The Betrayal

Chapter Thirty-Four

I sat at the head of the table, studying each of the men in front of me and waiting for one of them to volunteer any ideas to the conversation. For the past few hours, I'd been hoping to come up with another plan. But most of the time Damon and Luca had been passive aggressive towards each other. Neither one of them contributing any sort of helpful ideas.

My gaze drifted from the men to the map that was sprawled across the table. White markers were placed at the various points where the most pup-nappings have taken place.

"Maybe, we should call Aeron," Valerio volunteered.

Damon growled at his name. I cocked a brow at him.

"We've been sitting here for hours trying to figure out where they could be, just staring at this map filled with clusters of points and what have we come up with? Nothing," Valerio continued.

"We should," I said.

Damon clenched his jaw.

"Doesn't feel good when someone else flirts with your mate and threatens to take your whole world away from you, huh?" Luca scoffed.

Damon slammed his hands down on the table. I jumped up, palms smacking down on the wood of the table too, and glared at the two of them.

"If you don't like it, you can both leave. I'm trying to find our pups. I don't have time for your childish fighting. Either you contribute to our conversation and deal with Aaron without putting up a fuss or you leave. I don't need either of you to be here right now."

Their eyes widened. I placed my hands on my hips. "What's it going to be?"

When neither Damon nor Luca dared to move, Aaisha spoke up. "I'm down to summon this sexy tootsie roll of chocolate."

I narrowed my eyes at the men again, and then walked to the window. My eyes travelled across the purple and pink sunset over the trees.

"Radiance." Aeron appeared in front of the door, walking towards me with a smile. "You needed me?"

"Yes. We... we wanted your opinion." I smiled, walking back to the table. He walked up beside me, his hand grazing ever so slightly against my lower back.

I sighed. Hopefully, he'd help us. Right now we needed someone wise and mature and someone who didn't behave like Damon and Luca had been.

A chair screeched across the wooden floor and our eyes snapped to Aaisha. "Hey, there is a chair over here, you can sit in. I know how tiring being a god could be all day, ya know." She patted the seat I was sitting in earlier.

Aeron shot me a smile, walking over to the seat. His dark eyes remained on me, watching me, studying me. "Would you like to sit?" he asked.

I shook my head at him, watching him take a seat.

If you change your mind, you can always sit on my lap.He whispered through my mind and then winked from across the table, his biceps bulging as he crossed his arms over one another.

Again, I shook my head at him. A hint of a smile tugged at my lips.

Valerio stood from his seat, leaning over the table with the map on it. "Alright, these points are the ones where the most kidnappings are happening."

Aeron studied the map, nodding. "And, what about these points are important? Where do I think the Challengers would be keeping these pups?"

I nodded. "Yes. We've had a couple ideas, but none of them have played out correctly as we discussed them earlier. What do you think?"

He leaned back in his seat, his hands clasping behind his head, his muscles flexing. "Well, let's think about it from their perspective. If I was a Challenger, why would I attack these specific places?" His eyes scanned the map, looking through the mess of points. His eyes widened for a moment and he sat up, tracing the points with his finger. "These points are all deep in the forest."