way that wouldn’t risk both my life and Lilith’s welfare. “Maybe we should wait. I mean, I can manage this if someone watches me while I sleep. You guys can tie me down. We might find another solution in the Underealm.”
Cora closed her eyes and sucked in her bottom lip as if struggling with some inner dilemma, and then she looked right at me. “You might not have the time to wait, okay.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t want to scare you, which is why I didn’t tell you before, but Elijah says a curse like this will eventually slip into your conscious mind, and when that happens, it’ll be too late to do anything.”
My conscious mind? “What do you mean?”
“I mean, it will drive you crazy, and at that point, even if we did remove it by stopping your heart and bringing you back, your mind…Your mind would be broken.”
“How much time?” Grayson asked.
“He didn’t say,” Cora replied. “But this is the only way. Right now, the curse is confined to your subconscious. Right now, we can stop it.” She looked at me. “Babe, I’m just as scared as the guys, but I know you. I know how fucking strong you are, and I know you can do this, we can do this. I won’t lose you to a fucking curse.”
It looked like this was the only way. The alternative was to go insane. “I’ll do it.” Cora’s shoulders relaxed. “But Azazel and Mal will need to know.”
“Azazel will be obligated to stop you,” Cora reminded me. “He’s cursed to keep you alive. He won’t be able to let you take the risk.”
“And if he doesn’t let me do this, then he risks losing me anyway. It’s a damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t situation. I’m not doing this without saying goodbye to Azazel and Mal.” I gave her a what-the-fuck look. “If it goes wrong…”
“We don’t have time to go chasing after them,” Cora said. “There’s too much at stake right here.”
She was right, we still had to find Hunter and the super vamp puppeteers. “Fine, if Conah comes to help with Kristoff, I’ll pass along a message. If he doesn’t, then…Then I’ll do it without them being here.”
“Leave it to fate,” Uri said softly.
Cora didn’t argue this time even though I could see she wanted to.
“I’ll be back in a bit.” Grayson strode around the counter and headed down the back corridor toward the training room.
I didn’t need to drop my shields to know he was freaking out. “Excuse me, guys.”
I followed my mate.
I found Grayson beating the shit out of the punch bag with his bare fists, no wrap-up. He’d taken off his shirt, and his muscles rippled with every swing.
“Give me a minute,” he bit out as he continued to punch.
I locked the training room door, tugged off my shirt, and unbuttoned my pants. He faltered and slapped a hand onto the punch bag to halt its swing.
I kicked off my boots and shimmied out of my jeans.
“Fee…” His voice was thick.
I strode toward him, trailing my hand from my breasts down my abdomen to my pubic bone. “If you want to hit something, then I’d rather you hit this.”
He bridged the distance between us with a growl, and for a little while, there was only the two of us.
Grayson and I emerged from the training room to find Cora and Uri flanking Bobby at the island while he studied his laptop screen.
“I found something,” Bobby said to us. “The symbol you drew…I did a search for recent sightings of it on any buildings or any locations, and I got a hit. Look.”
He turned the laptop to show us a grainy photograph of a signposted track where he’d blown up the sign. There were regular town names on the sign and if you weren’t looking for it, you’d totally have missed the tiny circular symbol on the bottom left-hand corner of the sign.
“It’s a lead,” Grayson said. “And it’s not too far from here, either.”
A lead to finding Hunter. “Let me change clothes and grab my weapons belt, and we can go.”
“Wait,” Uri said. “We have no idea what we’re walking into. We need to scope out the area first.”
He didn’t look at me, his attention focused on the laptop screen. “Can you pull up a map?”
Bobby tapped buttons, and Uri nodded. “Yes, I know where that is.”
“We’ll check it out,” Cora said. “We can jump to the location and jump back out once