Chapter 264: Grace
My answer seemed to satisfy Adrian, and it took all I had not to show the relief I felt on my face or in any of my features really. I felt like I was walking in a field of land mines, and everything would blow up with one wrong step. And honestly, there was a lot of truth to the metaphor now. There was no room for error.
“Why did you stay with him?” Adrian asked. “He brought you back once, and then we brought you back, but you ran back to him. Why?”
A truth within the lie. “Honestly? I was scared. Red Blood Pack was my home... But it wasn’t always the best experience. I had to choose between my home and a man who pretended to care for me, but only wanted to use me. It took me a while to see clearly.”
“Nice lie. I hope it was a lie anyway.”
I startled slightly at the intrusion of Rhys’ voice in my head.
“Are you alright?” Adrian asked with fake concern in his voice.
“I- uh- I'm not really used to traveling by car yet. There wasn’t much of a reason to in the Alpha King pack. And when I lived in Red Blood I had no time for travel. Sometimes, seeing the world fly by like this still startles me a little.”
“Get out of my head.” I mindlinked Rhys back. I knew he had to be listening through the little bug Sawyer had implanted in my arm before my escape. “I’m busy.”
“My bad,” Rhys laughed slightly, and it took all I had not to roll my eyes at his comment.
As hard of a time as I was giving him though, I didn’t mind him being there. The bond between us made sure we both knew that neither of us were actually mad at the other. It was nice to not stress about something so trivial.
Adrian made a little grunt at my comment, and I swallowed hard and cleared my throat before saying, “So, where are we going?”
“I know the little brats that you guys' stole have already told you.” Adrian responded bitterly. “But if you’re going to be a part of our pack, you need to understand it. This is a big part of our plan, and it would be good if you could get behind it.”
I nodded, “Of course,” I answered and swallowed hard.
I really didn’t want to be a part of this project. I didn’t want my name attached to it. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, especially kids. But this was the plan, I reminded myself. I would be able to mark the location. This was to help them, and hopefully, one day they could forgive me for any part I’d have to play the bad guy.
I turned toward the window. There was nothing around. No houses. No trees. Just vast amounts of land for as far as the eye could see. Even the road became non-existent. If there was a path Adrian was following, I couldn’t see it.
I hadn’t realized that his territory was so big, but maybe that was naive of me to think. I mean, he had combined the two packs... Wait... We had combined the two packs... But they weren’t neighboring packs... Did we even bother to check the old territory of the Red Night pack?
Eventually, a beeping noise came from the car, and Adrian pulled it over and got out. I followed after him quickly, a little concerned that maybe he brought me out here to kill me or something, but honestly, that didn’t really make sense. If he wanted to kill me, he would have had no resistance doing it in front of everyone at the packhouse. They had never been kind to me before. They had never had an issue with hurting me, so my death in front of them wouldn’t have been a stretch.
“Where are we?” I asked, a little nervously.
“I liked it better when you didn’t talk.” Adrian snapped at me.
I immediately shut up. The fear of what he could do to me took over. I didn’t want to cross that line that I kept talking about, but I also didn’t want to be that girl who had lived in fear her whole life.
“Ugh.” He sighed as he knelt down on the ground and pulled at something I couldn’t see. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”
It wasn’t an apology. He had felt the energy shift, and it was an inconvenience to him.
“It’s fine.” I answered, but we both knew we were working on a fragile trust, and trust being a completely relative term.
“Come on, I want to show you this.”
It was only then that I realized there was a trap door in the ground that he was holding open. I tapped my tracker gently as I inched closer to it. I could see a long ladder descending into its depths, but the ground was nowhere in sight.
I took a deep breath and took my first step down. It was honestly terrifying, and I gripped the ladder so tight, my knuckles turned so white I could see them in the dark.
When my feet finally hit the ground, a light flashed on, and Adrian hurried down the ladder himself, not trusting me to be alone in here for more than a few moments.
He led me through the first tunnel, and it was then that I realized how big this place was. My heart was pounding as I looked in room after room with glass walls. This is the mess hall. This is a training room. This is the medical quarters. This is the hole where we keep naughty kids.
“Pretty cool, right?” Adrian asked as we made our toward the final room he wanted to show me.
I wanted to vomit. Nothing about this was cool, but I nodded, using his earlier comment as an excuse not to speak my true thoughts.
“This is the coolest part. This room, controls everything.”
I tapped my bracelet as soon as I walked in. There was a small child restrained to a chair, and magic swirled around the room in a similar way it had at Sandra’s house. There were waves of colors weaving in and out in a ball-like shape.
“Rhys?” I mindlinked uneasily. “I found the Pyxis.”
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