by K. N. Banet
I didn’t reply, thinking about what he said about how dominant he was. I had never really considered Heath’s power in the general scheme of things. He always played off his power by saying there were others above him. I had never really considered how many, rather, how few, werewolves were above him.
Something about his casual declaration and ability to use that dominance when it suited him showed he wasn’t just being boastful. He had held onto that information for a long time, which he could have told me over a year ago. It was something to think about.
My phone buzzed, and I checked the text to see if it was from Everett. I had sent him a text, asking for his address, and he sent it back over an hour later. I quickly updated him, telling him we were about to jump on a plane and head his way. Hopefully, this was something we could clean up easily and wasn’t as bad as it felt.
“Would the Tribunal werewolves tell Hasan about the Russian werewolves?” I asked my partner quietly. “They might be able to put their feet down and stop anything before it happens.”
“No. It would make them look vulnerable. I bet Hasan has his sources, just like they would, but…” Heath seemed thoughtful. “They didn’t take advantage of what your family went through in February, so I don’t see Hasan using this to take advantage of them.”
“But they won’t talk to each other. They keep their distance, just in case.”
“Just in case,” Heath agreed. “It’s safer that way. No one likes when other species get involved with their affairs.”
“Yet…” I lifted my hands and gave him a hard look. I got what I wanted, a masculine chuckle.
“Yes, yes, I know. Werewolves and other supernaturals successfully pull you werecats into things that shouldn’t be your business. Take that up with Hasan. He’s the one who decided someone needed to protect the human aspect of the supernatural world and that werecats should do that,” Heath said, smiling. “You are one of the few people who can talk to him about it.”
“Yeah…” I stared at the plane. “You think we’ll be able to leave soon?”
Right after I said that, Ranger walked out of the plane again and waved us to board.
“Well, never mind.” I started walking, chuckling a little. Heath ignored the wolf as we boarded, but I stopped. “Thank you for doing this.”
“Yeah, sure.” He was curt and stiff, not that I could blame him. I moved into the main cabin of the little luxury private plane and sat as far from Heath as I could. When he looked back at me, I really tried to convey the reason through the look on my face.
There was no way in hell we could sit together for this flight. The risk of seeming cozy was too high.
He shrugged and turned around again, looking toward the front.
We settled in for the flight. Sheila went through the safety procedure, then went back into the cockpit with Ranger, locking us out.
I ignored Heath as we entered the air, turning my thoughts onto the situation in Minnesota. I had no real idea what I was walking into, which disturbed me. The last time I left my territory on a plane with Heath, I had no idea what I would find. It made me uncomfortable last time, but now, I knew to fear the possibilities.
Not that my territory was much safer last winter. The other werecats pushed me into running and…
I banished the memories, trying to stay in the present. If I thought about my captivity too much, I knew I would have nightmares for a week.
One Russian werewolf Alpha is dead to a submissive werewolf, who can’t take over, which leaves the pack in disarray, and from the sound of it, Everett has a human covered in werewolf blood.
Instinctively, I knew the human wasn’t safe. If Heath was right about the Russian werewolf pack, they would go after every human involved with the Alpha’s death for revenge. Innocent doctors, nurses, and techs would be killed if they had any reason to think the hospital was responsible for the death of their Alpha.
Heath made it sound like the pack was old and strong, something that made this more complicated. Most wolves in the U.S., from my understanding, were fairly young and not as strong.
About two hours into the flight, I got a text I wasn’t expecting.
Dirk: So, you just leave town without telling us now?
Wincing, I quickly replied.
Jacky: Sorry, it was urgent. Landon is going to check in with you guys while I’m gone. Hopefully, it won’t be a long trip. Is that okay with you? Also, please don’t tell Niko or anyone else from the family about this.
Dirk: I won’t tell them. Oliver doesn’t even know you left yet, I haven’t told him. Landon gave me a call and let me know, and I’ve been thinking about how to tell Oliver without scaring him. He’s easy to spook.
I frowned and wondered for a moment how Landon had Dirk’s number, then decided to ignore it. If Dirk and Landon were friends or could contact each other, that was only a good thing for me.
“Heath, when did Landon and Dirk exchange numbers?” I asked loudly.
“Back in February, I bet. They ran an errand together and probably traded contacts in case they got separated.”
“Ah.” I nodded slowly and got to work on my response.
Jacky: Stay safe. Thanks for understanding.
Dirk: Will do and no problem, boss.
I chuckled. Dirk, born and raised in Germany, was blending in with America really well. Oliver couldn’t completely cover his English heritage, but obviously, Dirk had training in it from Niko. More and more, he came off as a relaxed American guy, an act to get his customers to tip him better.
Putting my phone away, I relaxed for the long flight. I had a feeling it would be the last chance I had for a long time.
10
Chapter Ten
When we landed in Rochester, Heath and I quickly thanked Ranger and Sheila.
“Look, just go back to Dallas, okay?” I said, looking between them. “We’re not going to ask this of you ever again, I promise.” I heard Heath make a noise of disagreement but ignored it. We still needed to rent a car and get to Everett. We could talk about whatever offended him on the drive.
“Good luck with whatever you’re into,” Sheila said softly. “I hope nothing we’ve done or said has changed your feelings about the Dallas pack.”
Ranger growled softly, and the female werewolf made a face.
“I know this is uncomfortable for your Alpha. Let him know I’m grateful for the assistance, and if there’s a time when any of the pack’s humans need protection, I will take that Duty without complaint.” I bowed my head a little, and without anything left to say, I started the search for a rental company.
Heath caught up with me after only a couple of steps.
“You could have stayed a moment and said a longer goodbye to them,” I chastised softly. “They used to be—”
“They used to be my pack, but it’s getting more apparent Ranger is growing more dominant. If I haven’t lost my touch about these things, he’ll be part of Tywin’s inner circle before the end of the year. Good for him, but frustrating for me to deal with. He’s instinctively hostile to me, therefore you, because he’s growing to think less about following pack orders and more independently to protect the pack as a leader.”
“Ah.” I tried to sound like I understood, but really, I didn’t. Werecats didn’t have anything like that. We went through a whirlwind of an adjustment period when we first changed, then settled into our lives for the coming centuries. I did, my siblings did, every werecat I ever heard of had. The only time werecats deviated from that path was when other species got involved, wars, and the like.
“You did good, but you offered them a lot.” Heath didn’t sound pleased.
“I offered them what I thought they deserved—”
“You didn’t owe them anything—”
“I don’t like unfair politics—”
“And what’s going to happen when another human—”
“Heath!” I snapped, tired of cutting each other off. His eyebrows went up when I s
tepped in front of him and narrowed my eyes. “I’m stressed out, and you involved a pack of werewolves without letting me know, which led to awkward tension that could have been avoided. I understand we’re on a time crunch, but you could have run it by me. How I handle it after you drop it on my head is my business, and I don’t need the critique.”
“I just want to help you,” he growled softly. “What’s so wrong with that?”
“You’re not allowed to, remember?” I hissed.
“You’re getting paranoid,” he snarled. I watched him, ironically, cast a glance over his shoulder, then survey the rest of the area before continuing. “I have done nothing but help you since we met. When we met, you were woefully bad at politics. You’re getting better, and supernaturals know who you are, but that doesn’t mean I think you can go without some advice every now and then.”
“I am not—”
“You wouldn’t even sit beside me on the plane to talk about what we’re walking into,” he reminded me, then stepped around me and walked off. That didn’t bother me. What bothered me was the storm brewing in his eyes as he said it.
I took thirty seconds to sigh and glare at the small plane we were walking away from. Ranger and Sheila were out of sight already.
Am I being paranoid?
Shaking my head, I dismissed the idea.
I caught up to Heath as he entered the airport. He didn’t speak to me as he found a rental car company, got keys, and walked back out of the airport. When we were finally seated in the small sedan with our bags, he sighed.
“I know…I know there’s a lot between us people can’t know about, but that doesn’t mean we need to avoid each other. The world knows we’re allies. There’s no hiding that now and trying to makes us look even more suspicious. As for critiquing you…I’m an Alpha werewolf, and that’s hard to turn off. I don’t like when I see people I care about get in situations I could have helped them avoid without any fallout. I can be controlling and don’t always think things through. I’ve lived a long time by my own agenda.” He turned the car on after his little speech. I wanted him to look at me, but he didn’t. “You’re good at politics. Maybe it’s from bartending or something, but you have a natural knack. I don’t agree with offering more to the Dallas pack, but I’m willing to admit I’m on bad terms with them, so I’m biased.”
“Why did you even call them?” I asked softly.
“Because I was checking flights, and we might have been too late to get this human before your werecat tossed her out. It’s more time-sensitive than the last time we left Texas for Seattle. I didn’t think it would be this much of a problem.”
Watching him, I read his face as he pulled us out of the parking lot. I punched in the address and settled in, new knowledge bouncing around my head.
He seemed disappointed in himself, another thing I had never seen. I felt foolish for a minute, relating to that. Thinking I was doing the right thing and making an ass of myself.
“Thank you,” I whispered, fiddling with the radio, “for trying to help. It worked out in the end.”
“Any time,” he mumbled, keeping his eyes on the road.
Night had fallen, and we drove on the dark roads farther and farther out of Rochester. I stayed in contact with Everett, letting him know we were getting close. He kept me up to date on the human, saying the woman had shut down and stopped talking. He couldn’t find any injuries on her, which was a positive. He also made sure I knew where his territory line was.
“Stop,” I ordered nearly an hour later. Heath slowed down and pulled off the side of the road.
“Stay here,” I ordered. “I want to let him know we’re here without just busting into his territory. I’ll be right back.” I jumped out and started to the territory line twenty yards in front of me and walked slowly past the invisible line. The initial reaction was fear and distrust, but I didn’t move, waiting for Everett to remember he had called for my help. Sure enough, the feeling of the magic in the air, Everett’s mood, shifted to wary but welcoming. He was worried about guests, but he wasn’t going to attack unless we did something. I stepped back out of his territory while Heath drove up slowly behind me. When I got back into the car, I chuckled.
“I told you to stay where you were,” I reminded him.
“I didn’t think you needed to walk all the way back,” he countered, a small smile forming.
“Alphas,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “Go slow to start. I’ll tell you when you can speed up.”
“This is different from when we entered Gaia’s territory in Washington,” he pointed out as he hit the gas, and the car started rolling into Everett’s territory.
“Gaia was dead,” I whispered. “Everett is very much alive, and he’s five hundred years old. Bigger and badder than both of us. I didn’t want us to accidentally upset him by being rude.”
I saw him nod out of my peripheral vision.
After a few moments, Heath sped up at my direction, getting back to the speed limit. It was another twenty minutes before we reached the heart of Everett’s territory and turned down his long dirt driveway. It wasn’t flat, showing signs of neglect as though he never left his home or bothered with it.
Heath parked in the clearing in front of the deceptively small house. I had a sneaking suspicion, it was bigger on the inside, or I couldn’t see all of it. Only a single story, I had a feeling it was one of those sprawling homes that looked small from one side.
There were three cars parked in front—a Ford pickup, a sedan I didn’t immediately recognize, and a small minivan.
Does this human have children we should worry about? I don’t see a werecat of any personality ever driving one of those around…or any sane adult.
Everett was waiting in the dark on the front porch. I didn’t notice him at first, but my eyes adjusted quickly when the headlights went off, and I saw his outline. There were no visible lights on in the house. I tried to keep my courage together, but something scared and paranoid ran through me as I saw my first non-family werecat since I had killed Lani. I’d spoken to enough of them on the phone, but no one visited me, and I didn’t visit them.
He was a tall, lean man with light brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Spectacular for his height, but he screamed stereotypical normal beyond that.
“Jacqueline, daughter of Hasan, be welcomed in my territory,” Everett said softly. I heard boards creak as he walked down the wooden porch steps onto the grass where Heath and I stood. “Alpha Heath Everson. Thank you for joining her.”
“What’s going on, Everett? There was a lot you refused to tell me on the phone.”
“Based on her clothing, she’s a doctor, and there’s a lot of werewolf blood on her. I assume there’s something going on at the Mygi Hospital.”
“Fuck,” Heath muttered. Neither Everett nor I reacted to that.
“You’d be right,” I informed him. “How deep do you want to be brought in on this? If you don’t want to know everything, you don’t need to.”
“I don’t want to be involved at all. I could and should have turned her away,” he reminded me. “She’s lying about something, but I don’t know what. When she got here, she was rambling and scared. I couldn’t put enough of it together to figure out what the lie was.”
“Then why did you keep her?” I asked, crossing my arms. “And call me and Heath? You obviously think she needs protection.”
“I called because I’m not stupid. She asked for you when I started asking too many questions, and I knew something was up.” He gave me a toothy smile, and his eyes began to glow a terrible yellow-gold like my own. “You’ll need to see this to believe it.”
“Then show me.” I waved a hand, hoping he would let me get to the bottom of his fun little mystery. He turned on his heel and started back up to his house. I followed first, keeping my body between him and Heath, who had returned to complete silence. I knew he wanted more information as well, and we still needed to confirm this was actually connected to the death
of the Russian werewolf Alpha.
Once the front door closed, lights began to come on, and footsteps could be heard from the back of the house. My assumptions were right about the home. It was actually a spacious mini-mansion, tucked in the center of the werecat’s territory—his home and den, his safest place. I had to tread carefully, but whoever was running around the back of the house toward us was not doing the same. There was either a familiarity to the other person or a lack of respect for Everett’s domain.
“Who’s there?” a feminine voice called, mature with age and weighted by exhaustion. “Everett, is she here?”
That must be her.
“She’s here,” he called back. He kept walking, and I followed him, frowning deeply. Heath was like a strung bow behind me, tense and uncomfortable. Having him at my back was one of the few things I was comfortable with, even if we were in a bad position and no way of knowing what was coming.
Everett stopped and turned to the side as the running stopped. We had walked through a wide entryway into a hallway, only five feet from the door.
I wanted to backpedal back through that door and leave.
The human woman was panting from her short run, her hazel eyes wide in surprise and relief. Her long, chocolate brown hair was just a slightly different shade than my own, had blood in it, and was styled as if she had used that blood to glue it into place by running her hands through it. She had been with Everett for hours and hadn’t cleaned up yet.
The blood didn’t surprise me. I had known about it.
I hadn’t known who the blood would be on—I wasn’t ready for the who.
I could have never been ready for the who.
“Do you see? I figured keeping her and calling you as she asked was the only good option,” Everett said with a note of fear now. “I wasn’t going to turn away—”
“Gwen,” I said, letting all the air rush out of my lungs as if I had been hit on my chest.
