جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 70

LENADamien's childhood home was nothing if not spectacular, towering over the suburban setting like it had any business existing so far from the city skyline.Damien had asked us to wait outside at first, insisting he alone should face the confrontation, but as soon as we reached the threshold, his courage failed him in an ugly heap of anxiety, and he turned back, pleading a little. Cole and I followed, unchaperoned and uncared for by anyone in this moment. Aiden had wanted to come, but Damien had refused, having assured himself that his father would react far too harshly to the sight of him. I imagine the man had seen enough of Cole and my presence in the shop to make it difficult to consider the acceptance of a second vampire, younger even than Cole in his years.Marcus Holt stood waiting in his study as we entered, just the sort of place I expected him to receive high-profile clients such as oneself."Damien." His eyes swept over Cole and I, calculating something, or so it seemed

LENAI knew I had chosen wisely when Thorne led us to an abandoned ranger station on the outskirts of the pack territory. It had an air of long disuse clinging to it from decades of neglect, making a mockery of the few trees that had survived the construction.As soon as we got out of the car, Cole took my hand in his grip with an ease that seemed to contradict the tension rolling from his shoulders. Aiden kept to the half-step ahead with a stiffness to his movements, the kind not normally on display even during his tense confrontation with the council the other night.Thorne, still in the shadows, was waiting for us inside.He sat on one of several overturned crates near the fireplace long since turned to ash, his silver darkened with age and the stubble along his jaw worn in lines deeper than I expected. He looked older than I had imagined him, with the wear lines that made him seem fifty years older than I thought he was."Aiden Holt," Thorne drew his name out after he stood, meeti

LENANoah found him three days later, and for the first time in weeks the entire table was filled with something that resembled hope as opposed to exhaustion."Rhys Bennett," he said, turning his laptop around to reveal a small property record photo; one that could still clearly make out dark hair, lean build, and age. "Worked as groundskeeper plus a part-time driver for the Holt estate, beginning about twenty-three years ago. He left the position abruptly the same year as the massacre with no forwarding address on record.""Where is he now?" Cole asked."Good news there, he never actually left the area. He changed his last name legally around fifteen years ago, moving forty minutes outside pack territory to work as a mechanic. Your life has been a fairly ordinary one since, as far as the public record knows."Aiden studied the photo with an expression caught between hope and something else more careful than that. "It's possible. Build matches Thorne's photograph, as far as I can tell

LENAIvy called on a Tuesday afternoon, and the relief in her voice as I answered told me she had found something."I found something," she said. "An old registry of name changes, one most people would be unlikely to check due to its age. A certain Rhys, with no known surname, changed his to Daniel Voss twenty-one years ago. That seems to be about the same time as the massacre."My heart was hammering in my ears. "What did he change it to?""Daniel Voss," she replied. There was a pause, as if whatever she was about to say next was unpleasant. "I did some more digging, however. Daniel Voss died six years ago of a heart attack."My heart sank. "So he's dead, as well. Another dead end.""Not quite," said Ivy. "He left behind a wife, who still lives in the city, about an hour or so's drive away. If Daniel Voss was truly your Rhys, his wife may know things he never thought to put in writing."We gathered the rest of our group that evening in our usual corner of the library. I gave them the

LENAAiden went suddenly quiet when we told him the name to the point that I hadn't heard him be so quiet since the day he'd walked into the council chamber for the first time and announced himself to a room of strangers who thought him dead."I've heard that title before," he said finally, after the rest of the group had managed to settle around him waiting. "Not often. The kinds of things older wolves used to mention half jokingly, warnings without warning.""What for kind of story," Cole asked."A fixer. Someone who arranged outcomes for packs willing to pay the right price in favors and not money. Council seats, territorial disputes, even occasional claimings in the way that they always had some degree of mystery wrapped around it." Aiden's jaw tightened for a moment. "I always assumed that meant that it was a story parents told their ambitious children who wanted to explain things that felt just too convenient to be natural. I never actually thought it might be a real thing.""Ho