Wild and Free (The Three #3)(104)

Abel didn’t move.

He stated, “I’m taking it the apple fell far from that tree.”

“I’m eight hundred and twenty-three years old and not one day in all those years was a day where I felt even a modicum of warmth for my father,” Lucien returned.

Abel felt his body relax and his lips curl up. “So you hate him.”

“He’s despicable and this is only the latest in a very long history of him proving just that,” Lucien replied.

“In other words, you hate him,” Abel said again, and finally, Lucien smiled.

“Yes, Abel. In other words, I hate him.”

“Right, then let’s go see this picture,” Abel muttered.

Lucien nodded and turned, Callum and Abel following him into the house. Abel and Callum waited in one of the dozen living rooms the place had while Lucien went up to his and Leah’s bedroom to get his iPad. He did this with vampire speed, which meant they waited about five seconds.

Abel was feeling no humor when he looked at the photo of the man on Lucien’s tablet.

This was because it was the man in Delilah’s dream.

“What the f*ck?” he whispered.

“Fuck,” Callum also whispered.

Lucien just drew in an annoyed breath.

Abel focused on Lucien. “She’s dreaming of someone she doesn’t know.”

“Yes,” Lucien agreed.

The seconds of the dream he saw and felt, the slaughter, Delilah’s terror, raked through him.

“This means whatever the f*ck that was might happen,” he bit out.

“None of the dreams have come true, Abel,” Callum reminded him. “Except the good kind that Sonia and I or Lucien and Leah have had.”

This did not make Abel feel better.

“She was terrified in that dream,” Abel told him. “She reeked of it so much, I tasted it and I was only in that dream for a coupla seconds.”

Callum’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

“He saw you,” Lucien said, taking Abel’s attention back to him.

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

“Be careful, Abel,” Lucien warned, his voice low and heavy. “In war, anything can happen. I cannot imagine a scenario where anyone, especially you, would allow Lilah to be in that situation by herself. That said, there are many forces at work here and anything we do, as frustrating as it is, we must proceed with caution.”

“What you’re sayin’ is, I should let her have her dreams and not try to get in again,” Abel deduced, and Lucien nodded.

“We’ve learned that our dreams can cause harm. If Lilah’s aren’t harming her, and she isn’t remembering them, then there’s no reason for you to try to get in,” Lucien said.

“Because some bitch of a witch somewhere has got the power, or some other supernatural shit might be goin’ on, and they’re usin’ Lilah and her connection to me as a channel to lure me in and maybe do me or both of us harm in her dream,” Abel guessed.

“I don’t know,” Lucien replied. “But as I said, I would be careful.”

“So what if they get frustrated that they aren’t gettin’ to me and they step things up with her and her dreams do do her harm?” Abel asked curtly.

“Then you go in, but you do it with me close so I can mark you and pull you back,” Lucien returned.

“You can do that?” Abel asked.

“I’ve no idea,” Lucien answered. “But I can attune myself to you, or her, so I’m relatively certain I could pull one or the other of you out of a dream state.”

Abel’s eyes narrowed. “Relatively certain?”

“It’s all we have,” Lucien said quietly.

“Fuck,” Abel clipped.

“We need to move,” Callum growled, and Abel and Lucien looked to him.

“What?” Lucien asked.

“We need to move. We need to do something,” Callum ground out. “We need to take the offensive to them. We need to hunt them, inactivate their soldiers, dismantle their infrastructure. We can’t have them manipulating dreams. We can’t give them any in to get to somebody. And we can’t sit around on our asses for eternity.”

Obviously, Callum was feeling restless too.

“With due respect, Cal, it was you three days ago who advised caution,” Lucien noted carefully.

“That was three days ago,” Callum shot back. “Now there’s a possibility one of The Three can be murdered in their beds without the enemy even penetrating the outer wall. So my advice has changed.”

“And how do we start doing that?” Abel asked.

“We begin to gather intel, doing it aggressively by giving them a target,” Callum answered.

Abel’s entire frame went wired. “Delilah’s in enough danger. I won’t have her in more.”

“The women stay here. We’ll be the targets,” Callum told him. “Whoever comes after us, we take them down but not out. If we have a prisoner, he or she can be interrogated.”

Finally. A plan. Not a great one, but it was something.

“I’m in,” Abel stated immediately, and Callum grinned.

“Wolf,” he whispered.

“Whatever we do must be meticulously planned,” Lucien added.