“Can’t complain,” Hook answered. “Fucking with that bitch feeding, meetin’ a woman who can hold her liquor as good as I can and go all night, finally hit the foot of the stairway to heaven. So yeah, I’m all right. More than all right. But that doesn’t mean I’m not fucked out, my balls shot dry, and I don’t got bourbon instead of blood in my veins. Even so, if things go south for me this mornin’, least you know I ended my days on this earth just like I wanted.”

Abel faced forward, murmuring, “Way too fuckin’ much information,” then heard Hook’s chuckle.

Callum must have felt his mood because he didn’t chuckle.

Instead, he assured quietly, “All is in place and we’ve planned well, brother.”

Abel said nothing because Callum was right. They’d planned well. No matter what happened that morning, they’d get something out of it. Hopefully it would be one of the enemy, alive and breathing, who they could break for information. But even if no one showed, they had human scouts everywhere surrounding the meeting place—fishermen, campers, hunters, and just men who were driving the roads like they had somewhere to go but were on the lookout.

This mission, on the face of it, was Lucien meeting with his friend Cosmo.

Cosmo was in charge of the vamps, wolves, and wraiths in the surrounding areas who were keeping an eye out for the enemy, something the supernaturals reporting to Cosmo shared were nonexistent.

That didn’t mean the enemy didn’t have human eyes.

But Cosmo couldn’t approach the compound, because if he did, the enemy, if they were watching, would know he was the one leading that effort. And according to Lucien, Cosmo was a force to be reckoned with and his involvement and proximity to The Three at that juncture was something advantageous to keep secret. Lucien, and Gregor, wanted their enemies to guess what Cosmo was up to, not know.

Now they were outing Cosmo themselves, with a purpose.

Their road trip was early, the meeting place clandestine, the route they were taking to it was circuitous, all of this to show anyone who might be watching that they were taking precautions to hide the fact this was a trap.

And if they found themselves with a fight on their hands, they’d know they were being watched. Even if no one showed, the scouts they had in place were trained to spot who they were supposed to be spotting. So if Cosmo was followed but not approached, or their convoy was, they’d still know that they had enemy eyes on them, active ones.

That didn’t seem much to Abel, but he was cool with it because it was doing something. But Callum and Lucien said any intel was good to have in order to analyze and then strategize.