Seeing Red

by Lyra Evans

  Niko crossed his arms. “Names?” Preston shook his head. “Damn. I don’t know everyone in his family.” Cursing himself for being unprepared, Niko thought more. The photographs of Preston with Keilani Palm and others came to mind. “Keilani Palm.”

  Preston thought it over again. “I know her,” he said, but it was different than the last. He didn’t call them friends.

  “Friends?” he asked.

  “Why?” Preston asked, apparently confused. Niko sat on his theory. He was concerned if he made his hypothesis too clear Preston would clam up, but Preston apparently caught on without Niko saying anything at all. “You think Keilani Palm is running the Woods?” He nearly laughed. “What would make you think that? Have you met her?”

  Niko frowned. “Yes. She led the Court for Sade’s idiotic appeal for release. And she granted it.”

  Preston’s laughter faded somewhat. Eyes narrowed, he watched the road ahead, but Niko could tell his mind was far off. “I suppose she would, yes.” It was in answer to nothing, and Niko did not appreciate being left in the dark. “We’re not friends. She’s not in the Woods, I assure you. Much too Lawful Good for that. Or maybe Lawful Neutral. I get them confused.”

  Niko couldn’t believe this. “But there was a photo of you with her in your apartment,” he said. “She let Sade out. She knew what he had done, what kind of person he was, and she still—”

  “I have photos with many important Courtiers,” Preston said. “Not everyone is part of this conspiracy. Though admittedly quite a few.” He made a thoughtful face, then shook it off. “In any case, Keilani Palm likely released Sade Hemlock because it was the legally correct thing to do.”

  “How can—”

  “You abused your position,” Preston said flatly. “You took advantage of an inmate, who by definition had no power.”

  Niko fumed, his entire body hot with rage. “I broke no laws.”

  Preston tilted his head back and forth. “Didn’t you? If anyone had known prior to the situation what Selkie powers were, you can bet there would be legal provisions in place to protect—well, everyone—from being subject to that without their consent. Meanwhile, though, you did deny an inmate his rights.”

  The world was crumbling before his very eyes. That Preston—Preston—was lecturing Niko on the law and consent was mind-blowing. It was also deeply infuriating.

  “Sade Hemlock is a rapist, a kidnapper, a sex trafficker, a violent offender, and a fucking murderer,” Niko said. “Who knows what else he’s fucking done. None of those things are excused or forgotten because I forced him to answer questions in order to save innocent lives. That anyone bought into his fucking sob story—”

  “Was,” Preston said. Niko stopped, confused. Preston eyed him. “Hemlock was a rapist and all those other things. He’s dead, remember, Niko.” He paused as Niko struggled with the word. “I’m surprised you feel that bonded to him, considering.”

  Niko’s eyes flashed a blinding fury. “I am bonded to Sade Hemlock only in the seething hatred I have for him. I hated him before, and I hate him now. I will continue to hate him until the Ancient Roots release the Earth, until the Moon falls and the Endless Hunt concludes.”

  Preston nodded. “So forever, then? Got it.” Preston shifted gears, overtaking another car. “Shall we get back to the game? I’ve told you Palm isn’t involved in the Woods. Anyone else?”

  Niko thought of the others seated on the Court that day. “Phoebe Linden and Siraj Cypress?” he asked.

  Preston paused again, though he could have been focused on signalling and changing lanes. “Yes,” was all he said.

  Niko nodded. That much he had figured, though he didn’t quite know what to do with the information. “The Birches? Elior and Lucia Birch?” This was somewhat of a concern for him, given the help their daughter, Aurora Birch, had contributed in the past. She was a well-known reporter and friend of Connor—Alpha of the Werewolf Court—as well as Connor’s mate, Oliver. Her parents were also very close to Queen Maeve herself. If they were—

  “No, definitely not,” Preston said. “They’d likely take issue with some of the founding principles of the Woods, I imagine.”

  Niko perked up. “Founding principles?” He made a face. “You mean crime?”

  Lips pursed, Preston said, “Wealthy and powerful people do not typically go to the trouble of creating secret groups purely out of a desire to ‘do crime.’ That’s rather a side effect.” He sounded somewhat like a professor trying to educate a particularly stubborn student. Niko did enjoy making things difficult for him. “But I’m sure you can guess what kind of ideology people like these would have they wouldn’t necessarily openly share. What do the other names you mentioned have in common that the Birches do not?”

  Niko rolled his eyes but thought the question over nonetheless. At first, it seemed like crime was the only thing they had in common, but once he remembered people like Chief Banyan were involved later and less enthusiastically, it became clearer.

  “Redwood, Linden, Cypress, Juniper,” Niko listed, the realization weighty and deeply disappointing. “They’re the Old Families. The ‘Old Trees.’” He shook his head. “Fuck. Is that it? They espouse some kind of idiotic idea that because they can trace their lineages back further, they’re more—what?—worthy? Of money? Of power?”

  “Both, I’d say,” Preston said.

  Niko scoffed. “Morons. It’s thinly veiled fear is all. Fear they’re obsolete. If poor people suddenly have rights then how will rich people know they are different??” Niko shook his head. “It’s the bullshit Linden’s been spouting about Selkies. That they’re ‘other’ and need to be controlled. That their mere existence threatens ours. It’s fucking insane.”

  Preston made an indistinct noise. “It’s a philosophy that’s gaining momentum,” he said, reaching for the audio system. He pressed a button and the sound increased. The voice on the radio was Linden’s, spewing more hate about the threat Selkies posed, how they corrupted an otherwise stand-up officer—meaning Niko, apparently—and how they could easily take control of anyone at any time and make them do terrible things. It was a matter of Kingdom-wide security.

  “She’s just one voice—” Niko began, but Preston pushed another button and the channel changed. This voice was a well-known radio announcer, and he was off on a tear on the same subject. Saying Selkies were going to steal Fae jobs because they were so much more attractive and who wouldn’t want to have a Selkie pleasure them. Where would all the Fae pleasure clubs be when Selkies took over? Preston changed the channel again, and this time callers were chiming in over the phone, their tinny rants echoing the same points. Protect Fae rights. Protect Fae jobs. Close the borders. Build a wall in the ocean. Disgusting. “They don’t know what they’re fucking talking about. That’s not how employment works. That’s also not how the economy works. Closing the borders would hurt everyone far more than—”

  “Wrong,” Preston said. Niko tensed, but Preston only added, “Closing the borders that way will only hurt the poor. These actions all, at some level, benefit the wealthy. That’s the fundamental idea. Make the rich and powerful more rich and powerful.”

  Niko felt the rage searing in his blood. He thought of Cobalt, injured and intent on helping him at all costs. He thought of how very careful Cobalt was with his power, with using it, of how he’d only used it on Niko to show its limits. The only Selkie who seemed interested in controlling other people was Vermillion Oak. And perhaps that was the problem; he was the only one people had heard of. And Cobalt, for his part, had been painted with the same brush. Because of his absence, he had no chance to defend himself. He was tried in absentia and found guilty.

  “Redwood, Linden, Juniper—all of them can go fuck themselves,” Niko said. “I don’t get how they’ve managed to convince regular people this idea is a good one.”

  Preston shrugged. “Phoebe’s always been remarkably persuasive.”

  “Know her well, do you?” Niko asked.


  “Oh, I should think so,” he said. “She raised me, after all.”

  The air in the car crystallized and snapped, like glass into micro-fine dust. It cut through every part of Niko’s mind. Preston was a mystery from every angle. He never shared details of himself or his past with anyone, though the newspapers and a significant online following had long tried to coax it out of him. Now he was just telling Niko?

  “She—what?” His mind couldn’t process. “But she’s—you’re—you—”

  “Yes, I’m a Werewolf, she’s a Fae who believes Fae are the superior species,” he agreed easily, “and now she’s calling for closed borders. I imagine it won’t be long before she tries to expel all non-natives from the Court.”

  Niko shook his head. His fingertips were cold. “She raised you? So you’re—like family?”

  Preston thought that over. “Family is a strong word.” He didn’t really elaborate on that point. “I came to Maeve’s Court still essentially a pup. I lived on the streets for a while. Had nowhere else to go. Then one day she walks by in her designer heels and tailored skirt-suit and actually stops when she sees me. I think I growled at her; the memory is somewhat fuzzy.” He shrugged, slowing the car to stop along the shoulder of the road. “Maybe it was the growl that did it. She took me home, washed me, clothed me, fed me, everything. Told her husband in no uncertain terms I was staying. You know I’ve always wanted a dog, Lucius.”

  Niko’s jaw might have dropped if it wasn’t screwed tight as a vise. “She called you a dog?”

  Preston nodded. “I suppose you could say she made me the man I am today,” he said with a strange kind of sadness. But the moment passed, and he turned to Niko with a smile Niko didn’t understand. “More than my blood family ever did for me, anyway.”

  He wasn’t sure whether or not he was supposed to ask, to push Preston to explain further. Niko was uncomfortable in these kind of ‘sharing’ situations, but his curiosity acted for him. “Who were they?”

  Preston waved that off. “No one. They were of no consequence in Logan’s Court—it was Logan, then—but they desperately wanted to be. The lot of them were Alphas, but they were Alphas with no one to lead. They had no positions of power in their pack sector, nor the Court as a whole. They were ambitious but useless. And when I was born clearly not an Alpha—”

  “You’re not an Alpha?” Niko interrupted, unable to stop himself. Preston’s behaviour at the auction and in the past would have had Niko guessing he couldn’t be anything else. But when he thought it over, perhaps it was there all along. Preston didn’t demand the way Niko had seen Connor do in press conferences or videos. He didn’t hold himself the same way. It was subtle, but it was there. Niko had thought it was just a matter of status; Connor was Alpha of his entire Court, after all. “What are you?”

  Preston made a face as though to indicate Niko had just said something offensive. But since Niko only gaped at him, he shook it off. “I’m a Beta, obviously. But I’ve learned to play a good part, I suppose. But Betas are not leaders. They have important roles in the packs of Connor’s Court, but they cannot lead it. We just don’t want to. The idea that my family of Alphas had somehow birthed a lesser being was unforgivable. They ran me out of Court.”

  Niko was in shock. “There’s no way Logan, or even the lower-ranked Alphas would have stood for that. Pack is everything to them, isn’t it?”

  Preston nodded. “Probably. But they’d kept me hidden away, locked in a room most of my life, trying to beat me into a rage to teach me to be an Alpha. I don’t know. But the end result was my believing all Alphas were like that. I wanted no part of it. So rather than run to another house, another family, to anyone in the Court, I ran as far South as I could get. What I had to do to myself to get out of there...” There was a moment of silence, and Niko didn’t know what to do with it. He waited, thinking it all through, wondering how this affected his view of Preston. If it did. He wasn’t sure. “The cosmic joke is that coming to Maeve’s Court taught me more about being an Alpha than their idiocy ever did.”

  He turned off the car and hit a button that made both doors open. Niko looked at him, confused. They were still outside the city, parked in a secluded area marked as private property. There was no structure in sight, though. Only trees smattered around, bushes, and something like a meadow. Beyond that was a fence, in the distance, that Niko guessed marked the edge of the city’s properties.

  “Where are we?” Niko asked, realizing Preston’s sudden urge to share had distracted him enough to catch him off guard. He tensed. Preston smiled.

  “At the edge of the city,” he said. He pointed to their right, toward the fence in the distance. “Noor’s property is that way. Beyond the fence.”

  Niko didn’t move, but his muscles were pulled to tension like a bowstring. “Does she not have a front door?”

  Preston got out of his side, and the door shut behind him. He stretched his arms and legs, one by one, standing next to the car. Taking a deep breath of the morning air, he turned back to Niko with that same predatory smile. Cold rushed down Niko’s spine.

  “You want this to be believable, don’t you?” Preston said. “Then I suggest you run.”

  Before Niko’s eyes, Preston’s body began to morph. It was hard to watch, to take in the detail of it. A strange shimmer on the air, then a very large, brown and black Wolf stood before him. Its dark eyes were the same shade of brown as Preston’s, and it snuffed at the air. For a heartbeat of time, Niko didn’t move. Then the Wolf bared its teeth, and Niko bolted.

  He ran at full tilt, his lungs burning in seconds of activity as the cool wind cut through him. Needles pierced his chest with every inhale, and Niko’s feet slammed down on the uneven ground without grace. He reached for the gun he always carried, but he wasn’t wearing his holster. The deceit would not allow it; and as his heart raced, pumping adrenaline through his every fibre, Niko wondered if this had all been a trap.

  He heard nothing at all but his own breath as he ran, until he heard the light pads of the Wolf behind him. It panted too, but it sounded much more comfortable with it than Niko was. Fear spiked in him, and he dove around a bush that seemed to materialize out of nothing in front of him. The branches scraped at his arm as he dodged it. Uneven ground had him stumbling, struggling, but he clawed at some nearby tall grass and pulled himself forward.

  Grass whispered a warning call as he fought through it, aiming for clearer ground. But as he broke through the perimeter of the green blades, he came down hard on some loose rocks and a shallow valley. Kneecap colliding painfully with the ground, Niko spared no time to nurse it. He scrabbled to his feet and kept on, the snapping of a jaw too close behind him for him to slow.

  The fence was in sight. He didn’t know what he would do when he reached it; it was near eight feet tall and made of brick, a fact not clear to him earlier. But there was nowhere else to run, no other direction to take. His mind flashed again and again to Cobalt, to his strong arms around Niko, to his body thrown between Niko and the chimera, to the way he’d cradled Niko and undressed him and set him to bed when Niko had exploded. He thought of how he’d welcomed Cobalt back with a gun to his face and a cold shoulder. He thought of the hurt in his chest and how he wanted it gone, wanted to forget. He wanted to go back to that day on the pebbled beach and never let go of Cobalt. He wanted to feel the Soul Stone inside him again, filling his empty places and making him whole.

  But a tuft of wet grass caught his foot, and he swung sideways, grasping at the air in hopes of catching himself. A massive weight struck his side, spinning him in the air, and Niko fell hard on his back. The ground crashed into him, stealing the wind from his lungs and knocking his head hard enough to cause his ears to ring. The weight that had hit him landed atop him now, pinning him down.

  Dizzy and breathless and on the edge of panic, Niko reached up to make a trade he hadn’t planned, but his hands were knocked down, caught in place by claws and fur. He looked up into the face of Preston’s W
olf form, panting and growling from a deep place in his belly. Niko couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, and he briefly thought he saw flashes of his life. The Wolf opened its fanged maw and—licked Niko.

  The tongue was wide, leaving a streak of saliva across Niko’s face and neck. He flinched somewhat, pulling a face. He didn’t particularly like the idea of Preston licking him, but Preston eating him was much less preferable so he calmed down anyway.

  In an instant, Preston’s Wolf form was gone, and the Werewolf was atop Niko, still pinning him to the ground, his knees straddling Niko’s hips. The proximity was much less comfortable than when he was a Wolf, much too intimate. He leaned in as though to lick Niko again, but this time he pressed his lips close to Niko’s ear instead.

  “You taste almost as good as you smell,” he breathed. “Like forever.” Niko clenched his jaw and fought the urge to jerk. The adrenaline and pain had caused his body to react in a way he most definitely did not want to back up. Preston sniffed him slightly and added, “Is that what you want, Niko? You can have it.”

  That was enough. Niko yanked his hands from Preston’s grasp and grabbed him by the shoulders. He shoved the Werewolf off. Chest heaving, Niko fixed Preston with a furious stare.

  “I’m with Cobalt,” he said, biting out every syllable. “This is to clear my name and set things right. Nothing more.”

  Preston raised his hands in a silent apology. “Whatever you say,” he said, and Niko’s tension increased. “I overheard your little argument is all. Thought maybe you were reconsidering.” He shrugged, got to his feet, and offered Niko a hand. Niko considered this. Offering a Fae a hand was always a dangerous bet. It was a peace offering.

  Niko took it after a moment, getting to his feet. He made no trades. Perhaps Preston knew he wouldn’t. “Is that why you played this ridiculous game?” he asked, gesturing toward the path he’d run.

  Preston shook his head. “No, that was for Noor,” he said. And it was here Niko noticed the bruise on Preston’s face from the previous day was gone. He supposed it was for the best; it would have been hard to explain to Noor. “You smell like fear, like sweat. And like me, frankly. You’re also covered in dirt and grass stains. That’s more evidence than any I’ve been playing with you. The disguise is more believable now. Let’s go, Pet.”