Page 221 of A Warrior's Fate

“Could it be the witch that destroyed Phobos?”

“I don’t see why we’d have an image of her around here.”

So imbued by another deep source of power, then.

Isla turned on a heel to head for the pile of books on witches and their continent that she’d left on a small desk that hadn’t been shelved yet.

“What are you doing?” Jonah called after her.

Heaving the tomes into her arms, she brought them back to the table. “Getting books.”

“You’re staying?”

Isla raised her brows in challenge. “Would there be an issue if I was?”

Jonah mustered another grin, plucked out another pastry, and sat down. “Of course not, Your Majesty.”

Somehow, the days leading up to the challenge were more strenuous than Isla’s days leading up to her warrior debut here in Deimos. So much happening, so many movements, she didn’t know which way was up or down. Though they were more aware of the pieces on the board now, there were some additional ones needed to be kept track of. A lot of pieces they were waiting to watch make their move and react, and a lot of bases they had to ensure were covered.

While protocol forced Kai to endure meeting after meeting—even more than he’d experienced transitioning to alpha—as well as preparations and training to ensure he was in fighting shape, Isla fluttered from place to place, becoming a general of sorts in a different manner. Never alone, she worked with those they trusted, which were Jonah, Davina, Ameera, Rhydian, and Unit 37B.

Jonah continued focusing his work on the journal. Given the mention of an ancient weapon, his curiosity had been piqued. And since it held the same language as the markers, it was their best shot at figuring out what was where within the tunnels. When Isla was with him, she alternated between looking into witches and looking into the poisons of the world. What worked on wolves, how they worked. Nothing seemed to be the one that had been used against them.

Efforts on the rogue front, down at the southeastern border, had been amplified, and Rhydian, along with the warriors, aside from Isla, patrolled frequently. But the rogues didn’t move, barely even a whisper as if they were waiting to emerge the day of the challenge. Isla had asked Kai if any of them had the right to be at the battle—as it was another rogue fighting—but he’d said that didn’t matter. They wouldn’t be permitted in. No one had been permitted in, including refugees from Charon.

For those that were already within Deimos’s borders, Isla went to their homes with Davina who she’d learned was a refugee of Charon herself.

“I made it into Deimos about a year before I met Rhydian,” she’d said, fighting back tears as she finally told Isla her story in the darkness of the House’s den, a fire roaring before them.

She divulged the information in bits and pieces, but emotion would overcome her before she got too detailed. Isla learned of how Charon’s economy had been a slow collapse over the last decades, leading up to the point where no one had any money, everything going to pay high taxes to fund pack leadership’s questionable endeavors. Davina told her of how outside the kingdom’s heavily guarded capital, Ayr, where most finances were funneled to, the streets were falling apart, the crime rate high, death not uncommon due to that or disease.

Davina could barely speak of her parents, mostly because she barely knew them. Imprisoned when she was young, forcing her to live with her neighbors and their cruel children, they never came back for her as they’d promised once they’d been released.

It was when she was sobbing that she shared the day she’d overheard at the rundown marketplace that Deimos would take refugees in if they were able to make it through the rogue lands to its borders. How she’d been frightened until something had happened that made it clear she’d rather die than live another day there.

And so, a few days after her twenty-third birthday, along with another woman she’d met on the edge of Charon’s pack territory, Davina had left. And all Isla would let her explain then, as panic had clearly racked Davina’s paling form while Isla tried to soothe her, was that she’d made it into Abalys alone weeks later—weak, starving, and traumatized.

Then she worked to make a life for herself here…and then she met her mate. The handsome member of Deimos’s guard who would go on to love and protect her in a way no one ever had, and how no one else ever would.

Isla hadn’t let Davina see the anger that had festered within her. She waited until the secretary had gone before the emotions took over, and she fought the urge to go into Charon and rip Alpha Locke to shreds. Imperial Alpha Cassius, too, if he was taking part in this.

And her father…

Isla checked in with Ameera sparingly.

Though the general had put on a brave face, one of a leader of the highest order, the news of her father’s actions, his secret, had rattled her. Him lying to Kai—she took it as a betrayal to her, too.

The two warrior women rarely crossed paths that week, only when Ameera found Kai in those perfect moments when Ezekiel had been at the hall and Kai on a break, when he and Isla would take a moment to just be with each other for a few seconds. And though she could’ve stayed, Isla took it as her cue to go. There was something else she could do, and Kai would’ve told her later, anyway.

Though, Ezekiel, frankly, hadn’t been doing much out of the ordinary—keeping Ameera occupied, of course, when Isla would’ve been happy to have her by her side.

Without her, Isla and Rhydian had taken it upon themselves to scout where the tunnels fed into Deimos. Jonah couldn’t find any type of map of them, and Callan’s didn’t offer much. It seemed he’d been guessing their locations.

Reassuring was the fact that even if the Wall’s wards were breaking down, since the Hunt—since the witch, possibly—the bak weren’t moving in packs. At least, not close by. Most of them remained in their favored areas away from the Wall, the ones in the tunnel by the guard base, as well as the wasteland were anomalies.

Still, Isla was asked—basically told—never to go to the house alone, even if she’d figured that was her best chance at contacting the killer.

And hence—Unit 37B.

---