After several hours and many miles, I finally calmed down enough to go home and finish speaking with my dad. I stopped at one of the outhouses we had around the property and grabbed an extra change of clothes. I didn’t have a problem with nudity, as it was par for the course as a shifter, but I also didn’t care to walk around naked all the time.
Once I was dressed, I headed straight for the pack house. My heart was beyond broken, but my anger was a thousand times more prominent. I knew what I was going to do. My dad better be ready to finally let me have some freedom, because things were about to change, whether he liked it or not.
“What can I do?” Augie asked as I came up the stairs to the porch.
“Follow me.” I jerked my head in the direction I was headed and kept moving toward my dad’s office.
I knew I couldn’t stop my forward momentum until my brother had been avenged. I couldn’t allow myself to stop and think about what had happened. If I acknowledged my brother, who was so full of life and passion, was gone… I’d shatter.
One day I would allow that, but not anytime soon. The foreseeable future was set aside for training and finding the piece of shit who dared to mess with my family.
Augie’s gentle touch snapped me from my thoughts. I turned to look at him and immediately regretted it. The sadness in his eyes was more than I could handle.
“I know you need me, Augie, but I can’t yet. I’m sorry.” I wanted so badly to hug my friend and be there for him.
I knew the loss of Cord was hurting him almost as bad as it was me, but I couldn’t help anyone else until I helped myself.
“Just make sure you don’t ignore it too long and wind up going rogue. I’m not chasing your ass all over this country to bring you back.”
I peeked at him, trying to find the will to smile, but it wasn’t coming. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”
Augie assessed me once more, seeming to decide my answer would suffice for now, then gestured for me to continue on my path. When we arrived back in my father’s office, he was staring out the window with his face drawn tight.
“I’m sorry, Taya,” he whispered as he turned around and opened his arms to me.
I closed the distance and wrapped my arms around his sturdy frame, but quickly pulled back as tears began to build in my eyes. I didn’t want to cry yet. There were dickbags who needed to be dealt with.
“What happened, Dad? Was this random or did someone purposely set out to take Cord from us?” I asked.
He ran his hands through his already tousled hair, then turned back toward the window. “I very much doubt this was random.” His tone was clipped and full of anger.
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t think now is the time to discuss this,” Augie interrupted.
“Discuss what? Do you know what’s going on?” I was about to majorly lose my shit if something had been going on and I’d been kept in the dark by those closest to me.
Augie and my dad shared a look I didn’t care for, but my dad finally relented. “Cord was helping me look into something Augie found. I hadn’t even told Davis. I forced Augie and Cord to keep quiet about it.”
Of course, he had used his alpha abilities. It wasn’t something I’d seen him often do, but I knew he could push anyone in our pack into submission if he needed to.
“You need to bring me in on this,” I demanded. “I won’t be kept in the dark and treated as if I’m incapable. I will help bring down anyone responsible for taking away my brother.”
Breathing deeply, he pinched the bridge of his nose. Once he regained his composure, he came closer to me.
“You are my daughter,” he whispered as he placed both hands on my shoulders, “in more ways than I’d like to admit. I have no doubt that you could help us, but understand where I’m coming from. I can’t lose both of my children, Taya. I wouldn’t survive that. What we’re dealing with is messy, complicated, and dangerous.”
I let out a sigh and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him closer. “Someone did this, Dad. I won’t stand by and do nothing. I may not have been as involved with the pack as Cord these last few years, but I’m more than capable.”
I pulled away, locking my gaze on my dad. “You have to let Augie fill me in or risk me going off on my own and making things much more difficult than they need to be.”
Completely broken, my dad sighed and nodded before he went back to his desk. I would have to be strong for the both of us for as long as it took. “Augie, you’re free to fill her in.”
“Thank you, Dad,” I said softly.
Before he could change his mind, I grabbed Augie’s hand, pulling him along with me toward the door. He squeezed tightly, and I had to close my eyes briefly to keep my emotions at bay. It was going to be tough holding the tears in check if Augie kept looking at me as he was now, with so much concern in his eyes.
The pack house was the center hub of Raven Point. Behind it were the training fields and a large building for indoor training. New members lived in the pack house until they found their own place, though it usually didn’t take long for them to get assigned one of the many cabins we had built on our three thousand acres.
We had acquired more and more land as the years went on. When homeowners moved or died, we were the first to make an offer. Wolves needed the room to run, and knowing we owned a decent chunk of land made everyone in the pack feel more secure.
Our pack was the biggest in the United States and, from what I’d heard, had the best location. The Catskills pack in the East Coast territory was the second most popular choice. Shifters were able to choose where to put down their roots based on which climate they preferred.
I followed Augie into the training building, and he headed for one of the rooms on the north wall. He had helped my brother on more than one occasion with his training, so I wasn’t surprised he knew what was going on. Augie might be my best friend, but he and Cord were as close as brothers.
Augie punched a code into a digital lock on the door, and I raised a brow at him as he said, “Confidential stuff. It seems as though we were smart to keep it locked up.”
Wasn’t that the truth? Foul play was definitely at work. I just prayed I didn’t find out it had anything to do with one of our own pack members. That kind of betrayal was hard to move past within a pack. We were all family, whether we were blood or not.
I let out a low whistle as I took in all the information displayed on the walls before me. “You’ve been busy.”
Augie shrugged. “Keep your enemies close. Isn’t that what they say?”
He had a point. All of the walls had pictures tacked to them, along with dozens of other papers. The amount of information seemed daunting as I tried to take it all in. Each of the walls appeared to be dedicated to one of the other four main territories within the United States.
“Why are you researching the other territories?” I asked. “What the hell did you guys get yourselves into?”
“Most of the people are just up there so we can figure out who might be our allies and who might be our enemies. After today, I’m pretty sure we’ve narrowed down that information.”
“What exactly does that mean?” I glared at him and smiled on the inside as sweat broke out on his face. My patience was thinning, and from the pinched look on his face, he knew it.
“Listen, Tay…” He shifted nervously. “You have to understand I was sworn to secrecy. I wasn’t allowed to tell another soul. You know how your dad’s alpha ability works, so you can’t blame me for this, okay?”
“What. Is. Going. On.” I ground out each word as the anger began to build within me again.
I followed Augie to the back wall. Declan Black. I recognized the name but couldn’t remember why. Next to his picture was a smaller one of a younger guy, definitely a relation there, probably his son.
“We had been working on some theories and came really close to getting concrete proof. The Blacks must have figured out we were getting too close and…”
“Augie, you’re trying my patience. Did these people kill my brother?”
His nod was so slight I almost missed it, but it was enough to make me see red. Dark, angry red. “We’re leaving tonight. I will kill them all. Slowly.”
“Taya, we can’t do that. You have no idea how fine a line we are walking here. What we think is happening… We need to have solid evidence before we make our move.”
“They killed Cord! What the hell do you think we should do? I’m not sitting here waiting on politics. Screw politics. They can kiss my ass.”
My voice was several octaves higher than what was probably necessary, but I couldn’t believe I was just hearing the information. I should have been involved in all of it sooner. I was the alpha’s daughter. A potential future leader of our pack. Just because I didn’t have anything swinging between my legs didn’t mean I wasn’t capable.
I may not have been training to be the next alpha like Cord was, but now I would be. Though, I didn’t have to take on the responsibility. If I didn’t, then shifters within our pack could battle for dominance, and a new family line would take over, but I did want it. I loved our pack and planned on doing everything I could to keep them safe, even if the path hadn’t been my first choice.
“And this is why we never brought you in. We knew you’d attack first and think later.”
My patience was so gone. “Brought me into what?” I screeched. “What do you have on these people other than the fact they killed my brother and have a death wish? Tell me everything, August James.”
He cringed at my use of his full name. Good. He deserved it for keeping secrets from me.
“Have a seat.” He gestured toward the table in the middle of the room as he took his own seat. “A few months ago, I found some irregularities with the Rocky Mountain’s shifter registry as I was researching info for Cord on the upcoming Decennial Gathering. Their population had grown faster than the births that had been recorded. Adults were joining their ranks with no history. A few of them were recorded as rogue wolves, which does happen occasionally, but when I counted, there were over fifty within a five-year period.”
I sucked in a breath. Our population wasn’t dying out by any means, but we didn’t grow very fast. Our slow-growing numbers were offset by the fact that wolves aged slower than humans and had more time to produce offspring.
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“At first, we didn’t know, but Cord went there last month under the pretense of making rounds to tour each of the territories as part of his alpha training. What he was really doing was searching for anything to tell us how their numbers were growing. We had no leads other than the records I found, so Cord didn’t have a clue of what he was looking for. The night he was supposed to leave the Rocky Mountain pack, he didn’t go far. Deciding Declan, their alpha, wasn’t stupid enough to try something while the council chief’s son was there, Cord snuck back in later that night.”
“By himself?” I interrupted, wanting to voice my opinion on the matter, but Augie cut me off.
“I get it. Your dad gets it. We blame ourselves for all this. The three of us were the only ones who knew about the issue. We should have brought others in. Sent Cord with backup. Done anything other than what we did. If we had, maybe things would be different. But we didn’t, and we have to live with that.”
My body went rigid. I wanted nothing more than to reach out and console my best friend, but I saw the pain in his eyes and felt it inside me. We couldn’t break yet. We had to fight back first.
“I’m sorry. Keep going.” I gestured with my hand.
Augie regained his composure and continued. “When Cord went back that night, he stayed on the outskirts of their pack house, watching for people coming in and out. Finally, someone new showed up. A woman he hadn’t seen during the day and a half he had been there. She went inside and quickly came back out with Declan. Cord followed them to a van. He couldn’t get close enough to see, but he could hear them, and it wasn’t good. The woman was a sorceress, Taya.”
What the actual fuckery? “Are you sure? How did he know? Sorceresses haven’t been around for centuries. I thought the witches had managed to eliminate them all when the sorcerers and sorceresses started abusing their power.”
“Cord was sure and, based on what he overheard, I have no reason not to believe him.”
“What did he hear?” I was on the edge of my seat, leaning into the metal table. I knew whatever Augie said next was going to change things for us, possibly for all shifters, if we didn’t stop whatever Cord had been trying to prevent.
“The sorceress is turning humans into shifters, and Declan seems to be growing his pack to do one of two things. Either he wants to make his pack more desirable for other shifters to join since he has or, well, had the lowest population, or he’s creating an army to overthrow your dad as chief of the council. Cord overheard them talking about disposing of the ones that were of no use to them. They’re dumping the humans who don’t survive in various places, never to be thought of again. No closure for the families they were taken from.”
The pain and anger I had felt when I realized Cord was gone had been immense. So great that I’d thought my heart would shatter. But this on top of losing my bother… Well, there were no words for the rage that surged within me. My body shook, and silver hairs sprouted on my arms while my nails turned to claws. Shifters were taught to respect and protect the humans as long as it didn’t put us at risk of exposure. Treating them like test subjects was not okay.