Page 224 of The Lost Ones

Levi bends kissing me slowly before handing me the cup. He lets his lips linger by my ear.

“I’m going to hold you to that, Darling.” He vows nipping my ear and sending a shiver down my spine.

“Promises, promises.” I mutter turning and capturing his lips with I nip them in retaliation.

“Damn, Beautiful.” Kai mutters from the other side. “You’re going to be the death of us.”

“Same.” I reply taking and sip of coffee. “Oh my god. If I can’t have sex at least I can have damn good coffee.”

Jax chokes on his coffee as he and the others turn to me with their eyes wide and eyebrows raised.

“What?” I ask taking another sip.

“I just love your unpredictability.” Maverick smirks and I grin in return.

“Ok so before we get more side tracked what’s the plan?” Levi asks settling down.

“It’s not going to be easy getting into the Cursed City. I imagine that’s the whole reason why they are keeping them there. Hard to get to and less questions being asked.” Kysen says taking a huge bite of pastry.

“And their own little protection army. Even if the criminals that live in the city aren’t aware that’s what they’re doing. They are an effective deterrent.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that.” Kysen muses. “They must have one hell of a reputation within the city if they’re being left alone. Like I said outsiders are killed or kept as workers. I’m not sure which fate is worse.”

“It’s obviously going to be a mistake to just rush in and try to rescue them. Doing that is almost guaranteed to go wrong, and will end in our failure and probable casualties for everyone concerned.” Maverick says.

“We need to be cautious and realistic about this. Seasoned and welltrained Enforcers have tried to get in and failed. There is a massive chance that we will too.” Kai says seriously, remembering what Kysen told us when we first learned of the Cursed City.

“Ok so business as usual then.” Hunt says, “Just because we’re in another realm doesn’t mean that all the training we’ve already had is useless. We always do recon first. So that’s what we’ll do here.”

“Hunter’s right. We will run this like a normal op but remain aware and on guard for the supernatural elements.” Levi says. “Everyone pack up, Toby and his brothers are getting the horses ready.”

“We‘ll get as close as safely possible and see what we can find out.” Maverick adds.

“Ideally we’d be able to get in but I wouldn’t keep your hopes up. I can ask my brothers to help us. There’s no way that we’re going to be able to rescue that many without some help and we have a better chance of success if there’s more of us.” Kysen suggests.

“Good point.” Levi agrees, “I want to do the recon first though before we contact them. At least that way we have more information to give them and they can decide if it’s worth the risk. I am aware of what a big ask it is and how dangerous it is. None of us would hold it against you or them if they didn’t want to. After all this mission was giving to us by the goddess and you are not obligated to help at all.”

“Whilst I appreciate that, Mate, I’m in. I want to help rescue the other Centres and not only will my brothers be in because I am but they would be regardless because it’s what we are training to do. We are training to fight against the Order. Trust me we’re all in.”

“Thank you.” Levi says sincerely. “I still want to recon first so we know where we stand and have an actually base camp for them to meet us at.”

“Got it.” Kysen nods respectfully and smiles.

“How far away is the Cursed City from here?” I ask.

“Good question. I have no idea, since I’m not familiar with the area. One second.” Kysen replies as he fishes around in his already packed bag and pulls out his map.

Jax takes everything off of one of the tables pushed to the side of the room and drags it into the middle so Kysen can lay the map on it and we can all see.

“Right ok, so this is where we are.” Kysen mutters pointing to a point on the map. “Well fuck me.”

“What?” Levi asks.

“Well I was pretty certain that it would be at least a two day ride back to the Cursed City from here. We just have to go back the way we came but look, there’s a short cut through this band of trees here that will cut the trip down to two hours if we ride nonstop maybe even quicker since our horses seem to be able to go faster than they should. I don’t know how I’ve never noticed it before we’ve been travelling this way for years.”

“You did say you’d never been out this way though so you had no needto look.” Maverick reasons, “what about when we get them out. Where are we taking them?”

“Good point. Not only that but how are we going to travel with thousands of Centre’s and their Bonded.” Kai asks.