It had taken another day before Saber was able to make it as far as the front porch.  He sat in one of the rocking chairs with Chadwick at his side most of the afternoon.  The second day, he actually managed to walk around the house, twice, before he started shaking and had to sit down.

Shifting several times had helped, but even that had sapped his strength.  Now it was day three and he was back to training, sort of.

“Come on, you have to at least pretend to try,” Krill taunted him as they sparred in the yard behind the house.

A growl rumbled through him when the punch he threw not only missed but Saber was pretty sure it wouldn’t have hurt a fly if it had managed to make contact.  “Damn it,” he cursed.

“I keep trying to tell you, you aren’t ready,” Nole called from the back porch as he came down with two glasses of lemonade.  “As your doctor, I insist you take a break.”

Saber was ready to tell the annoying mouse shifter where he could put his suggestion, until Nole added.  “Plus, Edrick said you were needed inside for that Council meeting they’re having before some of the others head back home.”

“And I, for one, would like these people to leave,” Hudson said as he and Harper came around the side of the house carrying their ghost hunting equipment.  “Since they arrived, we haven’t seen any trace of our ghost.”  Hudson handed Nole a rod of some sort that they called a divining rod.

Chadwick had told Saber about Hudson’s belief in ghosts.  It was definitely a bit…unique, but then again, if one asked humans about the existence of shifters, he was sure most of them would think the person asking was out of his or her mind.

Downing the glass of lemonade in one long swallow, Saber said, “I’ll see what I can do.”  He couldn’t wait to get rid of the interlopers either.  As appreciative as he was for their help with the Council’s soldiers, Saber knew they were starting to wear on Chadwick.  Or, at least, he assumed that was the problem.  It was hard to know since Chadwick refused to tell him why he’d been in a sullen mood lately.

Saber went into the house and followed the voices to the kitchen.  Seven people sat in chairs around the large wooden table all talking over each other.  Edrick was the only non-Council member in the room.  Since this was his house, not to mention his town, Saber wasn’t about to argue about his being there.

“Sorry I’m late,” he announced as he walked in and took his seat at the table.  “I think we need to have a moment of silence for those we lost, not only in the battle with the Council’s soldiers, but for the Council members who were defeated.”

Everyone bowed their head.

Saber wasn’t strictly a religious man, but he fully believed in honoring the dead, whether that was by praying or just remembering them. 

After a full minute, he raised his head.  “Now, let’s get this meeting started.”  He looked around at the table.  Starting to his right was Tanis Cruz, a lioness, Marlow Dunn, a bear, Koen Dirks, a fox, Zara Snow, a wolf, Banyan Huff, a ram, and Jerzy Rocha, a Coyote.

He’d had a chance to meet and talk with all of them leading up to the challenge and some of them while he was recuperating.  They all seemed like upstanding shifters who wanted what was best for their community.  With any luck, that’s exactly who they were but only time would tell.

“First order of business, to vote on several laws that condemn members of the shifter community unjustly.”  It wasn’t just gays the former Council had gone after and Saber refused to allow anyone else to be harmed because of the bigoted nature of those laws.

He read each one, then looked each member of his new Council in the eye one by one as they voted on whether or not to abolish each of the laws he read.  Without hesitation, they overturned laws against gays, against prey species, and, strangely enough, against those who preferred to live among humans.  All things that the old Council would kill a person for.  The fact that there were any prey species alive was a miracle.

“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,” Saber told them.  “I want to thank each and every one of you for your sacrifice in volunteering to challenge the old Council.  I will email you at the end of the day segments of all the laws on the books.  Please read through them and make notes of which ones you feel we need to either change or get rid of.”

“Actually, there are several that I believe need to be changed, as they impact several shifter species,” Zara said.  “I know we are all anxious to go home but I feel these are too important to ignore.”

Jerzy cleared his throat.  “I have a few also.  Actually, I have a long list, but only three I feel we should address before leaving here today.”

Saber wanted to groan.  He had hoped this wouldn’t take long so he could go find his mate.  That morning Chadwick had seemed off when Saber mentioned the Council meeting and he really wanted to go find out what was wrong.  If he’d thought things would take this long, he would have stopped Chadwick from heading into to town to finish the bar he was building for Kellach and Trygg.

Saber glanced at his watch.  “Fine, we have another two hours, then I insist on calling the meeting.  Anything we don’t get finished will have to wait.  I made a promise to have all of you out of here today and I plan on keeping that promise.”

The men and women around the table chuckled.  Saber was sure they wanted to get on the road as badly as he wanted them to leave.  “So, let’s get started.”

 

***

 

Three long hours later Saber was finished.  He had been ready to throw them all out on their ear as they bickered over wording and syntax.  Syntax.  Saber rolled his eyes just thinking about anything so asinine.  People were being hunted down and killed because of some of these laws, yet his colleagues were worried about syntax.

Sure, detail was needed, but first, making it illegal to kill another shifter because the old Council had been bigoted assholes seemed more of a priority.  But what in the hell did he know?  Apparently not enough about syntax according to Koen, who had been a professor at one of the shifter universities in Canada.

“Please, tell me they finally left,” Iniko said as he walked into the kitchen after escorting the other council members out and went to the fridge.  He opened it, scowled and slammed it shut.  “I’m sick of there never being anything to eat around here.”

Saber chuckled.  He could understand.  No matter how much food Edrick and the others had managed to bring to town, it wasn’t nearly enough.  In fairness, they were shifters with high metabolisms, but considering how many had shown up, it would have seemed reasonable for them to offer to go to one of the neighboring towns and bring food back, instead of just eating what Edrick provided for them.

“There’s always The Mousetrap,” Saber suggested.  His stomach rumbled at the thought of one of Jari’s pot roast dinners with all the fixings.

Iniko snorted and rolled his eyes.  “Why do you think I’m here where I have to make my own meal?  They’re out of food, too.”  Iniko yanked a chair out from under the kitchen table and sat heavily on it.  “I swear, next time we invite so many people to Miracle, we need to insist on them bringing their own damn food.”

“Quit your bitching,” Jari said as he walked into the kitchen with Krill and Harper behind him.  All three were loaded down with grocery bags.  “You don’t think I would allow them to eat all our food do you?”

Iniko jumped up out of his chair and started picking through the bags until he found something he could eat right away, a block of cheese.  “Where were you hiding this?”  He grabbed a knife and cut off several pieces.  “I searched the diner and here and found nothing.”

Harper grinned.  “Jari was storing them at our house since no one would dare take on Krill to search our house for food.”

“Smart,” Iniko said as he happily munched on a couple pieces of cheese.

Jari looked over his shoulder at Saber.  “We’ll be eating in an hour, would you mind going into town and telling Chadwick and the others?”

There was a look in Jari’s eyes that caused Saber a bit of concern.  Maybe he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Chadwick’s weird mood earlier.

Wincing as he stood, Saber did his best to ignore the stitch in his side as he strode from the room.  Pain or no, it was time to find his mate.