Oath Sworn (Jacky Leon Book 1)

by Kristen Banet

She and I jumped out and walked inside together. I ignored the front counter for the most part, just making sure it wasn’t the woman from the night before, and it wasn’t. Stacy was silent beside me until we reached my room. I was aching by the time we reached it. Between the walking I’d done all morning, the running the night before, and, you know, being shot until I died, every part of my body fucking hurt.

  “You were protecting her…” Stacy looked over my things, frowning. “They shot you for it.”

  “Have those two taught you the Law?” I asked softly, putting my things back into my suitcase.

  “Yeah. I never read more than the general rules and the part about the werewolves, though.”

  “There’s a werecat section that deals with all Laws for my kind and for others dealing with mine. We’re the reason the Laws exist, you and I. Did you know that?”

  She shook her head, and I rolled my eyes.

  “Ask your father or Heath for a better history lesson, then.” I zipped up the suitcase. “Do you know Carey?”

  “I babysit her,” she said with a bite. “Of course I know her. My father is Heath’s fourth.”

  “Ah. I’m sorry, then.” The guilt ate into my soul a little more the longer Carey was missing. I failed all of them by losing her. Being dead just didn’t seem like a good enough excuse to me, even if it was for them.

  “So, you were really injured…we have someone who can help with that. A half-witch who can heal.”

  “Really?” That perked me up. I knew about the half-witch, but I didn’t want to reveal that. They might not have liked Carey talking about pack secrets with me, and that should be a secret. I definitely did not know she could heal.

  “Yeah. We can ask Heath if she can patch you up. No offense, but you walk funny and you’re favoring your right arm.”

  I hadn’t even noticed, and while I hurt, I wasn’t going to bitch about it or let it slow me down. “Yeah. If you feel comfortable with that, sure. I’m fine, though. Really.” Not really, but again, not letting it slow me down.

  “Good.” She nodded wisely and took the suitcase from me. She carefully laid my gym bag on top of it.

  “So, you want to be a werewolf,” I said casually.

  “I want to try. I know the Change might kill me, but it’s my decision.” She raised her chin, ready for me to try and convince her not to, I bet.

  “Who’s mad at you?” I asked softly.

  “My mom, who divorced my dad ten years ago. She doesn’t get a say, in my opinion. My dad and Heath are going to walk me through it, so my odds are pretty good. There’s something about genetics, that if one person in the direct line successfully Changed, then the others have a good chance. I want to research it when I’m in college and beyond. I can help further humans and wolves, if we can discover what that little…something is that determines it.”

  “You can,” I agreed. “Though the chance of it being successful is higher when someone is born to the werewolf and not to the human before the Change.”

  “Yeah, but still, my odds aren’t one out of ten or worse, like they are for most humans. There’s more like a sixty-six percent chance of me surviving, which is why I think my dad relented and let me go through with it. Those are good odds.” She shrugged.

  Fuck. I hope I’m never that comfortable facing my possible doom.

  Wait.

  I shrugged with her. “Fair point.”

  “How did you choose?” she asked as we left the room.

  “I didn’t,” I answered. “I was dying.”

  She didn’t say anything else, just giving me a wide-eyed stare as the doors closed. Finally, she broke out of the shock. I knew it would puzzle her.

  “Is that a werecat thing?”

  “Not at all.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Ask Heath. He seems to know a lot about my kind.”

  “Yeah, but you’re one of your kind. So why don’t you tell me?”

  “Not out here in public. My kind isn’t out to the humans, kid.” I scoffed as the doors opened and walked ahead of her, ignoring my pain. The curiosity of the young. I was only thirty-six and that meant in the eyes of many, I was a child too, but I wasn’t that nosy. Or rather, I knew how to be nosy without…being overtly nosy, or so I believed.

  We got back into the SUV and I sat quietly next to Heath as we started driving off.

  “You haven’t told Stacy how the Laws came to be,” I said, loudly enough that I knew they would all hear me and the small bite of ‘what the fuck’ in it.

  Heath bared his teeth. “You mean the war with your kind we had and practically won, before we were forced to sit down and play for peace?”

  “Woah!” Stacy heard that too, looking back at us. “Really? We had a war? With her kind? And yet you let her protect Carey?” The end was angry at Heath, disbelieving.

  “Jacky here is too young to have been a part of the war.”

  “How do you know?” I demanded, glaring at him.

  “You act too modern. If it helps, I wasn’t around for it either, but I’m much older than you.” He kept his teeth bared, but it turned into a predatory smile. “You brought it up.”

  “I just figured that’s something you should teach people. She’s also never read all of the Laws.”

  “Have you?”

  No, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I read the ones that really mattered. “She should have at least read the section about werewolves and werecats.”

  “Don’t tell me how to teach my pack,” he snapped.

  “Do you make all your wolves prove that they have read and understand them? It might have kept the others from blatantly breaking them and coming after Carey and me.” I wasn’t dropping it now.

  He snarled, reaching out for me. I grabbed his wrist, holding him off. I was weak, I was tired, and I was in pain, but I was still a damn werecat. Two werewolves and a human teenager were no match, especially if I fought each of them one on one. My confidence soared in my chest again, less afraid than I had been, as I pushed his hand further away from me.

  “Forgive me,” I said softly. “But I think I have a point.”

  “Yes, I make sure they all know, but do you know when the last real Tribunal concerning a broken Law was? A very long time ago. A lot of wolves barely make it to fifty, which means they weren’t alive for it. To them, the Law and being in front of the Tribunal is a horror story, not something that actually happens.” He yanked his hand away, looking down at it. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Did you forget I’m the stronger species?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “No. I actually never believed it. I’ve only met one werecat, and it was in passing. I couldn’t believe that she would be able to beat me, and I didn’t think you could stop my strike. Consider me educated.”

  “Same. You have a point.” I crossed my arms again as I realized he wasn’t going to try again. I couldn’t really be mad at him. If I had been challenged like that, I would have gone for a control hold too. I knew he had wanted ownership over my throat to make his point and his position in the ranking clear, but this was exactly what I had been telling Carey.

  I had to prove I was the top predator, and it made the Alpha very insecure. He didn’t like that he couldn’t take me, still staring at his hand and flexing it.

  “How old are you exactly?” he asked, giving me a curious look. “If you’re like my kind, you get stronger with age. Call me curious.”

  “I’m thirty-six and I’ve been a werecat for ten years,” I answered, looking away from him. I was a baby compared to the other werecats. “I’m the youngest werecat I know of by…ninety-two years.” I looked back over at him, watching him absorb that information.

  “Interesting,” he murmured.

  “You?” I was curious, probably too curious, and the adage about cats’ curiosity came to mind. I smirked. “Call me curious.”

  “I was Changed during the American Revolution, at the age of thirty. I’m two hundred and seventy-eight.�
�� He didn’t like his answer.

  I overpowered a nearly three hundred-year-old werewolf. I knew my kind was stronger than his, but he was old in their terms. Not by werecats terms, but for his kind, he was a survivor. With werewolves and their dominance struggles, they died easier, faster, than my own.

  “Wait,” Stacy cut in. “Can I ask more?”

  “Stacy,” Heath chastised softly, giving her a look.

  “It’s fine.” I shrugged. I figured if there was nothing to do about Carey until we got with the rest of the wolves, I might as well help educate the wily youth about other supernaturals, especially if she planned on joining the ranks.

  “Fine,” he relented.

  “Why are there no other young werecats? I mean, there’s young wolves all the time. Lots of them. Everywhere.”

  “I know the answer to this one,” Heath said before I could open my mouth. “It’s a cultural difference.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded in agreement. “We’re solitary. We don’t go out looking for companionship most of the time. To Change someone is putting someone in our care, probably for a long time. Like…if and when Heath or whoever Changes you, they’re going to be responsible for you until you can handle things on your own. That’s a bit of a turn-off to werecats.” I sighed. “Also, we practically never Change someone without consent and years-long education about it and our world beforehand. Then you have to account for failures. So a werecat can invest thirty years in adopting a baby, raising it as their child, offering the Change, doing it, and…”

  Well, I had heard from Hasan how heartbreaking those cases were. He hadn’t done something like that in two hundred years, and he’d told me about two failures he had ages ago. I could still remember the shadows I saw in his eyes when he talked about the two young men that it happened to.

  “Oh. So…there’s no process like there is with us?” She frowned. “Why? There must not be many of you.”

  “There never will be. We’re not community-oriented. We’re territorial and stand-offish. We don’t want too many werecats. There’s not enough land to go around between us, you werewolves, the fae, the vampires, and so on. Our numbers are healthy right now, though.” I yawned, suddenly tired. “You done? Any more?”

  “You said that werecats practically never Change someone without their consent…but you were. Did anyone get into trouble for it, or is it just rare?”

  Heath’s eyebrows went up. That was something I really shouldn’t have shared, I realized belatedly. He hadn’t known that. Hell, Lani didn’t even know that.

  “Yes, well, I was dying after a storm made the roads slick and I went over a cliff,” I said quietly, shifting my body to face away from Heath, an obvious sign I wasn’t up to giving away any more of my life story. “It’s just rare,” I finally said. “And avoided.”

  It was because some people didn’t accept the Change. For the werewolves, Hasan had told me they were laxer about it because they were easier to put down. For werecats, because of the bonds we made and the strength we had, it was too risky. He’d said if I didn’t have control of my werecat within a year, he would have put me down before I got too strong for him to potentially stop.

  Luckily, I gained control.

  “I think we’re done interrogating the local werecat, Stacy,” Heath said gently. “Why don’t you call the safe house and let them know we’re on our way back?”

  “Okay…Sorry, Jacky, if I offended you.”

  I shrugged. “Not offended. Just a sore topic,” I told her. “You didn’t know. Don’t feel bad.” Couldn’t have kids feeling bad for their curiosity.

  The rest of the ride was quiet for me, as everyone else talked softly about who was where and doing what. When we arrived at the warehouse, lost somewhere in Dallas, I was ready to face the next challenge.

  I had to work with a wolf pack to get Carey back.

  15

  Chapter Fifteen

  The warehouse was completely nondescript. Boring, plain, it blended in with several other warehouses. Heath walked in the front of our group with Stacy next to him. I wish I could say it was a place of respect, but I knew it wasn’t. It was a place of safety. He was showing the pack that Stacy mattered and he would die for even their future wolves, probably because the future was important, or something idealistic like that. Shamus was behind him, a few feet back. Casually protecting his Alpha’s back without crowding or being overprotective. A sign that he trusted his Alpha to protect his still-human daughter.

  I was tailing the entire group, just behind Shamus, who smartly kept me more to his back right and not directly behind him. A sign that he knew I could make trouble and wasn’t going to let me get the drop on him. Smart wolf. Not that I was planning on trying, but I had nowhere else to walk. They didn’t really leave me any other options.

  There were no werewolves outside the warehouse, giving even more of a normal, ‘nothing weird going on here’ look, but I could smell them. There were so many that the scents blended together until it just smelled like werewolf and I couldn’t pull them apart.

  It was disconcerting, and I was about to walk into the middle of them. The idea made me feel fidgety and anxious, something that must have become obvious as Shamus looked back at me when we got close to the building, frowning.

  “We’re not bringing you back here to eat you,” he said quietly.

  “Sure,” I replied, crossing my arms to cover the important bits, like my lungs and heart.

  “I thought werecats were supposed to be a werewolf’s boogie man.” There was something light about Heath’s tone from the front.

  I hissed. In the presence of other animals, I knew I could relax on one thing, and that was showing the more animalistic parts of my personality. Any humans in this building would probably know about the werewolves, and that meant there was a chance they knew about me or my kind.

  “What big eyes you have,” Shamus teased, a toothy grin appearing on his face. “We’ve got her right where we want her, boss.”

  I snarled, snapping at the closer wolf. He jumped away, laughing.

  “Kidding. We’ve got more important things to do than trying to kill you.”

  “He’s right,” Heath said loudly, looking back at us now. “Killing you only gets rid of one more layer of protection my daughter could use. I’m not going to do that. And I’ll swear it here: no wolves of mine will attempt to hurt you while you’re here or in our territory, as long as you prove to be dedicated to the task of rescuing my daughter from those that would do her harm.”

  I inclined my head as my anxiety eased. If any of his wolves broke that, he would be required to step in on my behalf if he wanted to keep his honor, and for Alpha werewolves, honor was everything. “Thank you.”

  He nodded back and continued walking. Stacy ran off ahead. We didn’t enter through either of the large shipping bay doors, but rather a small side door for employees. I was, of course, last to enter.

  I felt paralyzed for just a second as the scent of wolf covered me, filling my nose until I could smell nothing else. I was also in front of five wolves I hadn’t met yet, which didn’t help anything. A couple of them snarled, baring their teeth. Their eye colors shifted from their human colors to their wolves’, much like my hazel turned gold.

  “She’s here by my will and in my good graces,” Heath snapped, staring down the wolves. “Meet Jacky Leon, a werecat that lives a couple hours southeast of us near Jacksonville. She’s oath-sworn to my daughter, a werecat called to Duty. You’ll treat her with respect.”

  “And where’s Carey?” one asked, his anger fading quickly, replaced with worry.

  My heart clenched. Carey was a human princess among wolves. They would all probably die for her, I realized.

  “A hunting party incapacitated our feline cousin here and took her. Jacky is here to help us get her back. Or we’re going to help her.”

  “We’re going to work together as equals in the effort to get Carey out of their hands,” I said, fixing the proble
m Heath had walked into. On principle, a werecat would never bow and take orders from a werewolf Alpha, and he couldn’t let me be above him, since it would jeopardize his position of power. Equals, however tentative, was the only solution.

  “That works,” he replied, nodding. He turned back to his wolves and waved. “I need everyone for a pack meeting so we can discuss our next move.”

  “Yes sir,” the speaker said, jumping up and running out of the room. The others followed, slower, but no less purposeful.

  “Is that one a youngin’?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. I threw on a bit of a southern accent to soften the question into something humorous.

  “He is, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders and a decently dominant streak. He’ll climb into someone’s inner circle one day, if he’s trained right and has the chance to grow. Right now he’s all about pleasing and doing his part.” Heath gestured for me to keep following him. As I did, he said something else. “Shamus, I want you there as well, but I think it’s time for Stacy to help with the kids.”

  “Of course, Heath.”

  As I left the office with him, I heard Stacy whining about being put back on babysitting duty, something that made me smirk.

  The warehouse before me was full of werewolves, many lying on cots, talking to their neighbors. Some were sitting on boxes, probably taken from the warehouse. Some were lying on large crates, others were playing on computers.

  “Nice war camp,” I said, trying to be polite and probably failing at it.

  “Yeah. It was the best we could do with the short amount of time we had when this all started. We have a couple of injured, but nothing too bad.” He gave me a sideways look.

  I ignored it, opting to instead meet the eyes of the wolves now watching me intently. My comment had drawn their attention, and now probably two dozen or more wolves were looking at me, expressions ranging from shocked to confused to downright angry.

  “Hi.” I waved. “Do I look funny?”

  Heath snorted. More than a few of the wolves snarled, while others had the opposite reaction and laughed.