Page 37 of Renegade Kings

But now there was nothing. Not a single trace of the knife was on my skin. And there was something disconcerting about that. To come so close to death and then have nothing to show for it. Perhaps not the thought of a normal person, but when had I ever been that?

“I think I can feel something,” Ryder said, drawing my attention back to the others, only to find Ryder up to his shoulder with his arm inside the wall.

“Did you not even consider that there could be something on the other side which could separate that arm from your body?” I asked calmly, already knowing there wasn’t because it probably would have happened before now.

“Nah, it’s fine. I’ve probably got super healing like you.” Ryder didn’t even look at me as he spoke. He was that caught up in his task. He’d always been like this, obsessive to a fault sometimes.

“I’m not sure it works like that,” Tank pointed out, making Ryder bark with laughter.

Then he wrenched out his arm, a small package in his hand that was definitely a book wrapped in some kind of cloth.

“Huh, that feels somewhat anticlimactic,” he complained as he passed it over to Alyssa and then tried to shove his face through the hole. “Maybe there’s something else in here.”

At that point, a click reverberated around the room, and the bookcase swung loose from the wall. “Found the catch,” Maddox added, much to Ryder’s displeasure.

“Boooo, that’s the boring way.”

Alyssa left the squabbling pair, who were now struggling to get the bookcase fully open, the hinges long since having rusted over from lack of use. She moved to the desk Tank had been using and slowly sat in the seat; her gaze locked on the parcel in her hands.

I could tell that she recognised it, but couldn’t figure out if that was a good thing or not. If she’d seen this before, it seemed unlikely that it would hold the answers we were looking for. Alyssa had never heard of this prophecy before or we wouldn’t be in this room searching for information.

Tank went to her side at the same time as I. Part of me thought about hanging back, letting them have this moment together. She’d chosen him first. They needed time to be together. But I couldn’t make my feet move me away. Because I needed her too, and I didn’t have the luxury of a bond to look to as reassurance that she would always be mine.

Not yet, anyway.

The strangest part was that he didn’t even seem bothered to see me standing on her other side. I knew his feelings about Alyssa taking us all as mates. I’d developed an intriguing habit of listening to conversations. Mainly because my wolf kept fucking about with my hearing and it meant I could hear things I wasn’t supposed to. I wasn’t exactly going to stop him, though. Because knowing Tank wanted us all to be with Alyssa meant claiming her would be all that much easier.

All I was waiting for was a sign that she was ready. It was the only thing holding me back. I wouldn’t take her until she was begging me for it. That way, her surrender would be all the sweeter. For me and for her.

Alyssa slowly slipped the material from the book, revealing the leather bound tome beneath. It bore no markings on the cover with a thick cord wrapped around it, holding the pages closed.

“This is my father’s journal.” She looked up, her gaze moving around the office as she took in every surface. “I didn’t think to look for it. It was never hidden away like this. He was always scribbling something inside.”

“This is it then? He’d write it in here, right? Especially if he was looking into what it meant.” It seemed like the answer to all the questions we had right now, but it also seemed far too convenient for it to be true.

It couldn’t be this easy.

I almost held my breath as she unwound the leather cord. The leather creaked with age as she opened the cover. The paper inside had yellowed, but the writing was still clear enough to read. Especially on the loose piece of paper that was slipped inside the cover.

I took a step back when I saw Alyssa’s name at the top. This was a letter from her father. One that he’d written knowing that one day she’d find this and he would already be gone. It wasn’t meant for me, and she shouldn’t have to read this in front of us all.

Tank looked at me in confusion as my hand came to his shoulder, but he moved back with me without me even needing to put any pressure on him. Interesting. He’d said before that his bear wouldn’t be able to stand down to my wolf, but he didn’t seem to question looking to me when he wanted to know what to do.

“Why don’t we see if we can find Rhidian?” I suggested.

Alyssa’s spine snapped straight, and her gaze darted to me before I could even finish my thought. Thinking about it, I could see why she’d be concerned, considering my earlier statement.

I gave her the softest smile I could manage and knew I fell short by a long shot. “We should look at getting our weapons back and see about where we can start training. Maybe look for a spot for tonight while we’re at it. Somewhere away from the other people in the palace who we haven’t seen any sign of yet,” I explained.

It was a thought that needed following up later, but for now, all I could think about was getting Alyssa the privacy she needed and didn’t seem to want to ask for. Because where the hell was everyone and were they keeping them away from us on purpose or just giving us time to get used to the idea of all of us dying in this place before we had to interact with them?

“Maybe we should head back to the water. It’s far enough from the palace that we shouldn’t pose a risk to anyone here and we didn’t have any trouble from the trees before,” Ryder suggested.

“No, just the people coming out of them,” Tank muttered.

I could get on board with his whole pissed off bear thing. It made sense to me on an almost spiritual level. I never understood the need to pacify people you didn’t care about.

“It’s not a terrible idea,” Alyssa muttered, but I could see that her mind was elsewhere. She didn’t need to be worrying about stuff like this. What kind of mates were we if we weren’t able to take something like this off her hands?