by K. N. Banet
“Okhranyat would like you to follow me,” he said, all professional. He was even dressed like a butler. I nodded and jumped up from the couch, waving goodbye to my sister and Heath.
I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew what I would find. Mischa and Hisao had left to talk to our family, and I was finally getting invited to the conversation. It was like being called to the principal’s office, except I didn’t feel the dread I might have in school. I got more pissed off every step, following the nameless, distant relative of my sister.
When Mischa and Hisao had left, their intention was clear, but I was left waiting. An important, long discussion was about to happen in the family, and I was left out. Just like I was when they learned my sister worked at the hospital and never told me. They had made all of those decisions on their own—just like they made a decision on how to help my family all on their own.
We went to the basement, and the butler left me at the door, which I didn’t stop to knock on. I stormed right through the door into an office with a massive screen. Hisao and Mischa were sitting on a couch with a camera pointed at them. From the video feed that showed everyone, it could see the entire couch but not me.
“Come sit down, Jacky,” Mischa ordered, leaning over and clasping her hands.
“I can see everyone from right here,” I said, closing the door and leaning on it. “What’s the verdict? How much trouble am I in this time?”
“We don’t need the attitude,” Hasan said patiently. “Sit down where we can see you.”
“No,” I snapped. “You’re all pretty used to having discussions about me without me around. Just pretend like I’m not fucking here. That’s probably easier.”
The silence I got in response was long and awkward.
“Yeah,” I said evenly, finally walking over to the couch, but not sitting. I leaned on the arm, making sure I was in camera. “Who wants to tell me why I was never told about my sister? Hmm? Maybe this situation wouldn’t have fucking blindsided me if anyone had thought to mention that. ‘Oh, your twin works for the supernatural hospital. We need to talk to her about what’s allowed and what’s not.’ Instead of just telling her to stay away and never contacting me. Thanks for that fucking awkward moment where I was standing in Everett’s house, staring at her, unable to fucking process how it even happened. Really appreciated it.”
“We made the wrong call,” Zuri agreed softly. “Not all of us voted in favor of that decision.”
I looked at Zuri and Jabari, sitting together. Neither seemed comfortable, but then, I could understand that.
“I don’t have the same relationship with her you two have. That relationship was poisoned years ago, but thank you for considering me.” Once, we might have—before hormones and teenage years, before the resentments on my end could build, and she grew a superiority complex I had to suffer with for over a decade.
“Relationships ebb and flow,” she said in return, smiling a little. “You think Jabari and I have always been close? We have our bad decades.”
“It doesn’t matter who agreed with it or not. We made a decision,” Hasan said evenly. “Jacqueline—”
“No, you are the last person who is allowed to talk to me right now,” I growled. “Secrets, Hasan, always with the secrets. There was Shane. I’ll remind you I disappeared from this family for over six years because of that, and now my sister?” I was hurt. This wounded me in an all too familiar way.
“I thought I was doing what was best. You wanted no contact with your human family after you Changed, even after you left my household.”
“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t know one is becoming entrenched in the supernatural world. Did I want to talk to her? No! But that doesn’t mean never tell me about her at all.”
“I see that now,” he said, looking down at something on his desk. “And you can hold that against me and continue to rage at me at a later date. I extend my apology for not properly judging what you needed or wanted when it came to your human family.”
I hated that. For years, he was unapologetic for never telling me about Shane. He had deep and dangerous secrets when it came to Changing people like me over Shane and more. That I understood.
But he apologized so quickly, it reminded me that Hasan wasn’t perfect and even he knew that. This man ruled a sizable portion of the supernaturals and led the werecats to peace. He wasn’t perfect, and he was sorry, just like that.
I just wanted to keep being angry. I looked at everyone else on the screen and saw the same apology reflected in their faces.
“Were you all going off what Hasan felt I wanted?” I asked softly. “That I never wanted to speak to them or know about them ever again?”
“We were,” Niko said softly, nodding. “But the circumstances changed things, and we should have recognized that.”
I cursed under my breath and slid onto the couch, sitting next to Mischa.
“Well, if you’re all going to put it that way,” I muttered. “I don’t like being the topic of conversation when I’m not in the room.”
“Mischa needed time to calm down,” Hisao said softly. “We haven’t been talking for very long. You riled her up.”
“Heath’s point was a good one,” Zuri said, leaning on her brother, making an executive decision to change the subject. “We don’t know this Alpha, and we don’t know anything about how he’s going to run the pack. The death of Alpha Vasiliev changes everything in the region.”
“He took Jacky’s family the same way Mischa’s family was attacked,” Davor pointed out. “How different can he be?”
“He’s more politically minded,” Hasan countered. “And that makes him a danger to the Tribunal.”
That confused me. We all waited for him to say more. Hasan never talked about the Tribunal with me, and by the looks of it, he didn’t talk much about his business there with most of us.
“Father?” Hisao asked softly. “Are you going to call in an Executioner or an Investigator? Because I can give you recommendations.”
“I think I’m going to approach Callahan and Corissa about an Investigator, but first, we need to extract Jacky’s family. If this is a move to trap Jacky and get favors out of her—”
“Blackmail her into doing his bidding,” Zuri corrected.
“Yes, that,” Hasan agreed, nodding. He was too patient, I decided. He was always way too patient with all of us. “Then he’s probably looking to cause me problems. That I can take to Callahan, and he’ll have to act.”
“I’m amazed none of you thought about this earlier,” I said softly, leaning back. “The whole ‘using my family against me’ thing.” I hadn’t thought of it either until Heath said something, but that was because I had never considered making the trade with Sergey.
“We were all pretty pissed off,” Davor muttered, looking away from his camera. “Here we go again. Jacky’s gone and gotten herself into something, there’s no winning. There’s only a less terrible outcome than others. Fantastic.”
“I don’t get into trouble that often,” I fired back, glaring at his face on the screen, which probably looked odd to them once I considered what I was doing.
“No, you just don’t follow conventions,” Zuri reminded me. “You broke the Law, and we had to step in. You got into a fight with some vampires, which was more you and Jabari, and it’s not a problem, but it’s a lot of action in less than six months for a werecat who had just entered the public in a big way. Then there was letting Alpha Everson and his family move in. That upset a lot of people. And when we tried to clean you up and give you something productive to do, that just pissed off some unsavory werecats, who were just looking for an excuse because they had been watching just as closely as we had. You…”
“I?” I waited, but she never continued.
“You’re a wild card. That’s the saying, Zuri. A wild card.” Niko chuckled softly. “Damn, you need to get out a little more.”
“Oh, stop. I can’t know every single saying in every sing
le language,” she snapped back, but it was lighthearted ribbing between them. “But that’s what I was looking for. You’re a wild card, Jacky. You don’t do what the rest of us have done or would do, so when you call Father and tell him, ‘I killed some werewolves and by the way, my twin is involved,’ then hang up, we don’t know what’s going on, we don’t know why it’s happening. Once again, we’re in the dark, just like we were when you were oath sworn and called to Duty. You left us wondering what terrible thing we would have to clean up, and hopefully, it wasn’t going to be your body.”
Heath had been right.
“So, when you discovered there was another way for me to get in a lot of trouble…”
“We immediately jumped on the idea of making you take the trade to get part of what you want. It was convenient politically and ended this entire mess faster than it began,” she confirmed.
“And clearer heads made us see the problem with that.” Hasan rubbed his temples, and I saw how much he hated every moment of this. He didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to say what I figured he had to say. “So, Jacky, you will get what you want. You and Hisao will rescue your human family—”
“Heath should go too,” Hisao said. “A werewolf with a strong nose, he’ll give us the edge the werewolves will have on us.”
“Accepted. You, Hisao,”—a deep sigh—“and Alpha Everson will go get your human family. It will be dangerous, but I have faith in you to do what must be done. You will leave the new Alpha and as many werewolves as you can alive. Once you confirm to me you are cleared of their compound, and they aren’t pursuing, I will contact Callahan and tell him everything, from the beginning to the end, leaving out how your sister…killed Alpha Vasiliev…if I can,” he stressed that part at the end. “Hopefully, Callahan and—”
“Try Corissa,” Zuri said, tapping a finger on her chin. “Female. She’ll be more willing to see Jacky and Gwen’s point. Callahan would understand why you would never trade with a lower wolf, but hopefully Corissa will have the righteous fury on the side of the wolves to excuse Jacky for being involved.”
Hasan’s blank face said a thousand words, particularly ‘Yes, Zuri, I know all of this.’
“I was going to say, hopefully, Callahan and Corissa understand and will talk reasonably with me. I don’t and will never contact Corissa directly. She and Callahan have been mates since before I met them. I would never tread on Callahan’s toes by going to Corissa privately.”
“Ah. Good old-fashioned casual sexism,” I said, nodding wisely. Old supernaturals were the best at it. It was something I tried to knock out of Hasan when he Changed me, but he was only a very mild offender and only on rare occasions. He couldn’t be much more than that with Zuri and Mischa.
Oh, the look Hasan was trying to level at me through the cameras was terrifying in a comical way. When Mischa snorted next to me and covered her face, I knew I’d won my Russian sister back to me, and we would be okay in the long run.
“Why is Mischa staying?” Jabari asked, trying his best to keep the family on topic. “It’s her region, and she knows it the best.”
“Hisao knows it next best to me because he visits more often than the rest of you,” she replied. “I will stay and protect my village from retribution and protect Gwen. I’ll provide a place where they can come back to with hot food and sleep quarters once Jacky has returned with her family.”
“Does he know how to get to the werewolves?”
“Oh, yes,” he confirmed. I glanced his way and saw a small, cold smile form. “I’ve always known. When they built this new compound thirty years ago, I went to see it. I know the way.”
“You’ll be going in blind. Be careful,” Jabari ordered. “Father?”
Hasan looked into his camera, then away, the glow of the screen hitting his face at a different angle, making him seem harsher, more angled.
“Be safe,” he whispered. “Jacky, leave the files with Mischa.”
I took it out of my pocket and handed it to my sister without complaint.
Hasan hung up, followed by the rest of my siblings.
“He hates when we have to fight,” Mischa said softly. “He’s willing, and he’s always been very good at it, but he always hates it.”
“He’s dedicated his life to peace,” Hisao reminded us. “Being one of the remaining first children of the first werecat, he’s seen the violence since our creation. He’s tired, and he wants peace.”
“What?” I frowned. “What do you mean? I knew he was Changed by the first werecat, but you make it sound like he was Changed to be a soldier to fight…”
“He was,” Mischa said softly, standing. “We’ve lived a relatively peaceful existence for eight hundred years. It’s been a good run. I would blame it all on you, but it ended with Liza’s murder. Before the Tribunal was established…the war all over Europe eight hundred years ago was just a reckoning. Tensions had been too high, and we’ve always clashed in personality with werewolves. One human died, and the fragile coexistence fell apart, but we had been fighting for far longer. Hasan says since the day the first werecat and the first werewolf were created. Probably even before they were created.”
“Were we made to hate each other?”
Mischa looked at Hisao, who met her gaze.
“This isn’t something he tells us when we’re young,” she said, asking an unspoken question. “Do you think he’ll be mad?”
“I think we need to help our sister understand our father better,” he said, equally uncomfortable.
“Yes, little sister, we were.”
They all knew the origins of the werecats and the werewolves.
“Can you tell me any more than that?” I asked.
Mischa opened her mouth, nothing came out, then she coughed violently.
Hisao chuckled. “Sister, you know better than to try to fight that spell.” He looked down at me, a little sorry but also humored by Mischa’s coughing fit. “Sorry, little sister. There’s only one person who can tell you the origins of the werecats. It took two hundred years for me to learn and be placed under the same spell, a spell only that person can remove.” He patted my shoulder as he went to leave the room. “We don’t intentionally keep secrets, but you must understand. You’re young, and some of these take time. We can’t rush it. Neither can you.”
Mischa nodded while pointing at Hisao with one hand and covering her mouth with another. Once it looked like she was okay, she took a deep breath.
“What he said. I can try all day and end up no closer to telling you. I don’t know why I even tried.”
“Who put the spell on you?”
“Can’t tell you that either,” she said. “We can talk about this another time. We need to get to work. The sooner we get moving, the sooner we’re done, and the better Father will feel.”
She walked out with Hisao, leaving me alone. Hasan hated violence, had been Changed to fight for the first werecat, to fight an eternal war to extinction versus the werewolves—even though he now hated violence and worked so hard to keep the peace.
“You could make an army,” I whispered.
“Daughter,” he murmured, running a hand over my head. “I already have.”
They’d had literally ages to create their mysteries and hide their secrets. I had ages to figure them out.
So, I stood from the couch and walked away, leaving thoughts of armies and soldiers behind and focused on the task at hand.
26
Chapter Twenty-Six
“We will leave by truck in six hours, which will give Mischa and her village time to get the necessary supplies ready,” Hisao said to our group. “That also puts us on schedule to be there at nightfall. They’re south of us, so they’ll have a proper night at this time of the year, unlike this village.”
“It’s also nearly seventeen hours until we get to them,” I pointed out. “Right before we landed, we were down to forty-eight hours left. If my math is right, and it’s probably a little off, we’ve got forty-four
left. Another seventeen hours leaves…” I did the quick math, but it was slow. The time zones had already made my head spin, and now simple subtraction was hard. “Twenty-seven or so? Then another ten-hour trip back…I want to get there faster.”
“The time limit the werewolves gave you is fine. It won’t matter by the time we have your family,” Hisao pointed out. “Forget the time limit, it’s not a concern for us. We’ll be in and out well before they have a reason to hurt your family. I’m more worried about chaos in the compound, thanks to the change in regime. It’s going to be okay, Jacky.” He was kind with that last line, lifting a hand to make a gesture that told me I needed to bring my anxiety down.
Gwen stood beside me, holding my hand tightly. Heath stood further around the circular table with Gwen between us, his face frozen in a severe expression as he concentrated on the map. Mischa and Hisao were directly across from me.
“We take the truck halfway since we’ll have the road that far, then proceed in animal form. It turns off at a bad place. We’ll have a bag for clothing for Heath. He’s the only one of us I want in human form once we leave that truck and make it to the compound.”
“How do we get our family back with no ride on a five-hour run?”
“I can hotwire,” Hisao said.
“So can I,” Heath added. When I looked at him like he’d grown a second head, he shrugged. “It’s a useful skill that can mean life or death, and it comes with learning how to work on your own car. It’s not hard. Just a few minutes if the vehicle is old enough and the wiring isn’t a complete mess.”
Hisao was the only person in the room who gave Heath an appreciative nod of respect. I was still a little shocked to find out the good werewolf father knew how to steal a car.
“It will be an old truck,” Mischa said, drumming her fingernails on the table. “Luxury cars are only for the rich, but a good truck out here just needs to be easy to fix and strong enough to handle rough treatment. The pack will have several old things you can steal. If they don’t, I’ll be surprised.”
