Page 39 of Eternal Light (Fated in the Stars #5)

The Shadow Crown (Finn)

The atmosphere in the cottage is quiet, but Finn knows it’s just that everyone is lost in their own thoughts.

Even after the flurry of discussion, the bare-bones chessboard plan, and Luca’s half-asleep commentary from Gideon’s lap, his thoughts are still racing.

His brain keeps looping the same internal checklist—What’s next?

What’s missing? What’s going to go wrong?

—while his fingers move without direction, tugging on borrowed sweatpants and fidgeting with the old wooden chess pieces Leo had left behind.

They’re scuffed and worn, clearly well-loved. Who had played here before them? Who had left them behind?

With a sigh, Finn sets the white Queen gently back in place and finally gives in to what he’s been resisting for the last ten minutes—pulling up the biometric data for all his mates, even though he can see with his own eyes that they’re here. That they’re okay.

His phone rings before the screen can even load. The sudden vibration makes him flinch and nearly drop it to the stone floor.

“Shit,” he mutters. “It’s Margot.” He hits accept, his thumb trembling. “Hello, Finn speaking.”

“Finn, is Jay there?” she asks, sounding a bit off—even to Finn, who has only met her a handful of times.

Finn puts her on speaker and places the phone in the center of the chessboard.

“We’re all here. Is everything alright at Phoenix?” Jay asks.

“As good as it can be, given we’re dealing with the…uh, debacle…” she says cautiously.

She’s referring to Jay’s shooting and the public perception of his subsequent demise. Finn hates to even think about how close it was to being reality rather than fiction—a disaster rather than a mere debacle.

“Sorry. We know it’s a lot of work.”

“Lauren says it’s important—and if it’s important to you, it’s important to us. That’s why I’m calling. She said I should let her know if there was anything weird happening, but I can’t get her on the phone or by email since this morning. So I wanted to call you.”

It’s unlike Lauren to disappear off the radar without letting them know. Shit.

“What is it? Trouble with the news agencies?” Leo asks.

“No, actually, we got a DM on socials yesterday.”

“From whom?” Nix asks, curiosity clear on his face. “Does Phoenix usually respond to DMs?”

“We don’t, but we screen them for verified accounts as a professional courtesy.

The DM came from @bossmanpc??. We escalated it to Sentinel to do a bit of recon right away, given the content of the DM, and a few things popped up.

It was enough to make us take it seriously.

I didn’t want to call until we knew what we were dealing with. ”

“That handle sounds like I should be making a connection. Just save me from my stupidity and give it to us straight,” Jay jokes.

Nix growls at the self-effacing insult to their alpha while Luca snorts: Straight! Ha.

“Sure thing, Boss. You said before that you knew Carnell had connections in your old company, right?”

“Buddies of buddies and a bit of blackmail fodder,” Jay says with a frown.

There had been some high-ranking members of the board on Carnell’s blackmail list. They’d assumed he’d been putting a bit of pressure on to keep Hayes employed in the aftermath.

Awful, but nothing they couldn’t handle.

Tentacles of evil, Jay had called them once.

“Well, it’s a bit more than that. Sentinel tracked the account to an IP address in Nashville.

I won’t bore you with the ‘hows,’ but they found three holding companies that account for seventy-eight percent of the voting shares.

Notably, they’ve been selling stock off at below market value at an accelerated rate over the last five months. ”

That would explain the low-cash-flow-motivated shit LRH had been experiencing last fall, too. That the time frame correlated with Nix’s return to them can’t be a coincidence. Finn isn’t the only one connecting the dots.

“Those companies are owned by Patrick Carnell.”

Luca is frozen in shock, his eyes wide with anger—if his burnt coffee scent is anything to go by.

Leo picks the chessboard up and flings it into the old stone wall with an uncharacteristic roar.

“Are you telling me Carnell has been impacting Ripley Records’ decisions at the shareholder level? He’s made profit off LRH’s backs? He’s had his fucking eye on us all this time? For how long?”

“Sentinel techs said the trail goes back at least a decade,” Margot says. She must realize that this news is bad, even if she doesn’t know exactly why.

Finn has never seen Jay so angry, his smoky pine scent a blazing forest fire fueled by the knowledge that Jay’s life’s work had lined the pockets of the man who had tortured their mate.

Carnell has been playing the long game for much longer than any of them had expected—maybe since the very beginning.

Out of the corner of his eye, Finn catches Nix making suspiciously intense eye contact with Luca before shaking his head. What are they keeping from them? Surely something that would tip their rage-filled mates over the edge into a rampage.

Keeping something from Gideon and Jay is all Luca needs to hit his maximum, as he bursts into tears, turning his face into Gideon’s neck.

If the alpha’s stone face is anything to go by, it’s going to smell like petrichor tinged with sulfur in there in ten seconds or fewer.

“I need a minute,” Jay growls before heading out the front door at a slow walk.

Nix looks torn between Jay and Luca but follows the former out.

“Should I still read the DM?” Margot asks quietly.

“Sorry. Yes. Please, go ahead,” Grayson says, his hair moving in that non-existent breeze that Finn has quickly come to realize means he’s controlling his anger—and his magic—with extreme effort.

Margot reads the message in a monotone.

“We’d like to extend an invitation to my son, Allistair Carnell, and his pack to attend a night of celebration. The prophesied time of destiny is upon us. Regards, Your father, Patrick Carnell.”

Prophesied time of destiny? What the hell.

“Ew, fucking ew. Celebrating what? Jay’s death?” Luca sniffs, jumping up to start pacing.

Grayson promptly grabs him around the waist and pulls him down onto his lap before he can hurt himself stepping on the wooden chess pieces.

“There’s an official invitation attached.

I asked at the mailroom, and there were two physical invitations sent here, too.

Sentinel has another one from your house, and there were others sent to Grayson’s office and Human Resources at the hospital.

Gideon, Maureen said they have one as well at Quest. They were all received in the last forty-eight hours. ”

“He really wants you to attend,” Rowan snarls.

“Thanks for calling. Don’t do anything with them or respond. We’ll handle it from here. Thank the Sentinel crew for us, too,” Leo says carefully.

“Will do. Just…be careful, will you? I’m not cut out for this espionage shit.”

“I feel you. I think maybe you guys should head home and stay there until we get things settled here.”

“Are you sure? It’ll delay all kinds of stuff.”

“Very sure. Say we’re closing in mourning until further notice.”

It’s a damn fine idea; Carnell would certainly not hesitate to apply pressure at Phoenix if he thought it would bring LRH—and therefore Gideon—to heel. The pack has too many soft spots, and for better or worse, it makes them vulnerable to Carnell—and now Withers—applying pressure.

“Sounds good. Take care of everyone. I’ll be in touch if there’s anything else.”

“Will do. You, too,” Leo says, disconnecting.

Finn wastes no time checking Jay and Nix’s biometrics again to self-soothe. He can’t help that his black currant scent is musty. What he sees—or doesn’t see—causes his eyebrows to go up, and he’s on his feet to follow them out the front door.

At his mad scramble, Gideon asks, “Everything okay, Puppy?”

“Jay’s microchip just went offline.”

Nix’s is fine. Logic dictates he wouldn’t be if Jay had been struck down. Again.

Spinning in the chair, Gideon pulls open the curtains.

Finn heaves a sigh of relief when he sees Jay stomping through the yard, arms flailing and face red. He’s got his fangs down and his claws out, too—like his anger has manifested beyond his normal human constraints.

“Probably damaged from the surgery, or maybe when Gray healed him up?” Finn knows he sounds disappointed. Not being able to see all of his mates is just one more thing he’ll have to worry about. “Was there another microchip? A backup?”

“They all have to be individually calibrated,” Gideon says, shaking his head.

“Grayson recalibrated on its own when he…uh…leveled up.” Back at the hospital, after he’d blown up the MRI. It was still Grayson, though—even if he was more than before.

“We can always hope it’ll come back online. But even then, I left the whole kit at the apartment.”

And they won’t be going back there until this is all over.

Moving away from the window, Finn leaves Jay and Nix to hug it out and turns back to the room, where Grayson has Luca swaddled in a big pink quilt. Their beta has the enigma’s finger in his mouth, and his red, puffy eyelids are at half-mast.

“Leo, what are we going to do about Carnell’s invitation?” Rowan asks. “Hey, could this be your way in?”

To Finn’s surprise, Leo is perched in Rowan’s lap, but his arms are like steel bands around their beta’s chest—as if he’d wrestled him into submission to prevent him from hunting Carnell down in retaliation for a decade of manipulation.

Leo turns in Rowan’s arms, his jaw still clenched in anger. “That’s a good idea.”

Pulling a phone out of his pocket, he texts Margot to ask for a copy of the attachment Carnell had sent electronically.

It must be the phone Jay and Gideon had, because Finn hasn’t seen Rowan using one since yesterday morning. It makes sense, given that Rowan’s wolf “suit” doesn’t exactly come with pockets. It makes Finn wonder where the phone is.

“Rowan, where’s your phone?”

The enigma’s eyes go wide, and Finn can almost see the wheels turning as he thinks back to the last time he had it in his hand—or mouth.

“Fuck, I think Winnie might have it?”

“I should call her and make sure. We don’t want to have it lying around.”

Finn dials Rowan’s phone, and it rings and rings.

Nix had made sure they had her number so they could coordinate their move to his parents’ house. Ansel had been awake when they’d left, so they hadn’t wanted to distract the siblings from their relieved reunion, but Nix had said they would be in touch today.

Finn feels his love surge along the bond. It’s unbelievably kind of Nix to offer his family home to help Winnie and Ansel. It’s a selfless gesture, given he’d just found the house himself—even if Nix insists it really isn’t selfless at all.

Hey, I can hear you thinking sweet things about me, Dr. Merritt. Are you okay?

It’s not that Nix can really hear the specifics of Finn’s thoughts in the same way Finn can hear Nix, but he can tell the quality of his emotion. He is determined that someday, Nix will hear Finn say I love you on this wavelength.

A few seconds later, Nix is pulling an exhausted, still steaming-mad Jay through the door, and once the angry alpha is seated in the chair with his head in his hands, their omega puts his strong arms around Finn’s waist for a hug.

“You called?” he says, with a kiss to Finn’s chin.

“I was thinking about Winnie and Ansel. Rowan has lost his phone.”

“Hey! I was dealing with some other stuff at the time; cut me some slack. I’m going to heat up those leftovers—that’s okay with you guys?”

Nix’s stomach shifts at the words, pressed as it is against Finn’s abdomen. The girls are bumping and rolling. No matter that Finn is a physician and he’s delivered no less than thirty babies in his career, feeling their children still gives him butterflies.

With a last squeeze to Finn’s waist, he sits on the corner of the couch so he can touch both Grayson and Luca.

“Yummy. Did you get her on the phone?”

“No, I was just going to call her on her own line. See if she can find it on her end.”

“I was wondering if we could find her a job where she can work at home for a bit? She doesn’t want to feel like a freeloader,” Nix says. What he doesn’t add is that he understands that feeling exactly. “I bet Lauren has an idea.”

“Good idea. I’ll ask her. I wonder why she didn’t take Margot’s calls,” Leo says, adding a text to his mother onto the one to Margot.

“Let’s call Winnie about the lost phone and ask if she has an idea of work she’d like to do? She could even go to school. She can do that online, too,” Jay suggests.

“Yes!” Nix does a little jig in excitement, his emotions raising the happiness quotient in the room.

Finn dials Winnie’s number on speaker, and it rings and rings before finally connecting. Expecting his new friend to say a happy hello, there’s just heavy breathing.

“Winnie?” Nix asks with concern in his tone and a frown between his eyebrows.

“Well, hello, little Novice. I’d recognize those dulcet tones anywhere. I’m sorry to say that Winnie and Ansel can’t come to the phone right now.”