“We went to the Red Horn’s headquarters. Your wife asked them who they sold my son to. They told us to ‘fuck off.’ There was a fight. She won. When the man in charge there, the underboss, wouldn’t tell her who took my son, she cut off his head.”
So far all of that sounded plausible.
“What happened then? Please be specific.”
“She held up the severed head and asked it who bought my son. Then she told the rest of them that since their boss couldn’t answer, she would have to keep asking them one by one, until someone told her.”
Of course, she had.
“One of them told her that a journeyman named Onyx paid them to kidnap Darin. Onyx works at the Farm.”
“And then what happened?
“There were children at the house.”
Slavers. This wasn’t an isolated incident. They didn’t just take one child. They were taking children on a regular basis. Onyx must’ve hired them because of their experience.
Thomas had gone quiet. The shapeshifters around him froze.
Keelan cleared his throat. “My lord.”
He pointed to his eyes.
Oh. I blinked the alpha stare off.
“Continue, please.”
“After we got all the kids out of the cages, Kate set the house on fire.”
“As she should have,” Keelan said.
“What happened after that?”
“We took the children to the Order, so they could be delivered back to their families. The Knight-Protector had her fill out some paperwork and gave her a will-o’-wisp in a cage to take to the man in charge of the People.
“Barrett,” Keelan spat the name out like a curse.
Interesting. “Aren’t you supposed to be cordial with the People, Keelan?”
“We’re both alive. That’s cordial enough.”
“You don’t like him?”
“He likes himself well enough for both of us. All big smiles and sharp knives in your guts, that one.”
“Okay, after the Order you went to the Farm?”
Thomas nodded. “We took a boat across. The captain tried to rob us and take the will-o’-wisp.”
Of course, he had. “But she killed him?”
“No, he pulled a crossbow on us, but she hit him with some powder, and he shot himself in the foot. Then, a water monster grabbed him and tried to pull him into the water. It had tentacles like a squid or an octopus, but very large, and the weight of it almost capsized the boat.”
Keelan nodded sagely. “A kraken, most like.”
“A kraken in Cape Fear?” I asked.
“It happens. Probably a wee one chasing fish in from the sea. The juveniles don’t have a lot of experience, so they come up the river sometimes.”
Good to know.
“Did the kraken eat the man?”
“No. Kate saved him.” Thomas sounded like he disapproved.
“How?”
“Well, she said something, a word in a language I didn’t understand, and the thing exploded.”
A power word. She used a goddamned power word to save the man who tried to rob them. A man who would have shot them if they hadn’t complied.
“She became upset and told him to sit still and be quiet. We let him go when we crossed the river.”
“The Consort, ever merciful,” Keelan opined.
Yes, she was that.
“Did any other unusual things happen on your way to the Farm?”
“No. We got there, she spoke to someone at a desk, and a man came to take her to see Barrett. I waited for her. She was gone for about thirty minutes. She came back and we left the Farm. On the way to the ferry, she told me that Onyx didn’t make it, but he told her that he sold Darin to someone named Aaron, who lives on the Emerald Wave and might be a god.”
Why not? Why wouldn’t it be a child-abducting god? A gang of mundane scumbags or a rogue journeyman would have been too damned easy.
“And that’s where the two of you split up and she left you in the company of this gentleman and his friends?”
Keelan spoke up again. “Indeed.”
“Was she hurt?”
Keelan grinned. “No. Not at all.”
That’s all that mattered.
“She also let slip that there might be a bit of trouble here tonight. Unsavory types invading your home. Some of the same cowards who stole Thomas’ lad.”
His Irish accent was getting thicker. He was plotting something.
“An honest man and his family attacked by brigands,” Keelan declared. “Well, we couldn’t just stand by and let that kind of thing happen. Could we?”
A chorus of noes answered from the other shapeshifters.
“The Wilmington Pack promised the Consort we’d deliver him here safely, and now we mean to stop here awhile and make sure he stays that way.” Keelan paused. “With your permission, of course.”
The Wilmington Pack, huh. Oh, Jim was just going to love that. This needed to be handled carefully.
I had no authority to give Keelan permission for anything. Especially here in Wilmington. We’d given up all authority when we’d separated from the Pack. Technically, I wasn’t even supposed to be having this conversation.
However, we were a long way from Atlanta, and we could use the extra muscle. Besides, it’d been years since I really gave a fuck what Jim thought about anything. We had been friends once, but that was a long time ago. I’d always known that to Jim only the Pack mattered. It wasn’t enough to be a shapeshifter—you had to have the label, so he could put you on the right side of the line between enemy and ally. The moment we left, we became ignorable at best and a potential threat to his leadership at worst. He’d never admit it, but he wanted us gone. It was simpler that way.
We had fought side by side for so long, I had thought that we saw the Pack in the same way. Now I knew we never had. Water under the bridge. Jim had made his choices, and I’d made mine. And Keelan was clearly making his, because he’d been my-lording me the entire time without any hesitation. For all of his aw shucks and “simple Irishman” pretense, Keelan was sharp.
“Are you here in an official capacity, Keelan?”
The werewolf scoffed. “Perish the thought, my lord. Where is it written that a man can’t visit a dear friend he’s not seen in far too long? Besides, the Consort mentioned you were fixing up this old ruin and told me I should see it for myself.”
The Consort and I were going to have a little chat when she got back.
“At night? And with six of your pack in tow? You reckon Jim or Desandra would see it that way?”
“What better time? Besides, we both know I’ve always been a bit of a Pack floutlaw.”
And now he was making words up.
“It’s that very same poor attitude that got me shipped up here,” Keelan continued. “The advantage is that I can now go weeks or even months without giving much thought to what Jim or the Wolf Queen fancy.”
I knew the feeling. And I quite enjoyed it.
Keelan flashed his teeth, and a hint of the alpha shone through. “We were neither of us born with a neck meant for bending. They may exile us, but they can’t beat us.”
That Kate and I left the Pack voluntarily or that he was, in fact, the alpha of the pack here in Wilmington seemed unimportant to Keelan. Jim had badly miscalculated. I would’ve made sure Keelan stayed right next to me, where I could keep an eye on him. But Jim and Desandra, those two geniuses, put their heads together and sent him here, on his own, and then they gave him a bunch of promising fighters and potential troublemakers to train. Neither of them had any idea just how much influence Keelan could exert over the Pack. Specifically, over its renders, the cream of the crop when it came to combat.
So I played along. “Banished to this lawless place because we’re too fiercely independent?”