Echoed Defiance (Jacky Leon Book 4)

by K. N. Banet

  “We have so much to lose. We don’t have centuries to live and do whatever we please. We can’t spend fifty years or more building wealth to live for five hundred years. Most of the time, we can only struggle every day for what we have. We have to fight for every single day. We have a lot to lose.”

  “Yes and no,” Hisao whispered. “You live in the present, but so do we. Everyone else on this plane lives to see the years pass by, far more than you ever will, but we still live in the present, struggling every day. We make attachments we aren’t willing to lose because we’ve had them for so long, and they should be immortal. You know that one day, your human parents will die of old age. My father is endless, and I will destroy anyone who dares to try to stop his journey through the ages. My siblings are endless, and I would do the same for them. My family has spent centuries building peace after centuries of fighting nearly decimated us. Do not begin to think you have more to lose.”

  Centuries? The war eight hundred years ago didn’t last that long.

  “So, your life is worth more than mine?” my sister dared to ask. “Because you’ve been promised immortality, and someone might dare to change that?”

  “No, not worthless. You just made the mistake of thinking we’re without feeling. That we build nothing of worth during our years. I wanted to correct that assumption.”

  “Sure.” My sister sounded disbelieving. “Jacky—”

  “I’m not getting into a philosophical debate of immortality versus mortality. I’m undecided.” I lifted my hands. “There’re better things to talk about.”

  “I can comment,” Heath said softly, looking around at us. “I’ve had and still have both mortal and immortal family members who help me keep perspective. I’ve lived long enough to understand immortality, long enough to know I should be long dead.” He sat across the aisle at a different small table area with four chairs. “They’re different. Immortality brings with it long, if sometimes ignored, relationships. There’s confidence, but it has to be worked for. There’re a lot of immortals who will continue to struggle every day for wealth, just like humans. But wealth isn’t the point.” He chuckled softly, shaking his head. “Wealth will never be the point.

  “Humans love each other for their fragility. One day that person will be gone, and we cherish the mortality for as long as we can, as hard as we can. Immortals form connections based on the endless. Who do we want by our sides for the centuries to come? Forever is a long time when death is only possible in a violent way. Stay out of trouble, and you get forever. That’s a massive commitment and not one to be taken lightly. I will love my daughter every day of her mortal life as best I can. I know my son will stay by my side endlessly.”

  “Yes.” Hisao nodded slowly, which made me appreciate my assassin brother more. “I like that way of thinking about it. Very insightful of you, Alpha Everson.” My brother wiped his hands, but I didn’t know what he was wiping off. Maybe it was the topic. “Now, it’s a long flight to Mischa. Please get some rest. She’s asking me to take you somewhere that’s very special to her, and I might not have the chance to say it later, so I’ll say it now. You will all be respectful of her home. Under normal circumstances, outsiders aren’t permitted. She only keeps a runway and fuel for the plane, when she needs it and for the locals. This isn’t a commercial camp that sees many people coming through.”

  “Anything else?” I leaned back and spread my legs out, a little upset I didn’t get much time to properly stretch them out between flights.

  “Don’t contact the Russians until we’ve had a chance to confer with her. Feel free to discuss the options and ideas you might have about how to approach this, but we’re not confirming anything.”

  “Should I call Hasan?” I hadn’t missed how my werecat father hadn’t attempted to call me back.

  Something angry flashed in my brother’s eyes—something directed at me.

  “No, that won’t be necessary. He, Mischa, and I have all spoken on it. By the time we land, the entire family will have been briefed. Zuri and Jabari have been off the grid on a long camping trip. We’ve had to get one of their humans to go find them.”

  Oh. They’re all pissed. I should have expected that.

  He stood and walked out of the main cabin into the small cockpit at the front of the plane. After twenty minutes, a human came out and asked us what we wanted to drink. He wasn’t Japanese. His accent was close to Russian, but I wasn’t proficient in the small nuances of similar accents. He disappeared back into the cockpit once we were served and left us alone.

  “I’m always grateful I can hide my emotional scents when I meet your family,” Heath whispered, looking across the plane at me.

  “He’s pretty scary,” I agreed. “You know, he once offered to teach me how to endure torture.”

  “That’s…” Heath sipped his drink, not finishing. Then it was like a light bulb went off. “Hasan believes my ability is a real Talent, you know. I don’t think I ever told you that. He commented on it when I met him at my safe house in February.”

  “You didn’t,” I replied, raising my eyebrows. “How was meeting my entire family in their—”

  “They aren’t your family,” Gwen mumbled behind me.

  It felt like an attack.

  “Don’t ever let one of them hear you say that,” Heath cautioned. “In fact, don’t ever say it again.”

  “They’re not biologically related to you—”

  “Leave it,” Heath growled as I sat in silence at my sister’s words. “That is not your place.”

  “Heath, it’s okay,” I finally forced out, reaching to him and patting his thigh in a friendly way. “It’s fine.”

  “Your family was taken by werewolves,” Gwen said boldly. I turned back to her as she raised her chin. “They…”

  “What is your problem?” I demanded, keeping the anger and hostility I felt out of my words. Instead, the emotion that clung to those words was my pain. Why was she saying this?

  “Nothing. Obviously, I’m the one who doesn’t understand anything,” she said, looking away.

  “I’m here, pissing off the family I’ve had for over a decade, and not for the first time, to protect and help you. To finish a fight you started. What…what do I need to do or say to get you to stop attacking me?” I shook my head, unable to understand her.

  “Family doesn’t tell you to stay away,” she said, looking down at her hands. “You asked why I never reached out? I was angry at you for being a werecat and never coming home. I was also told not to. When they saw I worked at the hospital, they told me not to.”

  I schooled my face before I could give away anything to Gwen, but Heath picked up every scent. As I turned to look at the front of the plane, his eyes went wide as my fury built and stewed.

  Which one did it? Hasan? Zuri? Which one would do that? She knows the secrets of the supernatural world. Why couldn’t she reach out to me? Why couldn’t I know she was there? Which one of them decided to interfere in my life like that?

  21

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Two hours after the plane took off, I tried to get to work. After waving Heath over, I grabbed my bag and took my laptop out. Heath moved next to me, bringing his laptop as well.

  “Are we going to sort through the USBs?” he asked softly.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled.

  “Are you okay?” He leaned in, his grey-blue eyes searching my face. “You can…you can talk to me—”

  “Not about this.” Looking away, I opened my laptop and sighed.

  Before continuing, I looked back at my sister and was glad to see her sound asleep. Long hospital hours and traveling long hours were two different beasts. On top of that, she was probably still reeling from the new dangers in her life. She wasn’t built like Heath and me. As apex predators, we were built for the fighting and constant go, go, go of the supernatural world. Humans weren’t.

  When I turned back to Heath, I dared to voice my feelings.

  “How coul
d they?”

  “They had to have had their reasons,” Heath said gently. “I don’t think what they did was the right thing, but it does explain your sister. She was desperate and scared, and reaching out to you defied your family.”

  “Yeah…” I was glad Heath finally had a reason to like my sister. I knew he was still having a hard time trusting her intentions of why she reached out to me. They were valid concerns, and if she was a supernatural, they would most likely be correct.

  “Jacky…” My name sounded like a plea when it rolled off his tongue in a hushed whisper. “You were adamant for years about not reaching out to them, for a lot of reasons. Maybe they were just trying to let you maintain the peace you had achieved with being a werecat.”

  “Would you have done it?” I asked as I logged into my computer. When he didn’t reply fast enough, I turned to him again. “Heath?”

  Sighing, he shrugged. “Not without telling you. I would probably have told you she was there if I knew and asked you what you wanted to do about it. If you didn’t want a relationship, I would have let her know she needed to stop pursuing information about you.”

  “That’s…” I tried to smile. “That’s better than what they did. I could have known she was there. I could have…”

  “I know.”

  Shaking my head, I reached into my bag and found the smaller bag full of data. I unzipped it and dropped it on the table, grabbing two—one for me and one for Heath.

  “Let’s get to work.” He only nodded and took his, plugging it into the side of his laptop. Plugging mine in, I clicked through folders. Sarah wasn’t the most complicated person by the looks of her file organization. I clicked the first video, and my speakers suddenly roared to life with a video of a young man talking.

  “Shit. I need headphones.”

  Heath held out a pair, and I took them, only a little confused by their sudden and easy appearance.

  “They’re in the side pockets of the chairs,” he explained, then put his back in his ear and went back to whatever he was watching.

  I set them up and started the video again, turning my volume down.

  The young man talked about a vampire nest that turned him. They had kidnapped him at the age of ten and changed him at only sixteen. Then they drank from him repeatedly to tie his life to theirs. The story made me sick as he described the abuse he went through, thanks to the obsession of the nest’s master. He had been a plaything.

  I forced myself to stop watching and closed the video. I quickly checked the videos in all the folders. This particular USB was all vampires. I put it aside and went in for another drive.

  This one had several humans talking about how they worked for a werewolf pack in Atlanta, and that some of the werewolves were cruel. The Alpha was never told when they tried to report it.

  I put that one aside as well, trying not to think about how I had a passing acquaintance with the werewolf Alpha of the Atlanta Pack, Alpha Harrison. He’d been particularly cranky when he found out I was a daughter of Hasan. For a moment, I wondered if he ever discovered his pack was a danger to the humans they employed and were related to.

  I put it aside and continued. There were just over a dozen USBs. Some only had one video, some had a string of them, pointing to a problem in the organization they came from.

  Heath growled at one point, then put the USB he had been watching between us. When I reached for it to see what was so upsetting, he put his hand over it.

  “Let’s find the Russians first,” he whispered.

  Nodding, I went back to searching.

  It was the last one because, obviously, I was out of the cosmic luck I normally had.

  There were fifteen videos. Swallowing, I started watching the first one, promising myself I was going to watch every single one.

  “Did he beat you?” Sarah asked softly. “You can tell me. No one will ever know. We’re sworn to secrecy. Just consider me a place to get the pain out of your soul.”

  “He beat me,” the young woman answered. “He beat me when I would serve the other werewolves. He said I was too pretty to go to waste, so he never hit my face. He always let me heal before sending me…”

  I winced as tears welled up in my eyes. She had been Changed by Alpha Vasiliev to serve his inner circle as a present for when their mates grew tiresome. She talked about Sergey and Alexei. She said other names I didn’t recognize.

  “I found it,” I said, trying to wrangle the storm of emotions brewing. “I found the videos Sarah has of the Russians.”

  “Let me figure out what my last one is,” Heath said in a stiff way, which made me wonder for a moment what was bothering him. The easy guess was the constant bombardment of trauma coming in front of our eyes.

  I went to the second video and saw a young male, uninjured. Sarah convinced him it was okay for him to talk to her. Watching this video, I realized none of Sarah’s patients knew they had been recorded. She never told him there was a camera, which was cruel, taking down this footage of the pain these people were going through.

  This young male was Devora’s beta brother. He had a peaceful quality to him, I had only run into once before. He talked about living conditions and how hard it was for him to see his sister. He had been Changed first when the pack came through his neighborhood, looking for possible recruits. They had pinned him as a beta werewolf before he even knew what they wanted. The pack ended up buying both him and his sister from their parents for the price of a new home and a new life in Moscow, somewhere far away and living better. They thought it was an honor for their children to go to the great pack. Surprisingly, Devora’s brother had no blame for them. Apparently, the poor people living near the pack had been duped in a great PR play.

  The interview was cut off when another werewolf entered the picture and ordered Devora’s brother to do something in Russian. By the look on the beta’s face, he was in trouble, and he knew it.

  I watched because I felt like it was my duty to watch. This was the reason my sister was sacrificing everything. This was why she killed a man, breaking an oath I knew she took seriously. This was why we were on the plane.

  Sarah was able to interview another female while her injuries were still apparent. She had been beaten by a mate and couldn’t find help. Her father was a member of the pack and was able to escape with her.

  One older female said she was the mate of an inner circle werewolf. She didn’t look old, but she carried the ages on her shoulders. I recognized age in immortals that old because I saw it in Hasan and most of my siblings. Zuri had shown it to me only back in February. There was a weight they carried once they had seen centuries turn and empires built and crumble.

  She was tired. She wanted to leave but knew if she did, her husband would mate their daughter.

  I closed my laptop after that, unable to bear anymore.

  This is the pack that wants me to hide their crimes. This pack…

  I can’t do that. I can’t let them keep doing this. I’d never be able to sleep again.

  “Should I watch it?” Heath asked gently as I took out my headphones.

  “No.” I shook my head then reconsidered. “Yes. Yeah…You need to watch it.” I slid my laptop in front of him, warring between rage and being violently sick. I wanted blood on my hands—their blood. At the same time, I figured the sight and smell of blood would make me puke. I wanted to be furious and scream. I wanted to call my entire family and do to this pack what we had done to Lani’s fucking friends. I wanted destruction, and I never wanted to commit another act of violence ever again.

  The warring emotions left me paralyzed as Heath watched. I could hear it all because I had nothing else to focus on.

  “We’ll deal with this,” he promised, pulling out the USB. “I swear it, Jacky, we’ll deal with this.”

  “We better,” I whispered. “You said you figured Callahan knew…”

  “I don’t think he knows all of this. If he did, we all would. This is…” By the look on his face, h
e was worried—sick. His scent was unknown to me, but I didn’t fault him for that. I was trying to bury my feelings for him to stop Hisao from picking anything up. He was probably locked down for the same reason.

  “They’ve been keeping their secrets through force, just like they are right now. They own the entire region, and they’ve crushed disobedience.” I could see it—authoritarian rule, dissenters killed. Everyone walking on eggshells, kept poor and desperate, needing to please the Alpha and his inner circle. Middle-rank wolves using their power and rage to subjugate lower werewolves even more.

  He only nodded, reaching for the USB he had put down.

  “This is about…” Sighing, he put it back down. “This is something recent. A human girl ravaged by a werewolf in an American pack. Apparently, they were attempting to Change her, and the wolf who did it lost control.”

  “What?” I put a hand over my mouth, considering what he was saying. “Did she live?”

  “They rushed her to the hospital where she passed away, probably from a combination of the injuries and the Change trying to take her. There’s no real interview. I think Sarah felt it was necessary to secretly tape her treatment and listen to what the pack was saying. Probably a new little fucking side project she wanted to work.”

  “Which pack?” I asked, knowing I shouldn’t. I didn’t even understand why he was telling me.

  “Dallas,” he whispered. “An Alpha should do Changes—all of them. I’ve Changed over a dozen people, for good and bad, and it weighs on my soul, but I never asked someone else to do it. Some people I denied the chance, and they tried to convince others. In those instances, I had to be the judge, jury, and executioner. This? Either Tywin lost control and killed this girl, proving himself unfit, or he asked someone else to Change her, and it went wrong. Her Change was approved. The werewolves made that very clear when questioned.”

  “Who else would know about this?”

  “The Alphas on the council if anyone reported it to them. The hospital wouldn’t have, and Tywin probably didn’t.”