Chapter 12

W e covered a half-mile radius around the park, but there was no sign of Diago’s signature. We agreed to try Lomax tomorrow and call it a day for now.

Back at the office, Holly checked on the rest of her tincture before we packed up to head to Old Town.

My phone rang as I was about to exit the office. Micah’s name flashed on the caller ID. Hopefully he was calling to tell me he’d sorted out our manpower problem. I shut the office door and answered. “Good news I hope?”

“Hello to you too.” He sounded amused. “And I’m afraid not.”

Fucksake. “Why not?”

“There’s a threat alert here. A potential leak from Morningstar and all Order operatives are on standby, just in case.”

Icy dread trickled through my veins. I knew there was an incident, and that wards had been set up, Lorenzo had told me, but to put Order operatives on standby… “What’s happening in Morningstar?”

“Nothing you need to be worrying about. Your job is to act as Ezekiel’s shadow every time he leaves his castle. Make sure he stays safe and stays in control of his…temperament.”

“Micah, what the fuck is happening in Morningstar, do you know?” Lorenzo had said it was classified last time, but maybe?—

“You know they don’t tell us that stuff. All we know is that wards have been put in place cutting the mainland off from their territory. Whatever’s happening over the golden bridge is being dealt with by them.”

Nyx was there. Trapped in Morningstar, but I believed Micah when he said he didn’t know more. He was a grunt like me, a higher up grunt, but still a grunt. “Thank you for letting me know about the manpower and…I have to go.”

“Orina, wait. Are you all right? You’re…safe, right?”

Agatha’s screams echoed in my ears for a moment. “You sent me to Dracul territory, what do you think?” I hung up, my annoyance getting the better of me, then instantly regretted the move. It wasn’t Micah’s fault that I was here. I sent him a quick text apologizing, then dialed Lorenzo, who answered almost immediately.

I spoke before he could. “What’s going on in Morningstar?”

He sighed. “I already told you. It’s classified.”

“Yeah, but now the Order operatives are on standby?”

“A precaution, Orina. It’s protocol in a situation like this.”

“Like what?”

“Look, there is nothing you can do. Nothing any of us can do. It’s up to Nyx and the Morningstar establishment now. We’ll act if the wards are breached, and if that happens, then…”

“Then it’s too late, isn’t it? It means Nyx is hurt or…Dammit!” Shit, shit, shit. “You can’t tell Quinn. She’s pregnant. The stress would?—”

“I know. I’ve spoken to Bryce about it. We’ve toned it down for her.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “When you told me before I didn’t realize how serious it might be.”

“We all have our part to play in the grand scheme of things. Your part is in Dracul territory. Focus on that. Nyx is more than capable, you know that.”

I exhaled and nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me nod. “Yeah, I know.”

Nyx would deal with Morningstar. She’d fix whatever was happening there, and I needed to make sure another problem didn’t spawn here in the form of Loviator, which meant focusing on Ezekiel, something I hadn’t been doing very well since getting here. I was his watcher, which meant it was my job to watch him, and I’d neglected that duty, allowing him to swan off by himself every night.

That was about to change. “Thank you, Lorenzo. For the pep talk and for Holly.”

“You’re welcome. Anytime.”

The true warmth in his voice evoked a pang of nostalgia for a simpler time.

We said our goodbyes, and I went in search of the others.

I found Padma in the lobby looking stressed out.

“What’s wrong?”

“The books I ordered from the Night Library should have arrived by now.”

“Have you called them to check?”

“You can’t call them. No number. Requests are put in via email or in person, and they haven’t replied to my email yet.” She sighed. “I’ll have to go over there tonight.”

“How far is it? Can we pop in on the way to the stables?”

“It’s only a few blocks away, so yeah, we could. You best drop Hemlock and Ordell a text and let them know you might be a few minutes late to the stables.”

Shit. “Good call.” They were, after all, my ride back to misery castle.

“I don’t want Holly knowing about my…condition,” Padma said.

“We’ll tell her we need the books for Order business.”

She gave a curt nod.

I shrugged on my coat and raised my voice. “Chop, chop, people, we’ve got places to be!”

We were in the van and off into the night less than five minutes later just as a text pinged back from Ordell.

I’ll be waiting. Hemlock is busy.

Strange considering Hemlock had warned me not to be alone with Ordell. But then he probably thought a carriage ride with me inside the cabin and Ordell driving wasn’t a danger.

But a carriage ride was also the perfect time to talk to Ordell about the mate mark.

There was hardly much risk of us going into fuck buddy mode while driving a carriage, right?

The Night Library was a blue door on an innocuous residential street lined with terraced houses. We asked Holly and Merry to stay in the van while Padma, Edwin, and I went inside.

The door opened into a ten-by-ten room. A long counter took up the back where a clerk snored softly while sitting bolt upright. There were no books in sight, except for the large ledger parked on the counter next to the flat-screen computer.

I leaned in to speak to Padma. “Is this it?”

“I know it doesn’t look like much, but this place has access to every piece of literature ever written, not just in our world but a host of others.” She hurried to the counter, leaving me to turn over her sentence.

Host of other worlds? The multiverse? It had been mentioned in our training a few times, but I’d thought it was more of an idea, a scientific postulation, not fact. But here Padma was, speaking of it as if it was reality. That this place was a gateway or something. But surely if that was the case, then… “Shouldn’t this place be guarded? I mean, it’s a gateway, right?”

“If you’re a book,” Edwin said. “Places like this are protected. They’re called conjunctions. Some are tiny, like this one, and others are vast. The universe knows how to protect itself.”

I guess that made sense.

Padma dinged the bell, and the clerk’s eyelids snapped wide open around yellowy orange irises before falling to half mast, heavy-lidded and sleepy once more. He yawned and stretched, and for a moment I had the impression of more than one arm, but it was a trick of the light and shadow because when he folded his arms across the desk, there were only two of them.

“How may I help you?” Even his voice was slow and sleepy.

“I ordered three books that were meant to arrive today, and they haven’t,” Padma said.

He frowned. “Name.”

“Padma Choudhry.”

He tapped at his keyboard. “Ah yes, you picked them up last night.” He looked over at Padma and then tipped his head to one side. “You look…different tonight.”

“Because I didn’t collect the order.”

“Ah, yes, that would make sense.”

“Didn’t you ask for ID?” Edwin demanded.

The clerk slow-blinked his way. “Does this look like a place that requires ID?”

“People could steal the books.”

“They could try,” he said. “But the books know where they belong, and they always come home sooner or later.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Look, can you describe who took the books?”

“Of course I can.” He blinked and stared. Blinked and stared.

Padma made a sound of exasperation. “ Will you please describe her to us?”

“Ah, yes, of course. Let me see. She was a young woman. Human, I believe, although there was an aura of darkness about her. Pale-skinned, the kind where blue veins were visible beneath, and she had a haunted look about her. As if she’d seen terrible things, or maybe done terrible things. Her hair was dark. Long but tied back, and she had green eyes flecked with gold.”

“Wow,” Edwin said. “Now that’s a description.”

“Thank you,” the clerk said with a small smile.

“That bitch,” Padma muttered.

“Indeed,” the clerk said. “I am not best pleased at being duped. If you know her name, then please allow me to add her to our banned list of customers.”

“Ms. Jacq,” Padma said. “Harriet Jacq.”

“What is Harriet playing at?” Edwin asked as we hurried back to the van.

It had started to drizzle, and the world was a misty haze.

“She wants to force me to take her up on her experiment offer,” Padma said, her tone low so Holly in the van up ahead wouldn’t hear.

“Then we stop her,” Edwin replied. “We go get the books back.”

She slowed her pace and looked up at him. “You’ll come with me?”

“Of course.” He scanned her face as if searching for something. “Always.”

She bumped him with her shoulder, and he put his arm around her, hugging her to his side.

When I first met him, he’d seemed too young, too inexperienced to be here, but Edwin was smart and more than capable, and it was obvious he and Padma had a special bond. It was connections like these that kept us alive in the field.

I joined them. “I’ll come with you too.”

Merry wound down the window. “Did they have them?”

“No,” Padma said.

“What’s going on?” Holly asked. “Is it anything I can help with?”

“No,” we all said in unison.

“O-kay.” She made a face. “Order business, I get it.”

“Edwin and I have some stuff we need to do,” Padma said as she got into the van. “But we’ll drop you and Merry at the chapter house first.” I climbed into the front passenger seat. “I’ll fill you in tomorrow,” she said to me.

“Are you sure you don’t need me to come with you?”

“Positive.”

“Okay. But I’m only a Raven away.”

“I know.” Her smile was thin and determined. “But I’ve got this.”

Ordell didn’t comment when I climbed up into the driver’s seat of the carriage beside him. He simply grabbed the blanket tucked by his feet and pulled it over my lap, tucking me in for the ride. My stomach contracted in that telling way that was all too sexual. I exhaled through my nose, then proceeded to mouth-breathe to avoid his intoxicating aroma.

Ordell snapped the reins, and we set off, clip-clopping toward the misty boundary between New Town and Old Town.

“How was your day?” he asked.

I didn’t want to make small talk. I wanted to ask him about the mark and whether it was indeed a mate mark. But I also needed a moment to get my emotions in check first so I’d be ready for whatever the answer might be. And maybe a second moment to remind myself that if it was a mate mark, then it wasn’t his fault. It was his beast who’d done it, and yes, he’d lied to me by omission, but he wasn’t a bad guy. He was probably only trying to protect me. I mean, I had his whole argument mapped out for him. But if it wasn’t a mate mark, then none of the above mattered. Still, being prepared meant the difference between a constructive discussion and a destructive argument.

“Orina?” Ordell said. “You still with me?”

“Huh?”

“Your day? How was it?”

“Yeah, yeah, it was interesting. I met the high clan leader of the fae in Brimswood Park today.”

“You met Crushale?”

“You know him? Of course you know him.”

He smiled. “Yes, we go way back. He’s a good guy. So why did you need to see him?”

I filled him in on how we’d tracked Diago’s signature and how it had stopped at the park gates and what Crush’s response had been, and for a few minutes, I allowed myself to forget about the potential mate mark.

But only for a few minutes because when I was done, he said, “I’m sorry about last night. I lost control.”

Silence sat heavy between us as he waited for me to absolve him, which was easy to do; it was what would come after that was going to be awkward. “You don’t have to be sorry. You didn’t lose control. You never lose control. It was your beast.”

He sighed. “Yes, and he’s a part of me so?—”

“Did he mate mark me?” I blurted the words, then bit the insides of my cheeks as I waited for his response.

His stony stillness was answer enough. “What did Hemlock say?”

It was true, then. It had to be. “Hemlock didn’t say anything. I spoke to my friend Quinn. She’s mated to the Hawthorne Cove Pack, and they said it sounded like a mate mark.”

We clipped on for a few moments before Ordell urged the horses to the side of the road and brought the carriage to a standstill. He sat with his head bowed for several seconds in which my heart pounded so hard I was sure the whole world could hear it.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I should have told you.”

Even though part of me had come to accept the bite was a mate mark, a small part had hoped I was wrong, so his confirmation still hit like a blow to the chest. “What…what does it mean? I mean, it’s different for each shifter species, right? So what does it mean for us?” My mouth was dry, and I swallowed and licked my lips, waiting for his response.

He looked over at me with an expression that bordered on awe. “You’re not angry?”

“What? No, I’m not angry. I mean, I should be because you kept it from me, but. No. It’s not like you had control over it, right?”

“I want you.” His voice was a delicious rumble that rubbed in all the right places.

A fist clenched low in my belly. “Ordell…”

“My beast knows I want you, and it made you tempting to it.” His gaze dropped to my mouth. “It made you desirable, and then he found you and marked you.”

His breath mingled with mine, and I realized we were leaning toward each other, lips mere inches apart.

I sat back quickly, breathing heavily. “Explain it to me. What happens now?”

He licked his lips, and I tracked the movement, pulse beating hard in my throat. “The mark is the first stage. The beast claiming his perfect mate. It means the beast recognizes you as compatible in body and soul. But if I allow it…If I lose control, then it will take you. It will consummate over and over until you’re broken, and then it will…” He exhaled shakily and looked right at me. “ I will kill you.”

The fire smoldering between us died. I stared at him, hearing the words, comprehending them, but not believing that they could mean what they should mean.

“You wouldn’t kill me.”

A look of pure torment skated across his features. “Yes. I will. It’s how it ends. It’s part of my curse. The beast consummates and then…then it consumes.”

Consumes… “You’ll eat me? Wait…how can you know unless…Oh…”

His eyes glazed over. “It was a long time ago. The first and only time. She was…she was wonderful.” He looked down at his hands. “I woke to her blood on my hands, beneath my fingernails.” He touched his face. “I could taste her flesh between my teeth.” His voice dropped to a growl, and his ocean blues gleamed brighter, but this time it wasn’t desire that heated my veins but the icy prick of fear.

“Ordell?”

He squeezed his eyes closed. “I’m fine. The full moon is two weeks away. I can…I can control it.”

“Like last night?” I hated to do this. To say this but, “Don’t come to my room again.”

He flinched, but I pressed on. “I understand why we need to stay away from each other. If we both stick to the rules, then it’ll be fine. I’ll stay at the chapter house during full moon periods.”

“Ezekiel won’t like that.”

“Leave him to me.”

He nodded stiffly, shoulders slumping. “It could have been different for us,” he said. “If the beast hadn’t taken your scent, then we could have been lovers.”

He had no idea how impossible that was, and Order law prohibited me from telling him. “We can still be friends, Ordell. I want us to be friends. I care about you. A lot.” My eyes heated, and I blinked sharply to dispel the threat of tears.

He lightly touched my cheek. “I care about you too, Orina. More than I should, which is why it would kill me if I ever hurt you.”

I gently cupped the back of his hand and pressed my cheek to his palm. “We’ll be fine. I know it.”

The space in between the words neither of us said was filled with regret because how shitty was it to know you’d found the perfect mate but be unable to claim them?

Ordell was off-limits now for more than my blessed reasons. The threat of being killed by his beast should make it easier to stay away from him.

I hoped.

But only time would tell.