Page 22 of Renegade Kings

Chapter 10

Maddox

Ifelt the moment she surrendered to sleep as the last of the tension seeped from her body. The others had fallen asleep just as quickly. We were all running on the adrenaline of the day and the crash had been inevitable. I’d seen it in her eyes as she’d struggled to even tell us what was happening. Some would have tried to force the answer out of her, but we had all the time in the world, and Alyssa wasn’t the only one who needed a break from the chaos that seemed to follow our every step.

Dean was out like a light. It was a relief to see that the injury to his side was healing, even if it was completely impossible. I’d been so sure I was going to lose him today.

Damon.

I still couldn’t believe he’d done what he did. I knew deep inside that he hadn’t been trying to kill Dean. He was aiming for Alyssa, and it was only because Dean stepped into his path that he’d been injured instead.

Yet there hadn’t been a single emotion that crossed his face when he saw what he did. There wasn’t an ounce of regret or horror. Whoever that person was that we’d encountered at the Winter Palace, it wasn’t my brother. The problem was, I had no idea how we were supposed to get him back.

I rolled onto my back, staring up at the canopy above me. The material looked like an autumn leaf that had rotted to nothing but a fragile lace of veins. It was more beautiful than I had the wits to appreciate right now.

I should be sleeping. If recent events were anything to go by, this could be my only opportunity to get some decent sleep for a while. My training screamed at me that I should rest while I could. But that didn’t help my eyes to close or my mind to stop forcing visions of my brother plunging a blade deep into Dean’s side.

The lion inside me was just as agitated as I was, but his perspective was far simpler. A threat to our mate existed, and that was unacceptable to him. It didn’t matter to him that he was our brother. The only label that mattered was threat and there was only one way to deal with him.

But it did matter to my human side.

Damon mattered.

I knew him as well as I knew myself. He was the type of man who stood for what was right, no matter the cost. There had to be a reason for him to align himself with Arik that we couldn’t see. Something forcing his hand.

The alternative was impossible.

So that left me with only one question. What happened next?

Alyssa couldn’t walk away from the Spring Court and whatever people Rhidian had hidden here. Not to mention that there was clearly more going on than we knew or even understood. Tomorrow would be a day for answers, and whatever I was walking into, I needed to do it with at least a plan of what I wanted for Damon.

Giving up on him was a possibility I couldn’t let myself consider.

Arik was the common problem. He’d terrorised this realm and its people, and now Damon was involved somehow. What if this was like The Endless? What if Arik had his hooks into Damon and he had no choice in what he was doing?

It was a convenient theory that I happily clung to, even if it felt a lot like lying to myself.

The only way forward that left us was Rhidian’s plan. We came here knowing we wouldn’t abandon Nymeria. If that was the case, then we had to stand against Arik. It was a fight we could never avoid, and it was a necessary one if we were going to save the people here who so desperately needed it.

Rhidian’s plan might have seemed ridiculous to Alyssa, but it wasn’t any worse than ours. We were only five people. Rhidian said he had an army. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea to hear him out. The Spring Court had hidden these people for long enough. It could work the same for us. We could seek shelter here while we healed, while we trained. All we needed was time to regroup and time to find a plan to deal with Arik. One that wouldn’t see us, and everyone Rhidian had worked so hard to save, dead at the end.

So, basically the impossible.

A frustrated sigh gusted out of me. There had to be something I wasn’t considering. An option that could swing the tide in our favour. A weakness. A weapon.

There was always a way. We just had to find it.

A thudding on the outer door had me bolting up in bed. I didn’t even realise I’d fallen asleep. If the darkness outside of the window was any indication, at least some time had passed. It definitely wasn’t morning though, so what the hell could be so urgent to have someone hammering on the door?

Alyssa was still dead asleep, but Dean was out of bed and striding towards the door like he was itching for a fight. Given how volatile he’d been in our life back in the human realm, and the added contribution of the alpha wolf he now held, it was possibly exactly what he was hoping would happen.

I slipped out of the bed, trying not to wake anyone else as I did. To be fair, if the hammering on the door hadn’t done it yet, I doubted my jostling the mattress slightly would. It was better that Alyssa got the sleep she needed, and from the way she snuggled into Ryder’s side, she obviously needed some of us with her as well.

Jogging quietly across the bedroom floor, I gently closed the bedroom door and made it to Dean’s side just as he was throwing open the main doors. Rhidian didn’t even look guilty about standing there, his fist still raised in the air as he prepared to knock again.

“Finally, do you know how long I’ve been standing here?”

“Not long enough,” Dean snarked. “She’s sleeping, and it’s still night. Fuck off.”