Chapter 420: Princess’s Comeback.

Princess pulled the driver-side door open, checking the time on her phone. She needed to get moving before Faye started dialing her number again to nag.

While she waited for Kiara to finish up inside, she looked through the wide glass window of the Chinese restaurant. Kiara was standing right by the counter, making payment to Guru in exchange for the gold ring.

Princess caught the tail end of their quick back-and-forth, Guru had just sold the artifact straight to her.

A moment later, the glass door pushed open, and both Kiara and Guru stepped out into the cool evening air.

"Okay, so our adventures are over, huh?" Guru said, stretching his arms over his head. "Now back to business, looking for the Alpha rogue." He took a broad step forward, opening his arms wide as if he was going to wrap Princess in a heavy hug, but she simply turned her back on him, snubbing his arms completely, and stepped up into the car.

Guru let his arms drop to his sides, chuckling softly under his breath. "Well, looks like my daughter-in-law is angry, huh? Okay..."

Before he could turn on his heel to walk toward his boys, the car door slammed back open. Princess stepped out onto the gravel, her eyes cold as she stared him down.

"You better keep calling me your daughter-in-law from now on," Princess said, her voice low and steady. "I might be Faye’s plaything, but I am a permanent toy that she is going to play with forever."

Guru met her stare, a dry smile touching the corner of his lips. "Okay. Just keep being strong and don’t feel remorseful for the weak. The stronger you become, the weaker your enemies are."

"You sound like my grandfather," Princess spat back, her chest rising and falling as she held her ground. "Only valuing strength and preying on people because they are weak. I value my family, with or without strength."

Guru didn’t push back. He kept his lips pressed tight and just gave her a simple, silent nod.

The silence stretched for a couple of seconds before Guru shifted his stance, resting a hand on his hip. "The other girl who is currently in my captivity. No witch has figured out a way to unlink her from your pups. Some are saying they don’t see any knot. Should I kill her?"

Princess knew exactly who he meant. Yuki was still locked away tight inside the vault.

"No," Princess answered instantly, her jaw setting firm. "That girl is cunning. I don’t want to gamble with my babies’ lives. Let her keep staying there."

It didn’t matter if Yuki was telling the absolute truth about tying her life thread to one of the newborn pups or pulling a massive bluff.

Princess refused to take that risk with her children.

Guru shrugged his broad shoulders, tapping his fingers against his belt. "Okay. You know keeping her inside that place costs money. Keep sending the monthly bills, and she will spend eternity inside there." He finished the sentence with a quick wink.

From around the side of the building, footsteps crunched softly on the loose gravel. Beam was approaching from behind Guru, her fingers wrapped tight around the slim neck of a heavy, unopened bottle of scotch.

Princess looked past Guru’s shoulder, her eyes flicking to the glass in Beam’s hand.

"Guru, I think you should turn," Princess said polite and clear.

Guru, still in the middle of talking, started to rotate his shoulders around. "What..."

CRACK!

He didn’t even get to finish his sentence before the heavy base of the scotch bottle slammed full force against the side of his head. Dark glass exploded into a hundred shining green shards, spraying amber liquid and foam all over the ground.

Guru’s knees buckled instantly, his legs going completely limp as he dropped like a stone, slamming hard onto the rough ground.

Behind him, Rolex and Stevie scrambled backward so fast their boots slid in the dirt. Both of them stared at the scene with wide, unblinking eyes, completely unable to process what had just happened in front of them.

Rolex blinked repeatedly, his lower jaw hanging open as he looked down at his feared boss groaning on the ground with thick red blood flowing on his bald head, then up at Beam, who was still holding the jagged glass neck of the broken bottle. The boy swallowed hard, taking another small step back. He made a silent promise to himself right then and there that he was never going to walk anywhere near that wolf ever again.

Princess slowly bent down at the waist, hovering over Guru’s broad frame as he lay face down in the dirt. She looked at the blood running past his ear, letting out a faint sigh and making a mocking, pitying face at the groaning man.

"Looks like you also let your guard down, father-in-law," Princess murmured, her voice laced with a faint satisfaction. "Nobody messes with me and gets to see another day. It’s because you are my in-law that you are still breathing."

Princess stood up straight, smoothing down her dress without looking back at the two stunned henchmen.

"Come on, girls," Princess called out, opening her door once again. "Let’s go."

Kiara and Beam stepped around the pool of spilt liquor and blood, climbing into the passenger seats. The doors clicked shut, the engine roared to life, and the car kicked up a cloud of dust as Princess slammed on the gas and drove away down the main road.

On the ground behind the restaurant, Guru remained flat on his back. His face was stained with red and soaked in sweet alcohol, but as he stared up at the darkening sky, his chest began to heave. A low, raspy chuckle escaped his throat, growing into a wide, bloody smile across his teeth.

Stevie rushed forward, dropping to one knee beside him. "Boss, are you okay?"

Under normal circumstances, both Rolex and Stevie would have yanked their handguns from their holsters and unloaded full magazines into Beam for attacking their leader. But Guru had laid down strict, absolute orders beforehand, nobody was to make a single hostile move against Princess or her crew in a situation like this.

Guru grunted, pushing himself up onto his elbows. He sat up on the hard dirt, wiping a mixture of sweat, scotch, and thick blood away from his eyes with the back of his palm.

He spat a mouthful of red onto the ground. "Is my Jeep ready?"

Rolex hurried over, his voice trembling slightly. "Almost, boss. The mechanic is still working on it."

Because Guru was just an ordinary human without a wolf spirit to mend his flesh, a head wound like this was going to throb, swell, and take days to heal properly.

Guru wiped his forehead again, staring down the empty road where the tail lights had vanished. "Oh, dear Princess," he muttered under his breath, letting out another dry laugh. "Your daughter is all grown now and looks just like you, and even her attitude is a photocopy."

Stevie pulled a rag from his back pocket and handed it over, trying to pivot back to business. "Boss, should I tell the others about finding Prince Kings?" He looked down at his boots, waiting for the word to start tracking down Princess Kings’ official hit request.

Guru took the rag and pressed it hard against the gash above his ear, wincing slightly. "No. We can’t find Prince Kings. He is already dead and will never come back. So let’s just find some other gig."

Stevie pulled out his mobile phone, tapping his thumb rapidly against the screen as he loaded up the Rogue network application. He scrolled through the private bounty boards, filtering through the high-paying contracts.

"What about this one?" Stevie asked, holding the screen up closer to Guru’s face. "A were-witch wants us to find a witch and her Lycan son. She is paying a lot of money."

Guru shoved the phone away with the back of his hand, shaking his head firmly. "No. Find something else. I am not doing witches again."

After spending the last day chained to a ceiling beam by a vengeful mother with a coven ring, he was more than ready to take a long, permanent break from anything involving magic users.

Stevie kept scrolling, his thumb flicking past half a dozen low-tier tracking jobs until a fresh posting flashed at the top of the board.

"Okay, I found one," Stevie said, reading the fine print carefully. "This client wants us to kill his father."

Guru stopped dabbing at his bleeding head. His eyes lit up, and he snapped his fingers with a sharp crack.

"Bingo! That gig is good. Let’s go find his father and have him killed."

An hour later, the local mechanic pulled the repaired Jeep around to the front lot. Guru tossed the man a stack of cash, pulled himself into the driver’s seat despite his throbbing head, and backed out onto the main strip. With Rolex and Stevie riding shotgun, they sped off down the highway toward their next payday.