Page 23 of Hunted (Love and Revenge #5)

Dusek

T he tunnels breathed around us. There had been caves here long before the city of Detroit was ever built—the haunt of some paranormal forefathers or other.

This underground network had been built on top of the older caves and tunnels, and it lent the entire tunnel system an ancient kind of presence that seeped through the stone and more modern concrete.

The old Detroit tunnels were mostly forgotten by the general public.

Just miles of carved earth and sealed passageways beneath a city that had all but forgotten its smuggling roots, or the times when the city had plans for a subway.

But certain groups of paranorms knew the tunnels existed, and they put them to good use when they were up to something they didn’t want anyone to know about.

Robin walked ahead of me in silence, her magic pulsing against the line of wards embedded at intervals in the walls of the tunnels closest to The Fox. I didn’t announce myself. She knew I was there.

I had just happened to notice her slipping into the tunnels when I was doing security rounds.

She hadn’t exactly asked for company, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be alone.

I knew my alpha. She was struggling. And I had a feeling she was getting sick of Ruya and the betas being so nice about it.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother trying to help. Who needed a walking terror to comfort them? But lately... I didn’t know what was wrong with me, exactly. Only that I couldn’t seem to keep from poking my nose into things I was wildly unsuited for all of a sudden.

Robin emanated light from the tips of her fingers—a dragon trick that was part spell and part inner heat. The light flickered across the sigil etched into the wall, her hand a breath above the stone.

Her voice was a husky whisper. “Here to berate me for my monumental failure, bubak?”

I stepped closer, careful not to get so close I’d cause her discomfort with my aura, but close enough we weren’t talking to each other from across the tunnel.

I knew exactly which “failure” she meant. The alpha in her had to be a mess of fury and guilt right now. “Cicely’s alive,” I said evenly.

Her shoulders tensed. “Only because Ruya happened to be so close at hand. Seconds, Dusek. He had seconds to live, if she hadn’t given him everything she had.”

“There was never any chance of her not being nearby, Robin.” I said as I moved just a little closer. “Court healer is her official position. And everyone in that room knew there were risks.”

Robin turned, just enough to glance back at me.

Her eyes glinted in the faint light coming from the magic flame in her hand.

“I should have acted on Acacia’s demands immediately, one way or another.

I knew she’d lash out—I just stupidly assumed she’d target me or the snake, and we’re strong enough to withstand her tantrums. I should have realized she’d go for the most vulnerable of us instead.

It was a ridiculous mistake. Pathetic, not being able to predict and work around someone like Acacia.

I never would have made that kind of mistake before. I’m losing my touch.”

“No,” I said. “You’ve just got a whole lot of shit working against you right now. And I think you’ve lost faith in yourself. That alone can cause a person to make mistakes.”

The silence that followed was heavy.

She turned back to the wall, pressed her hand flat against the sigil.

Her aura surged as she poured magic into the marking—fire, and spark, and something older than language, something granted by her dragon heritage.

She was no sorcerer, but when Sanka made the wards decades ago, he made sure anyone in our original court could recharge them when needed.

The crack sealed and the ward strengthened. “One down,” she murmured.

We moved deeper into the tunnel. I didn’t tell her that she should be conserving her magical energy.

She didn’t need any reminder that she wasn’t whole.

And this was simple magic. Her system would equalize quickly with a brief rest. She was trying to prove herself.

I just wasn’t sure who she was trying to reassure—the court, or herself.

She walked with measured force—boots placed with purpose, jaw tight, fists curled.

I’d seen Robin crush enemies and ruthlessly orchestrate chaos and ruin within the syndicate factions as we slowly made a place for ourselves and eroded their power over the years.

I’d seen her laugh in the face of noble death and swear vengeance in a whisper that froze the air.

But this? This was the walk of someone very purposefully staying rooted to the ground. She was barely holding her human shape.

I recognized it in her, because I’d been there before. When Robin and the others first freed me from my slavery I had hardly been able to hold a human form. And for a long time after, all it took was one stressor too many to have me bursting and scattering into shadows again.

I didn’t speak again until we reached the southern gate—the one closest to the edge of the Rivertown warehouse district.

The sigil here had worn thin. Its heartbeat faltered.

Robin knelt, fingers sweeping over the moss-crusted symbol.

“I anchored this one the night we lost the old Corktown safehouse.”

“That was forty years ago,” I murmured.

“Mmm. Was it? Feels like only yesterday.”

I crouched beside her, careful not to touch. “Do you ever wish we’d moved quicker? Burned it all down sooner?” I asked. She had always had hunger and drive behind her goals, but she was also the most patient and methodical person I’d known. Until recently.

Her lips twisted. “I used to dream about it. Walking into the Emperor’s throne room with my wings out, teeth bared, fire in my throat. I used to fantasize about the sound his bones would make when they cracked, the way he’d feel as he burst between my dragon’s teeth.”

“But?” I prodded. I wanted to help. I was a gamma, my caring instincts were often secondary to my fighting instincts.

.. but I wanted to help. And I thought maybe Robin needed a less beta touch right now.

I wasn’t afraid to ask her difficult questions.

She would hardly be surprised if the boogeyman wanted to talk about awful things.

She shook her head. “It’s different now, the impatience I feel. I’m tired of fantasies. I want something real. Results. And end to this all. I just... I’m tired, Dusek. And I grow more tired with every day. I just want this to end.”

I nodded. That was what I was afraid of.

I could feel the darkness hovering around her aura, coloring her every movement.

Irritability. Lethargy. A sort of... soul sickness.

The bold, beautiful alpha princess of the rebel court was.

.. depressed. And I was afraid how this would end.

I didn’t know how best to confront her, though. I wasn’t a soft touch like the others.

Leaning into my bubak magic ever so slightly, I tried to siphon off some of the dark emotions, to feed from the soul-dark that was plaguing her and maybe lessen its weight.

“Everything will come around right in the end,” I said awkwardly, trying my best to offer.

.. positivity. It wasn’t really my strong suit.

She huffed in disdain at my weak attempt. “Will it?”

We worked in tandem to repair the gate. My magic moved like smoke—cool, precise, binding her heat without extinguishing it. Our auras met in the middle, danced like smoke and fire. Robin didn’t flinch away from the creeping dread my aura caused everyone who came into contact with it.

Finally, I worked up enough courage to ask her the question that was lodged in my throat. “You’re... not planning on surviving this, are you?” I said quietly.

She didn’t look at me, didn’t pause in her perusal of the rough stone wall in front of her. “Oh, that,” she said with a dismissive wave of one graceful hand. “It hardly matters, as long as the emperor dies and my magic is returned to me, where no one else can use it for their own stupid schemes.”

She was tired. A childhood full of trauma followed by sixty years of plotting and living for revenge would do that to a person, I supposed.

But I didn’t know what to say, how to change her mind or appease the desperate fear building in my own chest. We couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t lose her. For so long, Robin’s fiery spark was the only thing that had given me purpose when I myself was too tired to go on.

“You used to pray,” I said, surprising us both when the words just tumbled out of my mouth without thought.

“I did?” she asked flippantly as we moved on down the tunnel. As if she had no clue what I was nattering on about.

“I saw you once,” I admitted. “On accident. Not long after I joined the court.” The image was forever etched in my mind—Robin kneeling on the stone floor in her room, her long red-gold hair loose around her and her hands clasped to her chest as she whispered to the altar she kept hidden in her closet.

I hadn’t meant to spy. I had been looking for her to ask her a question.

But it had been all I could do to turn away from the vision she made.

She had seemed so... fervent. So passionate and intense. So full of faith.

“Mmm... yes, to the dragon ancestors, I suppose,” she said in a dismissive way that made me think she was working too hard to sound unbothered.

“Do you still?” I asked softly.

She didn’t answer, and I didn’t press the issue.

When the next ward sparked clean and steady, she turned and leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. I stayed beside her.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said quietly. “Acacia. The bond. Josh. This... spiral. I never meant for any of this to take this long. I think... I think I was dragging my feet. Putting it off, even before Ruya came.”

“I know.”

“And this mess with Acacia... I thought I could control it. Use her for information on the emperor. Keep our people safe.”