I hope he hasn’t. She started running as soon as he did, and there were people running after them, trying to get answers to their questions. As soon as they ran through the Earthborn and Stoneborn sectors, they realized that both groups were already causing trouble. Other groups accused the Earthborn and Stoneborn of not protecting the Shadowborn when they had been so close to the area where it happened.
“Quiet!” Nick roared as they ran through the area, but he didn’t stop as he ran toward the Forestborn area, where a wall of trees was already laid in place by fearful-looking men and women with deep green eyes. He didn’t try to breach it, though he knew he could have if he tried. He put out a hand to everyone behind him to stop them as well, and was glad when his command was actually obeyed. “Mitch! Beatrice! If you haven’t already run off like cowards in the night, you will…”
“We will what, Prince Nickel?” Mitch’s voice yelled back at him as he stepped through a tangle of woven-together trees to stand in front of Nick and Zara, Beatrice stepping out right beside him. Both of them looked like they had been woken in an untimely manner from their flower-beds but had already heard the news. “This was not our doing. Put your Heartborn to good use for once and see for yourself if you doubt me.”
Zara trembled a little bit behind Nick, but as she touched the back of his shoulder, he could see through Zara’s filter that Mitch was only partially being truthful. It was not his doing, nor his mate’s. They hadn’t touched Orlando at all. But apparently, according to Zara, their guards had. They didn’t do it themselves. She said as though she was wincing, since it was painful for her to go through with the lie, though Nick thought the pain in Zara was from all the fighting around them. They must have sent others to do it for them.
“How many did you lose?” Nick spat at Mitch, his hands balling into fists and the metal on his arms flowing down to wrap around his fingers in horrible curving blades that changed and shifted into more painful-looking instruments as he spoke.
Mitch’s face looked sad. “It wasn’t our doing. We knew nothing, even if it was Forestborn that was responsible…”
“It happened on your ground, by your guards, while you slept.” The metal in his hands finally formed itself into blades and solid gauntlets covering his hands, and Nick’s face was murderous. “You’ve broken the peace we tried to make here, Mitch.”
“Alpha Nickel, listen to me closely. I have no desire to end this peace against anyone but the Council.” He held out his hands, empty and unarmed, though Nick was obviously about to murder him where he stood. “I swear by all the gods that this was not our doing. May I never touch a single blade of grass again if I lie.”
Nick had a moment of doubt at the man’s earnestness, but he took a step forward anyway. “If you lie…”
A Forestborn on top of the wall behind Mitch leapt down from where he’d stood, bringing most of a branch with him to bash Nick directly in the face with it, sweeping him off his feet. “Run, my Alpha!”
Chaos broke out at that, and there were four Ironborn leaping at the man before his feet even touched the ground. Beneath their cry, Mitch’s shout was barely audible. “You idiot!”
Zara cried out as the onlooking Earthborn and Stoneborn took that single struck match of conflict and turned it into a wildfire. She was shoved aside as the Iron Guard leapt in to protect Nick, and so stumbling, she ran as hard as she could to get away from all the fighting and pain that was breaking out around her. She had to get away from the compound.
As she ran through the Stoneborn and Earthborn sectors, no one attacked her, and in fact, most of them made a path for her to get out quickly and safely. They were following someone else’s orders, after all. Someone else who cared about Zara’s safety just as much as Nick did.
Before Nick could even get his bearings, the war had broken out around him. There were Ironborn making a shield over him with their own bodies, throwing up a whole wall of a house on one side and a web of violence on the other. Earthborn and Stoneborn had swept in against the Forestborn, but Mitch was doing his best not to kill anyone he was going up against. He was as crafty a fighter as he was a strategist, and most of his fighting was just tripping up and trapping his opponents, not actually wounding them. From his place of safety, Nick’s heart sank as he realized that Zara had spoken the truth, but so had Mitch. If he was truly Nick’s enemy, he would be fighting to kill, not just to restrain.
“Stop! Stop it! The Forestborn are not…” Nick was knocked off his feet at that point, though, by a stray flying branch, and his plea was lost to almost everyone, though he could see that Mitch heard him, as he turned toward Nick with an acknowledging glare that was almost as condescending as it was truly remorseful at what was happening. After that, the peace broken, Nick jumped up and tried to order his fighters to pull back one at a time, trying to get it through their heads that they were being deceived into fighting each other.
The Ironborn started to pull back and any fighting with the Forestborn started to die off, but as soon as they stopped, they realized that there was still fighting going on. When the Ironborn and Forestborn stepped back behind their shields and barriers, they saw that the fighters who hadn’t stepped back were
