Chapter Thirty Five - Lycan Secrets

Jake heard David’s yelp of surprise at the same time he got his linked message. Lia had been there one moment, sneezed, then disappeared into thin air! There one moment and gone the next. Literally vanished in the blink of an eye. The werewolves around him were frozen in shock, looking at each other and trying to make sense of what they were seeing in the link. Only a lycan could make werewolves vanish like that, and they only did that when a law had been broken. There was always a warning too, not a hearing really, but a sentencing so the wolf and their family all knew what was happening and why. Jake took a slow steadying breath. Lia had done nothing wrong that he knew about and a lycan would ensure one mate knew the other’s transgressions. Usually their entire family and the pack as well. Lycan were heavy-handed and unforgiving when it came to law breaking, but they too followed their own laws to the letter. The family had to be notified first. Jake suspected the point of that was to make an example of every offender to discourage future transgressions. It didn’t matter to him at the moment what their motivation for the sentencing gatherings was. To him, it meant that, at least for the moment, Lia was most likely still alive.

Her link with him wasn’t solid though, not as open and free-flowing as a normal mate bond. Jake cursed under his breath as a tiny bit of doubt began to make his heart race. He should have asked her more questions on the way here. He was fairly certain she had been hiding something from him. Most likely there would have been nothing he could do to prevent the Lycan Council from doing whatever it wanted, but maybe they could have found a way out. Or maybe they could have even found a way to make it right before the lycan discovered her transgression.

He clenched his jaw tight and headed for the back door. All the werewolves followed him out to join David in the yard, all stealth and pretense forgotten.

“She was RIGHT HERE!” David insisted, pointing to the bush. Shock and terror were both visible in his expression. “I never took my eyes off her, I swear it! I was only a few meters away! I smelled her fear increase sharply, her heart began to race so I asked her what was wrong and then Poof! No Lia!” The warriors with the best sniffers were in their wolf form and were sniffing all around the berry bush.

“There is no fresh organic matter on the ground,” Beta Mark said, his hand on Jake’s shoulder, “which means she wasn’t terminated by a Lycan.” Jake nodded, looking down at the ground, not quite relieved. She wasn’t dead yet, but she was definitely gone. They must have taken her for sentencing. He couldn’t think of any other explanation.

“I do smell Lycan,“ one of them said hesitantly, “but it is not like any Lycan I have ever scented before.”

“He’s right,” agreed the other, “It is almost as if he were rotting. It smells of Lycan and old carrion at the same time.”

“No,” the other disagreed, “more like a festering wound. Still living, but the flesh is contaminated and dying.”

“Is that wrong for them?” David asked.

“Typically Lycans smell clean and natural. It’s almost like the air you find in the middle of an old-growth forest after a rainstorm. The oldest ones can sometimes smell a bit damp or musty, like fallen wet leaves on the forest floor, but this one, I’ve never smelled anything like it, certainly not on any Lycan that shows himself in public. He smells sick or dying, and they wouldn’t leave their homes in anything that seemed to be a weakened state. I’ve come across dead things that smelled better than this Lycan.”

They concentrated to separate the Lycan’s smell from the other scents and then shared it in the link. David, Mark, and Jake cried out in gut-wrenching terror. The other wolves all looked at them in shock.

“Selene’s mate,” Mark said, gasping as he recovered from the shock.

“When the Lycan saw Selene’s mate in her memories they called him the Bane. I remember if them saying something about him being banished, but I don’t remember if they said why. He must be one of them.” Jake said, trying desperately to make some sense of what was going on. Anything that might mean Lia could be safe and would be back in his arms soon. “I think he is a banished Lycan.”

“It’s been centuries since a Lycan claimed a werewolf for his mate. In fact, I thought they had given up mating.”

“A banished werewolf often doesn’t follow the pack ways,” said one of the Lone Wolves, “Maybe it is the same for Lycan. They didn’t kill him, so he couldn’t have broken an actual law, but he may not be following all their typical ways.”

“I can also smell the human, Albert,” one of the tracking wolves added. “He was here recently, not exactly where the Lycan was standing, but nearby. Another werewolf was with him. A strong one, it could be a weak Alpha or perhaps a strong Beta.”

They were all trying to make sense of this added information when an image from the Pack House guard came to him. Their Lycan visitors had returned to the guest house. Fear constricted Jake’s heart. Were they there to terminate his mate in front of the pack?

Without a word, Beta Mark took the keys from Jake’s trembling hands and they all headed out to their vehicles. It went without saying that their presence would be expected shortly, all werewolves had to be on pack lands for a Lycan visit, it was a Supreme Law. They moved silently, heads down, all of them fairly certain that they would be seeing the end of their new Luna very soon, the only question was, why?

Lia woke up, sighing as she realized that she was waking up because she was hungry, cramped up, and cold, not because she was well rested. Being cold was an odd sensation for her, she was hardly ever cold. She knew she would have to stretch and eat before she could go back to sleep, but didn’t really want to. The air around her smelled of snow, and something else oddly metallic. Gran was nearby though so the strangeness didn’t bother her too much. Maybe they’d left a window cracked open. She had the vaguest sense that something was wrong, but she couldn’t remember what. Perhaps if she just stretched, rolled over, and pulled up a blanket she could forget the empty stomach and nap a while longer. She tried to straighten her legs and her eyes flew open.

Recent events crashed into her mind, one on top of the other. She was a werewolf. Gran was a werewolf. Gran was missing. Everything had smelled horrid and then gone black. She swallowed, trying not to panic. The sensation of something digging into her throat as she swallowed did nothing to ease her nerves.

She was in a cage so small that she couldn’t move her legs or even turn her head very much. There was something tight on her neck. She could turn her head and eyes just far enough to get a glimpse of Gran a few feet away. She was still in her wolf form, sleeping in a cage that seemed to be as tightly fitted to her wolf as Lia’s was to her curled-up human body. They seemed to be outside, tiny flakes were falling through the cold air and starting to collect on Gran’s tail hair. Lia started to take in other scents now too, several of which put her even more on edge. The smell of salt water assaulted her at the same moment she realized the ground was moving beneath her. The deck of a ship made the most sense as far as a location went. Lia could feel her wolf starting to panic at being confined and tried to message someone using the links, but that method of communication was so new to her that she wasn’t sure if it was working, especially with her wolf so agitated. She wasn’t even sure if the link worked over a distance or just when werewolves were in relatively close proximity. She couldn’t move much in the tiny cage, but she started making an effort to find out how it was being held closed or if she could see anything that would tell her where she was. Even if she and her wolf could get a call for help out, she had no idea where to tell the others to come.

Jake cursed as they pulled up to the pack house. The full thirteen members of the Lycan council were waiting for him on the front steps with his pack on their knees in the falling snow. Everyone got out of their vehicles and joined the pack. Jake walked towards the lycan with his head down and his neck bared.

“You smelled the Bane, yet you bring him not.”

Jake stumbled mid stride and then sent the Lycan a video-style image of everything that had happened. David’s view or Lia vanishing, the warriors sniffing out the area and sharing the scent with them.”

“The Bane has his daughter,” one of the Lycan said. “What of the mother?”

“She is also missing,” Jake informed them, making a mental note of the fact that the Lycan referred to the Lycan-type smell as Lia’s father, but not as Selene’s mate.

“Unacceptable.” The Lycan Council members said in chorus. Jake quickly showed them images of the tranquilizing darts being removed from the guard and the omega as well as the dozens of wolves scenting for any type of trail to follow, hoping that it would convince them he was not completely incompetent, despite the missing shewolves. His image included Lia mentioning the smell of Albert and wolfsbane on the dart.

“The Bane had human assistance to capture the mother.”

“We have removed his ability to terminate werewolves through the elemental link, so when the girl disappeared he must simply have moved her.”

“He can still use physical means of termination.”

“The Goddess has not marked either as dead,” another added.

“Perhaps he means to torture them, as he did the mother before.”

“Removal of his trace was an unfortunate side effect of bannishment.”

“Perhaps he does not know his child is mated and hopes to sell her as a majority Lycan genetic mate, the way he did his other daughter.”

“Even mated the she wolf has value to those who wish - ”

One of the lycan tapped his staff on the ground and the link between Jake and the Lycans closed abruptly. Jake realized then that they had not intended for him to hear them talking among themselves. He dared to glance up at the one with the staff and the Lycan narrowed his eyes. He looked down and nodded, acknowledging that he must keep what he had heard to himself.

So, Jake thought, I am not supposed to know that Lia is alive, that they do not know where she is, that her father used to be a Lycan, that they can not trace their own kind after banishment, or that werewolf Lycan cross bread females not only exist but can be sold. He ground his teeth.

Jake felt a small werewolf pup rub against his leg and he knelt to keep the young one still, only realizing after he’d bent down that it was not as young a pup as he’d assumed. Zinnia was simply tiny, even in wolf form.

“Zin honey, you have to be still. Remember the rules.”

“Papa LeLoup said I could sit with you.”

“Who?”

“Papa LeLoup. He is Lycan. I asked. He said yes.”

“Little wolf! Did you contact a Lycan? That is not something you should have done.”

“He said hello first, I just answered.”

“A Lycan spoke to you?”

“Yes. He said it was a good idea for me to sit with you. That you would be angry and worried right now and I could calm you. He says to tell you Luna Liana is safe so far. He can sense those who are majority Lycan, like her, but the other Lycans do not know this and he does not want them to learn how to do it themselves. She is on a boat but it has not gone far from shore.”

“We will return to our homes now,” announced the Lycan, interrupting their mental conversation. “Cloud Lake werewolves, find your Luna and the Bane. Bring them here. We will return when you have accomplished this goal.” The staff thumped on the ground again, and the weight of the Lycan presence lifted from the werewolves.