Page 16 of Dark Rebel's Mystery

The suspicions had started a while ago, but he'd never expected the operations to be so extensive and to have done so much damage in such a short time.

He'd been complacent, secure in his knowledge of the Brotherhood's plans because he had a spy in their midst, but he should have suspected the real reason behind Navuh's decision to send Lokan to China. He wanted his son away because he suspected him on some level.

Whatever the case was, Kian had allowed it to happen. His arrogance had led him to get outmaneuvered and outsmartedby the enemy he had underestimated and misjudged. He had no one else to blame but himself.

Worse than the setback itself was how stupid Kian felt for accepting the notion that Navuh had been dedicating his resources almost exclusively to building a smarter army and financing it through drugs and prostitution. Lokan had reinforced that belief, but maybe Lokan had been misled or misinformed by his father.

Or perhaps Lokan wasn't as loyal to the clan as Kian had believed.

As he considered each possibility, a dull throb pounded behind his eyes.

None of the options were good. If Lokan was being kept in the dark by his father, it likely meant that Navuh was suspicious of him and that alone was dangerous. Navuh wouldn't hesitate to assassinate his own flesh and blood if he suspected treachery, and if Lokan was being fed disinformation, it was even worse, suggesting that Navuh was aware of Lokan's divided allegiance and was keeping him around just so he could deceive the clan.

The final possibility was the worst of all, and Kian refused to believe it. There was no way Lokan was knowingly misleading the clan. Kian didn't want to even entertain the thought, but it still lurked at the edges of his mind. Lokan was far from a paragon of virtue, but he was mated to Carol, a clan member, and betraying her people would mean betraying her. He shouldn't be able to bring himself to do that. Besides, Lokan had taken enormous risks to free his mother from Navuh's clutches. Areana had refused to leave Navuh, but that didn't diminish the enormity of risk and effort her son had put into the effort to free her.

Her choice still baffled Kian. Why stay with a man as twisted and ruthless as Navuh?

Love was a strange phenomenon, and the Fates' tapestry of destinies was stranger still. They must have had some inscrutable reason for pairing Areana, a gentle and loving soul, with a tyrant like Navuh. It was as if an angel had been bound to a demon.

Perhaps her influence on Navuh, as insignificant as it seemed to be, was critical. Even if she only managed to smooth down his edges, providing a minuscule nudge away from total darkness, she might have saved countless lives over the years.

Kian had no way of knowing how events would have played out without her presence, but it was possible that she had prevented Navuh's darkest impulses from manifesting.

The real question, however, was what all this meant for Lokan and what Kian should advise him to do. His gut told him that Lokan ought to flee Navuh and come live in the village with the clan, especially since the intelligence he brought back from the Brotherhood was clearly incomplete—or worse, intentionally manipulated. If Navuh knew what Lokan was up to, then every moment Lokan stayed behind enemy lines was another moment he risked a violent end. Even worse, he was endangering Carol.

There was no easy answer.

If they pulled Lokan out prematurely, would they lose an inside angle on Navuh's machinations? The possibilities swirled in Kian's mind.

He had to face the reality of what these Doomers had revealed. Not too long ago, he would have refused to believe that Navuh could stoop to such depravity, but the discoveries they'd madein Mexico proved how wrong that assumption had been. The Brotherhood's involvement with the cartels, and what they had allowed or even encouraged those monsters to do, was undeniable. But Kian had still been clinging to the hope that these operations had been carried out by rogue elements within the Brotherhood. But now, that delusion was shattered. Navuh knew exactly what was happening, and he had authorized it.

It forced Kian to accept that the clan's archenemy had no moral compass whatsoever, no line he wouldn't cross. If he ever had a soul, he must have sold it or tossed it aside like an outdated garment. Navuh had become a living embodiment of ruthless, rabid ambition. Evil incarnate.

Fates, what do you expect me to do?

The interior voice that often guided him was silent at first, but then a single word rang in his head like a clarion call.

Fight!

The word felt like both a direct command and an echo of his own defiance. Maybe it was the Fates' directive, or perhaps it was his own stubborn will that caused him to refuse to surrender. Either way, the meaning was clear. His only option was to fight, and the way to go about it was not to chase after the endless tentacles but to cut off the head of the Hydra.

Navuh.

The guy's paranoia gave Kian one huge advantage. The Brotherhood was divided, and none of Navuh's adopted sons had managed to gain a substantial following. If he eliminated Navuh, there would be no one to take his place. The Brotherhood would split into many small militias, and those would cause countless headaches around the world, but they wouldn't be ableto pull off grand-scale operations without Navuh to direct them and force them to work together.

They wouldn't be able to bring the entire world to its knees.

The problem, as always, was the size of his army. Counting the Kra-ell alongside the clan still wouldn't be enough to rival the Brotherhood's ever-growing force. And unlike Navuh, Kian had no breeding program to churn out new immortals in vast numbers. The odds tilted heavily against him in a direct confrontation.

The hopeless, grim reality was oppressing.

It's never hopeless,the Fates whispered, or maybe that was just the resilient spark of his inner voice encouraging him to keep strategizing.

Find a way. The words comforted him for a moment, though he wished for something more concrete. Visions. Guidance. Anything beyond a vague directive to fight.

Kill Navuh. It was the only way. But Navuh never left his fortified island, and sending a strike team there with the warriors Kian had was akin to suicide and would achieve nothing. Bombing the island out of existence would be equally catastrophic—countless innocent lives would perish alongside the guilty, and Kian couldn't stomach that. His aunt lived there, Wonder's sister lived there, and so did thousands of abducted humans who had been forced into semi-slavery under Navuh's rule.

Could he sacrifice all those lives to end the monster and save the world?

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