my benefit. I nodded that I understood he had found a clue, and then the three of us waited for the medics to arrive while Lyssa sobbed into my neck and told us where to find the other kids.
I could only pray we found them alive.
Seventeen
The ice in Midas’s veins had nothing to do with the carnage surrounding them and everything to do with what Hadley had done. She had commanded him, and he had obeyed. That power over him ought to set the animal within him pacing, but it had sprawled in a dark corner of his mind to nap.
The two halves of his nature had called a truce, but the reprieve left him jittery with unspent energy.
With the beast ascendant, and his mind fraying, he could have killed Hadley.
A snap of his teeth, and her delicate neck would have broken in his jaws.
He had done it before, so many times, to so many other females.
Only their mate bond had saved her, and she had no idea of the power she held over him. Until she had wielded it against him, he had no idea of the power she held over him.
“Abbott is on the way.” Hadley nudged him toward the road. “He’s going to treat us and cut us loose.”
The cleaners had arrived to catalog the carnage, and sentinels had extricated the traumatized children.
Ayla Clairmont, tipped off by one of her spies, had already contacted the paranormal branch of social services about adopting the pups who had lost their entire families. Wargs required pack to thrive, to learn control and how to hunt, and her alpha instincts would have demanded she assume the duty of their education.
Noticing the way Hadley used her elbows, he worried for her. “How are your hands?”
“Crisp.” Her palms were mottled black, red, and white. “Hurts like a mother.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t save Mendelsohn.”
Midas was certain that even if they had arrived sooner, they wouldn’t have stopped him from self-harm. Good alphas prided themselves on defending their pack, and Mendelsohn had destroyed his in a fit of drug-fueled mania. His bacchanalian leadership style lent itself toward his pack having a higher than usual number of females, and they had been no match for their alpha on a tear.
“We have to shut this coven down.” Pain tightened her features, but she didn’t complain. “They’re going to pick us off, faction by faction, until they’ve created a power vacuum. Then they’re going to waltz in and claim the territory as their own.”
“We won’t let it come to that.” Midas ached head to toe, but he blocked out the worst of it. “We’re going to hunt them, and we’re going to end this.”
“They’re always three steps ahead.” Her exhale ended on a cough. “We can’t even find them.”
“Faete, the club, was glamoured to conceal it from prying eyes,” he reminded her. “The coven could be holed up right under our noses, and we just can’t see them.”
A calculating stillness swept through her body, and her lips parted. “Bishop was right.”
The resignation in her tone set his skin prickling. “About what?”
“His friend gave me a gift to help me find a Martian Roach, but he gave me one before that too.”
Warning sang along Midas’s nerves, a premonition of danger. “What gift?”
“Sight.” She tapped the center of her forehead, indicating a third eye, then brushed her fingertips over her eyelids. “The sight.”
The moisture dried from his mouth as his thoughts caught up to hers, but she wasn’t done yet.
“He gave me a preview when I dropped Bishop off with him, then he arranged for a private viewing.”
“You’re not making any sense.” He eased closer to her. “What do you mean?”
“You see, but you don’t see yet.” The approaching lights bathed her face in reds and blues. “That’s what he told me.” She frowned. “He claimed he opened my eyes a crack.” She looked to him. “He knew I would need that gift to find what we’re searching for, and he let me test-drive it.”
“The second gift revealed a trail to the roaches. What did the first do?”
“It allowed me to see past the glamour on his home to what was really there.” She flagged down Abbott. “With that gift, I could walk the streets in a grid until I found them. They couldn’t hide from me.”
“Think of the cost,” he warned.
“I am.” Her gaze drifted back to the Mendelsohn pack. “I can’t afford not to pay it.”
The healer and his retinue arrived with grim countenances. They saw to Hadley,