The Alpha's Blind Fate
Chapter 258: A Hunter For A Hunter

Chapter 258: A Hunter For A Hunter

ZINA

Zina was already in Daemon’s office before Alpha Kairos could finish whatever glib words he was saying.

Her anxiety only seemed to grow when she realized that Daemon didn’t seem to be in his office in the first place.

"Daemon?" She whispered, taking in the abandoned chair of his office table, and the books neatly stacked on his table. He was a neat man almost to the point of obsession. A fact that Zina believed was contributed by his rabid control problems.

"In here," his voice called back. Following the sound of his voice, Zina found herself walking a narrow path in his office with just walls on both sides. She had always thought the dark path had a dead end, but no there was a door at the end of it. And said door was slightly ajar and light trickled from there to the corridor.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside. The first thing that hit her was a dry, musky smell. And one glance at the room she was in revealed what was responsible for the smell. Thousands and thousands of books were stacked in shelves so tall they hardly reached the towering ceilings of the room.

The shelves were of different structures and designs. Some, twisting like a snake, and some taking rare forms like a dome, pyramids, even cones. All in all, Zina just felt like she had stepped into the dwellings of an immortal of knowledge . Exactly the way the stories depicted them.

Something, like a shadow, quickly zapped through behind her, causing her to startle. Before she could turn and see what was responsible, Daemon appeared in front of her as if carried by the wind itself. He was that shockingly fast.

"Daemon," she gasped, wide eyes taking him.

"Don’t be afraid, it’s the full moon." He whispered close to her ears while hugging her at the same time.

Zina smiled, then shook her head. "I wasn’t scared... but it was startling."

Amused liquid dark eyes met hers. "Doesn’t that translate to fear as well?"

"Not really?" Zina defended weakly, but then she shook her head internally, remembering why she was there. She reluctantly stepped out of Daemon’s hold while trying as hard as possible not to play with her fingers, which was a dead giveaway that she was nervous.

"Why is Alpha Kairos here?" She asked, instead of starting with the exact reason she had sought Daemon out in the first place.

"I see you’ve met Kairos, but Is that what you want to spend your hard earned five minutes asking?"

"Surely you do not mean that I’ve only five minutes to talk with you?" Zina muttered, pretending to be aghast.

Daemon’s lips tugged into that devilish smile that went straight to decadent parts of her body. "Actually, it’s now three minutes, twenty five seconds."

Zina’s jaw dropped from mock horror. Wasn’t the man calculative to a fault. Without knowing it, she began to wrangle her fingers nervously.

"So I decided to drop by at the inn where the man who lost his tongue was found. My intention at first was to see whether I could find any clues as to the man who is threatening you." She explained hurriedly.

Daemon nodded grimly. "But instead of a clue you found another body, except unlike the man whose tongue is currently in my possession, this body ended up to be truly dead." He finished like he had been there that night.

Zina knew that he must have already gotten the information, but she still deemed it proper to report herself in the spirit of trusting each other and all that.

So she nodded, "do you think we have a serial killer in our hands?"

"I wouldn’t go as far as to give him such huge credit yet." Daemon retorted, eyes shining with intelligence that gleamed like he had all the knowledge in the world and more. "Sometimes what you believe to be planned might turn out to be a surprising coincidence in fact."

Zina wrangled her fingers harder. "I think the same," Zina muttered as she struggled and debated her next words over and over again. Finally, she spoke them with all the courage in the world.

"I think this man might have approached Fionna intentionally or not... but of course, Fionna knows nothing about that!"

Contrary to all the dreaded expressions she believed Daemon would bore at that revelation, he looked amused instead. "What makes you think that? Because the Red Sister was sent to declare your little friend a traitor?"

Of course he knew that too.

Zina could do nothing but keep her eyes on the ground. In a meek voice she pleaded while finally meeting his eyes. "Do not allow the Red Sisters to take her away."

Daemon’s eyes hardened like molten magma. "That is beyond my control, Zina. And besides, the only one I care about is you. I’m sure the Red Hand is capable of taking care of herself as she has always been doing.

"So do you think the man approached her or not?" Zina asked instead, deciding not to fight a losing battle. At least, it didn’t seem as though there was any anger on his part towards Fionna. For now, that was enough for her.

"It doesn’t matter." Daemon said nonchalantly while perusing through a shelf that stood tall by their side. Zina rushed to his side because she wanted to see his eyes no matter what.

"The man we are dealing with is quite manipulative," he explained as if ticking off boxes in his head, "he is a very good shifter, and probably a skilled lone wolf. Seeing how he operates, he must have been alone for a long time and that solitude has afforded him the ability to move like the shadows itself. He probably has the social skills of a duck, and the finesse of a panther. Seeing how you think he is manipulating Fionna, then he might be closer than I’ve anticipated. Perhaps, he probably wants me to find him as he has become impatient playing games."

Zina scrunched her nose. It wasn’t like Daemon to hand out such praises to any one, much less a man he wanted to catch more than anything.

"Why the sudden praises?"

Daemon pulled out a book from the shelf that was titled ’The Invisible Trails Under the Moonlight’.

Daemon frowned as though he believed the point of his long speech would have been apparent to her. How to tell him that more often than not, his thought processes were like that of an enigma only discernible by gods and immortals.

"Zina, the point is this man is a hunter. And to hunt a hunter, you need a damn good hunter. The best even ."

Zina froze as she realized something. "Is that why you’ve asked for Alpha Kairos?"

Daemon’s devious smile was all the answer that she needed.