111: Ada's POV

Darius had maintained consciousness for his treatment. They’d managed to get all of the debris away from his spine and had to stitch up several wounds. His healing properties still hadn’t returned, so he was healing like a human would. Two weeks had passed, and the deepest of his gashes remained— though some of that was due to his own stubbornness and refusal to follow Eric’s orders of rest. Wounds had reopened and been re-stitched.

Nik still wasn’t awake. Eric was telling us he was fairly certain it was just because his injuries were too severe and his body needed time to recover, but the way his eyebrows furrowed every time he said it told me that he didn’t really mean it.

Phoenix had given the royal medical team, along with a few magick users, the task of looking into what exactly was delaying the healing factor. I had been spending some of my downtime with the medical team in hopes of gaining some knowledge into how things work with the Royal Bloodline. I’d learned that it had to be some powerful magick to render the healing factor in any of the Princes useless— but especially Nik, because he had his own magickal blood factors it would have to counteract. That meant that they’d had to be prepared for this. Somehow, they would have had to gain access to the knowledge of the Prince’s blood factors.

All of it was a bit over my head. I did my best to keep up, but it was easier to focus on other things most of the time. With Darius primarily laid up in bed, I did spend some of my time there. We would read books together or play games of chess and other non-exerting duties. He was still so tired that these interactions didn’t last long.

Phoenix was pulling triple-duty, covering for both of his brothers while they were incapacitated. I would sometimes pass by him in the halls and get a warm smile from him, but nothing more. The circles under his eyes told me he was genuinely too busy to send me anything through our link, and I was a bit grateful for the break.

Going from only my emotions and thoughts for eighteen years to suddenly having four people’s emotions and thoughts running through my brain was a lot. It was nice to only have an occasional trickle in from Darius right now. The quiet was giving me time to process my own shit.

Today, I was processing in my own room. My body ran through the exercises that my mates had all given me to build my strength and agility. It was mindless work at this point, a routine that I now barely felt. If I had the time, I would have taken a moment to revel in how far I’d come. My muscles had once burned from the slightest bit of exertion, and now I was running through several full-body agility workouts before even breaking a sweat.

The fluid, thoughtless movement of my body allowed my mind to filter through whatever it needed to. At the moment, I was hyper-fixating on a bit of research I’d done on my own. We knew it was the Midnight Pack leading this rebellion. I knew my father, Alpha Bryant Lennon, was heading the charge. I’d been researching the history of the Midnight Pack and had discovered that there had always been an undercurrent of unrest present there.

The first Alpha King of the Ashford family had been the one to establish the packs that would reside in the Kingdom of the Moonglade. Due to an altercation with the head of the Lennon family, he’d given them control of the area that would be known as the Midnight Pack— a territory on the outskirts of the kingdom with land that was difficult to till and jagged mountain ranges surrounding it. While he hadn’t gone as far as removing the original Lennon’s Alpha title from him, the original Alpha Lennon had taken the territory as a direct snub. Tensions had continued to escalate over the years, a burden carried across generations.

This was the first rebellion being headed against the Ashford family, and I was fairly certain the timing wasn’t a coincidence. The original Alpha King in the Ashford family had written in his final journals that there would come a time when his bloodline would pay for his mistakes, and if I had to place a bet, I would bet on this being the outcome he was alluding to.

Over more recent years, the late Alpha King Everett had been keeping a close eye on the Midnight Pack. I’d found several reports while perusing the castle libraries from generals and spies regarding unusual activity in that area. Over the last three years, there had been a staggering number of reports regarding the use of magick on the Midnight Pack’s territory. They couldn’t figure out where it was coming from or who was using it, but it was strong enough to be sensed from miles away.

All of these had cleared a few things up for me. At first, I’d been fairly certain Francine and Georgina had been solely responsible for manipulating my father into this situation. Now, after reading up on how far back these reports went, I knew the rebellion had been forming almost my whole life. That made my father directly responsible for the majority of what was going on, and that meant Georgie had played right into his hands by bringing him Finn. He’d been the strong ally my father had most likely been waiting for.

Thankfully, that had backfired.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I froze mid-exercise. I’d allowed myself to get too lost in my own thoughts. Somehow, I’d missed the slight buzzing sound that was emitting from near my balcony. I stood up straight, staring at the area where the noise was coming from. The noise grew louder. My hand dropped to my thigh, my fingers running against the empty sheath there. *Dammit*. I’d never do strength and agility training without at least a dagger on me again. I blinked as the buzzing sound grew to its crescendo. Something was coming, and I didn’t like that I didn’t know what. All at once, the room went silent.

My father stepped into the room, appearing out of thin air.