Wild Cat

Anguish flooded his voice as much as it flooded Cassidy’s. The man moaned, his head dropping back to the floor.

Cassidy could scent his fear, his despair, and over that, his vast shame. It wrenched at her heart; at the same time, she could find no forgiveness. Donovan was dead. That was all.

Eric and Jace twitched with the heightened emotion in the room, but Diego was coolness itself. He stuck to essentials.

“What who had made you become?” Diego asked.

“The hoch alfar,” Reid said. “The f**king hoch alfar, who do you think? They took me because I was a danger to them. They killed my family and put me in this place. This human place.”

Diego prodded Reid with the rifle. “A little bit more. If you’re one of these dark elves, how did you join the police force? How do you have a name, a home, a social security number?”

“I’ve been here a long time. So long. Fifty human years. They exiled me. And for what? So that my dokk alfar, who lived in the land the hoch alfar warrior wanted, wouldn’t get in his way. I fought him. I’m very strong, a damn better warrior than any of them. I led my people against them. But in the end, there were too many. They killed my family and friends most loyal to me. They took me—the one who dared rise against them—and they shoved me here. To die, they thought. Stupid hoch alfar, think dokk alfar can’t take iron. Hell, we invented iron.”

“So you found yourself here,” Diego said, still calm. “What did you do then?”

Reid shrugged, as much as he could while bound hand and foot. “The humans didn’t notice any difference in me from themselves. They don’t believe anything until it’s shoved under their noses. I blended in. I became Stuart Reid. Paperwork was easier to fake fifty years ago. I’ve been Stuart Reid for a long time, moving before people caught on that I age more slowly than humans do.”

“And you tried to go back?” Diego asked.

“I tried, I tried, and I couldn’t. It doesn’t work for me to go to the weak places on the ley lines—the stone circles and whatever—which is how the hoch alfar cross. It doesn’t always work for the dokk alfar. The magic is different. So I searched for humans who knew Fae lore, as I told you. The ritual I found in that grimoire used the blood of a Shifter, in a spell performed at the spring equinox. It’s supposed to open the gate.”

“Great,” Jace said softly.

“I’d already been a police officer for a while,” Reid said. “I was good at it. In my world, I was a warrior and an enforcer. I easily passed the tests to get into the police. Once I found the spell that used Shifters, I got myself transferred into Shifter Division. I figured it was just a matter of time before I found an un-Collared Shifter that I could use. When the hunting law changed, I saw a way to speed up the process. I found some hunters experienced in tracking down un-Collared Shifters and paid them to help me. Except, they were hot to kill any Shifter, Collared or otherwise. They shot Donovan Grady before I could stop them, then pulled off his Collar to try to fool the cops…”

The speech, delivered rapid-fire, faded.

In the silence that followed, Cassidy could hear Nell talking to Shane and Brody outside. Warm, family conversation, so different from the anger and fear in this room.

“Are you telling me you would have let Donovan live once they’d captured him?” Cassidy asked. “As desperate as you were?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did you try to kill me? Not just any Shifter, but me in particular?”

Reid met her gaze with eyes like the black of space. “I knew you were his mate. I learned all about you and your family. I became an expert on you. I know that Shifters perform a ritual on the one-year anniversary of a death, and I knew you’d come out there again, right at the equinox. I told myself that you were so unhappy that it wouldn’t matter if the spell killed you. I justified it like that. But when I shot at you, I missed, and you ran. I chased you, so obsessed about doing the damn spell that I didn’t care about anything else. I realized, right then, that the hoch alfar had broken me. They’d made me become a dakhlar who’d sacrifice an innocent being for my own benefit. I’d grab you, use the spell, and deal with my guilt later.”

Cassidy put her bare foot on his thigh. “Why did you keep hunting me after I eluded you the first time? I went back to finish my ritual, but I brought plenty of guards, and we were alert for you. We almost got you that night. There must have been easier targets.”

Reid shook his head. “I told myself it had to be you, and you alone. To put you out of your misery, I reasoned. I thought you’d be happy to die.”

Cassidy rolled her foot on his thigh, increasing the pressure a little. He looked so pathetic, wrists and ankles bound with plastic ties, Diego with the barrel of the rifle in his stomach, Xavier watching with double weapons. Here was the man responsible for her mate’s death, at her feet, and now her victory tasted hollow.

Jace spoke behind her. “You’re talking as though the Fae have qualms about killing Shifters.”

Reid lifted himself halfway up. “No, no, the hoch alfar don’t care about killing Shifters. They’ll kill anything that gets in their way—they’ll do it for amusement. I know that, because I watched them do it to my mate and my children.”

Cassidy took her foot from him. “Diego, let him go.”

Diego shot her a surprised look. “He’ll vanish. We might never find him again.”