Free Web NovelChapter 207: Chapter 206: Malachai Is Sending Assassins
"Okay," Eve said quietly.
She watched her mates file out into the hallway with her uncle, and then she was alone with the silence and the slow, persistent warmth of her hunger and the particular feeling of being protected from information about her own life.
She hated it.
She understood it. She still hated it.
She lasted approximately eight minutes before pressing her ear to the door.
The voices were low, but succubus hearing, it turned out, was not something that had been damaged by her power crash. She caught fragments....Malachai and timeline and we don’t know which....and Raphael’s voice saying something that included the words before she reaches Court with a weight that made Eve’s stomach drop.
Then Damian’s voice, sharp and quiet: "All three? He’s pursuing all three simultaneously?"
And Raphael: "Seraphine’s source says he’s not certain which angle will land. So he’s running all of them at once and seeing which takes."
Then a silence that lasted long enough that Eve had to resist the urge to open the door entirely.
Then Silas: "She can’t know all of this yet. She’s not...."
"She needs to know enough to understand the stakes," Raphael said. "She’s not fragile. Don’t make her feel like she is."
Another silence. Then footsteps, and Eve retreated back to the bed with approximately three seconds to spare before the door opened and Damian walked back in, followed by the others, followed by Raphael who looked like he’d aged something invisible in the past twenty minutes.
Eve looked at Damian.
"Tell me," she said.
He pulled the chair close. Sat in it. Laced his hands together and looked at her with those gray eyes that were very carefully not showing her anything he wasn’t ready to show.
"Seraphine received intelligence from a source inside Malachai’s inner circle," he said. "Secondhand, unverified, but her source has been reliable before. Malachai knows about your trial. He knows Katerina endorsed you despite the loss. He knows your claim just gained significant momentum."
"He’s moving to stop it," Eve said. Not a question.
"He’s moving on multiple fronts. They don’t know which will materialize first....or if all of them will. The possibilities are...." He paused. "An assassin. Someone already positioned, already in place, waiting for an opportunity. They don’t know if that means inside the estate or outside it or somewhere between here and Court." freewēbnoveℓ.com
Eve’s mouth went dry.
"A legal challenge," Damian continued, his voice steady as architecture. "Moving to formally contest your claim before you reach Court, using your current condition as evidence of instability or unfitness. He’d argue the power crash at the trial proves you’re not ready, potentially not safe."
"And the third?" Eve asked.
Damian’s expression flickered....just barely. "He may be moving against someone you love. Someone close to you. To draw you out before you’ve recovered. To force your hand while you’re still..."
"Vulnerable," Eve finished.
"Yes."
The word landed in the room and stayed there.
Eve sat with it. Felt the weight of it....all three possibilities, all three threats running simultaneously, Malachai playing a hand of cards and waiting to see which one hit. He didn’t need all three to work. He only needed one.
Through the bond, she could feel her mates’ carefully managed tension....the controlled fury of men who were very good at protecting things and were currently staring at a threat with no clear face, no clear location, no clear timeline.
"The person they might target," Eve said carefully. "Close to me. Does Seraphine have any indication of who?"
Raphael spoke for the first time since re-entering the room. "No. Her source wasn’t specific. It could be a political contact. A pack member." He paused. "It could be Maya or Elena. Anyone Malachai has identified as a pressure point."
Anyone Eve loved. Anyone who could be used to make her move before she was ready, weak and healing and barely able to access the power she’d nearly died from yesterday.
She thought about Maya. About Elena. About Marcus and Catherine and all the pack members who had dressed formally and attended Margaret’s funeral to honor their Luna.
She thought about the assassin. Already positioned. Already watching. Already waiting for an opening.
Her hands were very steady in her lap. She noticed that, distantly.....the way they weren’t shaking even though something inside her chest had gone very cold and very still.
"Okay," she said.
"Eve....." Damon started.
"I’m not spiraling," she said. "I’m thinking." She looked at Raphael. "Seraphine came herself. To tell you specifically. Not through channels, not through intermediaries. She came here in person."
Raphael met her gaze. "Yes."
"That means she’s more worried than she wanted to appear at the trial. It means she thinks the threat is credible."
"Yes," he said again, and his voice had something in it that sounded like pride and grief in equal measure.
"And she told you specifically," Eve continued. "Not the brothers. Not a representative. You."
Something moved across Raphael’s face....subtle, quick, there and gone. "We have a history of communication," he said. "She knows I’ll deliver the information accurately."
The non-answer was, itself, an answer. Eve filed it away.....Raphael and Seraphine, two ancient beings with history of communication and eyes that said something more complicated than politics....and returned to the immediate problem.
"What do we do?" she asked.
"You recover," Damian said, and there was no room for argument in it. "Completely. Three days, like Raphael said. Because if Malachai wants you weakened and reactive, the worst thing you can do is give him that."
"And while I’m recovering?"
"We figure out which of the three is most advanced," Silas said. "Tighten security on the estate. Identify potential targets and get protection on them. And...." His jaw tightened. ".....we wait for more intelligence."
Eve nodded slowly. The cold thing in her chest was settling into something she recognized....not fear, exactly. Resolve. The same thing that had kept her on her feet through twenty minutes of getting systematically dismantled by one of the most dangerous fighters alive.
She was tired, and healing, and her body was making deeply inconvenient demands that she couldn’t address for another two days. She had an unknown assassin potentially already inside the walls she was currently sitting in. She had people she loved who might be targets. She had a legal challenge brewing and a throne she hadn’t claimed yet and a Court that was waiting to see if she’d survive long enough to be worth following.
Everything hurt.
She looked at her mates.....at Damian’s controlled fury and Silas’s quiet devastation and Damon, who was looking at her with an expression she’d never quite seen on him before. Something stripped down. No humor, no deflection, just....him. Raw and watching and absolutely certain.
"We’re not leaving this room," Damon said. Not asking. "Any of us. Tonight and every night until this is resolved."
"Damon...."
"I watched you bleed out on that floor," he said, and his voice was very quiet. "I am not interested in compromising on this particular point."
Eve looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached out and put her hand over his, and felt him exhale.
"Okay," she said softly.
Through the window, night was settling over the estate.....the sky going deep blue, the first stars emerging. Somewhere out there, Malachai was running three separate threads of destruction, waiting to see which one unraveled her.
Inside this room, Eve was healing. Slowly, stubbornly, with her mates pressed close and the bond thrumming between them and the hunger still quietly insisting in the background that three days was a very long time.
She was going to survive this.
The trial, the power crash, the impossible recovery....she’d survived all of it.
She was going to survive Malachai too. freёwebnovel.com
She just needed two more days.
