by Ladew, Lisa
But Mac was there, catching him around the waist, pulling him away from Graeme, who let out a grunt and staggered backwards himself.
Mac picked him up, carried him to the wooden bench and placed him there as gently as he would a pup, murmuring to him softly. Wade felt the strength come back into his limbs slowly, but steadily, even as his mind went into overdrive. When he could, he stood and reached into his pocket, withdrawing what he had been carrying around since the night Graeme, with a bit of help, had saved the future of all shiften.
He held the badge out on his palm, with its special KSRT marking. “We shall have a proper ceremony if you accept. Graeme, will you officially join the Serenity P.D.? We could use a good male like you.”
Graeme stared at the badge for what felt like too long. Just when Wade was certain he would refuse, he said, “Life’s burden forever grows. I will give you my answer anon.”
Before Wade could blink, a red dragon the size of a sparrow replaced Graeme on the dirt in front of him, then took flight, disappearing into the sky.
Chapter 9
Trevor turned left, pulling the eight-passenger van into the police department parking lot. The building looked different to him now. Not a place to do his most-important work anymore, but more of a distraction from his real life. Fighting against Khain would always be in his blood, but Ella was his world now. Ella and the young she carried inside her belly. What happened between the walls of the sterile building in front of him would never be able to compete with that.
Even as the thoughts ran through his mind, he knew that wasn’t reality. He could be called to give his life in the service of the Serenity PD at any moment, and then Ella would be alone. His pups would grow up without a father, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He bit his lip, ignoring the banter of the males in the back seat, then glancing over at his mate. She looked lovely. Glowing was definitely the right term.
She caught his glance and smiled at him, then held out her hand, twining her fingers in his for just a moment before she tried to step out her door.
“Wait,” he called, then jumped out and ran around to her side, helping her down.
They strode arm in arm to the front door of the department, catching up to Wade, who was also just arriving.
Wade beamed at them. “Good news.”
“The dragen is awake,” Trevor said, thinking of the best thing that could happen.
“He is. I saw him this morning.”
Ella clapped her hands together and bounced on the balls of her feet. “I’m so glad he’s recovered. I want to thank him properly for everything he did for us.”
Her face darkened for a minute, and Trevor thought she must be thinking of her sister, who was still in her own coma in the hospital. He pulled Ella close and kissed her on the forehead.
“Come, apparently there’s something going on with the foxen,” Wade said, but before he could open the door, Harlan exited it, his head down, his brow furrowed, almost running into them. He looked up at them and frowned. “Finally. I sent the video to your computer, Wade. All three of you need to go watch it, and then we need orders.”
He tried to keep walking, but Trevor caught his arm. “You coming?”
Harlan shook his head. “No, I’ve got to go deal with the foxen.”
Wade looked hard at Harlan. “Wait, I thought we were here to get some big news about the foxen.”
Harlan waved a hand. “You are. Go watch the video, then talk to me. I have to meet with a foxen representative at city hall who says he’s got a group of them together demanding one true mates.”
Wade scoffed. “What? We aren’t doling out females here. Even if they are or aren’t fated to one shiften, we can’t decide who that shiften is or who the one true mates are attracted to.”
Harlan leaned forward. “Beckett’s already told him that, twice. The male doesn’t believe it and says they are going to schedule protests if at least some of the one true mates aren’t put aside for them. His words. That’s why I’m going to meet with him in person.” He looked to Trevor. “Can I bring Trent and Troy? I could use some help reading him.”
“What a fool,” Trevor growled. “Yeah, they are in the van with the rest of the guard.”
Wade clapped Harlan on the shoulder. The male hurried away and Wade pushed in the door, holding it open for Ella and Trevor. Heads turned their way immediately as every officer in the large, open room stopped what they were doing to stare at the only one true mate found so far.
Ella scooched closer to him and curled her fingers around his arm, ducking her head behind his shoulder. He was about to whisper something reassuring to her when the applause started. “Oh God,” she squeaked. Trevor put his arm around her then waved his thanks and appreciation to his fellow officers. She didn’t understand what a big deal it was that she existed, but he did.
They crossed the room quickly and he felt her body relax as they entered the empty hallway that headed toward Wade’s office.
Mac was waiting inside for them. “About time. Harlan said there’s some video we’re all supposed to see?”
Wade reached his laptop and fiddled with it. “I’m working on it,” he said.
Trevor pulled over two chairs and sat Ella in the one farthest away from Mac, then bared his teeth at Mac in greeting. Mac grunted back.
Wade stopped what he was doing and looked up at them, his eyes narrowed, his voice tight. “What’s up with you two?”
Trevor sighed and sank into his chair. “I’m good, Chief.”
Mac snapped his fingers and popped both his thumbs up, a cheese-eating grin on his face. “Me too, Daddy-O. Right as acid rain.”
Wade leaned on his desk and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You two have got to work together. You have no idea─”
Trevor interrupted him. “Really, Chief. We’re good. Mac carried me out of the Pravus. Saved my mate. We’re not ever gonna be best friends, but I owe him my life and I’ve told him so. We are able to work together.”
“Yeah, Chief, you missed the waterworks. Golden boy got down on one knee and everything. Hell, I might have said something humble myself. I know I’ve let my mouth get away from me a few times in my life. You know, once or twice, three times max.”
Wade looked from wolf to wolf, then his gaze settled on Ella.
Ella nodded. “I don’t remember any crying, but there was a sincere attempt on both their parts to forge some sort of a civil relationship.” She smiled at Trevor and he squirmed, knowing what she was going end with. “It was beautiful.”
Wade nodded, relaxing slightly. “That’s good. That’s great. Because we’re going to need it. Something big is coming. I can feel it.”
Trevor shifted in his chair, pulling his posture up straighter. “About that. Do we have any idea what Khain is up to?”
“No, there’s been no sign of him since the disturbance the day you were mated and nothing came of that.”
Trevor shook his head, thinking. “Any chance he’ll take off? Leave the area?”
“I doubt he’ll ever leave Serenity as long as Rhen’s body is here. Something about it seems to keep him rooted here. My guess is he’s resting like he always seems to do after a major battle with us. If we could get to him, now would be the time to do it.”
Mac snorted. “Or he’s pouting.”
Wade messed around with his laptop again and Trevor spit out his words in a rush, not wanting to leave them for later. “I think I should give up leadership of the KSRT.”
Ella’s hand found his and he squeezed it as Mac and Wade both turned hard stares on him. He held up his free hand. “Hear me out. The Demon Destroyer prophecy. Guaranteed it’s not about me. It’s about my young. And my focus is divided. I’m not going to be able to give the role everything it needs while I’m worried about Ella. I don’t think I can even leave her to come to work. I don’t care how many shiften you’ve got guarding her. I have to be there myself.”
Wade stared at the wall
over Trevor’s head, his gaze thoughtful. “I think Ella can take care of herself.”
Tension built in Trevor’s chest. “It doesn’t matter what she’s capable of doing. I still need to be there.”
Wade’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re not going to leave her side until the young are born?”
Trevor shook his head. “Are you kidding me? Once the young are born it will be even more important that I am with her every second. Her and the young. I understand it may not always be possible to be with her. But I can’t imagine coming to work every day and leaving her on her own. Put yourself in my place.”
He searched for more words to explain what he was feeling. “The young she is carrying are everything, Wade.”
Wade was silent for a long time.
Mac cleared his throat. “Even if the prophecy is not about you, even if I and the other members of the team do all or most of the work, you’re still the leader. You still need to be calling the shots. We can make it work.”
Trevor couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He thought Mac would have jumped at the chance to take over.
Wade nodded. “That’s settled, then.” He flipped his computer around so they could see it, walked around his desk, stood between Trevor and Mac, then pressed “play”.
The screen showed a dark room, with a male in a chair in the middle of it, his face blank, his lips moving steadily.
“Hey! That’s the guy!” Ella cried.
“Which guy?” Trevor asked.
Mac leaned forward. “The foxen from the Pravus. You were doing your impression of a fish being smothered by good old H2O.” He tapped Wade. “Can you turn it up?”
Wade fiddled with the sound and the male’s voice filled the room, but his words ran together too quickly for them to make any sense of what he was saying.
“TheselandswillbeourstoreignoveraslordsandourfemaleswillberestoredtousourprogenywillfloodthesoilIamthevanquisherof…”
Trevor frowned, picking out a word here and there, but not liking the way it sounded or the words he could catch. It made him think of pillagers and pirates. It went on for five minutes or more, the soliloquy from hell.
“He’s crazy,” Mac muttered, then froze as a female voice cut in over the syllables.
“Stop!” the unseen woman cried. “Tell me about the wolves. I only want to know about the werewolves.”
The foxen froze and stopped talking, but Trevor could see his chest moving as he snuck tiny sips of air. His head turned slightly to the left as if he were looking at someone.
“There are no werewolves.”
The woman’s voice turned almost desperate. “That’s not what you said before.”
“Werewolves are made up. Make believe. What we are facing is much more dangerous than a werewolf.”
Trevor held his breath. Where had Harlan gotten this video? Who had seen it? Any humans?
The foxen’s reedy voice lowered. “The wolves that live in Serenity, indeed, in the entire world, are not tied to the moon in the manner of story. They run by it, mate by it, but they do not worship it or change only when it is fat.” His eyes widened and Trevor saw madness there.
“Go on,” the female voice said.
The foxen faced forward again, his voice losing any intonation. “Ohhearmethycunningandcrimson─”
“No!” the woman screamed, but this time no light returned to the foxen’s eyes and his mutterings continued. The video ended.
Wade looked to Trevor and opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but before he could, Mac jumped to his feet and pulled Wade’s laptop across the desk, his movements jerky and his breath steam-rolling in and out of his body as if he’d just run a marathon. “Who is she? I have to hear her voice again,” he muttered as he restarted the video, that horrible muttering dawning anew.
“Wait,” Wade said, reaching past Mac and pausing it. “There’s something about the─”
Mac set his feet and shoved Wade across the room without looking at him, then started the video again. Trevor stared at the insubordination, unable to believe what he was seeing. He half-stood, not knowing what to do, while Ella curled into a ball in her chair.
“Mac! Face me!” Wade’s sharp order reverberated off the walls of the office, telling Mac he had one chance and one chance only.
Mac didn’t hear. He manipulated the video timeline to where he wanted it with jerky pulls of the mouse. “You don’t understand. That voice. That female. I must hear it ag─”
His word cut off like he’d been karate chopped in the throat and his body froze, half-bent over Wade’s desk. Trevor glanced at Wade, who was frowning, but not in effort. Trevor knew Mac was bound and could not move, could not even breathe, until Wade let him go, and it did not cost the citlali much effort to bind one of their own species.
Wade approached Mac. “You forgot yourself, Mac. Don’t ever do that again.”
But Mac was struggling against the bind. Great cords stood out on his neck as he tried to move even a muscle. Wade’s frown deepened and he lowered his head and stared at Mac. Never, in all of his time on the planet, had Trevor seen a shiften even try to resist a bind.
Until now. With a great roar that forced a startled squeak from Ella, Mac pulled the right side of his body free and moved the mouse one more time.
Wade let him go, and he took in a gasping breath, his body jerking to bend over the computer again as if none of it had ever happened, although a vicious growling started deep in his throat.
Wade reached out and touched Mac’s arm, almost reverently. Mac collapsed to the floor, unconscious, his head bouncing off the white tile with a hollow thump.
Ella moaned and Trevor took her hand. “It’s ok, Wade put him under. It won’t hurt him.” Trevor looked to Wade. “Right?”
Wade nodded, staring at Mac, concern on his face. “I needed to make sure I could. I’ve never had anyone successfully resist a bind before.”
“What in the hell was that all about, anyway?”
Wade motioned to the computer, his face set. “A hundred bucks says we found another one true mate. Kind of.” He faced Trevor and motioned to Mac. “Another hundred says things are about to get dangerous.”
A thunderous roar from somewhere in the duty room outside Wade’s office shook the building like an earthquake, and Trevor shot to his feet, pulling Ella into his arms and staring at the doorway.
“Did I say dangerous? I meant deadly.” Wade muttered, then touched Mac on the arm again. “Wake up, you overgrown Saint Bernard, we might need you.” Males shouted and Trevor could hear people running and yelling to each other in the hallway.
Mac pushed to his hands and knees and shook his head, his mind seemingly his own again. “What’s going on?”
“Let’s go see,” Wade said, heading off at a dead run.
Chapter 10
Ella moved closer to her mate, knowing he would protect her, no matter what was happening in the duty room.
He curled a protective arm around her shoulders. “You ok, if we go see?”
She nodded, admitting to herself that she felt more curious and excited than scared. She thought she recognized that roar.
When they rounded the corner into the large open room lined with desks and computers, she saw she had been right. But why was Graeme in the middle of the room in a fighter’s stance, holding Blake and another male by their throats, while half the department circled him warily, unsure what to do? She recognized the second male as one she’d seen at the house under the green tarp a few times, which meant he was either a bearen or a felen. Given his straight-forward good looks, his abundance of dark hair and beard, and his brawn, she thought bearen. The felen, she’d noticed, tended towards more sleek and compact. Bearen were more like wolven in that the ones she had seen so far were always big.
Wade skidded to a stop a few feet from the action, Mac just behind him. “What in the hell is going on here?”
Blake rolled his eyes to Wade, clutching at Graeme’s fingers, but he
couldn’t speak. Beckett spoke up from the other side of Graeme, skirting him to get closer to Wade. “Do you want the full version? Or the Cliff notes?”
Wade snarled. “I want whatever is going to let me understand this in the quickest way possible.”
Beckett pointed to a blonde female Ella hadn’t immediately seen because she was partially hidden, crouching behind a desk. “First, she came in and said she had to confess to a crime, but every time I tried to get details from her, she shut down and stopped talking. I brought her back here to process her when he walked in the back.” Beckett pointed at the bearen Graeme was choking the life out of. “When he saw her, he handed me this dvd and said she started the fire last night on the hill.” He gave Wade a pointed look. “You know, the one we were briefed about this morning.”
Wade raised his eyebrows and nodded, watching Blake and the bearen as if checking to see if they were still conscious, while Graeme sucked in huge agitated breaths, his fingers curled around two throats, his eyes on the blonde woman. Wade nodded at Beckett and twirled his fingers in a little hurry it up gesture.
“I asked him what was on the dvd and he said “evidence”, so I was going to watch it. I asked Blake to fingerprint her. He took her by the arm, and that’s when Graeme came in the door.” Beckett splayed his fingers towards Graeme and shook his head. “You’ll have to ask him why he lost his shit.”
Graeme snorted and Ella heard electricity crackle in the noise. “No one touches her,” he yelled, his eyes traveling over every male in the room, as if daring them to try.
Wade nodded, seeming oddly pleased, but Ella barely noticed. Her eyes were glued to the female behind the desk, who was watching Graeme with eyes that held more healthy appreciation than fear. For some reason, Ella wanted to gather her up, take her into a quiet room, and just talk to her. Ask her about her life, share secrets, compare notes… just get to know her. As Ella stared, the woman lifted her head and stared back, something weighty passing between them for only a moment.