by Dean Murray
"Have I come at a bad time, Master Alec?"
"No worse than normal, Donovan, I'm just not handling things as well today. Please come in."
Donovan gave me a respectful nod and then waited as I turned on the three privacy generators stationed about my room.
"What can I do for you, Donovan?"
"Not for me, sir, but rather for your mother. She sent me to ask if you would be willing to spend the evening with your sister. She's heard that Master Kaleb is quite incensed over the damage to his troop rotations occasioned by her shopping trip with Mistress Rachel and she expects that he will pay her a visit tonight to discuss his unhappiness over her recent actions."
"And she'd rather Rachel not feel like it's her fault for asking Mother to take her shopping."
"Exactly, sir. May I tell her that you'll acquiesce to her request?"
"Yes. I'd much rather spend the evening stewing, but it would probably be good for me to not be by myself tonight. Mother could have just called me and saved you the trip across the house."
Donovan gave me the small smile he used when I questioned the traditions that my family had followed for more centuries than I could even imagine.
"Some things are simply better conveyed one person to another rather than over one of those technological devices that your generation is so fond of."
I shook my head at him. "And by that you mean she couldn't get away herself, but she wanted you to report on my state of mind in greater detail than she thought she'd be able to get by talking to me over the phone."
"Of course, sir. And since the secondary purpose of my visit is now out in the open, may I ask how things went? Your mother heard that you'd been injured and was quite concerned."
"All in all, they could have gone quite a bit worse than they did. James and I were injured, as were two of Jack's wolves, but Jasmin and Jessica came out of it with flesh wounds and James and I will pretty much be back at full strength by the time we land in Arizona tomorrow."
Donovan nodded, but it was obvious to me that he was considering his next question very carefully. "May I tell your mother that your power level has grown?"
I wanted to put my fist through a wall, but I forced my anger back down and nodded. "Yes. I hadn't planned on keeping that a secret from Mother, but I didn't expect for the secret to get out on its own so quickly. First Mallory and then you. At this rate the entire pack will know before I leave tomorrow. Is it that obvious?"
Donovan pursed his lips and then shook his head slowly. "I would say no, at least not for most of the dominants, but we submissives tend to become very good at remembering relative power levels, and you were quite angry just now. Under normal circumstances nobody other than Mallory could tell that anything had changed, but you will need to be very careful to remain in control of your emotions if you want to maintain your secret."
"I seem to be having a harder time than usual controlling my anger today. Honestly I'm not sure how Mallory got so far under my skin, but she sure pissed me off today."
"If I may, Master Alec, I've noticed a definite trend that would seem to indicate that the more powerful one's beast is, the harder time one tends to have keeping one's feelings in check. While you've become quite accomplished and controlled over the years, it is possible that your recent increase in power is going to take some getting used to on a number of fronts."
He was probably right. It made a lot of sense, which meant that I'd have to be even more vigilant than normal for the next little while, but that wasn't what had caught my attention. There'd been a slight change in his expression when I'd mentioned Mallory. It had been so small that I would have almost thought I was imagining it, but it wasn't the first time that it had happened when I'd mentioned her name around him.
"Donovan, just now when I talked about Mallory you…well, it was almost like you flinched."
"Indeed, Master Alec. I have tried for years to break myself of that habit, but it appears that I have not yet fully succeeded."
"Can I ask what happened or is that presuming too much?"
Donovan was silent for several seconds before finally nodding with a jerky motion that was nothing at all like the smooth, graceful, proper movements that normally characterized him.
"I must admit that the story is difficult for me to tell even now. Your mother has no doubt told you that your father was an entirely different man back before you were born, but you may not have realized that many of the pack were likewise different back then. Mallory and I have both been in service to your family since back before your father was born."
I nodded. I didn't tend to think about just how old Donovan was, but much like Jack he'd been around and lived through things that I'd only heard vague references about in history books.
"I fought my feelings for many decades, but the truth was that during our shared service, first to your grandfather and then to your father, I developed feelings for Mallory."
I felt my eyes go wide, but Donovan didn't seem to hold my surprise against me.
"I wish you could have known her back then, Master Alec. She was a strong, brave woman who was consumed by the plans that Kaleb had for the pack. It seemed that nothing was impossible back in those days. Kaleb was outmaneuvering the Coun'hij at every turn and he'd laid the groundwork for alliances with Jaclyn in the south and Ulrich in the north."
"What happened?"
Donovan shrugged. "Nobody knows, not even those of us who were inside of Kaleb's inner circle back when it happened. We had a visitor late one night, a man who demanded to be shown to Kaleb's office and who conversed with Kaleb for nearly ten hours before disappearing into the night. After that things slowly started to change. The differences were almost imperceptible at first. Still, I should have seen them, but I was foolishly focused more on Mallory than on Kaleb."
"She betrayed you, didn't she?"
"Yes. In hindsight, looking backwards with a knowledge of who she's become over the last couple of decades, it must seem obvious that she would betray me, but I didn't have that advantage back then. I'd struggled with the possible impropriety of my feelings for years, but finally one day I expressed my admiration for her in stronger, plainer terms than I ever had before. She told me that she was flattered, that she'd sensed a special bond growing between us over the years, but that she hadn't ever thought it proper to act on it before now. She told me that she needed some time to think things over and confirm to herself that a relationship between the two of us wouldn't violate our oaths to Kaleb and the pack."
Donovan's smile was bittersweet. "We spent more time together over the next couple of months. I wanted to press her for an answer, but I knew that she wasn't the kind of woman to respond well to being pressured, so I kept my silence and just enjoyed the fact that we were together so much more than before. Things came to a head when the two of us ran into Agony."
My breath caught. Agony had been the shape shifter equivalent to the bogyman for as long as I could remember. He was just a hybrid, but his power was one that allowed him to short-circuit the normal healing abilities of a shape shifter. Normally we healed back from nearly anything that didn't kill us and we rarely scarred. Agony could make any wound heal with human slowness and even then they never really healed right, leaving a mass of scar tissue that pulled whenever we moved around and especially when we shifted forms.
"It was a routine patrol. If we'd known that he was sniffing around we would have brought more help, but it was before Kaleb had joined up with the Coun'hij so we weren't expecting Agony to take any interest in us. Besides, we wanted some time alone."
"He knew. Somehow he knew that Kaleb was going to throw in with the Coun'hij."
"Yes, I think he did. I still don't know how, but I think that you're right. He knew that Kaleb was considering an alliance with the Coun'hij and he was scouting around the edge of our territory looking for a weakness, looking for a way into the manor so that he could attack Kaleb."
"What happened?"
"We attack
ed Agony like the good soldiers we were. Believe it or not, back then I was a respectable fighter. I was no match for a hybrid by myself, but Mallory and I together had Agony on the ropes. I thought that we were going to beat him, and then Mallory was a fraction of a second too slow in backing up one of my lunges and Agony buried his claws in the left side of my chest. It was far enough back that it missed my heart, but it scarred up exactly as you would have expected, which is why I rarely transform any more. After that Agony fled and Mallory carried me back here to the estate."
"Why would she have let you get hurt like that?"
"I think that she had been instructed by Kaleb to do whatever she could to increase the bond between us. She must have thought that her delay would go unnoticed, that I would think that she'd saved my life rather than risking it. She came to me while I was still in bed trying to recover from my injuries and she told me that she wanted to be with me, but that there was something hanging over her head that wouldn't allow it. Of course I begged her to tell me what was stopping her and finally she told me that Kaleb was planning on betraying the pack. She said that she was worried that he would use our relationship to manipulate both of us and that the only way for us to act on our feelings for each other would be for us to run away."
Donovan stared off into the distance for nearly a minute before sighing. "I didn't have access to nearly as much of your father's finances back then as I have now, but I could have easily made off with millions. It would have been enough for the two of us to live out our lives on a small island somewhere safe from Kaleb and the Coun'hij both."
"You told her no."
"I did indeed. I told her that my oath to your father was more important to me than even my feelings for her. I said that if he were indeed to betray us that things would be different, but until then I would have to stand by Kaleb no matter what else might come."
"It was a test."
"Indeed, a most shrewd one at that. I'd never realized until then just how accomplished a liar Mallory was. Her scent, her pulse, her expression, her voice, they were all perfect. I had no doubt that she was telling the truth and I chose to stand by Kaleb regardless. The only clue I had during the whole lead up to their test was the fact that she'd almost let me die, but only minutes after she left my room Kaleb came in and told me that I'd passed, that I'd shown the kind of loyalty that he'd always known I'd possessed."
"At which point he put you in charge of all of the pack finances."
"Correct, Master Alec. It was a cruel irony that not too long after that Kaleb joined the Coun'hij and I started to realize that everything Mallory had said had been true other than that she wanted to run away with me."
"I'm so sorry, Donovan."
"Don't be, Master Alec. I've had a long time to work through the bulk of my feelings where Mallory is concerned. I related the story now only because I think it's important for you to know what you are up against. Master Kaleb and Mallory are capable of almost any atrocity if they think that it might bring them closer to their goals."
Donovan shook himself slightly and then bowed his head respectfully. "I'll let your mother know that she can send Rachel over at any time."
I watched in silence as Donovan turned and left my room. I went back to my weights and made it through two more sets before Rachel arrived, but my heart wasn't in the workout anymore, so I didn't feel particularly put out by needing to stop to get the door for her.
Rachel wrinkled her nose at me as she stepped into my room. "You've been working out."
"I hardly worked out at all, but I can go jump through the shower if you want me to."
Rachel shook her head. "That's a bad idea if I've ever heard one. If you did that then I'd get bored and go back to Mom's rooms, thereby defeating the purpose of her suggesting I come and check up on you. You're not very good at this spy stuff."
I rolled my eyes at her. "Somehow I'm not surprised that you saw through Mom's attempt at getting you out of the way. It makes life a lot easier though because it means I could go shower without worrying that you'll wander off."
"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather you stay out here and talk to me. If I'm by myself then I'll just think about Dad yelling at Mom." Rachel looked down at the carpet and then shrugged. "Mom and I went on a shopping trip, which is what has Dad pissed off."
"Usually she schedules those a week or two in advance to make sure that it causes the minimum amount of fuss possible. What made her change things up at the last minute this time?"
Rachel sighed and tried not to meet my eyes, but I reached out and gently brought her chin up so that she had no other choice.
"Mom got a call from Jack in St. Louis. He told her that you'd been hurt and that he needed some help coming up with a way to keep you there for a day or two. She figured that a request from him combined with us screwing up the schedule for one of the planes would do it. She was right, but now Dad is going to yell at her again."
There was almost more information in those few sentences than I knew what to do with. Apparently Jack was working with my mother, maybe not all of the time, but enough still that they would do each other favors, at least when it came to protecting me.
"I didn't know that Mom let you hear those kinds of things. Usually she sends you out of the room whenever we talk about something important."
Rachel nodded. "Yeah, that's pretty much just for show. If it's just the two of us and a call comes in she rarely makes me leave. As long as we keep up the appearance that I don't know anything then she figures that I'm pretty safe. Nobody will try to sweat me for information if they don't know that I'm privy to most of what she knows. You'd be surprised at some of the stuff that's rattling around inside of my head, Alec."
She said it with a smile, but there was an undertone of worry to her voice.
"What's wrong, Rachel? I mean besides the fact that Kaleb and Mother are in her rooms fighting. There's something else, isn't there?"
"Yeah. Mom has started keeping a secret from me, or maybe I've just started to realize that she's not telling me everything like I thought she was. There's something going on down at the border, something that has her worried, but she keeps dodging my attempts to try to figure out what it is. I don't suppose you know what's going on?"
I shook my head. I could feel a headache coming on. I'd always thought that Mom kept me in the loop on everything and kept Rachel in the dark as much as possible. Rachel had just shaken my worldview in a slight but very real way.
"I don't know, but I'd bet that Jack does. He more or less hinted that something terrible was going on down on the border, but when I tried to press him about stuff, he shut me down in spectacular fashion."
Rachel frowned. "I don't like this. I don't like the fact that they are keeping some huge secret from us. It makes me question for the first time whether or not I can trust Mom. It seems like the stakes just keep getting higher and higher."
"Are you still hoping that Kaleb isn't the bad guy here?"
"I'm not an idiot, Alec. I know that Dad isn't very nice, and I know that he's done some pretty mean things. The fact that I'm holding out a little bit of hope that he's in some way redeemable doesn't mean that I'm going to allow him to hurt me or the people I care about. I'm telling you though that there is something about what Dad is doing that just doesn't add up, and I'm going to keep digging whenever I get the chance to try and figure out what is really going on."
I pulled Rachel into a hug and closed my eyes as I rested my chin on the top of her head. "You're too good for this life, Rachel. Someone as kind and smart as you belongs in the normal world where you can make some lucky guy extremely happy and then have a life where the worst thing you worry about is whether or not the two of you will be able to make your mortgage payments."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Alec. You're pretty okay yourself. Out of everyone in my life, you're the one person I still feel like I can trust completely. Please don't betray my trust. I'm not sure that I could survive that."
Chapter 7
Alec Graves
Rio Rico Airport
Rio Rico, Arizona
Our plane touched down in Rio Rico a little before noon. We found 100-degree heat and a fearsome reception waiting for us. I'd expected our arrival to be fairly low-key. Rio Rico was a small town with less than twenty thousand people that hadn't even had an airport until Kaleb had decided to make it one of the centers for his war on the southerners.
Instead of the bored local holding a sign with our names on it, we found Brandon, Vincent, and half a dozen other shape shifters from our pack waiting for us. It was like something out of an action movie. The way that the hybrids were all facing outwards, prepared to respond to any kind of threat, gave me the distinct impression that we were in hostile territory.
Alison, one of the wolves who had been sent down to the southern front more than four months ago, stepped forward and pointed towards a line of black SUVs waiting less than fifty feet from the plane.
"The cats have attacked the airport several times over the last two months. The four of you aren't versed in our standard operating procedure, so Brandon has asked that you go take a seat in the cars while the rest of us keep an eye on the plane until it is refueled and begins taxiing."
My beast didn't particularly like being told what to do by a submissive, but I mentally sat on him to keep him from sending out a flare of power that might tip off Brandon or Vincent to the fact that I was more powerful now than the last time they'd seen me.
"You heard the lady, let's get over to the vehicles."
James shot me an unhappy look. Apparently his beast was likewise dissatisfied with the way the chain of command was working, but I was dominant to him, so unless he wanted to start a fight with me out here in broad daylight there wasn't much he could do but follow Jasmin and Jessica to the SUVs.
Once we were inside one of the air-conditioned bubbles of calm, James practically exploded. The surge of power he unleashed into the air around him made my ears pop.
