Free Web NovelChapter 211: Chapter 210: Wrong Target
Eve’s POV — Morning. Day Two of Recovery.
She knew something was wrong before anyone said a word.
It was the assembly of it....all three of her mates, Raphael, the four of them arranged in the bedroom with the specific energy of people who had coordinated their presence rather than arrived organically. Damian standing near the window. Silas at the foot of the bed. Damon by the door like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to be closer or needed the option of leaving. Raphael near the wall, arms loose at his sides, expression arranged into that careful neutral configuration that Eve had learned, over months, meant he was hiding something underneath it.
They’d been awake all night. She could feel it through the bond....the particular texture of exhaustion that came from sustained high alert rather than physical exertion.
"Tell me," Eve said.
Damian looked at his brothers then sat down near on the bed and told her the information they just received.
She listened. She was good at listening.....Margaret had taught her that, the discipline of hearing things completely before reacting, the patience of letting information land before deciding what to do with it.
She made it through approximately forty seconds before the anger nearly chocked her, she stood up and started pacing.
"Eve." Silas’s hands were on her shoulders immediately.
"He’s going after Maya." Her voice came out raw. "He’s going after Maya and Elena because he can’t get to me directly...."
"We know." Silas replied. "Come and sit down"
"I am not going to sit down while...."
"You are," Damian said, from the window, "You are going to sit down because you are on day two of three days recovery and you nearly died forty-eight hours ago and standing up too fast could trigger another crash."
"I’m not crashing...."
"Eve." Damon’s voice, from the door. "Please. Sit down. We can’t....we can’t have you collapse again. We can’t do that again."
The rawness in it stopped her.
She stood at the edge of the bed, her hands shaking with the force of the anger burning through her body and looked at Damon’s face. At what she saw there made her stop, it was the expression of someone who had watched something terrible happen and was living in permanent anticipation of it happening again.
She sat down.
"Tell me what’s being done," she said. Her voice was steady, and she was was proud of that.
Damian told her.....the security rotations, the tightened perimeter protocols, the surveillance on anyone entering or leaving the estate grounds.
Eve listened to everything he was saying, processed the information and then asked questions. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
Then Silas spoke.
"There’s something else," he said carefully. "Something we haven’t confirmed but can’t rule out."
Eve looked at him.
"Malachai is intelligent," Silas said. "He’s been running Court politics longer than most supernatural beings have been alive. He would know....." He paused, choosing words with precision. "He would know that obvious targets get obvious protection. He would know that the moment his intent became known, we’d put everything we have on people the pack thinks are vulnerable, people like Elena and Maya. He would have used your mother as a primary target, because he knows that you’ll be deeply affected, but now the only options are Elena and Maya"
The anger burning through Eve burned into her hands.
"He’d also know," Silas continued, "that the person already inside the estate....the person we assume is safe because she’s within the walls....might be exactly the opening he’s looking for."
The room went very quiet.
"Maya," Eve said.
"We don’t know that Maya is the specific target," Silas said. "We don’t know anything for now. But we shouldn’t assume that inside the estate means protected just because....because that’s what we want to believe."
Eve looked at the window. At the grounds beyond it, the tree line at the perimeter, the manicured lawns that looked peaceful and ordinary in the morning light.
Maya was somewhere in this building. Probably in her room, or in the small kitchen she’d adopted, or doing whatever Maya did in the mornings....which Eve knew involved at minimum one cup of tea, some kind of podcast about true crime that she consumed with cheerful morbidity, and a very organised routine of stretching that she’d been doing since college.
Normal. Utterly normal.
Inside walls that Eve had been assuming meant safe.
"Increase security on Maya," Eve said. "Now. Inside the estate....I want someone with eyes on her. Not obvious, not intrusive, but present."
"Already in progress," Damian said. "Marcus put two people on interior rotation an hour ago."
"Good." Eve breathed. "Okay." She looked around the room at the assembled faces....her mates, and then her uncle’s.....
She looked at Raphael.
He was standing exactly where he’d been standing since the conversation started. Arms loose. Expression neutral. All the things he was very good at maintaining regardless of what was happening beneath them.
Except.
His jaw was very slightly tight. Not enough that most people would notice...but Eve had been watching Raphael’s face for months, learning the specific vocabulary of a man who communicated primarily through what he didn’t let surface. She knew the difference between his actual neutral and his managed neutral.
This was managed.
And she knew why....Elena. Outside the estate, no pack security and no defense against forces that had been specifically described as coming from Raphael’s world.
Forces from his world. Targeting a woman from Eve’s.
A woman who wasn’t just a pack member to her, a maid who had sat in this room and shared meals with both Eve and Maya and who Raphael had.....
Who Raphael had been feeding from, and who she had come to realize now that her uncle cared about.
Eve looked at her uncle’s carefully managed face and understood, with absolute certainty, that Elena was not just a tactical concern.
She was the thing keeping Raphael’s composure from complete collapse.
