«Sera.» Instinct — and Alec’s words — prompted Carmen to speak. «If you need help, if you need anything, call us. Please.»
«I will.» A muffled male voice called out in the background, and Sera swore. «I need to go. Tell him I’m on my way, okay?»
«Be safe.» Carmen disconnected the call and rubbed her hands over her face. So much left to do, and all she really wanted to do was hide.
Her uncle, her family. All this pain and destruction, just because Franklin had flouted an authority that wasn’t supposed to extend to him in the first place. And now Alec—
She stomped on the thought, pushing it down with absolute determination as she rose and made her way back down the half-lit hallway. There was no mistaking Alec’s intention; he planned to make sure that nothing like this ever happened in his town again.
His town.
She pushed through the exit and into the controlled chaos of the main warehouse. Alec still sat at a table near the entrance, talking to Nicole Peyton. Though his glowering had subsided into a sort of quiet thoughtfulness, she didn’t doubt that rage still boiled inside him, high and hot.
He would challenge Cesar and end up with his council seat. He would do it because he had no other recourse, even though he’d lain in her bed only days before and told her that anyone who went up against the Southeast council would die trying to change it.
His town.
He’d survive the first round of challenges, maybe even the first few. But no one could stand alone against an establishment, against so many who wanted to keep things exactly the way they were.
Lady luck favors you if you bring a friend. Or two.
Wesley Dade’s words. Days old, but they echoed in her ear as if he stood beside her now, bringing painful clarity to the core issue at hand — Alec couldn’t change the council, the Conclave, by himself.
Spotters keep count, and the big player drops in to strike while the iron’s hot.
He couldn’t do it alone, but he didn’t have to.
«Carmen?» Alec’s fingers brushed her shoulder, bringing the warmth of worry and protection. «You all right?»
She must have been staring, so lost in thought that she hadn’t even noticed him crossing the warehouse. «I’m fine. I was…I was just thinking about something someone said to me the other day.»
Worry intensified. «What’d they say?»
«That counting cards is a group activity,» she answered absently. «What if you didn’t take on the council alone?»
Alec’s fingers closed on her chin and tilted her head back. «Honey, you’re scaring me more than a little. Do you need to sit down?»
«No, listen.» She grasped his upper arms and looked up at him. «One person they don’t want on the Southeast council? That person’s a target. I’m talking about bringing backup. Majority rule.»
Alec blinked. Frowned. «I’m trying to think of a reason why that wouldn’t work. It feels like it wouldn’t work. It feels…»
«It would take special people, ones you trusted. Ones who wanted to help, not take what you had.»
«And here I was about to say it seems too easy.» Alec’s gaze unfocused. «Strong enough to get on the council. Strong enough to hold against challenges. Willing to lead, but capable of following too.»
«My brother.» He’d kill her for even thinking it, much less mentioning it to Alec, but it was true. «You need Julio.»
He laughed suddenly. «Hell, if we’re going to break all the rules, why go small? Andrew. Andrew can damn near take me out. He can win a challenge.»
Carmen’s heart began to pound. «It isn’t breaking the rules because the rules are already broken.»
«Oh, it’s breaking all of the rules,» he whispered. «All the ones no one ever wrote down because they just are. The rules that need to be smashed into pieces.»
Exactly what she’d meant, but it didn’t matter. She moved without thinking, sliding her hands up to his face. «Could you do it? If you weren’t alone?»
«Depends.» He gripped her hips and pulled her close, seemingly unconcerned with the attention they were attracting. «Will I have you?»
It was so much more than anything they’d discussed before, and it took her the span of a breath to know the answer. «You’ll have me, no matter what you do.»
He smiled, a smile full of warmth and excitement and hope, and then, in front of half the people they knew and a dozen they didn’t, he dragged her to him and kissed her.
He kissed her as if nothing had ever been more vital, as if he would never stop, and nothing penetrated the haze of pleasure and possession until she heard both of her brothers calling her name in unison.
She broke away and turned to Miguel, who held the neatly lettered list she’d made for Kat. «Hate to break it up,» he murmured, his cheeks red, «but you told us you’d put this in order so we knew what to track down first.»
«Right.» They had twelve hours to find most of the equipment, eighteen at the outside. «I have to do this, Alec. Can you go see if Franklin is awake? Even if he’s not…tell him Sera’s on her way, would you?»
«Will do.» Alec smoothed back her hair and smiled. «We can do this.»
«Yes.» The council, the makeshift clinic, all of it. «We can.»
Chapter Eighteen
Someone had brought a banged-up old card table upstairs. Someone else had provided flimsy folding chairs. Kat had given him one of her stupidly small computers, one with a keyboard so tiny he could barely type on it. A handful of cell phones lay scattered across his makeshift desk, tangled with phone lists and the files he’d had Jackson retrieve from the office.
A humble beginning for a revolution, but Alec supposed people had started with less.
They’d certainly started with less manpower. The room he’d claimed was a good twenty feet long and half that across, but with Julio, Andrew and Derek standing around the table, the place bristled with tense, uneasy power. It was almost a relief that Nick and Mackenzie had gone to raid Nick’s bar for food and supplies — six dominant shifters in so small a space would have been damn near unlivable.
Not that it was comfortable now. Only Derek seemed at ease as he sprawled in one of the chairs. «So. This is how coups start?»
Julio snorted. «I’m sure the new, civilized Conclave would call it a hostile takeover.»
After the last couple years, Alec suspected John Peyton might call it cleaning house, if he were allowed to express such sentiments out loud. «I put out a few calls. Tried to see if anyone could remember anything like this happening in the past.»
Andrew leaned one shoulder against the wall. «And?»
«Not at the council level. And not by people with good intentions.» Gangs, mostly, taking over local cities by challenging their way through the power structure and eliminating resistance in their path. Petty criminals who used the force of numbers because they didn’t have the power to stand against the council wolves, and whose own unsuitability worked against them. The one united front the councils and Conclave could muster was their response to criminals working their way up the food chain.
Maybe they don’t like the competition.
Derek crossed his arms over his chest. «So when I beat Coleman and refused to take his Conclave seat, I pretty much fucked up the whole system, didn’t I?»
«They wouldn’t have let you have it,» Julio told him. «You won his council seat. Leadership on the Conclave isn’t transferable, not like that. You would have still had to win out over the other members of the Southeast council.»