Page 26

“You’re About To Find Out.”

ALEXIARES

“Out of the tree, son.”

The voice startled me. Considering not much else did these days, I took it as a sign to listen to the old man glaring up at me with piercing eyes. Caught red-fucking-handed. Bloodhound wasn’t a name I carried around lightly. It had been hard earned and heavy worn. I’d moved through countless territories undetected for so fucking long I’d started to believe myself a ghost.

While it wasn’t the first time the unfortunate had happened, I hadn’t expected it to happen here. I’d been watching them for days. The Monterey Compound territory was well-covered, but not as impenetrable as it’d been made out to seem.

Lore, it appeared, was the only thing keeping this place standing for their notorious general had been absent from what I could tell. Granted I couldn’t see much in this tree, and I’d be an idiot to expect to see her gallivanting beyond the walls on her own. Pain shot up my ankles as my feet connected with the ground. I took a moment to scan the crowd.

The old man hadn’t come alone. Two soldiers stood behind him, guns raised, but the confidence in his stance let me know he could hand out an ass whooping or two on his own. We were level eyed though he had at least twenty pounds on me.

I tilted my head with a smirk. “You should really kill on command, would probably have solved your gate problem.”

“Who said it was a problem?” His voice was firm, harsher than gravel but calm.

“You don’t take me as stupid, old man.” I huffed a laugh as I dropped my weapons against the hard soil. “That herd didn’t plan that on their own.”

The command to disarm had not been explicitly stated. Spend enough time around jumpy businessmen with the itch to kill and the signs become apparent. Each soldier flanking the man kept their stance and hard glares trained on me, but the twitch of their fingers near the trigger had me seeing a new opportunity before me.

A different way to get in. To accomplish what I’d come here for.

“If I’m not stupid, then why are you giving me advice on how to handle infiltrators of my Compound?” he asked, approaching me without a care in the world. Dropping down, he scooped up my pistol and knife, tucking them into the waist of his pants.

“You think I did it,” I said, my voice steady as I dropped my shoulders in defeat. “I get it. You don’t know me. But think about it: if I was a true threat, would I really be standing here unarmed and vulnerable?”

The man grabbed my arm, pushing me out in front of him. No blood splattered his clothing. If I had to guess, he’d been outside their little walls when shit hit the fan.

“If I thought that, you would not be walking by my side,” he surmised with a grin.

The lack of uniform had me confused with the way the soldiers looked to him for direction. He wasn’t in their military, yet he clearly possessed some level of authority over them. A leader in their community, perhaps.

My mind raced for all that I had learned in preparation for coming to tear this place down. Though I had left St. Cloud in a hurry, I’d spent time on the road gathering intel. I could not defeat an enemy that I did not know. Besides their incompetent general, there were two others who’d help found this haven of which my misery was founded—one by the name of Jax and the other Prescott. Death had called for Jax before I could arrive—a mercy for him no doubt—which meant the one before me was none other than Prescott.

“All that means is you haven’t figured it out yet, and you’re waiting for the answers to come,” I chided, biting down the smirk from the guns poking into my back.

They were right to fear me, especially when I was unarmed. Made me release some … creative energy I suppose.

“You catch on quick.”

Arching a brow, I met his side-eye glance. “Quick enough to be concerning?”

“Precisely.” He tilted his head toward the blistering sun with a laugh.

“Smart man.”

Metal crunched underneath my boots as we passed through the remains of the gate in silence. North Gate if my blueprints had been correct. Prescott said nothing to call off the soldiers marching behind me with their weapons raised. Any hopes of keeping my arrival low-key was thwarted. Every soldier working on cleaning up the mess stared me down with anger simmering eyes. Enemy . I knew the look well. Had spent the entirety of my journey determined to learn how to hide it for the day I met their general face to face.

To truly savor her despair, I’d need to get close, play the long game. There was one final assignment I needed to complete before I left this world. I’d be damned if I didn’t stop to smell the flowers while doing so.

“Whatever you’re leading me to, can’t be worse than anything I’ve gone through. Torture will not work on me.”

“What I’m leading you to, young man , is far worse than torture.” There was a dark humor in his words. Mocking almost. Like he had played that final move in a lengthy game of chess after toying with me long enough for me to relax, to feel victorious—then snatching it away.

The soldiers at our backs snickered, whispering to each other low enough that their words evaded me. There was something going on here. Something that they knew and I didn’t. Licking the corners of my mouth, I accepted my fate for what it was.

“What’s worse than torture?” I asked, curiosity getting the best of me.

This place tested people. That had been the whispered lore lost into the wind and shadows of other settlements. Where I came from, people hated Salem Territory—Monterey Compound specifically. If they didn’t hate it, they wanted to be here. More times than not, I found it to be a mix of both. Hated the fact that they couldn’t be here because of the way it tested you. From what I knew, their gates were open to all. It’d made it easy to conclude that fear of the unknown had kept people rooted in place. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they make the trip themselves?

Before I’d arrived, I hadn’t known what the hell the words I’d heard in the corners of dark streets and mold-licked taverns meant. ‘Test’ could mean a lot of things these days. Now, it was clear to me and I’d walked myself right into what I was sure was the first of many tests.

Prescott’s eyes glimmered with amusement as he stepped behind me in a swift movement, his hand gripping the back of my neck. “You’re about to find out.”