking dick,” I pant, hanging my head. “Where are we?”
“Welcome to Veiled Valley, Soren.”