"The council wants you to go and take a look at the attack at the Norman Bridge." as soon as Tao entered his office, he relayed the itinerary that had been arranged for him by the council already. Dominic closed his eyes and opened them again, he raised his head and looked at Tao through his glasses and questioned, "The what?"
"The attack at the Norman Bridge," repeated Tao with a patience that Dominic certainly didn’t have. He placed the fax that one of the council members must have sent him. Dominic stared at the paper in front of him and took off his glasses before saying in an exasperated tone, "Is this really necessary? They could always use emails or maybe messages. Those are faster and much better means of communication."
"They don’t believe in it and you know that. Those old jerks only believe in what they want to believe," scoffed Tao.
Dominic didn’t say anything in response to that. He picked up the fax that the elders of the council had sent to him and started reading the information. The more he read, the more his brows furrowed. By the end of the report, he pursed his lips and said, "What kind of nonsense is written in this fax? What did they mean by the attack was done by a group of vampires and shifters?"
"Since when did vampires and shifters start working together? Are they trying to shift attention from the recent attacks?" Dominic questioned. He threw the fax down on the table and pinched the space between his brows.
"There is a possibility." Tao crossed his arms and glanced at the fax that was now lying haphazardly on the surface of the table. "Those elders other than Seth don’t want to accept that the witches are running rampant. It’s beneath their pride to accept that there are still witches who are going against them even when they have defeated their ancestors in the last war."
"Their pride is getting the best of them. I am certain that this order was passed down by Seth. He needs the true report of the situation about the Norman bridge and not a covered-up report that was whitewashed more than ten or twenty times. That’s the only reason he asked the elders to send this fax down to our pack."
He paused and added in a swift voice, "Since it’s the order passed down by the head of the council, you cannot refuse."
"I wasn’t going to," Dominic replied with a raise of his brow. He then turned to look at Luca, who stood next to Tao and questioned, "Why are you so silent? Did something happen?" Knowing Luca’s family dynamics, Dominic would not be surprised if something happened at Luca’s home.
"Dom... have you ever thought about whether we made the right decision?"
"What do you mean? The right decision regarding what—"
"Regarding Inez." Luca didn’t let him finish and spoke up. His words brought a sort of chill in the office and a frown on Dominic’s face. He rubbed the tips of his fingers and said to the man, "What do you mean by whether we made the right decision regarding her? You saw it. You saw her sneaking out of my office. The vial was in her hands—"
"Yes, it was. But what are the chances that it was her?" Luca snapped. His heart and mind had been in a mess ever since the day he saw the tiger shifter die right in front of him. A witch had snuck inside their territory despite all the sigils and defences that they had implemented against their kind. If the witch could sneak inside the pack once, could she not have done so in the past?
Dominic frowned as if he couldn’t understand what he was trying to say to him but Luca knew that he did. He did understand what he was trying to say to him. He just didn’t want to accept the truth.
Luca pursed his lips and exhaled heavily before stating, "Maybe the woman who stole the vial was never Inez."
"How can that be impossible!? The death of the tiger shifter is enough to prove that witches can move in and out of our territory with ease. Those defences that Uncle Cherith put around the pack are useless. What if the witches had snuck in and stolen the vial of siren’s tears? You know how crucial those tears are and almost everyone in the pack knew that you had acquired those siren tears. What are the chances that a witch didn’t just waltz in wearing Inez’s face and then leave?" Luca persisted. These questions had tormented him for days.
Even at night he couldn’t close his eyes and sleep because every time he closed them, he would recall Inez’s hurt and painful expression. He had always seen confusion in those eyes of hers. He had often thought and believed that it was because Inez didn’t know that they had found out what she had done.
But now he had another angle to look at the entire situation from. What if Inez was truly confused? His heart ached when he thought about how confused and pained Inez must have felt when her bestfriends suddenly turned their back on her without letting her know about what happened or what she had done?
She must have felt like a lost lamb who didn’t even know what she had done wrong.
And this realisation made Luca’s heart break all over again. Even worse than the time when he realised or thought that Inez had betrayed them and watched Arabella die right in front of them.
"You are overthinking," Dominic said calmly but his fingers were tightly clenched. He stared at the man in front of him and repeated, "You are overthinking. There is no way I could have seen it wrong. I know her. I know her better than you—"
"Did you?" Luca scoffed. For the first time in years of knowing him, he stood against Dominic and that too for a woman. But in his heart he knew that Inez was worth it; even if she was not destined to become his, he was going to fight for her. Even if it was late. "But from what I can see, you never knew her, Dom. and neither did we."
Luca stared at Dominic with a pained expression and stated in a cold voice, "Just admit it that you were wrong, Dom. You were fucking wrong!"
I am going to be thick-skinned here. Please vote for this book with your golden tickets, please. I have never received 100-200 golden tickets on this book and we are so close this time around; I would like to see it just once. Please.