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And I need to figure out why, of everything I have heard and felt in my life, this is the first one that feels like it was meant to find me.
Even if it feels like I am about to step toward the gates of hell.
Whatever is waiting for me out there.
It’s going to be carnage.
Chapter Three
CARNAGE
After the events of today, Raze called Church, and it’s running long tonight, every chair around the table full and nobody itching to leave it early, because for once, the news on the table isn’t blood, bounty, or which rival crew needs reminding whose territory they’re standing on. It’s three kids pulled out of cages, cleaned up, fed, and finally sleeping through the night at the Birch Hollow house, and every King in this room wants to hear how we get them somewhere safe for good.
Raze sits at the head of the table with his arms folded, dragon settled low and quiet behind his eyes the way it gets when the fight in front of him can’t be solved with fire. “Roxy’s mother says a portal call is the fastest way to reach the Seelie Court directly. No travel, no risk moving them through open territory before we know where they’re headed.” He looks down the table at Scar. “You good with that?”
“Titania keeps her word when it profits her,” Scar says, and there’s history sitting behind that sentence I don’t ask about. “This profits her.”
Thorn’s arms are crossed, but the thorns along his forearms haven’t stopped moving since we started talking. They push against his skin, settle, then rise again before he finally cuts in, “She owes this club. We got her out of her realm when nobody else could. That’s not a small debt to a fae queen.”
“No,” Scar agrees. “It isn’t.”
Roxy sets the portal stone in the center of the table, a chunk of moon-pale quartz veined with something that pulses faintly green when her fingers close around it. She murmurs something under her breath, old words that don’t belong to any language I recognize, and the air above the table folds in on itself, light bending sideways until a window opens where there wasn’t one a second ago.
Titania comes through without taking a single-fucking-step. One second there’s an empty portal, and the next she’s standing in it, long green robes settling around her like appearing out of thin air is normal as shit.
She’s beautiful, I’ll give her that, but my hellhound doesn’t give a fuck about pretty. The bastard shifts beneath my skin the second she appears, paying attention in a way that has me doing the same.
Her eyes move around the table, hitting Raze first, Scar next, before stopping on me.
She holds my stare a second longer than everyone else.
The fuck did I do?
“Kings of Anarchy.” Her voice carries the low hum of something ancient trying to sound gentle. “You called, and I answered. That is not a courtesy I extend often.”
“We appreciate it,” Raze says.
“You freed me from a cage carved out of my own bloodline.” Something flickers behind her expression, gone just as quickly. “That is a debt I intend to honor, hellhound present or not.”
The fuck?
Her attention settles on me then, sharper than before, like she’s trying to match whatever she’s been told about me with the bastard standing in front of her.
“I understand you were the one who tore the walls down?”
Something hot shifts beneath my skin. Apparently my hellhound likes his reputation. I scoff under my breath. “Wasn’t alone,” I say, nodding toward Sentinel beside me.
Her mouth curves, faint and unreadable. “No. You rarely are, from what I hear of your kind.”
I narrow my eyes, still deciding whether I’ve just been insulted when she turns back to Raze. “Tell me about the children.”
Raze leans forward, his forearms bracing against the table. “We moved them to one of our safe houses this morning. Couple of the club girls have been with them since they got there. No strangers coming or going. No one gets through that door unless we know about it.”
“Their condition?”
“The youngest is a faun. Boy can’t be more than eight. One of the girls called a few hours ago. He’s scared of damn near everything. Doors closing, footsteps in the hall, anyone moving too fast around him. They’ve got him eating, though. Not much, but it’s something.”
My jaw tightens.
