#Chapter 373 – Betrayer
Roger
“My phone,” Dominic murmurs as I look over his wounds. “Fuck your phone,” I murmur, shaking my head and leaning closer to a deep slice on his stomach that makes me hiss with anxiety.
“Roger,” Dominic snaps, and I look up at him with a frown. “The priest – he said the master had Rafe. Check my fucking phone – Ella will…” his head. 1 falls back, exhausted. But I interpret his meaning. So, I reach for his back pocket. Dominic moans loudly as I turn him a little so that I can get behind him, but eventually I get the phone and flick through it, my face going pale at what I see.
“Shit,” I murmur, flipping through the messages first from our father’s phone and then an unfamiliar number.
“What?” he asks.
“They don’t have Rafe,” I sigh, tucking the phone into my own back pocket. ” The priest was wrong about that. The baby’s still with Ella and Cora. But…” I sigh, and Dominic opens his eyes to look at me, bidding me silently to tell him everything I know. “They attacked the bunker when we left. The girls got out through the passage – they had to leave dad behind. And…Cora’s hurt,” I say, working hard to get the words out steadily. “They went to Hank, to try to patch them up.”
Dominic’s eyes go wide now. “Ella’s gift?”
“Bound,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t know how-”
“Doesn’t matter,” my brother murmurs, and then to my shock – he curls his body to sit up, almost screaming at the pain it causes him.
“Dominic!” I shout, putting my hands on his shoulders, but he works to swat me away, so I back off.
“We have to get to them,” Dominic says, panting and holding my eyes. We can’t – we can’t trust Hank…”
Slowly, I hold his eyes and shake my head. “Let me go, Dominic,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re in,” I hesitate, but when I look at the blood seeping from his wounds I know that I’m right. “You’re in bad shape.”
He just glares at me and I sigh, knowing it’s a lost cause.
“Fine,” I say, giving a little shrug and working to put my arm beneath my brother’s shoulder to help him up. “But if you fall to pieces on the way, don’t blame me.”
Dominic mutters something in response as we get him panting to his feet, but I ignore it, seeing Conor coming close.
“Nothing, Sir,” Conor reports, looking anxiously towards my brother. “No one else here. If the man – Xander if he was here, he’s not anymore. What can I
“Nothing,” I snap. But then I rethink the command. “Actually – get the cars close. We need transport, now. You take all the men – injured and healthy – back to the bunker. They were attacked when we were gone – they’ll need reinforcements. Dominic and I…”
“The Lunas,” Conor says, giving us a quick salute. “I understand.”
And then, his face serious, Conor turns and starts to give commands to the men. “That one needs a promotion,” I murmur to my brother.
“Later,” Dominic sighs, his eyes on the stairs. “Right now, let’s just figure out how the hell we’re getting me out of this house.”
Ella
My eyes dart to Hank, going immediately wide. And suddenly, Henry’s ideas echo in my mind. That we can’t trust Hank. That he’s gotten too close to our family too quickly. That he’s an ambitious, eager man who has worked suspiciously hard to work to a place of trust with our inner circle.
And then, today – why was he asking so much about my gift and how I could use it? Did he really really want to help Cora and her baby? Or was there something else…
“Don’t!” I gasp, throwing a hand out towards the Priestess, Rafe still crying loudly in one of her arms while she holds one of the empty jugs of holy water with her other hand. “Don’t give him the baby!”
Hank turns to me then, shocked and confused. “What?” he asks.
“Don’t do it!” I say, ignoring him, my eyes completely focused on the Priestess before me. “Don’t trust him – please! Just – ”
But then, I go pale as Rafe begins to scream in her arms – a noise beyond the normal cries of a disgruntled baby who wants his mother. A very true, very desperate scream –
As if –
As if Rafe himself intuits something about her –
That’s something is wrong –
My face goes slack with horror as I shift my eyes away from my baby and back to the Priestess who holds him, as I see now the vicious sneer on her face as she whips up the hand which is not holding Rafe and cracks the jug still held in her fingers hard across Hank’s skull.
Hank gives a horrible cry of pain and then falls to the ground, his hands immediately going to his head –
I begin to leap to my feet, heading immediately for the priestess, but she whirls on me next, throwing out a hand towards me and growling some words that have no meaning to me –
But even if I don’t understand them, their effects are immediately clear as the water that surrounds me instantly freezes.
I scream, the cold of the ice burning my skin where it touches, pinning me in place, binding me to the floor. I shove my arms against it but – somehow – it’s not natural ice. Instead, every time I break it, it re-freezes, holding me ever steady in my place in the center of the room as the Priestess lets out a dark laugh.
“No!” I scream, trying to reach for my baby, but my arms can’t move at all. Hank moans on the ground beside me, but I see his feet move- working to get up – see him
The Priestess turns to him, her face turning wicked now, and she delivers a sharp kick first to his rips – taking his breath and then to my horror to his head making his moan deepen and 1 his body go slack –
“Thank you,” the Priestess says, turning back to me with a nasty smile. ”
For making this so easy for me. For bidding me come help you once you were separated from that idiot Alpha you call your mate. For telling me precisely where you are, instead of having to hunt you down. The Master will be…quite pleased with me, that I was able to complete the job even when you weaseled out of his first and second traps.”
I’m still screaming at her to let me go, to give me back my child, telling her that I’ll kill her – and then, desperate, that I’ll give her whatever she wants.
She ignores me though. And, as I watch, the Priestess raises one hand over her head and snaps her fingers. A darkness descends over her then as her robes shift in color from dove to a dark and turbulent grey. And I know, instantly, that she’s one of them.
One of his.
“So good to be back in my true form,” she murmurs, shaking herself a little in relief. Then she smirks at me. “And so good to finally be able to get away from those goody-goods who worship your idiot mother.”
Then, taunting me, she comes close to grin down into my face, my baby screaming in her arms. “So good to again serve a real God. He will reward me much when he sees that it is me who has brought the Master his boy. The Master,” she says, her voice hardly more than a whisper now – hardly audible over Rafe’s screams, “always gets what he wants,”
And then she laughs, turning away from me, as I scream after her completely desperate, but totally unable to move. And she takes my baby away.
