Cutting Ties

by C. M. Torrens

  He led the way through the door and down a long hall where a bouncer sat behind a simple wooden desk. His feet were propped up, and he glanced lazily at them from over his magazine.

  Odin shot him a hard look, and he did a double take and jumped to his feet.

  “Odin!” he gasped, his magazine falling to the ground and the coffee cup on his desk spilling amber liquid over the polished wood. “Uh… I don’t think they’re expecting you until tomorrow, sir.”

  “Their problem, not mine.” Odin walked past the man through the simple blackened glass door behind him. “Come along, Velasco,” he added to be sure the bouncer understood his son was not staying behind.

  A short hall ended in a large set of double doors, and the bouncer scrambled down the hall, trying to get ahead of them and announce his arrival.

  Odin caught his arm quickly and jerked him aside. “Out of my way, boy,” Odin said.

  The bouncer paled visibly but nodded and slunk behind them.

  Odin paused at the double doors and glanced at the wards before throwing them open and heading down the winding stairs that led to the lower level. Another set of doors and another bouncer, much older, but not nearly old enough. The man started to reach for the doors, and Odin shot him a glare.

  “Touch that door and your parent will be trying to figure out how to reattach your arm before you bleed out,” Odin snapped.

  The bouncer backed away and glanced at his companion still hovering behind them.

  “Stay here,” Odin told them all and pushed the doors open, shutting them soundly behind him.

  The room, which was supposed to be for clan meetings, had turned into a blood den. Humans and shifters—both pack and stray—were sprawled out on couches and cushions, feeding their chosen partner.

  No one really paid him much attention until he moved to the center of the room and cleared his throat loudly. Several looked up at him and scrambled to their feet.

  “Odin,” someone stammered.

  The whole room went into panic mode at the sound of his name. Humans and strays scrambled past him, and he moved quickly to step in front of a pack shifter.

  “What pack are you from?” Odin asked.

  The shifter blinked up at him slowly. “Alpha Remus’s pack,” he whispered, still flushed and glassy-eyed from his time with the Nephilim.

  “Does he know you’re here?”

  The young male shook his head. “No.”

  “You’ll tell him yourself, then, and I will handle this issue on my end. Please assure him of this.”

  The shifter nodded quickly and rushed past Odin and out the door.

  Odin looked around the room as the remaining Nephilim looked at one another nervously.

  “This isn’t what you think,” someone said.

  Odin spun to face the speaker. He wasn’t even sure who it was, just some young woman he had never met before. Or if he had, she didn’t leave an impression on him worth remembering.

  “No?” Odin asked. “Then please explain to me what I walked into. Because the last time I looked, it was against the law to blood a pack shifter.”

  She flushed and looked away. The scent of shifter blood clung to her breath, and her lips were stained deep red. “He was begging for it. He’s an adult. What was I supposed to do?”

  Odin narrowed his eyes, his anger growing with every passing moment. “What is your name, and who is your parent?”

  She swallowed hard. “Emily. My mother is Marisol.”

  “And what is the law, or didn’t she teach you that?”

  She swallowed hard. “Death.”

  “Yes,” Odin said. He moved at speed, grabbed her throat, dug in his claws, and pulled.

  She dropped to the ground, clutching her throat. She would die slowly, being much too young to heal or survive that sort of wound. He watched a moment as the blood pooled on the ground and made its way toward a drain a few feet away. He tossed the meaty part of her throat at the drain and turned back to the crowd.

  “This particular law is nonnegotiable. Why anyone happened to think it was otherwise is your fault.” He turned his eyes to the clan’s elder Octavio. “Her death is on your head, and you can find a way to handle her mother when she comes looking for her daughter.”

  Elder Octavio winced. “Odin, you don’t understand. Things here are different—”

  “No. They. Aren’t.” Odin stressed every word as he stared around the room. “And if they are, you need to correct them. Do I make myself clear?”

  Elder Octavio nodded quickly. “As you wish.”

  Odin took a calming breath. His anger was building to uncommon heights. He wasn’t sure if it was willful ignorance or just stupidity. He ran his hand through his hair to help keep calm, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of parchment.

  “A death warrant for Eveline,” he said, showing it to them. “I wouldn’t suggest trying to carry out this warrant yourselves because you are not just young, you’re idiots. Instead you will call your betters.” He shoved the parchment against Octavio’s chest with enough force to hurt but not break anything. He had to admit, he was pretty proud of his self-control.

  He turned on his heels and started toward the doors. “Find her! And if I ever come back to a blood den again, I will stake each and every one of you to a wall and let you rot there for the next century!”

  22. About the Past

  JESSE FOUND Dante in the backyard, lying in the sun. His black fur caught the light as he lay half-asleep with Kent and Brady curled around him.

  The cubs adored him. He couldn’t go anywhere without them, and anytime he happened to lie down to relax, they piled on and cuddled up with him.

  Jesse smiled as Dante batted Brady off his head with one of his massive paws. He pinned the cub under him and groomed him absently. Brady giggled and threw his arms around Dante’s neck. The movement woke Kent, and the older cub squirmed between Dante and Brady to make sure he got some attention too. Faith raced across the yard and dove in the middle of the pile, making her brothers squawk and grumble until Dante settled them all with a few well-placed shoves of his muzzle.

  Jesse leaned against the side of the house to watch. He loved seeing Dante just be. He didn’t get the chance to do that very often. He was so busy lately, and it was so good for him to relax.

  “Have you talked to him yet?” Andrew asked, coming out onto the porch behind him.

  He was the oldest member of the pack, Victor, Ricco, and Ivory’s oldest sibling. He wasn’t alpha born like Victor, so he could never hold a pack, but he didn’t seem bothered by it.

  “Not yet. I will in a minute,” Jesse said and sighed happily. “He loves being with the cubs. I hope this madness ends soon, and maybe Ivory will give him a few more cubs.”

  “I thought he said he was fine with what he had,” Andrew said.

  “Oh, he is, but he’d have dozens if he could.”

  He felt Andrew’s eyes on him and turned to look at Andrew.

  “Where are your thoughts, cub?” Andrew asked.

  Jesse shook his head and smiled. “I’m fine. I just worry about him sometimes…. Okay, most of the time. I want things to be normal for once, and stay that way.”

  “It will be. It’ll just take time.”

  Every time someone told him that, his stomach clenched with fear, even when he said it to Dante. He hid it deep, but the fear something bad was going to happen made his stomach tense, and that ache in his gut wasn’t getting any better.

  He shook his head, trying to clear away the dark thoughts before Dante caught them.

  Too late.

  Dante lifted his head and turned to look at him. It wasn’t the thoughts that alerted him—it was the fear, the fear that Jesse couldn’t get rid of, an ever-increasing sense of doom with every day that passed that they didn’t find the nest.

  “Fuck,” Jesse grumbled. He hadn’t meant to ruin his lover’s moment of peace.

  Dante shook off the cubs and shifted back to
true form. He was beautiful in any form. His deeply tanned skin was marred by scars new and old, marks of pain Jesse wanted to kiss away. His chest was broad and powerful muscles rippled as he stretched a moment before heading toward Jesse.

  Jesse glanced at Andrew. “We’ll be back. We need to talk.”

  Andrew nodded, and Jesse wandered away from the house.

  Dante caught up with him a few seconds later, and they walked in silence before coming to the tall cliffs that looked out over the mountains and the vicious rocks below.

  Jesse sat down against a tree and smiled out over the landscape. “You could almost forget the world exists out here.”

  “Almost,” Dante agreed and sprawled out on the grass across from him. “You have something on your mind.”

  “I saw the hunter yesterday before you got home. I’m going to go talk to him tomorrow. I’m meeting him for brunch at the Blue Café.”

  Jesse watched as Dante mulled over that bit of information, but his posture changed to slightly guarded.

  “Why?”

  “The hunter has a friend. A stray friend who had the madness, but after a brain injury, doesn’t seem to have that madness anymore,” Jesse said, watching Dante carefully. “I know, you keep telling me that the madness can’t be cured and that controlling someone with that sort of illness would be difficult, if not impossible. But I have to look into it.”

  Dante nodded and picked at the grass between them. “I thought you might when I told you about his request for a pack doctor.”

  “You aren’t angry?”

  “Why would I be angry?” Dante sighed heavily. “When I was very young, all I could keep faith in was August. I still sometimes think he can be saved too. If his life hadn’t…. If I hadn’t forced his life to change, maybe Victor could have saved us both. We all have things we wish we could have done differently. I don’t tell you I can’t save Claire because I want you to give up. I just don’t want you to have hope in some miracle I can’t provide. I don’t want you hurt, Jesse, that’s all.”

  Jesse smiled sadly and stared off over the cliff. “I’m not getting my hopes too high, but a little hope, that’s enough because the alternative is giving up, and I can’t do that. I just can’t.”

  “All right. What do you want me to do?”

  “I want to borrow Andrew to look at this stray like a proper doctor would.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to talk to you first. But maybe tomorrow when I go to this meeting with the hunter.”

  Dante stared off thoughtfully before finally nodding. “All right. One favor. Take Trevor with you. Hunters are dangerous, and trusting them isn’t a good idea.”

  “You don’t want to come?” He expected Dante to want to be there, but maybe he’d decided the hunter was less trouble than he originally thought.

  “You don’t want me to come. I’m okay with that, but please take Trevor with you.”

  That was true. Claire was his sister. His problem. It just felt like he should be doing this alone and leave Dante to worry about much more important issues.

  “I will.” Jesse smiled, leaned in, and kissed Dante’s lips. “I love you.”

  Dante smiled back. “I love you too. Let’s go scavenge something for dinner.”

  GEORGE WAS excited. The prospect of not only talking one-on-one with someone so deep within a pack, but also getting a doctor to look at Nathan was more than he could ever have hoped for. He wasn’t sure Jesse could pull it off, but it seemed Jesse could be very convincing when he wanted to be.

  He met Jesse at the café and found he had exchanged his usual heavy, Seth, for Dante’s top heavy, Trevor. Trevor was, by far, considered one of the most dangerous men in Dante’s pack. He half expected Trevor to join them at the table, but he didn’t. He took a seat a table away and gave them at least the pretense of privacy.

  “Good morning,” Jesse greeted with a smile.

  The waitress appeared seconds later, and Jesse ordered a coffee.

  George ordered a cup for himself and sat back in his seat. “Good morning, Jesse. I’m glad you could make it.”

  “We’ll need some privacy,” Jesse told the waitress. “So if you could leave the pot, that’d be fantastic.”

  She smiled. “As you wish, sir. When you’re ready, wave me down.”

  “Thank you.”

  George watched her go. “I wasn’t sure you’d be able to pull everything off, but you did.”

  “You can thank Dante. Andrew will meet us later to examine your friend, but you said you had questions. And as I said before, some of the answers I can’t and won’t give you, but you are free to ask whatever you like.” Jesse sat back and sipped his coffee.

  George fought back his excitement and scooped several heaping teaspoons of sugar into his coffee mug. He savored the sweet concoction and debated how to approach things. “Did Dante give you permission—”

  “Our relationship isn’t like it is with most of the pack. And you seem to think that he controls each of our lives. He doesn’t. But if it affects the pack, it has to go through him because that’s the way things work and that’s the only way he can make sure everyone is protected.”

  George wasn’t exactly sure what an entire pack would need protection from. “Protected from… these hybrids?”

  “Most recently, yes. There are very dangerous beings out there, Mr. Keung. The only way we stay safe is as a whole.”

  George sipped his coffee and studied Jesse as he topped off his own. “And you believe that?”

  “I do,” Jesse said. “If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here.”

  “You could leave? Dante and your pack?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “But will I? No. Never.”

  George frowned thoughtfully. He thought once someone was in a pack, they could never leave. He had even heard rumors that breaking ties from a pack could end in death.

  He glanced at Trevor’s table. The heavy was reading a book and eating a danish a few tables away. He had heard rumors Trevor had been near death because he was banished.

  “So it’s not true?” George said. “That leaving a pack means death.”

  Jesse sipped his cup. “That’s a complicated question and one I won’t answer.”

  George inclined his head. Fair enough. He was more worried about the hybrids, anyway. And Jesse warned him he wasn’t likely to go into pack stuff.

  “I want to know more about the hybrids,” George said and refilled his cup.

  “I can only tell you what I know. Ask your questions,” Jesse said.

  There was a glint in Jesse’s eyes as if challenging him to ask the right questions, but since George didn’t know very much, he was pretty sure he was going to leave this conversation with less information than he could have had.

  He thought a long moment. “When I spoke to Dante, he said that you weren’t sure what they were. Is that true?”

  “Dante never lied to you. It would have taken too much effort to create a clean lie, so really, he wouldn’t have bothered.”

  “I’m that insignificant, am I?”

  “In the grand scheme of things, yes.”

  George chuckled. At least the man was honest. Dante clearly had plenty of bigger fish to worry about right now.

  “What’s a clean lie?”

  “A lie that can’t be seen through by a shifter or darkling. It takes effort and thought, so he wouldn’t have bothered lying at all.”

  George sipped his coffee and let himself absorb for a moment. He had been told shifters could sense a lie but didn’t know the lie detector could be beat. He wasn’t a natural liar, so he really didn’t have to worry, but it was a good nugget of information to file away for later.

  “I was told there were many of these hybrids. Where are they?”

  “We don’t know. If we did, there would be many less.”

  “I heard a rumor that darklings are involved.”

  “That’s not a question,” Jesse said.

&n
bsp; “Are darklings involved?”

  “In the creation of the hybrids. One is, yes.”

  “Really?” George said. “They look more pack.”

  “Is that a question?”

  He was starting to get annoyed with Jesse’s insistence on questions. “Is a pack involved in the creation of these things as well?”

  “One, yes.”

  “All right, who are they?”

  “The alpha’s name is August. The darkling is an old one by the name of Eveline.”

  George racked his brain as he pondered the name and finally shook his head. “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “No, I didn’t expect you would have.”

  “Are they breeding them?”

  Jesse shook his head. “We don’t think so. Darklings can’t breed, and they can’t make a shifter. It just doesn’t happen. Lots of other things can happen, but not that. Darklings don’t procreate like most beings. We don’t know what’s going on.” Jesse glanced at his phone. “You have a few minutes left. Ask the last of your questions.”

  “Hey! I didn’t know I was being timed.” George scrambled to think up more questions that might give him more information.

  “I can’t sit here all day, and you did want Andrew to see your friend, didn’t you?” Jesse was calm and collected as he sipped the last of his coffee. Maybe even a little amused.

  George did want to see what Andrew could do about Nathan, if anything. Though he wasn’t exactly sure if this conversation was panning out to be an equal exchange of information.

  “All right. Personal question, then. Who is the person you’re trying to cure of the madness?”

  Jesse blinked with surprise. “My sister, Claire.”

  It was the first time George saw the calm mask, which Jesse wore, vanish, and he couldn’t help but press on for more information. “And where is she?”

  Jesse narrowed his eyes, dangerous. “I wouldn’t give you my sister, Hunter, even if—”

  George held up his hands quickly. “No, that’s not what I meant. You implied she wasn’t here and that she couldn’t be here. Why?”