“If I killed you no one would miss you.” Kate found it hard to speak with her jaw clenched so tightly.
“Well, I must disagree. I do believe if you killed me you would have to explain the body to the couple in the other room. I don’t think they would understand your irrational behavior.
“Irrational behavior? IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOR? You have some nerve calling my behavior irrational. Let me tell you one thing little missy, if they spent as much time with you as I have they would damn well help me bury your body, no questions asked!”
“You have an appalling lack of knowledge of the shifter world if you believe an honorable pack would in any way do away with a single female.”
Kate screamed, “I will kill you!” as she lunged for Alice, her only thought to wrap her hands around the girl’s throat.
Before she could really start to squeeze the door was shouldered open and David and Stormie piled into the room. Stormie headed for Kate, who had introduced herself as Donna, and hugged her while David pried her hands loose from Alice’s throat. With a look at Stormie he headed for the other room, Alice held high as he kept his body between the two.
Sweetheart see what you can do to calm her down. The last thing we need is for me to have to call your brother and tell him one of the little females killed the other. Although, from what we overheard, I can’t say I blame her for trying. But it will not do. Explain to her we will keep Alice elsewhere if she wants but she is not allowed to kill the little one. Damn I wish I could reach your brother without having to use the phone.
Darling, you can, sort-of. Just call one of the others and get them to call Trey and they can relay everything to him.
Sweetheart, don’t you think I did not think of that? But I would have to admit to one of them we have a dangerously unstable female in the territory, though at this point I am uncertain which one should be labeled dangerous.
Yeah, that little one you took with you is mean. I don’t like her. She said some hateful things to Donna. Oh honey, I know, call Donny over. He is mean like her when it comes to computers. Maybe they can be mean to each other.
Seriously Stormie? Seriously? Baby, I can’t do that and you know it. I can’t believe you, of all people, even suggested I introduce a, well I would like to say innocent young female to an asshole like Donny, but I don’t know if I would label this one as innocent. Stormie heard the sudden glee in her mate’s mental voice as much as felt it, I want to introduce her to Gammon, oh man oh man I hope I get to introduce her to Gammon. If there is any kind of god at all I will get to introduce her to Gammon.
She is the one who asked for Santiago though.
I don’t care. Santiago sends underage unmated females to Gammon anyway, so odds are, unless something big is going on we haven’t heard about, Santiago is just going to send her to Gammon in the end. So, we can cut out the middle man and tell Gammon to pick her up here. He has to come get the older one anyway. Popcorn, we are going to need popcorn.
Where did you go with her?
Oh, we are in the kitchen. I thought she might be hungry by now.
This one is going through the hiccuppy sob stage now. She should be better in a few more minutes. What do you think we should do?
Baby, I don’t know, but if it is true this one knows how to increase the profits at the robotics company, I don’t even want to know how she knows, I just want to know what she knows. I think after she eats the sandwich I am making her I will see if she wants to go down to the plant. If nothing else the two will get some time apart. We will be back later. Will you be okay here with that one or would you like to call your mom over for a visit?
No, I will be fine. We can talk and maybe she will drop her guard and tell me more about herself.
Good deal. Give me a shout if you need us to come back.
Stormie heard the door shut behind the two before she turned back to the one calling herself Donna, “So tell everything.”
Chapter Nine
Marcus walked over to the door and opened it when he heard the knock. “Jules, good to see you again. Sorry to hear about the hiccup in your prosthetic motorized shifting body. Come on in, I think you know Trevor. Trey, I don’t believe you have met Trevor. Gammon and oh, here they are now. Gammon, Santiago, glad you could make it. You must be Edward.” Marcus looked up at the last man to enter the cabin. He was as large a man, if not larger than Gammon. Marcus didn’t think they made any other shifters as large as Gammon. He nodded to the other Alpha as they all filed into the cabin. He nodded a dismissal at Jamie when the man raised his eyebrows in question. Jamie had some knowledge of the meeting in question but for now, as young as he was, Marcus didn’t think he would have enough input to help the planning. He would call him back later when the meeting moved to the rescue mission. He planned on moving the group to the meeting hall when they worked on finalizing the planning. Trey had called some friends in, against Marcus’ wishes, to help.
As everyone found a place to sit and grabbed a beer from the cooler Trey spoke up. “I had an interesting conversation with David about twenty-minutes ago. Seems two females showed up in my territory today. Two underage, unmated, unknown females who refuse to tell anyone who they are aside from obvious fake names.”
“What the hell Trey. Here we are trying all we can to rescue females and you have them pop up in your territory left and right. Did you take out a fucking ad or something? First Gabby, then Trina followed Gabby now two more females? Where did they come from and what brought them to your territory?” Gammon was shaking his head with a look of amusement on his face. The youngest Alpha they knew about was the one all the females suddenly ran to for safety. By accident or design, in the end it didn’t matter.
“Funny you should ask. One asked for you and the other one asked for Santiago.”
“For me? Why would a female ask for me? Who is it?” Santiago growled. He tried to keep a low profile and having others ask for him did not bode well for the secrecy concerning his responsibility in the relocation of females.
“Well, she said we could call her Alice and,” Trey broke off what he was saying when Santiago began to swear. Everyone turned toward Santiago who was known to be one of the most mild mannered of all the Alphas. Even females who were traumatized seemed to have an instinctive trust of him so the sudden burst of swearing, so out of character for the man, caught everyone by surprise.
No one said a word as the man continued to swear first in English and then in Spanish and back to English. Trey was almost sure some German and Russian made it into the mix.
“Loca niña psicópata.” Santiago had finally ran out of steam and just kept repeating the same phrase over and over. The look of loss and defeat on his face was out of character. No one wanted to be the one to ask the question on everyone’s mind. Who was the strange girl and why did her arrival cause such a reaction?
Finally Gammon broke the silence. “Who is she and why do you call her a crazy psychopath? Some kind of rogue female? I don’t think I have ever heard of a female rogue before and I don’t think even a male can go rogue before they reach a certain age. This girl, she is underage Trey said, so how can she be crazy? Mentally unstable perhaps? A mental problem like the humans suffer from occasionally?”
Santiago looked up and around at the others. “No, forgive me. She is, my mija, she is too smart. If she is here my grandson and his friends are gone. They were,” he shook his head and shrugged, “like family to him, a strange sort of pack.” Mija would only come to me if everyone else were gone.”
“I didn’t know you had a grandson. I am sorry for your loss. But if the girl is crazy how do you know she did not run away? Do you need a moment? Maybe make a few calls?” Marcus asked.
“No, my mija is smart. She understood the danger her father refused to see. She is too smart for her age. She would not have come in search of me with another female. The danger to her would have increased and she would have found that to be an unacceptable risk. No, if my Shawn were still alive, and
she wanted to see me, she would have arranged things making it impossible for him to do anything but bring her to me. A child prodigy, she has a tendency to upset people, she has no social skills. She is like a bulldozer. She sees what needs to be done and plows through anything in her path with no regard for people’s feelings. She simply doesn’t care about other’s, not like a normal person. She has no empathy, no ability to sympathize with anyone. She makes these goals, unattainable to most, and then arranges everyone’s lives to reach her goals. Of course she does it for your own good. She reasons if she gets a better education she can only increase your education by teaching you what she has learned. If she is here, or rather if she is at Trey’s then her father is dead. I would not doubt the ones who killed him are either dead by her design, or suffering somehow. If not now they will be, if she thinks about it. Although, I can’t say she loved her father, saw him more as a guardian than any kind of family, so perhaps whatever happened did not inconvenience her enough to destroy anyone. Too smart, she is dangerously smart. I have lived a long life and learned much, but I can not touch her for intelligence.”
“Is she a danger to others of her kind then? Will she endanger the females in my territory?” Trey demanded.
“Endanger them? No, infuriate them, exasperate them, use them and walk all over them, yes. You see she has plans for her life and other people get in her way. She doesn’t make friends because she sees no value in friends. Or rather I should say what she calls friendship isn’t, not to others.”
“So what do you plan on doing with her? She is your great-granddaughter, yes?” Gammon watched Santiago carefully. The man spoke with love and some other emotion he couldn’t pin down.
“Me, why my friend, I am going to send her to you. Isn’t that what I do with unmated, underage females? I get them to the one Alpha who can keep them safe against all the world can throw against him.”
“NO! No, my friend you are not sending her to me. I think you should look into keeping this little granddaughter of yours. Far be it from me to take a family member away from you. Your pack is strong. You realize even the ones who are not crazy or damaged in some way often can’t handle the endless seeming nights of winter? Snowed in and dark with nothing to do they get cabin fever and,” Gammon narrowed his eyes and stopped talking when Santiago started laughing.
“Gammon, the child never has nothing to do as long as she has books, preferably text books, and internet. She never stops studying and learning. These things are to her like food to a gourmet. Buy her all the text books she wants, give her unlimited access to internet and remind her to eat and occasionally sleep, if you can manage to get her to sleep. I would recommend drugging her but Shawn said she started learning chemistry a few years ago so she would recognize the smell and taste of drugs. He hasn’t been, hadn’t,” his voice petered to a halt before he continued, “I forgot for a moment.” He paused and lifted his beer to his mouth. As he looked at it the others heard him mutter, “Just once getting drunk and forgetting would be nice, just once.” Before he took a swallow.
“If that is all she requires why can’t you keep her with you? I am all for bringing females to my territory to keep them safe, and I don’t turn down a female if I think for one minute the pack she is with can not ensure her safety. But your pack can, better than any other pack in the continental United States. In those situations you know I don’t take the female. I can’t see taking a female away from her family when the pack her family belongs to can keep her safe. She has lost her father, I assume her mother is gone also yet you didn’t mention a mother. Now you want to send her away from the only family she appears to have left? Make me understand.”
Santiago sat his beer down on the table beside him but he didn’t let go. He drug his thumb down the neck of the bottle and stared at the floor. Finally, taking a deep breath he turned toward Gammon. “My pack hates her. Oh not all of them, just the ones who have spent any time with her. They call her loca niña psicópata. She isn’t much like a child. More of an obnoxious, arrogant adult masquerading in the body of a small child. My pack is strong but the strength is a weakness when it comes to dealing with her. No adult appreciates being shown up by a child of nine, her age now, but even less do they appreciate being shown up by a child of seven, the age she was the last time she came for a visit. If all goes well she only has a couple more years until she graduates college. Do you understand what that kind of intelligence can do to a man, or a woman for that matter? Many of my pack have been to college, most were a hundred or older before they got a degree. Mostly because of the way the world worked back in the days before internet and rapid communication. Several of them went to obtain degrees to make the pack more self sufficient. Some of them worked toward a degree out of boredom. But Gammon, they all worked for the degree. My mija, well learning to her is like water flowing through a stream to the lake. She doesn’t have to take a bucket and go constantly to the stream to fill it and bring it home. She is the lake, the water flows to her. Knowledge and education is her water and she absorbs it as if she were a sponge. How do you keep a female safe when you don’t trust your pack to love and care for her? How can I bring her to my pack when they have turned their hearts against her?”
“You are proud of her.” Gammon had finally identified the emotion Santiago had in his voice.
“Of course I am proud of her. She is smart, she is driven, she beautiful, she is my mija. What grandfather would not be proud to have such a granddaughter. But she doesn’t understand a pack is more than one person’s goals. My pack, they will never accept one such as her. Her love of learning and her intelligence are the reasons her father had her raised mostly in European countries. He wanted to expand her horizons, not keep her isolated in one spot. But she cares nothing for expanding her horizons unless she can learn as she goes. She is happiest with a book and a computer, not tromping through museums of history. I need you to take her Gammon. I trust you with my mija. Just, keep her isolated from the others. My hopes rest on her finding a true-mate somewhere. Since she is in Trey’s territory obviously she hasn’t one there. She hasn’t one in my territory. I don’t know if she could be happy with a mate, but I have to give her a chance.”
“What about the other girl? Who is she then?” Gammon raised his eyebrows and waited but Santiago only shrugged.
“Damn if I know, I told you mija would not travel with another female shifter if she had a choice. My guess is the female is one she kidnapped and forced on the trip. But I only say that because, well, my mija wouldn’t choose to travel with a female and increase the danger to herself, but as smart as she is she can’t drive. She would have needed someone to bring her to me. I don’t understand why they went to Trey’s instead of my territory though.”
“Her name? What is your granddaughter’s name?”
Santiago looked around the room and his smile grew slowly before he finally burst into laughter. “You can call her Alice. She hates her given name and made me promise when she was two not to ever tell a soul her real name. She was two, what grandfather would not promise his little one the moon if he could get it for her? I didn’t know she would continue calling herself Alice for the next seven years when I made that promise.”
“Why Alice then? Any reason she chose to rename herself with that name? Anything special or particular about that name?” Jaden, who had listened quietly suddenly spoke up.
Santiago snorted, “I may have mentioned she reads a lot? Yeah, well somehow she got her hands on something called Alice training and decided they should all learn how to implement the training considering the danger they were in constantly. When Shawn checked it out and explained to her she was too tiny to make a difference she took matters into her own hands. She became his little Alice and she kept that name. Look it up, maybe you will understand.”
“This is all rather interesting, but we have bigger problems and frankly I would like to discuss them.” Trevor had listened intently to the conversation but being from an entirely
different continent didn’t feel he had anything to add to the discussion. Sitting back and listening did give him a better understanding of the Alphas around him.
“Ah yes, you are the reason we are meeting if I understood the cryptic request from Jaden the other day. Apparently you have information you feel we need. But the question I have is how you can have information being from down under which would in any way affect us here, unless it deals with the rogue faction? I know at least one female was kidnapped from Australia and smuggled into the country.” Gammon turned his attention toward Trevor. He didn’t know the man personally but he had heard good things from William. Even Edward spoke highly of him despite their antagonistic past.
By the time Trevor had told everyone the information he had previously shared with Marcus the other males had gone from blistering cursing to deadly silence. Not one male had any ideas how to protect their packs from a magical attack.
“So you are saying Marcus’ entire pack will be wiped out if these clans find out about Kate? I find that difficult to believe. Not impossible, I have lived a long time, but difficult. Times have changed, has anyone even heard from any of the clans in these last few centuries? Does anyone know where they are or what they are doing now?” Gammon finally demanded.
Dawn Page 5
