Adric loped across the broken-down Westside neighborhood he called home. A third of the houses were boarded up or turned into squats for junkies. But there were families here too—a tricycle was overturned on a small, neatly-kept lawn, and two women sat on a stoop, a toddler between them.
A man with a gangster tat on his neck strutted down the sidewalk, all broad shoulders and attitude. Then he got a closer look and continued past, eyes down. Adric was the most dangerous predator around, and everyone knew it.
Adric rented the house above his den to a pair of baby-faced drug dealers barely out of their teens. The older one leaned against the porch rail, arms crossed, a cigarillo hanging out of his mouth.
“Wassup, bro.”
Adric jerked his chin. The drug dealers were camouflage—no one would guess the Baltimore alpha lived here—but he was thinking it was time he cleaned up the neighborhood like Jace had.
The teenager’s flat brown eyes tracked him as he headed around the house. He pulled up the trap door concealed beneath the back porch and loped down the two flights of stairs to his den. As he entered the living room, the motion triggered the quartz wall sconces he’d installed when he and Marjani had first moved in.
The den had belonged to a family who had been completely wiped out in the Darktime, but Adric didn’t think about that. Not anymore. It was his home now, the first since his parents had died and he and Marjani had been sent to live with their uncle. Leron’s den had never felt like home.
The wall sconces cast a warm amber light over his sister, curled up on a rug in front of the fireplace. She was in her cougar form again. She’d turned on the fake fire—also quartz-powered—and was gazing into it, eyes slit. The flickering firelight turned her pelt a soft gold, but it couldn’t conceal her weight loss or that her fur was patchy with ill health.
Adric blew out a breath. Sometimes an entire day went by without his sister taking her human form.
“Did you eat today?”
Her head lifted, turned. Cool blue eyes examined him as if he were an annoying insect.
He clenched his hands, feeling helpless. “You have to eat, Jani.”
She tilted her head, considering that.
His claws pricked his palms, his cat wanting to slash something. He drew a slow breath and retracted them.
“You can’t go on like this. You didn’t go out the whole weekend. Jace asked for you. He almost died, you know. Would it have killed you to pay him a visit?”
That got through to her. She’d always liked Jace. Her furry gold brow knit, and she yowled a question.
“He’s fine,” Adric replied. “He was back at work today.”
She set her head back on her paws. Discussion closed.
He let out a growl of frustration. Marjani was one step away from becoming feral, lost in her animal—and forever lost to him. Because he’d have to put her down if she became truly wild. He couldn’t have a feral cougar with her intelligence roaming Baltimore.
He fingered his quartz, tempted. He was one of the rare fada with two Gifts. He was a tracker, one of the best in the world. But he had another, secret Gift—the ability to hypnotize others with his quartz.
Marjani was one of the few people who knew about his second Gift. He could hypnotize her, compel her to forget what had happened last year. But she’d made him promise that he wouldn’t.
“No,” she’d snarled when he’d suggested it. “This is me. My life. I need to deal with it. You can’t make everything better, Ric—not this time.”
For Marjani, he’d break a sworn vow, even if the backlash killed him. But she was the one who’d extracted the vow, and that was what stopped him.
He dropped onto the rug. It was a plush orange shag like something from the sixties, one of his few indulgences. He’d installed it as much for Marjani as for himself—a reward for the times they’d shivered all night in some boarded-up house, or crouched in the chilly rain because Leron had ordered them to stand watch.
He sat cross-legged and stared into the fire. The fake flames danced, bright flickers of warmth. Even in the summer, their cats craved heat.
“I need you, Jani. I need all four of my lieutenants. There’s something I’m not seeing. Lord Prick was behind Jace’s attack, but it looks like he might’ve been working with one of us.”
He swallowed something acrid. He’d done some terrible things to end the Darktime, including assassinating his own uncle rather than challenge him to a duel for alpha. But he hadn’t been able to risk losing. Leron had been out of control, and Adric was the only one strong enough to take him. It was either kill Leron, or see everyone he loved die.
When he’d first taken over as alpha, he’d cleaned up the last pockets of resistance and declared the Darktime over. Most of their elders were dead, and the ones that weren’t either swore allegiance to Adric—or were executed. That should’ve been the end of it. He’d turned his attention to rebuilding his ragged, war-torn clan, believing he had the full support of his remaining clanmates.
But six years later, he was still fighting an underground conflict that he suspected had been instigated by his own cousin, Corban Savonett. Marjani’s attack had been carried out by some rogue river fada—but the rogues had been working with some of Adric’s own people.
Corban had never accepted Adric as alpha. He believed that as Leron’s oldest son, he should’ve been made alpha after his death, but the fada didn’t work like that. An alpha had to earn the title. And strength wasn’t enough; an alpha needed his people’s respect, too.
Corban had challenged Adric anyway, and lost. But even though Adric had made his cousin a high-ranking sentry, a position just under his four lieutenants, Corban hadn’t given up. Instead, the bastard had struck at Adric’s weak spot—Marjani. His sister was strong—a hard-ass soldier—but they’d drugged her and smashed her quartz so she couldn’t fight back.
Adric’s fingers curled. If he’d had any proof that Corban was behind it, he’d have slit the bastard’s throat, but his cousin was too smart to get caught. He hid behind others, and every single one of them had either died or killed themselves before Adric could question them.
He gazed broodingly at Marjani’s silent form. He questioned his decision to let Corban go every day. Every single fucking day.
But—“I couldn’t execute Corban without proof,” he told her. “I swore when I became alpha things would be different.” Plus, Corban and his brothers were still a power in the clan. Adric had been afraid that if he pushed too hard, he’d set off another clan war.
So instead, he’d sent Corban out of the country on a job for the ice fae, after first forcing his cousin to swear he wouldn’t come back until the job was complete. Corban was to capture a rogue ice fae and return her to her king for justice. Corban would be lucky to come back alive, and they both knew it. A powerful ice fae could literally freeze you where you stood. They fed on the energy of motion, meaning they could stop your heart, your lungs…or simply lock your muscles in place until you died of starvation.
Marjani’s head swung toward Adric. His breath hitched. She was listening.
He hurried back into speech. “If only we knew what the fuck happened to Corban. But he’s gone missing. I can’t even raise him through his quartz. He could be dead—but I don’t think so.”
And why wasn’t the ice fae king more concerned? Sindre had listened to Adric’s explanation with an inscrutable expression and then said, “The agreement is void, then.”
Adric had inclined his head, relieved Sindre wasn’t demanding he send another man out on what amounted to a suicide mission. But it was damned odd. Sindre was an old, cold fae, and the fae had a thing about honoring a contract. The king should’ve been out for blood, but instead he’d given up with barely a protest.
Marjani rose to her feet, gave herself a shake and padded out of the room.
“Jani?” he asked, but she didn’t acknowledge him. Disappointed, he scrubbed a hand over his face. He was so damned tired.
But a short while later, she returned, a woman once again. She paused a few feet away and gazed down at him with shadowed eyes. She’d put on gray shorts and a T-shirt. Once, she’d worn bright, colorful clothes like Suha. And just the other day, he’d come home to find she’d given herself a buzz-cut.
But she was up, and the eyes gazing down at him were the rich brown of her human form. For now, that was enough.
She stuck her hands into the back pockets of her shorts. He’d thought she was too thin as a cougar, but this was shocking. Her arms and legs were bony brown sticks.
His breath whistled in. He rose to his feet, trying to conceal his dismay.
Marjani didn’t seem to notice. When she spoke, her voice was rusty from disuse. “Tell me what you know.”