Chapter 402

“What’s the matter?”
Inez snapped out of her thoughts and her vision cleared up. What looked like a dark silhouette slowly melted and the darkness cleared up, when she looked at the dark corner again, she realised that it was nothing but a tangled mess of branches that messed with her mind. She glanced at the foliage and the gentle sway of the pine leaves and turned to look at the front.
“Nothing. Just…just me being silly.” She whispered.
But she knew better.
She walked over to the cave in a hurry. The lack of protective walls around her made her back prickle uneasily.
“Is something the matter?” She asked as soon as she arrived inside the cave. “I thought we were moving right away after a short break.”
“We were supposed to—”
“Are we moving? I thought that we were running away,” taunted Morrineth from the corner with a hint of a sneer playing on her lips. “If anyone were to find out that we—a bunch of dominant shifters ran away from our territory, they will laugh at us until we cannot even raise our heads. If only Nyx were here.”
Nyx had gone to collect intel just like Killian asked her to and because of that very reason, she was not at the territory at the moment. And cue in the taunts that Morrineth had for Inez, who was sitting safely in the territory and yet she couldn’t even do something so simple.
Inez ignored the woman, knowing that there was no point in talking with her, while Selene narrowed her eyes and turned to look at Morrineth with impatience across her beautiful face. “But Nyx is not here so you need to sit quietly for me, Morrineth.”
“I was just telling the facts.”
“And I don’t need to hear them.”
Morrineth glanced at the two of them. She squinted her eyes just enough to let Inez know that she did not trust her at all. “Does she even know what she is doing?”
“I do.”
Another lie and the familiar frustration rises up in her heart. She had no idea what even she was doing or where they even needed to go. She just knew that they couldn’t stay in one place for long. They needed to keep moving.
Seeing that everyone was staring at her with disbelief other than Selene, Inez felt a familiar burn at the back of her neck. She raised her hand and rubbed it at the back of her neck and said to them, “Anyway, I have already told you what I know. If you want to stay here, then be my guest, but I am not staying.” She turned to look at Selene and asked, “Are you coming with me?”
She hoped that the woman would because if Selene decided to stay here, then Inez would have no choice but to stay with them even when she knew that it was dangerous.
“I will go with you,” Selene nodded in response, making Inez’s worries a little more controllable.
Fortunately, at least one person in this pack had their survival instincts intact and was not deliberately bent on going against her. Even if it meant spilling blood.
**
It had been six hours. Six hours of continuous driving and Fin had nothing to do other than play with the knob of the window on his side. He needed his fingers to do something, something other than wanting to skim the curves of a certain cherry-haired witch.
“Am I the only one who thinks that we need something?” Ajax asked with a yawn. He had been yawning for hours now, and Finn was surprised that he stayed quiet till now.
Everyone turned to look at him, and maybe Tao was just as bored, he for once, forgot that Ajax just tried to punch his alpha in the face a few hours ago. “What?”
“Sleep. Sleep, my dear friends. A process that includes a long, blissful nap.” Ajax exclaimed dramatically. He turned to look at Tracy with a hint of resentment in his eyes and added through gritted teeth, “Someone might forget it, but we need it to act as proper functional adults. Don’t we?”
Tracy didn’t even look at him. “Properly functional adults? I see that you have some really strong opinions about yourself.”
The temperature in the car rose another two degrees. Not literally— though with Ajax glaring at the witch as if he wished to skin her alive, he didn’t have the slightest bit of an idea. Finn cleared his throat and leaned back in his seat. Tracy had been like this ever since she received a call from Killian. He asked her if there was something going on. The latest_epɪ_sodes are on_the.net
He didn’t say anything outright, but Tracy easily concluded that there was something going on with Inez, and she was not happy about it. Tracy was highly protective of that little girl, who was an expert when it came to getting caught in troublesome situations. Maybe it was the universe’s way of apologising to Inez for giving her a shitty mate like Dominic Cherith, because if not, why would she get two highly psychopathic protectors?
And one of them was the kind who would set the world on fire, and the other one was destined to flip it upside down. What the moon goddess was thinking while giving this combination to Inez was simply something that he couldn’t understand. Not unless the goddess came to explain it to him. He meant, what made her think that ’hmm, this is a really nice combination’?
But then again, Inez had gone through a lot. She was too nice for someone who betrayed her in the worst possible way, and for Tracy, this feral witch was protective as hell toward her. Finn had a sick suspicion that Tracy came up with ’you have an affinity with magic’ just to fuck with Dominic.
Was he jealous of the attention and care she had for Inez? Maybe. Maybe not.
“Where are we headed anyway?” Finn asked, trying to keep his jealousy to a bare minimum. He wanted to fish for any reaction from the tight-lipped, cold-faced witch. And as she turned to look at him, he realised that it was not a good decision on his part.