The Guardians were coming back, and the keep was buzzing with excitement.

A blackboard had been hung on the wall across from the clan’s private elevator bay, listing the names of those who were coming back within an hour or two of him getting notified.

Waiting for the council members and Guardians to arrive, Kian wondered who was the source of the leak. Most times Anandur was the usual suspect, but this time Kian was betting on Shai.

A day after Bridget’s presentation there were already forty-two names up there, and the list was still growing. Kian wanted to commend whoever was leaking the news. The morale at the keep had never been higher.

Hell, he hadn’t felt so optimistic about the clan’s future since the day they’d leveled the Doomers’ camp in Ojai and rescued the women that had been imprisoned there.

One more milestone on the road that had led him to this date.

The Fates had been pushing Kian to do something about the slave market for a while now, but he’d been slow to connect the dots.

Perhaps it had taken him so long to realize where all of this was leading because he was a skeptic and an iconoclast. Kian had scoffed at his mother’s belief in fate. He’d regarded it as nonsense, a comforting illusion created by people to explain the inexplicable and to make sense of a chaotic world.

Annani was well aware of his dismissive attitude toward her beliefs, and yet she hadn’t been offended by it. She’d known the day would come when he would be forced to accept that there was some higher power at work.

He still didn’t believe, not fully, but he could no longer dismiss it either. Even if he could somehow convince himself that the chain of events leading up to his intervention in the abhorrent sex trade was random, he could not do that in regards to the Dormants.

Suddenly, after centuries of searching, they were popping up one after the other. Even a skeptic like him could not in good conscience call it a coincidence. Especially since it seemed it wasn’t the result of Amanda’s efforts. Callie had no paranormal abilities, and neither did Tessa. There had been nothing to indicate that they were Dormant other than their mates' reaction to them.

He wished the reaction could be measured or quantified, and that it could be used to search for more. Except, the reaction was subjective. Brundar hadn’t reacted to Tessa, and Jackson would not have reacted to Callie. Bottom line, searching for Dormants was futile. As much as he hated the thought, it seemed that the Fates decided when and who.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Amanda said as she walked into his office and took the seat to his right.

“I can’t believe you’re the first one to arrive.”

“That’s what you were thinking so hard about?”

“No. I was thinking about Dormants and how we have to rely on the fucking Fates to find them.”

Amanda slapped his back. “Shush, you idiot. Do you want to provoke their wrath? You should be thanking them morning and night for Syssi.” She grinned. “And me too. I was the matchmaker.”

“Thank you, yenta.”

She kissed his cheek. “You see? That wasn’t so hard.”

Despite calling her a yenta, he could not have made Amanda happier if he’d invited her mate to sit on the council. Not that Dalhu would’ve ever accepted the position. The ex-Doomer had become an artist and loved what he was doing. If needed, Kian had no doubt Dalhu would fight by his side as he had at Ojai, maybe even relish the rush of excitement, but otherwise Amanda’s guy was satisfied with his solitary artistic endeavors.

Dalhu had earned his nirvana.

As the last participants were seated, Kian motioned to Shai to start the recording. He was no longer opening the sessions by announcing their number. There was no need. Shai added the necessary tag later while editing the footage.

This wasn’t a regular council meeting though. Turner, a human, was present, as was Vanessa who wasn’t on the council. The therapist was the first clan member Bridget invited to be part of the team she was putting together.

“Brandon, you’re first.” Kian addressed the media specialist who was now wearing two additional hats—a fundraiser organizer, and a permit facilitator with the various municipal agencies, expediting the clan’s latest building project.

“I got a retired movie star, Belinda Rochester, if any of you remember her, excited about the project, and she is helping me organize the charity ball, by which I mean she took the project over. I trust her since she’s done many of those in the past, successfully. I might add. She freed up my time for all the other things I need to do. Like stroking the ego of Santa Barbara's mayor.”

Kian arched a brow. “Why would you need to do that?”

Brandon leaned back in his chair and flashed his toothy smile, looking like a very well dressed shark. “Do you want to rebuild the monastery in three months or in twenty-four?”

“It’s impossible to do in three months.”

Brandon’s grin widened. “It is if we use the original plans which should be fine to start with. I convinced the mayor that allowing an expedited process to restore what used to be a historical building, while at the same time providing a school for the girls, would be great publicity and help with his reelection.”

“Was the building a historical site?” Edna asked. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

“No, but I claimed that it should’ve been. It was an old building. One of the first to be built in Ojai.”

“Good work, Brandon,” Kian said.

“Thank you. Now you need to find a fast crew to build it.”

The fastest crew he’d ever had the pleasure of working with were the Chinese. It was good they didn’t have another job lined up, a rarity for them, because he needed them to stay and build a new section for the village. All those Guardians needed a place to stay, and they had been promised houses in the village. The question was whether they could split up and rebuild the monastery as well. Perhaps they could bring in more people.

“I have a fast crew.”

Brandon crossed his arms over his chest, stretching the fabric of his designer jacket. “The Chinese? Don’t you need them for the new village?”

“It’s not a new village, it’s an extension of the old one. I will ask if they can bring more crews.”

“But people are about to move in,” Bridget said. “What about secrecy and security?”

Kian waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not going to be a problem. I told the contractor we needed to protect the current occupants from the dust and the equipment of the new construction, and he suggested we build a tall, temporary fence separating the completed section from the new one.”

“Do we have enough land to build on?” Amanda asked.

Onegus answered before Kian had a chance to. “We have the whole mountain and the area around it. We can build a city if we want to. Originally, the plan was to use only a small portion of the land for the village, and the rest was supposed to act as a buffer. But since we are supplying our own utilities and are not limited by municipal restrictions, we can add as many homes as we want.”

Amanda chuckled. “At this rate, we will soon need to change the name from The Village to The Metropolis.”

That earned her a few chuckles. Calling the new place The Village was already an exaggeration, but it had a nice sound to it.

“What are we going to do with the girls we rescue until the monastery is ready?” Vanessa asked.

“I’m in the process of acquiring an old hotel. I plan to demolish it and build a new one, but until the monastery is ready, we can use the building to house the girls.”

“Is it safe?”

“The hotel is still open for business. So yes, it’s safe. Just ugly and small. The location is good, and I expect a new boutique hotel to do well there.”

“Wonderful. I have great news that will save us a small portion of the budget. I know you’re looking for ways to minimize expenses,” Vanessa said.

“Any savings would be welcome.”

“I talked with the other therapists who work in my building. Each of them is willing to donate half a day of work a week to help with the girls, provided the commute is not too long. I hope they don’t think of Ojai as too far away.”

“If it is, do you think they will agree to one full day every other week instead?”

She nodded. “I’ll have to ask again.”

“Thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate all that you’re doing for this cause.”

Vanessa had agreed to head the rehabilitation portion of their rescue plan, and she was dividing her current caseload between several of her colleagues in order to free up her time. She was sacrificing a practice which she’d worked long and hard to establish.

She nodded. “I gave it a lot of thought and decided that this is what I need to be doing. I entered the field to help people deal with traumas and other issues and improve the quality of their lives. I now have an opportunity to do it on a much larger scale.”

“Nevertheless, thank you. On another note, what about confidentiality? Did you talk with your colleagues about keeping quiet? I know they are not allowed to disclose confidential information about their patients, but that is not the same as keeping a lid on the whole program.”

Vanessa lifted her hands. “I did. I warned that the girls’ safety depended on it and was promised silence. But I can give you no guarantees. I wish we had someone who was good at compulsion. That would’ve solved a lot of problems for us.”

Indeed. Kian would have slept much better at night knowing people were compelled to keep secrets rather than relying on their good characters and judgment. Interaction with humans in general could’ve been less restricted if those humans were compelled never to reveal the clan’s existence.

But wishing it wasn’t going to make it so. If they were lucky, a child would be born to the clan who possessed this rare ability. The only other option was to have Annani do that, but that wasn’t an option at all.

The Clan Mother needed to remain in her Alaskan retreat, safe and secure. An occasional short visit was fine, even though it meant more sleepless nights for him worrying about his mother and her disregard for her own safety, but it was unavailable. She wasn’t a prisoner, and it was important for her wellbeing to get out of there once in a while.