by Laura Taylor
Oh, fucking hell, why didn’t she just rip his heart out of his chest and feed it to the crows? Of all the things she could have asked him…
When he didn’t say anything, Joselyn offered a tentative beginning to the solution. “I will be recommending that he’s barred from ever becoming alpha. It’s a fairly standard response from the Council for a range of unacceptable behaviour.”
“For what it’s worth, I would agree with you,” Baron said quickly. “But as far as John’s concerned, that’s not a punishment. The chances that he would ever become alpha in the first place are extremely small.”
Joselyn shrugged. “Mark was also demoted to the rank of omega and branded for his crimes -”
“You can’t brand John.” It was Heron who spoke up, though if she hadn’t, Baron would have told the assassin the same thing. “He’s been through too much trauma already.”
There was a telling pause. “As you see fit,” Joselyn acquiesced, and Baron was surprised she didn’t even try to argue the point.
“Demoting him to omega would certainly make an impression,” he said. “He’s very focused on rank and the power that comes with it.”
“That’s not nearly as simple as it sounds,” Caroline said in her usual blunt style. “Removing someone who’s as strong a fighter as John from the pecking order would cause a complete reshuffle in the Den’s structure. We’d be drowning in status fights for months. And we all know he’s been protecting Heron for years.”
Baron winced at the tactless statement, and he noticed Andre flinch as well. The senior members of the Den all held a deep respect for Heron’s knowledge and experience, and seeing her lose her rank would be a painful blow. But there was no denying that her physical strength was failing her, and it was inevitable that the younger, stronger members of the pack would eventually get restless.
Fortunately, Heron wasn’t blind to her own situation. “By all rights,” she said softly, “my rank should be a good three places below where it is now. I’m well aware that John’s been blocking the path up the ladder to stop anyone pushing me out of my seat. But change is long overdue. If you’re going to get Kwan moving up the ranks, something would have to be done about John anyway. And you’re right,” she told Baron. “Dropping his rank would most certainly get his attention.”
“Demoted to omega for a full year,” Joselyn said, making notes as she spoke. Then she looked back at Baron. “Is that it?” From her tone, it was clear that ‘yes’ was not the correct answer. “How serious do you consider his crimes to be?” she asked next, when Baron once again had no reply for her.
“Circumstances have been on our side,” Caroline replied for him. “You mentioned that it’s possible John’s actions saved us all. But if the Khuli had been even a slightly different sort of person, we could all be dead now. Regardless of his own beliefs on the matter, the correct course of action would have been to alert Baron and me to the presence of the Khuli and allow us to decide. Ignoring her would have been a poor choice, but to actually sit in a tree and talk to her for hours on end…” She turned to Baron. “He’s never really responded to authority well. And I understand the reasons for that,” she added, glancing at Heron, who would no doubt have something to say on the subject. “But this has proven the problems with that mindset. Wolves live in a pack. Whether or not they agree with the leadership, they need to respect it.”
“You know him better than any of us,” Andre pointed out, when a heavy silence followed. “What would make an impression on him?”
Baron let out a long, slow sigh. “The problem with John is that anything designed to make an impression on him also runs a very real risk of killing him.” His grim assessment was no exaggeration. Back when John had first joined the Den, they’d tried to lock him in one of the basement cages when his behaviour had got too out of hand. He’d damn near dislocated his own shoulder trying to get away.
“What if I could assure you he would be safe?” Andre asked. “Then what would you recommend?”
“Why would you be responsible for his safety?” Heron asked. As John’s surrogate mother, she may well have fancied herself for that role.
“Since he and Baron broke up, there are… certain things that I’ve had to take responsibility for, where John’s concerned,” Andre told her. Heron would understand him well enough, without disrespecting John by sharing any of his private life with Joselyn. An assassin she might be, but she was also an outsider, and John’s issues were not discussed with outsiders. “I think he would trust me more than most people. More, even, than you, under certain circumstances.” He turned back to Baron. “So what’s it to be?”
Baron took a deep breath, praying he wasn’t about to make one of the biggest mistakes of his life. “Lock him in a cage for three days. It’s long enough that he’ll have to actually face up to his situation, but not so long that he can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.” John was going to have a fit when he found out.
But Heron was having none of it. “You can’t lock him in the basement alone for three days. He’d go out of his mind -”
“We’re not,” Andre interrupted. “I’ll stay with him, for the entire time he’s down there. Every minute. Not in a cage,” he added, just for clarity, “but nearby. So he’s got someone to talk to, and so that if he gets too agitated, I can calm him down.”
“Wouldn’t that rather mitigate the purpose of putting him in the cage in the first place?” Joselyn asked. “If you’re there to take the sting out of the experience, then what’s the point?”
So the Council hadn’t told her all that much after all. Interesting. “I’m getting the idea here that the Council has basically told you to allow us to choose John’s punishment, and you’re just here to see that we follow it through,” Baron said. “Am I right?”
This was clearly not normal operating procedure for the assassin, but she had the good grace to not make a fuss. “That’s more or less the situation.”
“Then you have your answer. John will be demoted to omega, he’ll be banned from ever holding the rank of alpha, and he’ll be locked in the basement for three days. Is that it?” he asked the rest of the table, and everyone nodded. “Good. Because now we have to figure out how the fuck we’re going to tell John.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It was late in the evening when Alistair stepped into the IT office. As usual, the room was filled with the dull hum of half a dozen machines, and it took him a moment, in the faint glow of the few active screens, to realise he wasn’t alone.
Baron sat in front of a screen in the corner, the one that habitually displayed the feeds from the various security cameras around the property. Some were only activated if motion sensors triggered them, but others were continuously recorded, the data stored for later viewing in case of any suspicious activity. On the screen before Baron was one particular feed, from a camera that was only turned on under specific circumstances; the one that monitored the cages in the basement.
Baron didn’t look up when Alistair arrived, and he hesitated, wondering if his boss would prefer to be left alone. But with the rest of the chaos going on around here, he hadn’t had time to check all the news feeds lately, and it was the sort of thing that could turn ugly very, very quickly. So he really needed to spend some time sorting through things…
“Come in. It’s fine,” Baron said, still not looking up, and so Alistair did. He seated himself on the opposite side of the room and set about checking the feeds, scanning articles that the program Skip had built for him had highlighted, making a few notes about things to follow up in the next few days. Fortunately, there was nothing dramatic that needed attention. After finding out that Lee was a Khuli, and then having to deal with the battle at the estate and Raniesha and Aaron’s deaths, he’d have been hard pressed to construct a full sentence at the moment. It was a relief to know that the world was actually capable of carrying on without him for a couple of days. Even the Noturatii were being cooperative for the time being
; their story on the battle at the estate being a drug raid fitted in very nicely with available evidence, so he wasn’t inclined to mess with it.
But when he was done, Baron was still sitting there, staring at the screen. He hadn’t moved since Alistair had arrived, no sighs of boredom, no restless fidgeting, no stretching to ease stiff muscles.
Curious, and also a touch concerned, Alistair stood up and deliberately stepped towards him. He made no move to hide what was on the screen, so Alistair looked.
News of John’s punishment was by now common knowledge, and Alistair was profoundly relieved that Baron hadn’t followed through on his threat to have the young man put down. Now, John lay curled up on the narrow bed in his cage, and to all appearances, he was sleeping like a log. Andre was lying on the floor in wolf form just outside the cage, but his occasional movements confirmed he wasn’t asleep.
Alistair understood the reasons why Andre was needed to supervise John’s captivity; he wasn’t the only one who had expressed concerns when Caroline had shared the news with them. But if their resident assassin was on hand to take care of any mishaps, then why…?
He glanced sideways at Baron, and the expression on his face, lit only by the dim glow of the screen, answered the question. And now, more than ever before, Alistair understood how Baron felt. Unrequited love was... difficult.
“I can’t believe he’s actually asleep,” Baron said quietly, not taking his eyes off the figure on the screen. “God knows how Andre did it, but the man’s a fucking genius.”
“You think putting him in the cage was a bad call?” Alistair asked. “Even with Andre there, do you think...?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust Andre. I do. But he has to sleep sometime. I just can’t -” Baron’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat and started again. “I don’t want to wake up in the morning and find John hanging from the ceiling.”
Despite the macabre warning in his words, Alistair couldn’t help but smile, a soothing calm washing over him for the first time in ages. “The people in this Den have followed you into hell more times than I can count,” he observed. He glanced at the screen again. “You understand why, don’t you? I mean, even now, even after everything, you’re... well, here.”
For the first time since he’d entered the room, Baron’s eyes left the screen and looked up at Alistair. “As far as I was aware, most people in this Den didn’t really approve of what was going on between him and me.”
Alistair raised one eyebrow. “Given who I’ve been sleeping with lately, I really don’t feel I’m in a position to be judging anyone.” Baron didn’t reply, and Alistair didn’t really expect him to. “I’ll see you later,” he said, excusing himself from the room. But when he got to the door, he paused. “Are you hungry? I could bring something up from the kitchen if you like?” George would normally be happy to oblige, but there was no sense in alerting the entire Den to their leader’s current whereabouts.
Baron glanced over his shoulder. “That would be great. Thanks.”
Alistair nodded, then slipped out of the room, quietly closing the door behind him.
Giving Luke one last kiss on his fuzzy head, Dee set him down in the dog-bed/cot in the nursery. “Bedtime,” she told him firmly. Taya was already half-asleep, and there was a brief tussle as Luke snuggled into her corner, trying to steal her warm spot. A mock snap of needle-sharp teeth and a few puppyish growls later, and the disagreement was sorted. The pair of them cuddled up together, and not two minutes later, they were both fast asleep.
“That was way too easy,” Mark said from beside her.
Dee laughed softly, careful not to disturb them, although she was quickly discovering that once they were properly asleep, it would pretty much take a bomb hitting the house to wake them. “We’ll have to remember that. Wear them out in the late afternoon and they’ll sleep like logs.”
“Getting them to sleep, yes. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to stay asleep.”
Dee just smiled. Watching her two children lying there peacefully, she felt a sudden urge to cry. Her breath hitched, and a moment later, Mark was sliding his arms around her waist, chin nestled against her shoulder as he hugged her close.
“I’m going to miss Raniesha,” Dee said, a simple statement that somehow encapsulated all the things they’d lost in her passing.
“Yeah,” Mark agreed, sorrow making him laconic. The funerals had been held for her and Aaron, and Heron had had to phone the travel agent where Raniesha had a part time job and explain to them that she’d been killed in a car accident, and that her family had decided to have a private ceremony for the funeral. With no significant outside contacts, arrangements for Aaron had been simpler, and a new engraved plaque had been created for him and Raniesha and added to the memorial wall that sat beside the rear patio. Rift’s body had been returned to the Grey Watch, for them to hold their own funeral service. Come summer, Simon and Kwan would be asked to participate in the collective funeral ritual at the Densmeet, for all those who had passed into the Hall of Sirius during the previous year.
“How’s your chest?” Dee asked, putting a gentle hand against Mark’s ribs. He’d been shot during the battle, a direct hit against his bullet-proof vest, and they’d been worried for a time that he’d broken a rib.
“It’s getting better,” Mark told her, not resisting when she lifted his shirt to look at the dark purple bruise underneath. “It hurts less today than it did yesterday.”
A vivid image appeared in Dee’s mind, one that made her feel both bold and nervous. “Faeydir says that next time, she’ll go into battle and you can watch the pups.”
“I would agree, except that when she goes into battle, so do you. And you have yet to finish your training.” A low growl sounded in Dee’s mind, and Mark must have read the response on her face. “I’m not objecting to you fighting,” he said soothingly. “Some of our fiercest warriors have been women. But the Noturatii fight with submachine guns and grenades, not just teeth and claws. And if that’s what you’re up against, it’s only good sense that you let Silas finish training you properly before you dive in head-first.”
Dee considered pointing out that she’d already dived in quite thoroughly, in the battle to free Tank from the lab, but she knew that had been a result of circumstance, rather than solid planning. And he was right; while she’d learned a lot about weapons and battle strategy, she still had a fair way to go, and she wasn’t yet used to following military-style orders. Right now, she would be a liability, not only to herself, but to the rest of the team.
“Okay,” she conceded, and if she was honest about it, she was actually a little relieved that she didn’t have to jump right in just yet. “More training. But this time next year…”
“This time next year,” Mark said, pressing a kiss to her forehead, “you can start slaughtering as many Noturatii as you like.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
It was nine o’clock in the morning, and outside the window of the Den’s IT office, the sun was making a valiant effort to break through the day’s fog.
Alistair was sitting at one of the computers, running his usual round of checks against the day’s news. Beside him, Simon was working at another machine. He’d been quiet and subdued since Raniesha had died, and Alistair’s own mind was in enough turmoil that he had neither the desire nor the energy to try comforting the man. The Den was going to have to start doing some serious recruiting soon, as their numbers were down to a level where the Council would start making noise if they weren’t careful. Since recruiting and training people could take a good three years from start to finish, there was no time to waste.
John had been released from his cage that morning, and the entire Den had braced themselves as they waited to see how he would react to becoming the omega of the Den. But strangely, the young man hadn’t made a fuss, though Alistair hadn’t missed the sharp, meaningful look that passed between Baron and Andre. He couldn’t help wondering if that was the end of the matter, or w
hether it would swing back around to bite them in a few days.
He was about to get up to make a cup of coffee, and to offer to get one for Simon as well, when suddenly the alarm on Simon’s phone went off. He pulled it out and took a quick look at the screen, then muttered, “Oh, good god,” before leaping up and rushing off. Curious, and more than a little apprehensive in light of recent events, Alistair followed him.
Simon made a beeline for Baron, who was in the library updating one of the thick volumes with details of Aaron and Raniesha’s deaths, but Simon didn’t bother knocking or even apologising for the interruption. He just jammed his phone under Baron’s nose and said, “She’s back.”
Baron took one look at the screen and groaned. “Fucking hell, not again.” In a quick, discreet manoeuvre, Alistair took a peek over his shoulder, and his heart all but stopped in his chest. It was Lee, standing at the east gate again, having apparently just deliberately triggered the alarm. As he watched, she waved at the camera, then stepped back, a clear invitation for a civilised chat.
A moment later, Silas, Andre and Caroline all came barrelling into the room. “What do we do?” Andre asked, seeing that Baron had already heard the news. He was all tension and reflexes, ready for action… but then Baron gave a snort of amusement, a sound that Andre took offence to, judging by the look on his face.
“Really?” Baron asked him, standing up and stretching like a cat after a nap. “After all this, you still think she’s here to do us harm?”
“I think the Khuli are not to be trusted,” Andre snapped, not backing down one inch. “Not now, not tomorrow, not after she saves our lives a hundred times.”
