Rose waited most of the night, but she didn’t hear from Ty until early the next morning before the sun had a chance to rise. He’d found a living victim, found, and captured Jack alive, and found the remains of many of the missing wolves from around the region. Ty’s hands were full, but he finally relented and came home to sleep. He had to be carried to bed because he’d crashed sitting up in his desk chair trying to get things started. Rose’s feelings were mixed by what he’d found and Ben’s findings in one of the last storerooms told her all she needed to know. That’s where Russell kept his ill-gotten gains. Antiques taken from the house, along with antiques he’d acquired from his dirty dealings, were stored there waiting for who knows what. Maybe to be sold off or traded to pay off his debts for whatever nightmarish pursuit caught his interest. Rose was disgusted at the thought that this wolf had shared blood with her. He let his pack flounder, knowi
“I’ve got a message from the Ruling Council Rose. They want to know if anyone in our pack wants to face Jack and get answers to questions. Would you or Jules want to confront him?” “I know I have questions, so yes. I know I do. What about you Jules? Do you want to know anything?” “I’ll start making my list of questions. You might want to warn the Ruling Council that I’ll need time to get through all my questions.” “Right. Try to keep it under an hour. We don’t want to hold up the process of justice. They have a busy schedule.” “I can’t promise anything. My father has a lot to answer for.” “I’ll put out a call to both packs and see what the response is. I might have to get everyone to give me their questions and then we’ll record his responses to play it back later for everyone, just so that we can move things along.” Ty was talking about the preparations for Jack’s trial. The Ruling Council weren’t holding back on this beyond getting contact i
“Have you heard from Mikey?” Heather asked Jay when she returned with Ben. Jay looked at Ben with an upset expression on his face. Jay was sulking because he’d not been able to find out how it was going in town with Heather and her father. “I only know that they’re making some kind of progress, and no one’s come out of the canyon as of yet. But I’ve been stuck most of my time in and around the Icehouse. It’s going to be a nightmare to torch the place to the ground.” Jay lost some of that sullen look once he embraced Heather and could breathe in her comforting and familiar scent. He’d been missing both of his mates. Jay kept reminding himself that it was because their mating was so known. But he’d always been a needy type of bloke, as his stepfather called him in disgust. “Yeah, well, I’ll trade you my job for that. I must oversee the job of matching up the bones, so we have one skeleton person. Right now, I have boxes of miscellaneous bones that more than l
Heather arrived the next morning at her father’s clinic. It was hard to do, because of how many mixed signals were there. Her mother, whom she didn’t remember, rested in a bed above her father’s office. She couldn’t come to call it to their office. He’d always ensured she knew she was nothing more that the administrator, and general office help. She wasn’t sure how to react to her mother. How did one act to the stranger that gave birth to you? It was difficult enough being in a triad mating. She knew how her father felt about them, but she didn’t know how her mother did. Her mother was so fragile right now, physically, and mentally, that Heather couldn’t mention anything like this to her. She didn’t want to argue with her father in front of her. This only made things more difficult as the day went on. She’d taken on more and more of the workload as her father focused on her mother. “Dad, I think we need help here. Why can’t we let some people,
Ty stood there and watched as they finally removed the last of the debris from the mound blocking the canyon entrance. Jack wouldn’t tell them anything about what happened after the explosion blocked the canyon. So, they were using drones to see what or who was there. They were using the one piece of technology that the shifter society feared probably the most after cellphones. They had to wait until after nightfall to send the drones in, otherwise they’d be shot down. When the second one in as many weeks was picked off, they knew someone hostile was on the other side. With that sent in, Mikey maneuvered the drone in with it’s night vision camera on. What greeted them was a camp with maybe three humans in it. There was no sight of any wolf shifters. Were they dead? Or hiding somewhere else? It took several hours and almost drained the battery on the drone. They needed to get in there for the humans only. Jack was the survivor of all the wolves that w
The humans were glad to see them when they believed they were human. That Ty saw the first time he laid eyes on them. The Ruling Council enforcers allowed him to go with them if he stayed in the background. It was a good thing he’d listened to the Ruling Council Enforcers because once the humans realized they weren’t their people. They’d been abandoned by the people they expected to be saved from the humans who were anything but friendly. They drew weapons, and they forced everyone to take cover until a mage and druid teamed up to disarm them. That was something you didn’t normally see. The mage’s magic created a distraction. While the druid used their magic to manipulate the foliage around the humans. This caused the very earth beneath their feet to heave and writhe until the humans could not do more than cling to the solid boulders and such they hid behind. Vines whipped and tore at the guns. When successful, it forced the guns from the humans’ hands to d
“I will understand none of this. What made Russell do what he did? Or humans hunting other intelligent creatures, including each other. It doesn’t make sense at all. The thrill, what thrill is there in doing something like this?” Ben lay on his bed, having woken from an afternoon nap with Julie. He lay looking up at the ceiling. “No one says you need to understand any of that. I’m just hoping that your latest lead isn’t a dud like the ones you’ve talked about in the past.” Julie mumbled from under her pillow. The sheet he lay on top of, covered her to her neck. All he could see of her right now was her long hair. “It’s different, I think. Look, first the Ruling Council found those who were feeding the hunter ring their information. Then there’s Daisy, who’s watching the traffic coming and going from the warehouse.” Ben’s eyes grew wide when Julie went from lying there relaxed. To still half asleep, to suddenly kneeling on the bed beside him with her eyes wide open
The key members of the Shadow Pack sat around a large conference table. Ty stood while Rose sat at one side of the table’s end near a white board. On the other side of the same end stood Ben, with Julie sitting. They’d been hashing out the plans they’d use, and everyone searched for flaws or holes in the plan. If something went wrong, did they have a plan to circumvent or replace the problem? This wasn’t the first time, though, Ty hoped it would be the last time they needed to do this for a mission. After this, these meetings would be to work out issues within the pack. To make sure they knew how to keep it going and growing. “I want you to tell Rose exactly how you got the information on the transportation routines of the warehouse. She’ll find it interesting, to say the least.” Ben found himself surprised by Julie’s words and the stoked anger behind them. She interrupted Ty when he started talking about the stats he received from their person on the groun