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“Well, I know what I’d like to eat,” she purred, reaching for Hawk, but he stepped free of her. Her face was no less beautiful when she was pissed, but it was doubly scary. “You refuse me? I’ll have you returned to your cells to rot!”

“Not one of your captive dicks,” he replied, staring her down. “No cells to go back to.”

She studied him closely, her nostrils flaring as she did so, then she spun on her heel and stalked away from us, her daughter left behind with eyes scanning the room, trying to work out where she should be.

“Who have you brought us? I thought you had escaped the city,” Arelia said.

My spine began to straighten as I realised what we’d done.

These were the daughters and granddaughters of Lord Lian, one of the highest ranking Volken of the city.

I looked closely at each woman’s smooth, perfect face.

They could scent us like the guys could in Sanctuary.

We’d basically announced what we were and who we were to every single one of them, just by walking in.

What would they do with the information?

“I had, and now I’m back.”

“To do as you said? The prophecy…?”

He looked into Arelia’s eyes without flinching in the face of all that hope and longing.

“I don’t know, Arelia. Nothing's clear. My visions… Something’s coming, that's for sure. Change of some sort, but I don’t know what.”

“And we’re trapped down here, to wait it out,” another woman said, crossing her arms and frowning.

“What if you weren’t?”

I blurted the words out before I’d even thought about it, but as I looked around the gilded cage the women were forced to raise their children in, it was hard not to consider the possibility.

“Jules!” Aaron snapped. I got why. We didn’t know these women, these Volken daughters, didn’t know where their loyalties lay, or even if they wanted their freedom, but I found I had to know.

“What would you do if you could get out of here?” I said, watching each one of them react to the idea.

Some went wide eyed, minds blown too far to form a response.

Some got immediately restless, their arms going around their children, but too many went flat and still.

Like prey under the paws and claws of a predator, playing dead in the hope they wouldn't be. I didn’t need anyone to answer, their reaction was eloquent enough.

“I’d run,” the dark-haired woman said. Those grey eyes landed on her daughter, who had shrunk down against the couch with no one to hold her. “Away from everything here. I’d run and I’d run and I’d run, until there was nowhere left to run and then finally, I would be free.”

“Kerin…” Arelia said, taking a step forward.

“Well, I would. No one wants to live and die in a cage, no one. Not even if it’s pretty, not when our father deigns to visit, not when I’m forced to mate over and over with men who despise me and who I loathe in return.

Not when I’m forced to bear child after child, only to have the males torn away.

I would take any opportunity to get out of this place. ”

Kerin didn’t look at her daughter, but I did.

I saw the tears well in her eyes, then silently run down her face, and wasn’t sure who to empathise with.

Kerin was right, and I wondered how much I’d love a child I’d been forced to have, despite the fact her daughter patently needed someone to love her.

How would you bond with a child, knowing it was either going to be ripped from you or forced to live out her days as you did?

My hand strayed to my stomach, something that caught several of the women’s eyes.

They watched me carefully through narrowed eyes, until one of the little girls piped up.

“I’m hungry, Mummy.”

“Can I have some food please, Mummy,” the woman said in the carefully calm way mothers often used.

The little girl parroted the response back, and her mother nodded, straightening up to look expectantly at me.

The women and children moved as one, sitting down at a long dining table, backs straight, hands in their laps as we placed plates and cutlery before them.

“I’d move as far away as possible,” one woman said as she picked up her fork, pausing with the tines pressed into the tablecloth.

“I’d go somewhere where they’d never heard of Tirian or Lonan, find a little house, perhaps a mate.

I’d bring Layla up in peace, make sure she went outside every day to feel the sun on her face.

Let her fill the house with wildflowers.

” Layla, a girl of about seven looked up at her mother with a bright smile.

“I’d give her everything my mother wanted for me but couldn’t give. ”

For a moment, all you could hear was the sounds of us moving around the table, but it was soon broken.

“I’d run, in Tirian and human form, and my children would run with me, all of them.

” The woman squared her shoulders. “My boys as well as my girls. We would move for the pleasure of it, never staying in one place for more than a night, never leaving a mark on the earth. Just being, drifting like feathers on the wind.” She eyed the walls around her.

“I’d spurn gold and marble, velvet and silk for the simplest of homespun.

We would have nothing, and it would be glorious. ”

“So, you would beggar your children?” Kerin said.

“What would I care for wealth? What has it done for us here?” The woman poked the golden candlestick with her knife. “I’m Lyrica, by the way.”

“Jeananne,” the woman who’d spoken beforehand said, “and my daughter, Layla.”

“I’d have a child,” one of the women said. She sat between two other women, no child at her side. “I’d have one for myself, with someone of my choosing, for me to keep forever.”

“Unlike the ones you smothered in their sleep?” Kerin said.

“Kerin,” Arelia said.

“What? It’s true, isn’t it? But all this talk is for nothing, isn’t it?”

The red shine in Kerin’s grey eyes worried me as she turned to face me. The Black Wolf and Lonan weren’t the same things, but for now, they operated under an unholy alliance. Who looked out at me when that red tinge leached in? Kerin, Lonan, or the Black Wolf?

“Is it? I have the keys, don’t I?” I said, shaking them in front of them, which was probably a mistake.

Fuck, Kerin was fast. Her lips peeled from her fangs as she leapt across the table at me, scattering plates and pulling cries from children and women alike.

My free hand snapped around her wrist, and I was thankful when I managed to hold her still.

The guys clustered around me, low growls building in their chests.

Kerin went limp, more or less, in my grip, her eyes flicking to the guys then me.

“You’re a pack. You’re Tirian.”

She looked almost affronted. Punching her square in the face wouldn’t have surprised her as much as this, I was willing to guess.

“You exist, outside of all of this.” Kerin flung her arm up, gesturing widely to the suite.

“You… All of these… No one…” She just pulled herself off the table, unmoved by the fact plates and cutlery came with her, splattering on the rich carpets.

I caught her arm when she staggered, righting her, then watched to see if she had this.

“You did bring them,” Arelia said, standing up and staring at Sylvan.

“I don’t know what I brought.”

“But you said. You always said.”

“Fuck, Arelia, I don’t always remember what I said. When the dreams, the visions come, I’m offline. I’m the puppet of whichever god is riding me.”

“But you told me. All those nights, you told me you’d get us out.”

Most women, when they get upset, start to go red and blotchy, getting sniffy and snivelly, but not Arelia.

She stood there, every muscle in her body quivering, looking as terrible as a goddess as she stared down the table.

Kiralee’s hand reached for her mother’s, and Arelia took it, which drew all of our attention.

“She’s…” Jack said, and I nodded.

We hadn’t noticed it at the start, each one of the women a kaleidoscopic array of beautiful.

Every hair, eye, and skin colour was represented in the…

sisters or half-sisters at least, so a child with long black hair and bright green eyes like her mother was stunning, but no more stunning than any of the others here.

But as my eyes were drawn down, I noted the strong stance in the little girl’s feet, her eyebrows pulled down, her eyes burning into mine in ways her mother’s couldn’t.

“Get us out,” Kiralee said. An alpha rumble in a kid’s voice was the last thing I expected to hear, but the rest of us stood straighter as we felt her will beating down.

“Now, look…” Finn said in what he probably thought was a reasonable tone.

“Get us out,” the child repeated, and then I saw it.

Why would Sylvan come back? His heart seemed to be firmly ensnared by Branwen, but as I looked at Kiralee’s mother, it wasn’t hard to see why he would have.

Let your eyes blur, trade the knowing look of Branwen for the rather more nobly desperate one of Arelia, and it was easy to make the swap.

My eyes dropped to her daughter. As Sylvan had obviously done at least once.

I looked across at him, saw the completely arid expression on his face as every part of himself was tucked up tight behind the wall he’d built.

His eyes sparked when he caught me looking at him, that old devilish smile back for a second, and the gasp across the table said Arelia had seen it too.

“Well, little queen? Are you going to ride to the rescue? How can you build your court if you don’t collect some courtiers? ”

“I get it now,” Brandon said as an aside. “Seers are really fucking annoying.”

“Welcome to the club,” Slade said, slinging an arm around his shoulder. “What should we do with this weaselly little fuck? Wring every bit of bloody information he has out of him, and then use his misbegotten hide to wipe up the mess?”