Page 11

ELEVEN

Reed

K ane had gone off with Karissma and Head Priestess Marciana shortly after telling me he wanted a personal call scheduled with every single alpha who’d pledged their loyalty. He also gave me a short list of the remaining alphas who hadn’t pledged yet to contact, to set up initial meetings and get those pledges underway. It was part of his plan to solidify the wolf packs on our side, before news got out that Brielle was, in fact, an adult omega. I didn’t envy him those conversations, not one bit.

I’d called Lucien first to see if he had time to split the list with me since he was more connected than I was with the packs in this part of the globe, but he hadn’t answered or returned the call. Knowing him, he was probably on a weekend bender with a pair of blondes. I was irritated, but there was nothing to be done about it except get my phone charger and slog through it.

Several hours later, I was nearing the end of the list as I waited for the Japanese Alpha’s secretary to let me know what time he had available. Apparently, he was attending a very important tea ceremony and couldn’t answer himself.

“Makoto ni moushiwake arimasen, Alpha Monstru. Alpha Ito will not be available until Thursday afternoon. Does this work for the high alpha’s schedule?”

“Yes, that’s fine. But he’ll be meeting the high alpha after China and India on Wednesday.”

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. “Actually, a slot on Tuesday just opened up.”

“Imagine that,” I said, scratching the details out in the notebook I’d borrowed from the head priestess’s desk. “Thanks for your cooperation in this important matter.” I hung up the call and tossed my phone on my desk, groaning and stretching.

I hated the politics of pack life at this level, but I’d also known what I was signing up for, when I’d joined Kane’s pack. As the high alpha’s son, he was destined for this life, and so was I, once I accepted my place at his side as the pack’s third.

All the other names on Kane’s list were either going to call me back or hadn’t answered and didn’t have secretaries.

Time for a break, thank the Goddess. And well past time to check on Fiona. The need to see her was an itch under my skin, one I couldn’t shake until I saw her smile, those mesmerizing multicolored eyes shining up at me.

I walked down the hall, knocking lightly on Kane and Brielle’s door. After a long silence, I tried again.

A throat clearing behind me made me turn, spotting Dirge.

“They’re in the library. Have been for hours, apparently.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, already moving down the hallway as if she were pulling me into her orbit from across the enclave.

“Yeah,” Dirge said, falling into step beside me.

My twin was a man of few words, even when not trapped in fur.

“How you holding up?” he asked, slapping me on the shoulder and following it up with a squeeze.

“I’m fine.” I was also a man of few words. Ran in the family.

He snorted, giving me an incredulous look. “How about the truth this time?”

I shrugged. There was no way I could explain the barbed-wire ball of feelings in my chest to anyone, not even my twin.

“Fine. I’ll talk, you listen. Finding your mate turns your whole world upside down, and it’s supposed to. I know you like control, but when it comes to your woman… you’re going to have to let go a little.”

“I can’t,” I snapped, tugging on my sleeve in irritation before catching myself and shoving my hands into the pockets of my slacks.

Dirge put a hand on my shoulder again, stopping me this time at the door to the courtyard. “Listen. If anybody knows what it’s like to lose control, it’s me. But you’ve got the best control of anyone I’ve ever seen. You’re not going to hurt her or anyone else.”

I shook my head, not at all agreeing. “You saw what happened in Marciana’s office. I lost it, Dirge.”

“And then you pulled it back the second she walked into the room. That’s what matters. It’s intense before you seal the bond. It was for all of us. But when you exchange bites, the bond settles. You can reach her any time mentally, and it calms the beast.” He settled a hand over his chest, and I had never been more envious of my brother than I was at that moment.

“What if it doesn’t work? She’s not a wolf. I can’t stay like this forever. And after Galyna said she’d keep attracting other males any time she is out of the pack’s protection…” My fangs descended, my wolf tearing at my control in his rage at the mere thought of more males chasing her.

“Hey, now. She’s safe with us. They all are. That’s the part you have to focus on. Nobody in Pack Blackwater will raise a finger to her, nor Caelestis, because they’re under Kane’s control now too. It’s going to work out, brother.”

He was right. Galyna had said our own pack was immune to the draw. That was something. I just had to convince Fiona to stay with the pack.

Or I’d have to follow her home to Philadelphia and tear any males who dared to come after her to shreds.

“There you go. Nice and calm for your lady. What do you say we surprise them with some late dinner?”

I nodded and let him lead me toward the kitchens.

* * *

We got some stern looks from the maidens’ cook when we told her we were taking dinner to the library, but in the end, we left the kitchen with two giant trays laden with bowls of stew, fresh bread, a big bowl of salad to share, and an entire tray of fresh-baked brownies, lightly dusted with powdered sugar. The chocolate scent was mouthwatering, swiftly reminding me that I never ate lunch today.

The library was impressive, if a little chilly. We found the women at the back of the large space, all of them in various stages of glossy-eyed exhaustion with books piled helter-skelter over the surface and spread out across a large wooden table. They’d clearly been powering through a lot of material in a short amount of time.

But as soon as I spotted Fiona, none of the rest was of interest. Dirge and I set our trays on the empty table behind them—safely away from all printed materials—and then I slid into the chair next to Fiona. She was so absorbed in her reading that she didn’t notice me at first.

When she did, she startled. “Reed! I didn’t even see you. How long have you been here?”

“Only a second. We just came to see how it was going and if we could help.” I nodded to Dirge, who’d wrapped his arms around Shay’s shoulders at the other end of the table.

“What is that divine smell?” Leigh asked, stretching and scanning the covered trays behind us.

“Dinner, and help yourselves. We brought enough for everyone.” Dirge waved toward the trays, but Leigh was already moving.

“I would kiss you both if that wouldn’t make Gael bite your heads off. The second trimester makes me ravenous .” She was already lifting the cloches, making appreciative noises as she discovered each new thing.

“Have you eaten?” I asked, focusing back on my mate.

“Not since…” She frowned. “It’s been a while. I could definitely eat. But I’m afraid we haven’t found anything useful yet.”

“No?”

She shook her head ruefully. “Most of the books aren’t in English, for one. But the ones that are don’t exactly have lists of different species. Leigh is only reading books with dragons on the covers, and Oli found one mention of merfolk, which sounded promising but didn’t have much information.”

“Merfolk, really?” I sat back in the seat. I had never encountered a mer, so, I had no idea if that was even possible. It would definitely be something we couldn’t scent on her, though, as water was a natural scent dampener. “Well, don’t stress. It’s not the end of the world to not know. We will figure it out eventually.”

Fiona bit her lip and looked away, clearly not agreeing with my assessment. I slid a finger under her chin, steering her gaze back to my own.

“I don’t care. You know that, right? I mean, I care about you , but it doesn’t matter to me even a little that you’re not a wolf. You’re mine, and that’s enough.”

Her shoulders relaxed, her eyes searching my expression for tells. “What if I’m something awful? Some of these creatures sound evil.”

She pointed at a page in the book she was reading to a nasty-looking gnarled draugr, his flesh melting between a rusty, dented Viking helmet and a scraggly beard, eyes glowing a sickly green in the illustration.

The caption underneath read: It was oft thought greedy warriors, condemned to an eternity of fetid rot, haunted their fellows to remind them to live life well before death gripped them in their clutches .

“You are not a Norse draugr,” I chided.

“But until we know what I am, we can’t know that I’m not.”

I chuckled, pulling her into my chest and running my hand over her back. She melted against me, and the bone-deep satisfaction I felt at the tiny bit of submission from her was almost enough to knock me off my chair.

My wolf rumbled, the low sound meant to soothe. Her happy sigh told me it was working, wolf or no.

“You’re a good person, and that is true regardless of what we find out about your ancestry. Besides, we don’t believe any beings to be inherently good or bad. I mean, some people might say vampires, but even I can admit that not all vampires are terrible.”

“But you’d know if I was a vampire, right?” she asked, face still pressed against my shoulder, fingers gripping my shirt for dear life.

“Absolutely, we’d be able to smell that. You’re not.”

Her stomach rumbled in feeble protest, and I kissed her on top of her head. “Come on. Let me feed you, and you guys can fill us in on what you found and how we can help.”

I wasn’t excited about the idea of hunching over another table for the next four hours like I had the last, but the company would be infinitely better this go-round.

* * *

Once everyone had eaten their fill, we all spread out around the table of books.

“So far, our list of possibilities includes pixies, merfolk, dragons, and trolls.”

“Do any of them have a power or feature we can test so we can see if it fits?” I asked, looking over the list Brielle had passed me, tidily cited with reference materials that mentioned each species.

Brielle shrugged. “Well, she hasn’t shifted into a dragon or pixie, but she can see magic in a way we can’t, which, for all we know, a dragon could do. Merfolk seems harder to test. Most of what we were able to find indicates that pure merfolk can only leave the ocean for one day per year, before they begin to dry out and pine for the sea. There was no mention of what happens to any half-human children that result from those annual wanderings on land.”

“Trolls are massive and are said to smell swampy. Given that she’s no taller than the rest of us and said her grandmother wasn’t either, that seems unlikely. But you’re her mate. Is there any swamp to her scent?”

“Nope. She smells sweet, floral, and mine .” I dragged in a deep lungful of her scent, making Fiona blush as I illustrated my complete pleasure with her scent for the whole group to see.

“Basically, we’ve got bupkis,” Leigh summed up tidily, biting into another brownie at the end of the table while flipping the page in her book.

“That’s not entirely true. Ruling things out is still helpful. Sometimes the process of elimination is the best method,” I said, squeezing Fiona’s hand.

More than anything, I didn’t want her to worry or be discouraged. It really didn’t matter to me. As long as she had enough magic in her blood to be mine, the rest was just details. But I could see why she would care, and if she wanted to know, I wanted to help her find out.

“Yeah, but what happens when we run out of books we can read and we’re still no closer to an answer?” The despair was written plain on her face, and I hated it. My wolf hated it. Despair wasn’t how we convinced her to stay with us, where she was safe and loved and part of the pack.

“Gael and I both speak and read several languages. I’ll start in on the books in French. Dirge can take Romanian. We can ask Gael to tackle Spanish. I’m sure some of the maidens who speak other languages would be happy to help in their free time if we asked.”

Olivia dropped a book, the sharp sound of it slamming against the table stopping me in my tracks, and making us all turn in her direction. Her eyes were wide with excitement. “Wh-what if we don’t need to read them?”

“Uh, do you know another way to extract information from paper that we don’t know about?” Elodie asked, a joking gleam in her eyes even though her shoulders were sloped with exhaustion.

“Well, no, but we don’t know what your powers do. What if they could help you identify what you are? Like my weird thing with the plants?” Olivia turned to look at Leigh.

Leigh gave a noncommittal shrug. “That is pretty freaky but useful.”

“Plant thing. The sleepwalking?” I remembered the incident she was talking about but couldn’t see how we could force Fiona to sleepwalk her way to the correct book.

“Yes, and no. You shared that you have visions when you have seizures. When you’re out of control of your body, even temporarily, the power takes hold. Right?”

“Well, kind of, I guess?” Fiona clutched my shirt tighter, and I knew from the bitter tinge to her usually sweet scent that she was nervous to talk about it, even though we were trying to help.

“It’s okay,” I murmured low against her ear. “We’re all here to help.”

Her grip on my arm loosened a fraction.

“You probably haven’t ever tried tapping in to it when you’re in control because you didn’t know that the visions might be real. But what if you could tap in if you tried?”

“How would one do something like that? I can’t force a seizure. I mean, there are triggers, but none I’d be willing to do to myself on purpose.”

“No, nothing like that. We definitely don’t want to trigger a seizure. What if you just closed your eyes and felt .”

Fiona’s eyes dropped closed immediately, but I had a better idea.

“Wait. Let’s get closer to the stacks first.” I held her hand as we all crossed the library, the rest of our pack mates trailing behind us curiously. Leigh was still eating her brownie, but she’d abandoned the dragon book. “Try now,” I whispered, keeping her hand in mine.

Her eyes fell closed again, and we waited.