Wild and Free (The Three #3)(169)

“This is just a feeling?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“No visions with it?”

She shook her head on the pillow and said, “No.”

“It isn’t a stretch, button, to have anxiety about what’s happening.”

She was silent, thinking on this, before she said, “I hope that’s it.”

Yuri hoped the same.

“Try to set it from your mind so you can sleep.”

“Okay, sweetheart.”

He gathered her closer at the same time she snuggled deep into him.

Having given her concerns to him, she found sleep quickly.

Smelling her, feeling her tiny softness pressed close, her warmth, listening to the steady thrum of her heart, even with all this, Yuri did not do the same.





Chapter Twenty-Four


Hope Is Powerful

Delilah



“Let me get this straight,” Cain started over breakfast three days later. “You’ve got some crazy Mexican witch in the back forty sacrificing a yak, or some shit, in order to get visions of what might happen, doing this either to put your minds at ease or so she can tell you what you’ve got to stop. You’ve got six other witches, my mate included, chanting over a bowl you hope will guide you to the leader of this mess. You’ve got a lock on one, and maybe five other, training camps that, right now, teams of immortals and mortals are setting up to go in and take down. And if any of this is successful, it’s going to seriously anger the enemy. You’ve also got a vampire you trust who’s cornered an enemy vampire, rescuing the concubine he was set to rape and murder but detaining him. Because of that, even though the security in this place is so tight it’s a wonder anyone can breathe, you’re planning to put The Three in danger to take all of them over two thousand miles just so Abel can interrogate this guy. A guy, mind you, who might not know anything or anything you can use.”

He took in a breath, his eyes scanning the people at the table, which included all of The Three, the rest of the family, Gregor, and Yuri, but none of the witches.

Then he finished, “Do I have that right?”

“You do,” Abel, sitting beside me, confirmed.

Cain’s eyes narrowed on his brother. “Are you insane?”

I felt Abel get tense so I put my hand on his knee and squeezed.

“No,” my man clipped.

“You are, brother. You’ve totally lost it,” Cain returned, and I squeezed harder.

We’d learned, not surprisingly, that Cain was born first.

And we were now learning, also not surprisingly, that even though he was about fifteen minutes older than Abel, he definitely had big brother tendencies.

“What do you suggest we do?” Abel shot back.

“I don’t know,” Cain retorted. “But not that.” He shook his head in frustration. “Dammit, you got all of me, why didn’t I get all of you so I could go instead?”

I understood this.

Cain didn’t have Abel’s mind-control abilities.

That was just for the last of The Three.

“I wouldn’t want you in danger either, brother,” Abel bit out.

“Yes, well, I didn’t spend a century keeping you safe, and the century before that watching our parents do it, for you to go on a suicide mission,” Cain bit back.

It was me who got tense at that.

Needless to say, when Abel shared this plan with me, I wasn’t gung ho on it either.

But he was my man, my mate, the one destined for me.

I had to have his back.

This meant at the current juncture, I had to keep my mouth shut.

Abel felt my tenseness. I knew it when I heard his voice get tight as he said, “It’s not even close to a suicide, man. We’ll be covered.”

“You sure about that?” Cain returned.

Abel’s voice was still tight when he answered, “Nothing’s sure in war. That doesn’t mean you sit back and wait for devastation to occur before you do shit about it. We need as much information as we can get, considering we don’t have that much of it, and even if this guy doesn’t have much either, what we get will be more.”

“I understand that, so have the people who’ve got him work him,” Cain suggested.

“They are,” Gregor butted in. “Cosmo and Stephanie are both skilled in interrogation. They just aren’t succeeding.”

“So bring him here,” Cain said to Gregor.

“They’re chipped,” Callum told him something that Cain, having been fully briefed on the situation, already knew.

“So?” Cain asked. “A chip is not going to erase what he knows on his way across the country.”

“If we move him to this location, they’ll know we have him. Currently, he’s being kept in his home, which won’t arouse suspicion,” Lucien pointed out.

“And I’ll repeat, a chip is not going to erase his memory,” Cain stated.

“Yes, but if he is, indeed, important, whatever he knows and can share they’ll also know, and they might make moves to change plans if they believe he’s been compromised,” Yuri put in. “We must know what they’re planning, not what they planned and aborted because we captured one of their men.”