Page 93 of Forged Bonds

“You’re no longer a familiar, and you’re much too big to be following me around.”

His defensiveness dropped into a pout and he stalked to the middle of the room, dropping down onto a couch beside Nolan. The vampire was staring down at his phone as if it could begin ringing at any second. Technically it could, but he didn’t need to have it constantly in his hand. He was a vampire. He’d reach the device before the call went to voicemail.

I finished the wards around the edges of the room, hoping they were enough to conceal our presence. They should prevent people from coming in here, as well as preventing our scents and any noise we made from getting out. With this room being so infrequently used, it wouldn’t be too suspicious to have it completely barred from the staff. Mattie had said he was going to claim it was being prepared for renovations or something.

Walking back over to the centre of the room, I sat on the couch beside Emmett and curled against his side. The poor big man had been distraught, even more than me, and I felt him in my head constantly. He was grasping onto Caspian in any way he could.

“Can’t I just portal us into your friend’s house?” I asked.

Nolan’s eyes widened and he vigorously shook his head. “Absolutely not. Showing up would put him in an awkward position, and he won’t help us. No one can know that he has any part in us doing harm to Kylan, so we have to communicate on his terms and his terms only.”

He glanced back down at the cell phone and tossed it onto the coffee table with a sigh.

“Well, I can’t be mad at him covering his own ass,” I said. “It’s what I did for years. But if he’s not going to be able to help us beyond information and whatever the fuck else he can do without getting actually involved, how are we going to pull this off?”

Silence greeted me. Emmett’s arm tightened around my shoulders, while Ozzy and Nolan avoided looking into my eyes.

“I’m well aware we don’t have a plan. I was looking to start a conversation about solutions while we’re sitting here twiddling our thumbs,” I said dryly.

“Brute force didn’t work, so we’ll have to try some guerilla tactics,” Nolan offered after a beat. “If it was anyone else, I would suggest a sneak attack, but that was what the last one was supposed to be. He saw us coming far too early.”

My hand came down to rest on Emmett’s leg, fingers tracing circles on his thigh. The touch calmed some of the immense tension in his body. His hold on my bond with Caspian was keeping our mate at the forefront of my mind, and the incubus was getting increasingly more distressed as time passed.

“Guerilla tactics…” I mused.

Oswald and Nolan stayed close on the opposite couch just as I was doing with Em, and I was grateful they had each other. Emmett needed me more, was closer to Cas and Shan and feeling their loss more acutely. I wanted to give them all equal time and attention, but it wasn’t fair and Nolan and Ozzy had each other and Emmett had… just me, really.

And we were barely connected in the first place, not in a deep way. Nothing like the love he had for Caspian or the enduring friendship he had with Shan. I wanted to be able to be there for him, but I felt like I couldn’t.

“An inside man,” I said suddenly.

Nolan looked at me incredulously. “We don’t have time to infiltrate his organization.”

“We use someone who’s already on the inside.”

“Everyone close enough to Kylan to be able to help us is heavily vetted. He doesn’t allow just anyone into his inner circle.”

His point was valid, but the wheels were spinning in my head now. There had to be a way. “Anyone working for him probably has lofty ambitions. What if we offer than more than he’s offering?”

Humming, Nolan looked hesitant. He probably didn’t want to tell me ‘no’ another time. “I would love to do that, but I don’t know what we can offer that Kylan won’t double if they turn on us.”

“We kill Kylan, they get the mafia so long as they agree to leave us the fuck alone.”

“Considering how low our chances are of actually killing Kylan, taking that bet would be suicidal,” Ozzy chipped in. “There’s no way we’re going to get people to willingly work with us. Unwillingly, however…”

“Are you saying we stoop to their level and take hostages?” Emmett asked, horrified.

Oswald rolled his eyes. “You of all people should know what I’m talking about. Freya fucked with your memories. Little fin, could you possibly trick someone into helping us by taking away only specific memories?”

The idea sounded preposterous. I wasn’t actually skilled at mind magic — I’d never been able to manage going in and seeing people’s memories. The memory manipulation had been something I fought to master, which Oswald knew well. He was my familiar through the whole process of me realizing I needed another way to hide myself from people who discovered my designation.

“I’d need to be able to break into their memories to do that,” I said. “You know I’ve never been able to figure it out.”

He shrugged. “You’re stronger now than you ever were before, aren’t you? Besides, you haven’t tried to do it in years, and you’ve been practicing the base skill the whole time.”

Fair point.

Also, possibly our only option. Both of them were right: no one would betray him to help us because doing so would get them killed. We couldn’t trust anyone.

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