“Y’all killed a princess?” Jacob asked, incredulous.

Lucas shifted uncomfortably in the dining room chair. “In our defense, we weren’t aware of what she was until after she was dead. If it hadn’t been for Nic spotting the medallion around her neck, we wouldn’t have known at all.”

Anne glanced at her husband with a worried expression on her face. None of them were happy, though if Lucas were to guess, it was Nic who was unhappiest. He hadn’t said a word throughout their explanation of what had happened. The kitsune had positioned himself at the furthest corner of the table, and sat in stony silence staring at the tabletop.

“Is that why you boys are here? To see us one last time?” Anne asked, seemingly unable to decide if she was asking Shaun or Lucas as she looked between them.

Lucas winced, he had hoped that idea would never be spoken. “It’s not quite like that.”

Jacob’s eyes went wide. “Wait, you tellin’ me that ya both were just gonna…hand yourselves over to ‘em?”

“Because it woulda prevented this!” Shaun protested.

“No, because they’re both idiots,” Nic chimed in, anger in his voice.

Lucas looked at him. “Oh, you finally decided to speak, huh?”

“I was waiting to see how long it would take before one of you admitted that you were both going to go charging off into their hands like idiots. I thought you guys were coming here for help. Took me a while to figure out you were just saying goodbye without having the balls to actually say it,” Nic growled, glaring back at Lucas.

“It ain’t bein’ idiots if we were wantin’ to make all the fightin’ that’s about to happen not happen,” Shaun growled at him, his accent thickening with his anger.

“That’s what hunters do! They fight, goddammit!” Nic snarled at him, his sudden surge of anger surprising everyone at the table.

“You were going to kill yourselves without even bothering to tell us?” Anne asked, the anger evident in her voice. It didn’t surprise him, but the pained edge to it cut him to the core.

Shaun flopped his hands helplessly on the table, his anger disappearing in the face of his mother’s hurt expression. “Mama, please. I’m sorry. I am. We were just thinkin’ about how to stop this from happenin’ is all. Wars ain’t pretty and no one wants it. We hadn’t even talked about it yet, hadn’t decided.”

Lucas nodded. “We were supposed to have another week, or at least a few more days to decide. They figured it out quicker than we anticipated.”

“Yeah, good job on that prediction of yours,” Shaun told Nic in annoyance.

“From what I know, his prediction wasn’t bad. Can’t say I know too much about the Winter Fae, but it should have taken a little longer for them to figure it out,” Anne told them, the hurt expression still on her face.

Lucas couldn’t look her in the eye as he spoke. “Then they had some sort of warning, or were told ahead of schedule.”

Shaun wasn’t doing any better at making eye contact. “Yeah, but how?”

Nic sat up straight, “I told them.”

Every head at the table snapped to Nic as Shaun barked. “You what?”

Nic’s expression was defiant. “It was obvious what you two were going to do after you found out what happened. You two noble idiots were going to go charging off and sacrifice yourselves. I have good enough contacts that I was able to pass along the message that the royal family should check on their daughter’s wellbeing. I guess it didn’t take them too long to follow up on it.”

Shaun stood up, rage causing his arms to shake. “You went behind our backs and started this?”

Nic’s jaw was set, his gaze refusing to leave Shaun’s face. “No, you started this. I’m the one who saved you two from yourselves.”

“No, ya sacrificed a buncha hunters’ lives and for what?” Shaun shouted, fingers curling against the edge of the table.

Nic stood so suddenly he sent his chair toppling backward. “To save you from yourself! You two might think you’d be dying nobly but you know what? Dead is dead, it doesn’t matter how noble it was, or how defiant you were until the end. It’s not pretty, it’s not poetic, and it doesn’t matter if people speak of you proudly for years afterwards, you’re still just dead! It’s a bloody mess of pain and loss! So, you’re welcome, for me saving you from your own stupid decisions.”

He kicked the chair out of his way and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Lucas could hear him thundering down the hallway into the bar. Where he would end up after that was anyone’s guess.

“So, now we know that y’all and your friend helped this happen,” Jacob said slowly, looking thoughtful.

“He ain’t no friend of ours,” Shaun snarled as he sat back down, hard.

Anne turned on Shaun, her anger flaring. “You had better change your tone.”

Shaun recoiled back from her. “Mama?”

She jammed a finger in the direction of the door Nic had gone through. “You might not be happy that he didn’t do what you wanted him to, but you better suck it up. All you’re feelin’ is hurt pride, and egos heal. That man saved your asses, and there weren’t any guarantee they wouldn’t have figured it out before you were ready. Ready to kill yourselves without havin’ the decency to tell your parents what you were doing I might add. If anyone should feel guilty for what they did, and for goin’ behind someone’s back, it’s you two. In my book, that man saved my sons from doin’ something stupid, even if it meant making you two mad at him. If that ain’t a true friend, I don’t know what is.”

Lucas wanted to curl into himself and hide from her furious pain. All the fight in Shaun had disappeared as well, and he squirmed in his seat as he hunched over. Jacob was quietly leaning closer to his wife, in a silent support of her words. Lucas was wishing he hadn’t sat opposite Shaun, but was glad he wasn’t the one sitting nearest to Anne. She seemed to grow in size with her anger and it seemed as if she towered over both her son and husband.

Finally, he summoned the courage to speak. “What do we do?”

“Don’t have any more suicide plans?” she asked sharply and everyone at the table winced.

“Anne,” Jacob began, reaching out to lay his hand on his wife’s arm.

She looked at him, her head turning sharply so the full force of her frustration and anger was turned on him. Lucas gave him credit that he didn’t flinch away from it, staring back at her as his fingers squeezed hers. Neither of them said anything for a moment as Lucas and Shaun looked at one another nervously. The tension hung thick in the room now that everyone’s secrets were laid out in the open.

Anne turned back to them, her face still tight but controlled. “Well, seems we got a war on our hands. So we gotta deal with that now, don’t we?”

Some of the tightness in Jacob’s shoulders eased as he nodded. “It’s done now, ain’t no takin’ it back. These Fae have already started attackin’ hunters, and they ain’t gonna stop till they feel they won.”

“We know what would count as our victory: either killing enough of them or the rest of the royal family. But what would count as victory for the Fae? What would they need to end the war under the context that they won?” Lucas asked.

Anne drummed her fingers on the table. “Killing enough of us, I imagine. We don’t have leaders in the way they do, so they’d have to settle for wiping out enough of us to say they won.”

Shaun frowned “So it’s fight a war till there’s enough of ‘em, or enough of us dead?”

“Or killing the royal family,” Lucas pointed out, knowing it sounded a lot simpler than it was.

“Doesn’t have to necessarily be the whole royal family. If ya were to kill enough of the family, sure. But that would be hard, and probably take as long as it would to fight the whole war. They don’t always stay in one place, and if ya kill one, the others are gonna know you’re comin’ for them, and they’re gonna make finding them harder than it already is,” Anne told them.

“Why not go for the big one, then?” Shaun asked.

Lucas frowned at his partner. “Their king?”

“Why not? If goin’ after their family is such a big deal, why not take out the big daddy? If they’ve got like, kings and courts, then don’t that mean the king is like the General? Take out the General and they’re in trouble, right?” Shaun asked his mom.

She pursed her lips, nodding slowly. “Maybe. They don’t work like we do, humans that is. We got people to take over if a leader is killed, but they don’t work like that far as I know. Killin’ the king might just be enough to show we still got plenty of strength. One of his children will take his place, but the war might just end with that.”

“Killin’ a Fae king ain’t gonna be easy. Far as I know, the more important they are, the stronger they are. Fought me a royal guard once when I was younger. Barely got out of that alive,” Jacob told them.

“We killed a princess without a problem,” Shaun said, sounding eager now they had a plan, or at least the idea of a plan.

“You killed a princess who wasn’t expecting someone to come after her, and was distracted by tryin’ to find a mate,” Anne corrected him.

“And if she was young, she wasn’t gonna be as dangerous. Ain’t heard of changes in the Winter Fae in a while, which means that king has been there for a bit. Means he ain’t been thrown out by one of his kids yet. Makes him real smart and real dangerous,” Jacob added, troubled.

“Is that how it works?” Lucas asked, wishing he had done more research on the Fae before this all blew up.

“For the Summer and Winter ones? Sure. Dunno ‘bout the others, though. Each of ‘em do it different, but yeah, if one of the princes or princesses can get rid of their parents, they’re seen as strong enough to take the throne and rule. And with the Winter ones, that means they use anythin’ from a knife, to poison, to well…anythin’,” Jacob said.

Lucas frowned, leaning back in his seat and letting his troubled mind think that over. Shaun’s parents were right. It sounded all well and good to talk about simply killing the king to end the war. Yet, if the Winter Fae kings kept their throne by surviving repeated attempts on their life, that made them dangerous. The older a creature was, the more lethal they were, and the harder to try and take on. It meant they had survived all sorts of situations and people who would have ended their lives early. There was a craftiness and sheer stubbornness there that made a long-lived king a challenge to defeat.

If he took into account the fact that the king would be well-guarded, then he had to wonder just what chance they had of surviving the attempt. If the princes and princesses of the royal family, who were raised from birth in that environment, couldn’t take down their king, then what chance did a couple of hunters have? He and Shaun were plenty capable, but that didn’t mean they had the skill set necessary to find the king, infiltrate his fortress, and then bring him down without being killed themselves.

“We’d have to find ‘em,” Shaun was saying, bringing Lucas’ attention back to the conversation.

“That’s the first step. The rest is trying to get to him without being killed,” Lucas added.

“And tryin’ to kill somethin’ that’s probably lived through worse than us,” Jacob finished.

“Our only hope is to find out where he’s at and keep eyes on him. After that, we would have to keep them distracted so they don’t see us coming for the king,” Lucas said slowly, trying to think of how they could accomplish that.

“Couldn’t we just…I don’t know, attack wherever he is? A bunch of us?” Shaun asked.

Anne’s mouth twisted. “If you want to risk dozens of hunters’ lives over a suicide run, sure. But anywhere that king is, he’s bound to be surrounded by his best warriors, and he’s probably somewhere where they have the advantage. We don’t have the numbers for that. It’d be like tryin’ to go after a castle, moat and all.”

Lucas nodded, trying to remember what he knew of siege warfare. Sieges were fought when the attacking army had the supplies and manpower to sustain a drawn-out assault. Hunters weren’t the most organized of people, and they were highly individualistic. A lack of centralized organization meant they were difficult to track down, and there was no one figurehead an enemy could attack to cripple the hunters. It also meant they didn’t have much in the way of group discipline, and they were next to impossible to bring together in large numbers. They were everything the Fae weren’t, which meant the Fae would win if they tried a siege.

“They would be ready for that sort of thing, Shaun. Fae don’t expect much from hunters, at least not much in the way of ingenuity. Trying to rush wherever the king is staying would be exactly what they’d expect, especially since we’re at war now, and they know we know we’re at war with them. Trying to fight them head-on when they expect us to do just that, would just be a suicide run,” Lucas told his partner.

“So, what? We have no choice but to just let this war happen?” Shaun asked desperately.

“We ain’t sayin’ that. We’re just sayin’ we need to think of somethin’ better than sendin’ y’all or a buncha other hunters to their certain deaths,” Jacob said, frowning at his son.

Shaun crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I ain’t got no ideas then.”

Anne and Jacob glanced at one another and nodded. Lucas noticed. “What is it?”

“We’ve been trying for years now to keep the lines of communication open between sanctuaries, so news and what not can spread easier across hunters. It’s been hard, since hunters are a stubborn bunch, but we did get some on board with bein’ a little more connected,” Anne told him.

Jacob pointed at his wife. “She did it. I only yelled at a couple of ‘em when they were bein’ foolish. She did most of the work.”

She waved a hand at her husband to silence him. “Point is, we can reach out to a few of ‘em, let ‘em in on this. Might as well, since we’re all in this together anyway.”

“What good’s that gonna do?” Shaun asked.

Lucas grunted. “It gets a few more heads in the mix. If we can unite hunters better, we might have a sporting chance of winning. At the very least, someone else might have a new or better idea how to handle this, one that we’ve missed.”

Which is what they needed: a new idea, a new angle from which to approach this. Anne was the most knowledgeable at the table, and Lucas didn’t tend to approach things directly like Shaun and Jacob did. That was usually him and Shaun’s strength, since Shaun could take on anything, and Lucas was the one who knew how to aim him in the right direction. The problem was, Lucas was still limited by his hunter training and his time around hunters. For all his thinking outside the box, his box was still just as constricting.

Anne sighed, pushing herself up from the table. “Then I’ll call the first War Council I think hunters have seen in quite some time, if at all. Hope you boys are ready for some fun conversations, because these men and women are a pain in the ass.”