Page 89 of Shifters Reckoning

“It’s there,” I said. “I’ve seen it. Jasper and I spotted it the night we scouted the Void. All the mages, heads down, facing the hole. The horde stood down to feed it. Marcus’s sister is whispering the truth.”

“Then it is true,” Flynn said.

“True enough to depend on.” I pointed at the map on the wall. The pins clustered around Six-Mile. “Maybe formulate our plan around.”

Olivia’s gaze narrowed, and she crossed her arms as she considered me. “Or it’s the best bait he’s got.”

“Bait?” Garrick asked. “Bait, how?”

Olivia visibly rolled her eyes at the idiot.

I bit back a growl and crossed to the window behind my desk and stared through the glass before turning back toward the assembled shifters. Diplomacy wasn’t something alphas usually had to care about in their own effing territory.

“Well?” Garrick pressed.

Olivia snarled and showed her teeth at the fool. “Because it matches our recon, and that’s how you sell a lie, season it with a little truth.” Then she spoke to me. “You’ve said it yourself. Three parts desperate, one part reckless.”

She was right about the trap, if it was one. We’d already verified a seam and a hero’s window at a ritual hour. Six-Mile was filled with the shifters’ best just aching for a way to hit back at the enemy that had eaten their holiday. Would marching our strength into the flat at the one hour it looked safest be wise? We might only find out Acheron had been counting on exactly that.

I turned again to the window and stared out. My job wasn’t to win the war. Emma had gone to do that, God help her. My job was harder and smaller in scope. Keep the alliance whole. Keep Ville Platte in. Keep the horde off our fence. Make Six-Mile and the other clans survive.

A sigh whooshed out of me, and I shoved a hand through my hair. The only way I could see to do all four at once was to take the knife Marcus’s sister had offered and pray it wasn’t clutched in her master’s hand.

“We go at the ritual,” I said. “We stab at his heart without risking the entire army. We send a strike unit, our best shifters. Then we drag whatever we can out of that flat… starting with the woman whispering in Marcus’s head, because a leash in our hands is a leash that isn’t in his.” I turned and faced them. “Maybe we’ll buy Emma’s patch weeks instead of nights, and it’ll double as the answer to the question of Marcus’s loyalty. You want proof the Steeles aren’t spies? Fine. This’ll do it.”

Garrick grumbled but didn’t argue.

“Ville Platte leads the raid. Marcus plans it off his sister’s intel.”

Marcus’s cloudy amber eyes had gone bright. “And if it’s bait,” he added quietly, “I will have handed you the alliance’s best on the point of my own sister’s knife. You’re trusting a blind man with the enemy in his skull.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Why?”

I glanced at the note. Trust me, love.

“Because holding doesn’t mean standing still,” I answered. “It means I don’t get to wait for perfect. She didn’t.” I picked up her note, folded it once, and pressed it to my scar. Her scent clung to the paper. “Plan the raid, Marcus. Every hour, every angle, every lie your sister’s ever told you. Olivia builds the unit. Torbin manages the camp while we’re gone. Della, your cats are the tip.”

Nobody argued. The only move left was the one that might be the trap.

“When?” Flynn asked.

“The next blind hour we reach,” I said. Then I turned back to the window. “Race ya home, love,” I whispered.

I didn’t give two shits if anyone heard me. A man said all sorts of fuckery to the air when the person he would die for had strolled into hell ahead of him.

Together, we bent over the maps, and we built the most dangerous thing we’d ever framed. It was a raid based on the word of a woman who lived in the enemy’s fist, planned by her blind brother, to buy time for a mate who hadn’t told me where she’d gone. Fuck…

If it was a trap, I would lead them into it myself.

If it wasn’t, it was our only option.

My barometer, the scar over my heart, ached, warning of the storm we were all running to meet. I’d never hated a job more, and I’d never done one that mattered as much.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

emma