One more door, and I’m looking at two demons in human form.
Two men. I recognize them from our white flag meeting; the get-together we had with the demons right before the peace treaty. The meeting we had when we all agreed that it would be in everyone’s best interest if the demons and the wolves declared peace. The peace treaty, or rather the massive demon slaying, came right after that.
“Keros, Del, thank god I found you. I was starting to worry there wasn’t one of you left alive.” I want to run to them, but they reek of fear … of pure terror. They freeze, and I can sense that they’re trying to decide how best to run past me out of the room and escape me, but I hold my hands up.
“Wait! Don’t panic. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m only here to talk.”
“Yeah, right,” Del snaps at me nervously. “We saw what happened the last time you and your kind wanted to talk. Everyone we know ended up dead. Dead. We’d have been with them, but we were running late that night, and I’ve never been so thankful I wasn’t on time. We got there just in time to see everyone on our side die. You’re probably here to finish us off … get rid of the demons for good.”
I keep my hands up in the air. “WAIT! I swear it, I’m not here to hurt you. Look, I came alone. There’s two of you and one of me. Come on. You know I was at the white flag meeting. If you were there at the Parthenon in time to see all the demons die, you must have seen what happened afterward … right? When we showed up?”
Keros purses his lips and glances from me to Del and then back to me again. I can feel it. He’s wavering. I push on.
“You know we didn’t have anything to do with that. You saw it. The guy who killed all your kind was Rylan. I think you know him. They did it, not us. We were there to sign the peace treaty with you all, and we meant it. We want peace.”
Keros sighs and Del plants his hands on his hips. They share a look with each other and gaze back at me reluctantly.
“Yeah, we saw that. So … What do you want? Why are you here?” Del continues. He’s a stubborn, untrusting guy, but I can’t blame him. At least the fear in them has subsided enough to let me breathe without that being the only thing overwhelming my senses.
“Well, if you saw what happened, then you saw one of our shifters, a woman named Sydney, give herself up to Rylan to save the rest of us.”
Del frowns. “I know who she is, but I saw her go with him willingly. What do you mean give herself up?”
I take a couple of steps toward them and lower my hands slowly. It’s all I can do to keep my voice level, so it doesn’t crack with all the heartache I’m barely controlling.
“She was my partner. She knew if she agreed to go with him, she could use herself as leverage and save all of us. She went with him on the condition that he let all of us go. If he hadn’t already killed all your kind, she’d have done it for them too.”
Keros nods. “Yeah, she would have. It was her idea to have peace between our two kinds in the first place.”
“Yes, it was,” I agree, closing even more distance between us. “Except now … we’re all here, and she’s a prisoner of Rylan’s. We told her we’d try to save her, but we can’t do it on our own. We don’t have the numbers to fight Rylan and win. We need help. We need you and your kind. Please … we’ll never get her back without you.”
“And what does that have to do with us?” Del asks. “What do we care if one shifter gets married off to another pack?”
“Because …” I say through gritted teeth, trying desperately to keep my own emotions in check, “Rylan is our common enemy now. We’d still like peace between the remainder of your kind. He won’t stand for it for as long as he lives.”
Del and Keros eye each other, and I can tell they’re trying to communicate as well as they can without using words, which is much more difficult for them than it is for shifters.
They nod to one another and turn back to me.
“You have good timing,” Keros begins. “We’re heading out to meet up with more incubi and succubi from different regions. They’ve started coming from all over after word got out about what happened at the Parthenon. You can come with us.”
“Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I gush, smiling widely. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am!”
“We’ll see how grateful you are later,” Keros says. “We’ll bring you, but we can’t guarantee your safety. It’ll be no matter to us if you’re torn to shreds the moment you dare show your face.”
His warning doesn’t faze me in the slightest. I don’t care. Let them try.
At least I have something, something to try. Something to keep the dark fears of my own heart at bay.
“Let’s go.” Del groans. He doesn’t want me to come along, but he’s not going to turn me down either. I can tell I’ve got to prove myself to them, and I definitely understand why. I know how lucky I am that they’re even giving me this chance.
Half an hour later, we walk into an old warehouse on the wrong side of the already wrong side of the tracks. In fact, you couldn’t get further from the tracks. No one would come here on purpose, except these soul sucking demons, and me.
Desperate times, desperate measures.
The warehouse is filled with demons, most of them drop-dead gorgeous humans, ready to suck a human dry of their soul and leave them as a lifeless husk. We always thought that they were hurting any human they could get, but we learned at the white flag meeting that the demons only eat the souls of evil people.
Or … at least some of them do. Those that wish to exist in peace do. It’s what they crave; the truly damned. As far as the shifters were concerned, they could eat all the souls of evil people they wanted.
Souls, like mine apparently, if the shift in hunger focuses squarely on me.
Gasps sound all throughout the space as my two guides lead me through the crowd to the center of the room. All eyes are on me, and I’ve never felt so much hate and anger in my whole life. I keep Sydney’s beautiful face and green eyes at the forefront of my mind. I’m doing this for her. For our family. I’m willing to do anything to get her back, including this.
“What’s he doing here?” One of the incubi at the center of the group raises his voice and points at me.
“How could you bring him here?”
“How dare you!”
Shouts arise from the crowd.
There’s a woman at the table in the center of the room. She stands and holds her hand up. Everyone quiets.
“Del. Keros,” she addresses them. “Please, explain yourselves.”
Del turns to me. “I think I’ll let our guest explain.”
My heart skips a few beats as I turn to look at all the menacing, beautiful faces glaring furiously at me. I’m alone. If they decide to kill me, I won’t get one step, not even as a wolf.
I clear my throat. I’m in right now; all in.
“Hey … I’m uh … I’m Elon. Thank you for letting me come here to talk with you. I wouldn’t have come here, but it’s an emergency.”
They are unmoved. I don’t care. I might as well plow right into it, now that I’ve started.
I wish Teague or Roman was here. They’ve always been far more eloquent.
I blame being raised in the woods by a pack that barely saw me as a shifter—and then the years alone without a single other soul by my side.
My eyes scan the crowd, looking for faces I might recognize. Faces that weren’t left bloodied and broken on the battlefield Rylan left behind.
I point to a couple, and nod at them, but not many. “I remember you … and you.” I smile half-heartedly. The rest of them are strangers, of course. All the other ones I knew were wiped out.
Even if know is a strong word, it still doesn’t stop a pit from forming in my stomach.
“See, there’s a local pack of wolf-shifters here. We had a white flag meeting with the demons in this area. Some of you were there at the white flag meeting. We all agreed that it would be best for everyone if we si
gned a peace treaty. We were going to sign it because none of us wanted to lose any more of our kind.”
“Yeah, and then your pack slaughtered them all when they went to sign it!” someone in the back yells at me. Several voices rise around me in anger, and I know I’ve got seconds to speak before they turn on me and I die where I stand.
“NO!” I hold my hands up high for them to see, and to stop them. “No, it wasn’t our pack! The pack that murdered your friends and loved ones is from Florida. Their alpha, Rylan, is a real monster. He showed up out of the blue and poisoned them all before we ever got there. We didn’t even know he was coming. He’s not supposed to be in our territory at all. He violated our boundary lines and committed a heinous act. We are not connected with him at all, and we don’t even like him. In fact, I’ll be honest, I hate the son-of-a-bitch.”
The room quiets some, and I am able to take a deeper breath. They’re listening. I have a chance. I take it.
“The peace treaty was my partner’s idea. Some of you know her. Rylan, the alpha of the other pack, found out about our peace treaty because there was a traitor in our midst. He would kill every one of you because of what you are, not because of who you are or how you live, but simply just because of what you are, and the stupid, age-old rivalry between our races.”
I can see them listening and thinking, and it spurs me on, encouraging me. My voice gets louder.
“He abhorred the idea that we might find peace together. He thought it was an abomination, so he sneaked in and attacked. When we got there, everyone was already gone; a few of you had gotten away with your lives, but the rest were killed. There was nothing we could do, and Rylan … he was going to kill all of us for trying to make peace with you. We were part of the problem, and he was going to wipe our pack off the face of the earth, but Sydney, she stepped in again. She sacrificed herself.”
I can’t hold it back anymore. The emotion in me erupts, choking me, blinding me with tears, and making my body tremble.
I croak out loudly, “Rylan wanted her, and she knew it, so she told him she’d go with him if he’d spare all of us, and I mean all of us. Now she needs to be saved; rescued. We can’t let Rylan keep her. More importantly … we need to stop Rylan. We need to make sure he’s never allowed to terrorize our lands—or any other—like this again.”
The woman at the head of the table stops me with her eyes. “Do you know why we’re all gathered here, young man?”
I shake my head. “No, ma’am, I don’t. I just knew that I needed to come and see you, to talk with you, to beg you for help.”
“We’re here, gathered together from places all over this country—and beyond—because that attack by Rylan was our tipping point. He has started a war, and we’re discussing exactly what we’re going to do, here and now.”
My heart is pounding, and my ears begin to ring.
“Then we’re on the same side,” I say, breathlessly. “I’ll make you see it. I have to remind you of what Sydney wanted for us, for all of us. She wanted peace. She didn’t want even one more life lost; yours or ours, but now it’s clear that things have changed. I can see how hurt you are, how mad … and I understand. I get it. You have every right to be so angry, and to want to fight, and that’s just what we need. We want to join you and fight at your side against Rylan. We want to take him and his pack down and save Sydney. But there’s something else that you have to know.”
“And what is that?” the woman asks, coolly.
I turn slowly in a circle, speaking out loudly to everyone, making sure they all see my face; hear my voice.
“Rylan means to wed Sydney; to make her his wife. If that happens, their marriage will unite both our packs beneath his power. If that happens, we’re all going to die. He will become the most powerful alpha in the country, with the biggest region, and nothing and no one will be able to stop him after that! It isn’t just our freedom that’s at stake here; it’s our lives! It’s either now or never! We have to come together; demon and shifter, gather as many to our sides as we can, and fight Rylan. We’ve got to stop that wedding before it happens and kill every one of his pack there. I know you feel like you were betrayed before, but it wasn’t by us, and we need each other now more than we ever have.”
I stop. There’s really nothing more I can say; I’ve said it all—eloquently or not. It’s up to them now.
The woman regards me and nods finally.
“Give us time. We will deliberate, and we will let you know what we decide.”
The fact that I’m allowed to leave alive … that in and of itself is enough to lift my spirits. Now just to see if they stay that way, or if I’m left to drown in the wake of two wars.
Chapter Five
Teague
I walk with Roman and Elon into the pack headquarters; an old theatre that’s been renovated into the meeting hall for the Nashville shifters to gather.
It took some time and a lot of coffee, but I finally did manage to get Roman sobered up after Elon left him with me. All three of us want Sydney back, and we’re all having a wrenching hard time dealing with it, but Roman’s not handling it well.
At all.
Conan comes in behind us and gives me a nod as he speaks quietly.
“Hey, Teague. Did you get him sobered up? I don’t want him crawling out of a bottle and going before the council drunk. We’ve got enough problems already.”
“Yeah, I’ve got him sorted a bit. Hoping to keep him this way,” I murmur back, though I know Roman can hear us.
I don’t care. Let him hear.
We enter through one of the five sets of double doors that lead from the ruby carpeted front lobby into the auditorium. There are seats set about all over the place, and before the stage, where the orchestra pit has been filled in and floored with wood, sits a crescent shaped table. There are chairs behind it, and in each one sits a council member. The chair at the center is usually empty—left there for the non-existent Alpha—but it’s the second empty chair next to it that stabs at us, particularly Conan. It’s where Isla should sit, but she’s not here.
Not anymore.
The gathering of shifters in the seats before the council is somewhat smaller than I’ve seen it before, and I know that some of the members have peeled off quietly, leaving because of one reason or another. There’s no alpha, some of them don’t like Isla trying to lead the pack when it isn’t her proper place, we were going to sign a peace treaty with our age-old enemies, and Rylan making a huge power play with his marriage to Sydney—any one of those things would be a valid reason to leave the pack life behind.
Every one of those things on its own is enough to cause a shifter to want to go, but all of them together are just too much for some of the members of Roman’s home pack, and by extension, our new pack. I understand why they’re gone, though I think they should have showed some loyalty.
Even I wouldn’t have left my own pack, had I been given a choice.
“We call this meeting to order,” one of the elders on the council announces, and the hushed conversations in the room quiet.
“We’re gathered today to discuss the situation we’re facing at present. With the death of what was to become our demon allies, we’re left facing danger on two fronts. Not only are Sydney and Isla in Rylan’s custody, but we’re likely to face retaliation from any remaining incubi and succubi in the area.”
Elon, at my side, speaks up swiftly. “Wait! I have new information that may be of use.” He stands and speaks clearly, so that everyone can hear him. “I found two incubi who made it out alive, and they took me to a meeting of their kind. There are demons pouring in from all kinds of places—not just local, but from around the world.”
Murmurs break out all around us, and the council member opens his mouth as if to speak—but Elon quickly continues before he can be drowned out.
“I made sure they knew we were not responsible for the slaughter, that we’re on their side.”
“And what side is that?” the
council member asks.
“The side that wants Rylan dead,” Elon states, his knuckles curling up at his sides until they turn white. “The incubi see this act as a declaration of war, and they want to fight. I’ve asked them to join us so that we can have greater numbers. If they agree then we can fight Rylan and get Sydney and Isla back before it’s too late.”
Before Sydney is married off to that bastard and Rylan finds a way to murder Isla still.
I’m not the only one thinking it. Beside me, Conan’s own fists match Elon’s a moment earlier.
Conan vaults to his feet immediately, shaking his head. “We cannot seek a violent solution to this! We must be diplomatic. If there’s a battle, Isla could be hurt, or worse … killed. I will not lose my wife and children in a fight with other shifters. Not when we could solve this with nonviolent means.”
I feel them both; their urgency, their desperation, the fear and anger that roils within them both. I stand beside Elon. He is a brother to me, and in this, I will take his side.
“I too think that we should rescue the ladies and fight Rylan. He’s done horrendous things, things we cannot tolerate. If this pack does tolerate it, it will eventually be led by a real monster. We have the chance to stop that now before it gets worse. If Rylan is allowed to marry Sydney, it will be much more difficult to stop him. This is our chance.”
“How could you think for even a moment that we’d stand a chance against Rylan in a fight?” Conan demands, blasting us with his rage and fear. “We had more hunters than any other pack in the country, thanks to Isla’s father, and now every single one of them has either deserted us or gone to join Rylan! There are none on our side, fighting for us. How do you expect to be Rylan’s massive pack and the army of hunters he has? No number of incubi and succubi are going to help us win. If we face Rylan head on, we’ll be slaughtered.”
“Conan, this is our only chance,” I insist. “How can you not see that? Once that wedding takes place and Sydney becomes his wife, he’ll have total control over both regions and every wolf shifter in both packs! You think he has power now? Wait until our remaining hunters have no choice but to obey him. There’ll be no way to take him down then. We’ll all be ruled by one of the cruelest leaders the shifters have ever known … or have you not heard the rumors of his own compound? This is our only chance to stop him. We have to try. We have to take the chance we have before us now. A rescue is the only option we have.”
Alpha Returned: A Rejected Mates Reverse Harem Shifter Series (Feral Mates Book 3) Page 4