My Most Precious Human novel Chapter 158

I took my phone from the soldier who held it in his hand and called Draven again. This time, I even lost the signal and any possibility to connect. I glanced meaningfully at Patrick. He immediately pulled out his phone and tried calling Draven himself. Like mine, his phone was out of range.

"Neal." Patrick jerked his chin up at the soldier standing next to me.

He grabbed his phone, looked at the screen, and shook his head.

"Damn it!" Patrick clenched his fist, then slowly scanned the area, processing our situation.

He ordered everyone to retreat deeper into the forest, hoping that whatever was jamming our signal was coming from the mansion. Half an hour later, we knew that it wasn't the case. The signal came and went in brief waves, but once any of us broke through with the connection, the other end of the line went dead. Nonetheless, no one but me experienced this odd strike of disturbing sound while trying to make the call. When I brought up that subject, Neal, who turned out to be an IT specialist, took my phone to take a closer look at it.

We were left with only one option after losing all communication options: we had to wait. Draven and others were about to get here soon anyway. Our plan was to meet in the area where we were currently staying in an hour and attack the mansion with all our force. We used that time to regenerate, staying in smaller groups around the forest.

I was with Patrick, Neal, and six other soldiers. The waiting was nerve-wracking and devastating. I sat on the ground, giving my feet a rest, but my mind was running at full speed.

"Do you think that the same happened to Sariel and Leo?" I asked, restlessly gazing at Patrick.

He confirmed, "I'm afraid they might have entered a similar jamming zone."

"Then… they might be around here somewhere, somewhere in the woods around the mountain," I said, feeling my heart hammering, hopeful and filled with fear at the same time.

"As much as I want to hear from the General and the King, finding them here would mean that the degenerates are close, and our armies are doomed to collide." Patrick gritted his teeth.

I instantly remembered Draven's concerns about his warriors facing the degenerates. The pack warriors might have been trained to fight against other wolves, but I bet that most of them had never fought against bloodthirsty vampire zombies, not to mention a whole army of them. The Royal Army struggled to defeat them, but they just kept reappearing in great numbers. If Sariel truly lost to them, then I doubted that Draven would not share his fate. Yet, no matter how dark the thoughts invading my mind were, I tried holding onto the hope that the vampire king had to be more powerful than thousands of degenerated creatures.

While I was busy worrying about the possibility of JD's army getting closer, Neal crouched down beside me, opened the palm of my hand, and handed me a small black object the size of a bean.

"What's this?" I asked, confused.

"Spying device," he replied.

"Why would you give me that?" I chuckled nervously.

"I took it out of your phone."

His words made me flinch. "What?"

He showed me the back of my phone and pointed at the CPU. "Someone planted a bug on you. It must have malfunctioned from the start, and, finally, caused a short circuit when you were trying to call Alpha Draven," Neal explained.

I swallowed and took a deep breath. "What can this device do?" I squeezed through my teeth, wondering how deeply someone might have invaded my privacy.

"All of your calls and texts might have been intercepted, blocked, or manipulated…" he paused, checking if I could handle the details. "A stranger might have called you, and your screen would have shown you someone from your contact list. The same goes with text messages."

I laughed hysterically, feeling violated and assumingly deceived. Someone out there could have listened to all of my conversations with Martha, Kanan… or even with Sariel. If it had been JD or someone working for him, then he would have known everything we had ever found out about him, and he would have known a lot of intimate details about me. Thinking about it made me sick.

The more I started to wonder whether the messages about Sariel being the father of Elora's child were fake. How much would it change if they were… Those texts were my final push towards Draven. The accumulation of what-ifs made my head spin.