The Prophecy (Saga of the Chosen Book 1)

by Petra Landon

  “Then I suggest we not introduce her at the Registry” Jason suggested mildly.

  “Wasn’t planning to” Raoul responded, equally mildly.

  Jason let out a chuckle in response.

  “Alright then, we’re in agreement here it seems.”

  “So it would seem” the Alpha concurred agreeably. “Now” he said glancing at his watch. “We have one hour before we head out.”

  It was the signal for everyone gathered in the room to disperse. On her way out with Hawk, Tasia turned impulsively to her unusually silent companion.

  “It was Jerome Carter who refused to accept you into the Pack, wasn’t it?” she questioned in a low voice. Tasia figured that this was no state secret and could be discussed safely outside the Pack Room. And if not, then Hawk would remind her.

  “Yes” Hawk assented. “Eight months after Sara and I were accepted into the Pack, he came after me one day. I was young, still in training as a Shifter, and ended up badly hurt before Duncan put a stop to it. I think that’s when Duncan decided that he’d had enough. Luis challenged Carter before Duncan could though.”

  “Luis knew my father” he added as Tasia paused before the room she was to share with Sienna. “He had apprenticed under him. He’s always had a soft corner for Sara and me because of the connection.”

  Thirty minutes later, Tasia closed the door to her room behind her only to start visibly at the sight of the Alpha watching her quietly from the hallway.

  “I need to talk to you” he said.

  Caught by surprise, Tasia simply stared back at him mutely.

  “Pack Room?” one tawny eyebrow arched in inquiry after a brief silence.

  Tasia followed him to the sound-proofed room a few doors down the hallway. She made her way to a chair while the Alpha shut the door behind him to come to a stand before her.

  “I’ve a bad feeling about this” he stated abruptly, without preamble. “We might need to rethink this. Or perhaps tweak it a little” he added thoughtfully.

  Puzzled by the cryptic statement, Tasia found herself projecting her own uncertainties onto his words. The issue currently at the forefront of her mind was her decision to attempt a working relationship with the Pack for the second time. The events of the past week had shaken Tasia’s confidence in herself and the decisions she’d made in San Francisco. As a consequence, she found herself second guessing her decision to associate with the Shifters again. Had she made the same mistake again, was a constant refrain through Tasia’s mind.

  “Do you mean my relationship with the Pack?” she inquired a tad diffidently.

  The Alpha’s gold eyes snapped to her in shock. “What?” he barked. “No” he was vehement as the gold eyes held her gaze, an arrested expression in them.

  There was a brief silence. Tasia stared at him uncertainly while he studied her with a mixture of astonishment and shock.

  “No” he repeated again, his tone milder. He hesitated as if intending to expand on his brief interlocution but eventually contended himself with a simple statement. “I wasn’t talking about your association with the Pack.”

  “I meant the visit to the Registry. LaRue seems to think that the wizards will do their best to stonewall me and stymie our investigation. And I believe him. He’s no fool. He believes that it’s too soon – the San Francisco humiliation is still fresh in everyone’s minds. That makes me suspect that you’ll be even more of a persona non grata than me. I, at least, have the excuse of being a heretic. A lowlier form of Chosen - a Shifter who knows no better than to attack a Guardian whose job is to safeguard all wizards. You, however, are one of them. They’ll not be so easy to forgive you.”

  “I see” Tasia responded slowly, suddenly starting to understand where he was going with this. The Alpha was right about how the wizards would view their differing roles in the San Francisco altercation. Centuries of co-existing separately had created a kind of disconnect between the different Chosen with differing magic abilities. The advent of the CoC had brought more Chosen into contact with other kinds of Magicks but the old stereotypes and assumptions had not been vanquished that easily. This kind of thinking still persisted amongst the Chosen although not so openly as before. It had evolved into a subtler, almost institutionalized, form of bigotry.

  “They won’t know who I am if you don’t introduce me” Tasia pointed out. What he was hinting at was that he would suffer none of the consequences of this narrow mindedness. He was a Shifter and an Alpha to boot. And one on a mission for the First Wizard. The Registry would eventually co-operate with him one way or another. But she’d be more vulnerable.

  “This is the Chosen world where gossip spreads like wild fire” there was a note of amusement in his voice. “I doubt they’ll wait for me to introduce you before they take a stab at your identity. Our names are so intertwined by the San Francisco affair that it will take them no time to infer who the mysterious wizard in my team I studiously refrain from introducing is.”

  “They’ll be watching you like hawks the moment you step foot in the Registry” his words were sober. “That makes it too dangerous to work your magic at the scene. With that many wizard eyes on you, I’m not sure that it’s worth the risk. If even one wizard suspects that you’re more than a level two, it’ll open a can of worms that we will have a hard time closing back again. It might be better for you to sit this one out.”

  “You can’t leave me behind” Tasia blurted out, shocked by the suggestion. “Unless you take me with you, I will not be able to help you get anything to use in your revenge against the Guardian” she said naively. Or discover the Guardian’s true intentions regarding her, she added silently. How would they have something of interest to offer Faoladh unless she used her powers at the Registry, she wondered mutely.

  Raoul contemplated her for a long moment, his expression unfathomable. “I’ll manage” he said softly. “Protecting your secret is higher priority.”

  “The thing is I’d rather not leave you behind even with Shifter guards, not with that bastard Carter sniffing around, waiting for an opportunity to do the Pack and me damage. I’ve been thinking about this and I believe the safest option is for you to accompany us to the Registry but desist using any magic. That way, you should be safe.”

  Tasia stared at the Alpha, nonplussed by his words. She understood him perfectly but was confused all the same. She would always run the risk of raising suspicions whenever she used her magic. That would never go away. Not completely. If she always played it completely safe, then how was she to do the job that the Pack had hired her for, she wondered.

  “I’m not sure I understand you, Alpha” she said slowly. “I’m aware of the risk that I run, of course. But that risk will never truly go away, will it. If I hide away, how am I to do the job the Pack is paying me for?”

  Raoul sighed softly at her question. It was a valid query for the witchling to make, he acknowledged. What a mess this was turning out to be. Perhaps he ought to have been a little more candid about his reasons for offering her this new partnership with his Pack. Instead he had used the argument he felt would make her less wary and more inclined to not walk away from the Pack again.

  “Do not sell yourself short, Tasia Armstrong. We hired you for a reason. And I will call upon your abilities when the time is right but not at the expense of blowing your cover. You need our protection but never forget that what you offer in return, neither the Pack nor I can get elsewhere. This is a partnership of equals. There’ll be other occasions for you to use your abilities for the benefit of the Pack.”

  Tasia contemplated him in silence, her mind ticking over what he had just said. To say that she was surprised by the Alpha’s words was to put it mildly. She was jolted, confused, puzzled and amazed all at once. He was placing her safety over the interests of the Pack. His too actually, for she knew that the Alpha’s interest was always paramount in a Shifter Pack.

  “This partnership between us holds the potential for enormous mutual benefit. Irresp
ective of that, I’m not the kind of man to sacrifice a partnership or you for short term gain. That is not who I am.” The words were bluntly offered, without any attempt at prevarication.

  For a shocked and enormously confused Tasia, the candid words seemed to do the trick. They spurred her on to be equally honest with him.

  “I’ll keep my senses open just in case I pick up any magic residue” she offered, knowing that this would pose no risk to her. “That involves no risk and might be of some benefit to us since it is something that the investigation will probably not uncover otherwise.”

  “Are you sure?” Raoul asked, the gold eyes searching on her.

  “Trust me” Tasia responded, unconsciously echoing words that she had never in her wildest dreams thought that she would ever say to Raoul Merceau. He had proven, in some ways, to be her nemesis. The person who’d unerringly come to her aid when no one else would and yet the one who kept her on edge and uncertain about his motives. She trusted him implicitly on certain matters and was very wary of him on others.

  “Alright” he capitulated after a moment of shocked amusement.

  “You were alarmed when I asked you to use your magic at The Vault in the presence of two Guardians” he explained. “The Registry will be full of wizards.”

  “This is different” she assured him. “These are local wizards. The only Guardian present will be the one accompanying us. Hopefully, he’ll be too busy to pay any attention to me.”

  “LaRue has surprised me” he remarked suddenly. “Does he still alarm you?”

  Tasia recalled her astonishment when the Alpha had picked up on her anxiety at the presence of the two wizards last evening. She’d had time to reflect on this and her predominant response to the suspicion that the Alpha could read her so well was uneasiness. Especially because she had a sneaking suspicion that his intuition regarding her was a result of something other than his Shifter senses.

  “No, he doesn’t. I’m not sure what to make of him though” she said honestly.

  “I might have miscalculated a little” he admitted candidly after a short pause. “I sought to protect you by publicizing the fact that Anderson had incompetently kidnapped the wrong wizard. Unfortunately, it also identified your name to the gossip mongers as the unfortunate wizard caught in the middle. I thought that once the Guardian’s misdeeds against his own kind became known, the wizard community would feel more solidarity with the wizard victims of San Francisco than a rogue Guardian. My assumption doesn’t seem to be holding true.”

  “Understanding the wizard psyche has never been my strong point” he added with a touch of self-deprecation.

  A tad taken aback by his unexpected candidness, Tasia impulsively asked him the question that had so mystified her.

  “Why?” she asked abruptly.

  He merely stared back at her, an expression of dispassionate inquiry in the gold eyes.

  “Why did you come for me at the Registry?” she asked him bluntly.

  The heavy eyelids descended swiftly to hide the expression in the gold eyes from Tasia.

  “You had the protection of the Pack” he said curtly.

  “Not then though” Tasia proceeded with caution. “We’d already agreed to sever my association with the Pack.”

  His eyelids lifted to reveal gold eyes that stared back at her with an unfathomable expression in them.

  “You made the decision to sever your ties with us unilaterally” he said evenly. “The Pack did not walk away from you. As for me, I still considered you Pack.”

  Tasia could do nothing but stare at him, speechless with astonishment. She’d rather thought that the severing of ties had been a mutual decision. Tasia had assumed that the only thing holding their fragile pact together had been his Shifter sense of obligation. So, she’d made it easier by letting him know that she considered the Pack’s debt to her repaid before going their separate ways. Or so, she’d believed.

  “We made a mess of it, didn’t we” he remarked softly. “It might’ve turned out very differently if I’d made more of an effort to understand your concerns or if you had tried a little harder to trust me.”

  “I did trust you” Tasia protested, somewhat breathlessly.

  “Did you? I wonder” there was a whimsical note in his voice. “If you had trusted me, you’d never have gone to your friend behind my back.”

  Reeling from words that she suspected came straight from the heart for once, Tasia spoke up impulsively.

  “Do you know why I talked to Caro about the mercenaries?”

  Raoul had a fair inkling of what had motivated her. Nevertheless, he found himself encouraging her. It was something she needed to get off her chest if they were to move on from their last disastrous engagement. He understood that better, now that he’d had some time to reflect on the matter.

  “I’ve been pretending to be a low level wizard for a long time. But the three months in San Francisco were some of the toughest. It’s not easy for a female wizard without much magic in such a big city. You aren’t qualified for most wizard gigs, so you have no choice but to accede to the odd hours and seedy locations for the few gigs you do manage to land. You deal with sleazy clientele that mostly live on the edges of Chosen society. You’re worried sick that one day your luck is going to run out; that a Chosen is going to come after you and you might not have the power to stop him, at least not without exposing parts of yourself that you’d rather keep hidden.”

  She looked directly at him for just an instant to allow her words to sink in. Raoul’s expression tightened in response, the gold eyes for once showing a hint of emotion.

  “I just wanted to level the field a little for others in similar circumstances - wanted them to be armed with information so that they could watch out for themselves.”

  Raoul sighed silently, he understood the witchling well enough. She’d walked in these women’s shoes and felt a kinship with them. Although the thought of this particular witchling running the gamut of potentially dangerous Chosen in order to make a living made him clench his jaw in sudden and unexpected anger.

  “You could’ve come to me with your concerns” he pointed out evenly in an attempt to hide his sudden spurt of concern.

  “I didn’t understand that” Tasia confessed softly. “I knew that you didn’t want the information about the rogues to get out. That’s the reason I talked to Caro. I trusted her to keep this confidential. And she had the influence to get it to the right people who could warn other potential victims.”

  “Packs don’t work like that, Big Eyes” the gold eyes gazed at her with a gleam of amusement, using the name he had coined for her that first time in the vampire nest. “Something like this is not done without the Alpha’s approval.”

  Big Eyes? I guess it’s an improvement on witchling. What’s wrong with my name - Tasia. Taaa-siii-aaa!

  “Somehow I think that you knew that” he countered.

  For the first time, Tasia found herself unable to meet the gold eyes.

  “I’m willing to try again” he made the offer very softly. “Are you?”

  Tasia looked away from the perceptive gaze, unsure of what he was asking.

  “So we’ve had some trouble bridging the gap between us in the past. But contrary to what you believe, we’ve already made an auspicious beginning. You have entrusted some of your secrets to me and I’ve trusted you with information about this mission that only a few of my Shifters know. At some elemental level, we both trust the other to keep our secrets. How many new allies have such a promising start?”

  This time, Tasia’s eyes lifted to meet his gaze. The gold eyes were sober with a hint of a plea in their usually opaque depths.

  “You and I can do better this time, Big Eyes. Can’t we?”

  Mesmerized by the depths of the gold eyes, Tasia found herself nodding mutely.

  “Good.”

  The Alpha opened his mouth to say more just as the door rattled before it was opened to allow Duncan to stride in.


  “Aah, good” Raoul remarked. “Duncan will be your shadow today. No matter what, you do not leave his side at any time while you’re in the Registry.”

  “I thought Hawk … “ she paused.

  “Hawk would give his last breath for you” Raoul acknowledged. “But he’s young in the art of political machinations yet. This particular job needs both brutal strength and savvy playing-of-the-game. Duncan is a master at both.”

  “You’ll be fine, Tasia” Duncan said placidly, his calm tone oddly reassuring to Tasia. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Thank you, Duncan” she responded. “I know you will.”

  Tasia knew that she would be safe with him. She had come to slowly trust the big English Shifter over time – partly because of her own experience with him and also from what she’d heard about him from both Hawk and Sara.

  Seated on one side of the conference table, Tasia studied the array of hostile faces ranged across it. They had been greeted at the entrance to the Registry by a ten-strong team of wizards. The Registrar had invited them graciously into the building after Jason LaRue had introduced the Alpha. The Guardian had received an effusive welcome and the Alpha, a rather frosty one.

  It looked as if half the Registry staff plus sundry other local wizards had turned up to stare at the party of Shifters, with varying degrees of curiosity and hostility. Jason LaRue, attempting valiantly to open communications with small talk, was ably aided in his endeavor by the Registrar but the rest of the wizards remained stubbornly silent. It had now been almost thirty minutes in this oppressive atmosphere while Jason continued his attempts to get the wizards to share the findings from their investigation into the explosion twenty-four years ago. From what Tasia could gather, the GCW and the Chicago Registry had run two separate investigations into the matter. The explosion that had ripped through the building to cause so much devastation had been set off from within the Registry building. The local wizards had focused on security lapses in the Registry, mainly on how the bomb had been smuggled into the building while the GCW investigation had been more far reaching and thorough. No access to the GCW investigation had been granted to the Alpha’s team. So far, the First Wizard had been unsuccessful in getting the GCW to share any information on the investigation with them although she hadn’t given up on the endeavor yet. In the absence of any results from the GCW investigation, the Registry investigation had acquired greater significance to their efforts.