Harry put a hand on Cooper’s shoulder to thwart him. He loomed over Cooper, almost twice his size and bulk. “Just give me one minute, okay?”
Cooper nodded moving toward the opening of the door. “One minute. That’s it.”
Harry pulled her to his chest, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll come get you. Swear it. No way am I letting you take the fall for this, Mara. I’ll lie. I’ll tell them I drank the serum on purpose because I wanted to know what it was like to be a werewolf. They’ll believe it because I’m King of Geeks. Whatever it takes. But the hell I’m letting you go to werewolf jail. Hear me?” His breath shuddered from his lungs, making the width of his chest brush against her cheek.
She shook her head hard. “Don’t you dare do that, Harry! Stay with the kids. Hear me? They need you so much right now. Please,” she begged before pulling away, more tears threatening to escape. She rose on tiptoe and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. “No matter what, they need you to be there. Don’t let them down,” she whispered before pushing her way past everyone and flying out the door toward Cooper’s waiting car.
The last thing her sharp ears picked up was the sound of poor Carl, wailing his discontent at Mara’s departure while Nina and Harry tried to soothe him.
CHAPTER
17
“Fuck!” Harry roared in impatience, making an already on-edge Carl jump.
Marty’s mouth was a thin line, her eyes rimmed with red as she, Wanda, and Nina gathered in the small cottage to formulate a plan to help Mara. “Keegan’s meeting with the council tonight. He’d better find a way to talk them out of this, or I’m going into full-on assault mode and storming the castle!”
Wanda squeezed Marty’s shoulder, her elegant face full of sympathy. She wiped a fresh batch of tears from Marty’s cheeks. “They’re really going to put her on trial?”
“Ain’t that some shit? Kid makes an honest mistake, one even Harry will tell them was without malicious intent, and still they have to try her in front of a jury of her peers. Some goddamn bunch of jackasses you got in your corner, blondie,” Nina growled.
Marty nodded her head. “You know what, Elvira? Today? Today I won’t disagree with you, and if I knew there was a way to take my family and get away from this ridiculous rule the council’s set forth, don’t think for a minute I wouldn’t!”
Mara had been gone for ten hours. Ten long, painful hours they’d waited to hear what the council’s intent was regarding Mara’s arrest.
Ten long hours wherein Harry kicked himself for not seeing the signs, the hidden messages she’d left him like a trail of breadcrumbs. She knew damn well he’d have found a way to try and stop her from handing herself over like she was guilty.
Wanda came up behind him. Grabbing his hand, she pulled it to her chest, as though she were trying to absorb some of his pain. Her voice was raw when she whispered, “Promise you, we’ll figure this out, Harry. No matter what it takes, we’ll find a way. Please believe.”
Nina clapped him on the back. “Goddamn right, we will. Don’t you worry, nerd. I’ll get her out of there if I have to chew my way through the motherfucking doors.”
He’d done all the believing he was capable of. Now he just wanted everyone to get the fuck out of his path while he got to Mara.
At that moment, Keegan walked through the door, his face grim, his eyes lined from exhaustion.
Marty didn’t rush to his side the way she normally did whenever her husband entered the room. She lifted her eyes to meet his, and Harry knew as the look passed between them it wasn’t good.
Harry stiffened and growled, stunning even himself with the level of his anger.
Wanda gripped him harder, holding him in place. On tiptoe, she whispered in his ear, “Harry, I’m begging you, think of the kids. Please. They need you so much. They adore you. I know you can’t feel that sometimes because they’ve struggled, but I’ve been with them almost every night since this happened, and they cling to your memory. Please, don’t be rash. We’ll help you. We’ll help the kids. Archibald’s fallen in love with them. Don’t deny him the chance to fall in love with you, too, because you did something stupid.”
He breathed deeply, forcing down the urge to break free of Wanda’s iron grip and bust Mara out. Nothing was more important than the kids, but Mara had taken a spot right alongside them. “Okay.” He cleared his throat, and his murderous thoughts. Turning to Keegan, he asked, “So what happens next? Tell me what we do?”
Keegan ran a hand through his dark hair, his eyes finding Harry’s. “She goes to trial in front of a jury of her peers. It goes the same way it does with humans.”
“How can she go to jail for an accident? This was a goddamn accident!” How the fuck was this happening?
Keegan’s head shook, slow and weary. “We have no precedent for this, Harry. It doesn’t matter that you don’t want to see her punished. The problem is she has, in that mighty brain of hers, the wherewithal to create a formula that makes werewolves. That’s dangerous to the pack. It’s dangerous to everyone concerned. She created you. If she can do it, and she gets away with it, who’s to say someone else won’t do it and think they can get away with it?”
Harry’s jaw grew tight. “So they think if they lock her up it’ll keep some other lunatic from creating a serum just like it? Did it stop serial killers when they jailed Jeffrey Dahmer? That’s ludicrous!”
Keegan pulled off his knit cap, pinching the space between his eyebrows. “It sends a message, Harry. It’s a deterrent of sorts. Just like prosecuting anyone who’s broken a law. Mara knew what she was doing was an iffy proposition. She knew it could lead to trouble if she got caught.” Keegan held up a hand to keep Harry from protesting. “But don’t think I don’t understand your point. I do. I made it myself to the council. Still, they’ve decided to allow Mara’s peers to vote whether she can be trusted to never reveal the ingredients of that serum. She has a solid reputation in the community, mad scientist that she is. That’ll go a long way in keeping the council from believing she would sell this serum to someone.” He shook his head, sorrow streaking his eyes. “If she could have just waited, I would have found a way—something,” he murmured, worry lining his face.
Harry looked down at the floor, his gut in a knot. No way was he going to sit around while Mara was in jail. “She hated the lying. She knew it was only a matter of time before her scent on me wouldn’t fly anymore. She also knew she had to keep your alpha position safe. She didn’t want you to be accused of favoritism.”
Keegan approached him with clear hesitation. “In all this, I’ve forgotten to ask how you are. Marty tells me you want out no matter how you find it.”
“What if I find a way to do that? Will this council arrest me, too?” He was provoking unnecessarily, and while it was rude, Harry couldn’t stop himself.
“He’s not the fucking enemy, dude. Step off,” Nina said with a warning.
“What can the pack do to help you adjust, Harry? At least until you figure this out.” Keegan persisted, obviously not put off by his angry words.
Harry took in another deep breath. “My apologies. I’m taking this out on you when it’s not your fault. Just tell me what this proceeding is like. Can I be there?”
Keegan nodded. “You have no choice. They’ll call you as a witness. You just tell the truth and relay what happened the night you were turned.”
Harry scoffed without even realizing it. “Will it even matter? Will they take into account my testimony? They don’t seem to care much that I, the alleged victim, am just damn fine with the idea of being a werewolf. If I don’t want to press charges, there shouldn’t damn well be any.” It was all he could do not to break something, hit someone.
And he’d just admitted, out loud, he’d come to terms with being a werewolf.
It meant he could be with Mara. For as long as she’d have him. If she’d have him. He
’d decided last night when she’d given him the speech about her age and all the kooky bits of information about werewolf-ing. He wanted Mara. Period. If that meant baying at the moon and living forever, he’d find a way to figure it out where the kids were concerned.
In this precarious situation, one he was told he could never change, he’d rather have Mara and the kids together than have them without her. He didn’t ever want to think about a time when the kids weren’t a part of his world. However, the cards he’d been dealt left him little choice but to accept what fate had handed him.
But he had to make one thing clear to Mara. If there ever came a time when he could reverse this, he would. Not because he hated the idea, but because Mimi and Fletcher were the most important things in his life, and to watch them leave this earth before him was unthinkable.
He ran a hand over his grainy eyes. “How can I make these council members understand?”
Keegan cleared his throat. “I’d like to think they will, Harry—if they hear it from you. They didn’t love Marty and me at first either. I was meant to mate with someone else entirely.”
Harry held a hand up. “Hold up. This pack chooses your mate? The hell I’ll be told who to spend my life with,” he grumbled. “Do they even know what century we live in? Next you’ll tell me dowries and goat exchanges are involved.”
Keegan barked a harsh laugh. “You know, there was a time . . . Never mind. The point is they adjusted. They’re not unreasonable. They’re just from another era, one where humans and werewolves don’t mix under any circumstances. So yes, I’d like to think they’ll find a way to understand how this happened.”
“Think they will, Keegan?” Marty erupted in a yelp, disbelief riddling her question. “You have some pull, Keegan! Use it, damn it. I’m not going to sit back and let Mara go to prison because the council thinks she’s a crazy, werewolf-creating little Frankenstein. You know that’s not true! Surely her good reputation within the pack lets them see she’d never hurt a soul? What’s being a good girl for, if not for it to work in your favor? Jesus Christ!” Marty yelled up at him, her face contorted in fear and misery, her fists clenched at her side.
But Keegan didn’t shoot back like one would expect. Instead he pulled Marty to his chest and let her cry into it, releasing her ragged sobs of frustration.
Her raw, agonizing wail made his chest uncomfortably tight. Harry gripped the back of Mara’s couch.
The very couch he’d made the most incredible love with her on. And he was determined, despite their enormous differences, to have the chance to do that again.
Nina knocked his shoulder with hers and hitched her jaw toward the small hallway dividing Mara’s bedroom and the bathroom.
He followed without question. “Say something good, Nina. Say something that’ll keep me from blowing this whole thing for Mara by doing something unreasonable.”
Nina held up her phone, tapping it with a short nail. “Your favorite lame-ass witch doctor Guido just left me a voice mail. I think we got a lead on who snatched the damn kids and Carl. Listen.” She held her phone up to his ear.
Harry grabbed the phone, his eyes going wide as he heard what Guido had to say.
* * *
AS she entered the council courtroom, rich with miles of crown molding and an imposing judge’s bench that appeared a mile high, Mara lifted her chin, refusing to be ashamed of her prison garb. This might be, by far, one of the least flattering outfits she’d ever worn, but Marty’s words, as crazy a time as it was to actually remember them, still rang clear. “Even if it’s the worst fashion faux pas of your life, wear that bitch like you intended it, honey.”
Okay, so that had been in reference to the ugly oversized tie-dyed T-shirt she’d worn with a pair of red leggings and yellow ballet slippers, which Nina had promptly banned, but her jailhouse jumpsuit was sort of on the same level. She just wasn’t a free woman making the choice to wear something so ugly.
Clinking her way to her seat, along with what felt like an endless aisle of pack member after pack member in the crowd, she passed Marty and Keegan. Marty, threats of no contact to the prisoner be damned, reached out and grabbed her hand just before one of the council’s prison guards tried to prevent it, her eyes irate and sad at the same time.
Nina was up and out of her seat in a flash, almost making Mara smile. Except she was on her way to being tried for werewolf-making, and maybe a life sentence. That wasn’t cause for smiling.
Nina lifted her sunglasses and growled at the guard. “Touch a bitch, and I kill you, weasel. You got that?” She leered at him; despite his size, he had to clearly fight to keep his ground. “You’re draggin’ her around like you just caught Charlie Manson the Second. Take it down a notch, brother. You didn’t train at Quantico, and she ain’t some mass murderer. So step off. You do not want to see my vampire rage, poser.”
Mara, after a long sleepless night next to a snoring fellow werewolf inmate doing time for killing a neighboring farm’s cows, almost giggled. It had to be from lack of sleep and maybe a touch of delirium, but somehow Nina ignoring the long arm of the law was a million shades of awesome. “Nina,” she whispered, remembering where she was. “It’s okay. Sit down before they give me extra time for friends behaving badly.”
Nina turned to her, putting her hand up in the guard’s face before he could protest. “You okay, Short-Shot? Anybody bother you in the big house? You say it, I’ll kill it.”
Mara nodded on a gulp. She’d never doubted Nina was a marshmallow on the inside. When her favor shone upon you, it was like Mother Teresa herself had taken your hand and told you everything was going to be just fine.
“I’m fine. Swear,” she assured like she’d spent the night glamping instead of lying on a hard cot, in a cold, sterile cell, beneath a woman whose snoring rivaled ten grown men with deviated septums. “Are the kids okay?”
Harry, big, handsome and, even in her predicament, still stealing her breath with his handsomeness, rose and stood up behind Nina. And then he tripped over something, probably his big feet, almost falling into the vampire and the others seated beside them.
Someone reached up to offer assistance, but Harry held up his hand. “I’ve got this!” he whisper-yelled, gripping the back of the wooden pews set up in the courtroom to steady himself. When he looked at Mara, his eyes were warm. “The kids are fine. They’re with Arch while we’re all here.”
Mara glanced over past Harry and Nina to find Wanda, Ying, Leah, and Astrid all in solidaric attendance. Astrid and Ying raised fists of support while Leah dug in her purse.
Darnell stood at the back of the courtroom, his face somber even as he nodded his head in her direction. Her brother Sloan and his new wife Jeannie, a pretty petite blonde who adored her husband, sat in the middle of everything, holding hands, worried expressions on their faces.
The cold glare of sunlight filtered in through the high row of windows to their left, lining the interior of the courtroom, highlighting their faces, so pale and full of fear. Mara’s heart warmed with undying gratitude for the people who loved her and supported her, even in an act of stupidity.
Jeannie wiggled her nose a la I Dream of Jeannie, using the joke they all teased her with as a signal to Mara she could make this all go away by using her magic if necessary. Genie magic trumped everything, but that would only bring huge disorder to Jeannie’s reign as head djinn. Never would Mara risk her sister-in-law’s position for her own benefit.
Mara gave her a subtle shake of her head, shooting her a glance filled with gratitude.
Harry reached over Nina’s shoulder and ran a tender finger along her cheek.
“Has anyone heard from Jeff?” she asked him, still sick with worry he was hurt somewhere.
He passed Nina and shook his head. “No. Not yet. And for now, the police seem satisfied he’s in Vegas. We spent all night trying to find clues to his whereabouts, but nothing tu
rned up. Not even in Vegas—which will never be the same after Nina. But right now, I need you to just listen, say absolutely nothing, and keep your expression unreadable. Second, if all hell breaks loose, just go with the chaos, okay? Oh, and go team werewolf,” he said on a smile—one that was steady and sure.
Her face curled into his touch without a moment’s hesitation. She stared right at him, trying to read what his cryptic message meant. “Thank you,” was all she could manage before the guard pulled her away toward the high back chair she was to sit in for judgment.
Settling herself as comfortably as she could with handcuffs on, Mara waited for the council to begin the proceedings. Oddly, while the elders of the pack assembled and situated, she wasn’t at all fearful for her future or their scowling frowns. Not the way she’d once been as a child anyway.
When she was little, the council was a group of people who watched over you from on high, larger than life, and scarier, too. You never saw them. They were, for all intents and purposes, invisible; chosen for their superior observation skills and wise handling of pack issues. You never knew how they were always watching. You just knew they were.
Sort of like Santa Claus, minus the cute, fun-loving elves and flying reindeer.
And she’d always behaved accordingly—with the idea that at any moment, one of them would pop up and catch her doing something wrong, like writing on the bathroom walls or smoking weed. Her fear, the fear they’d instilled, had always been with her, albeit subconsciously. It was the silent force that drove the good girl in her without ever having to say a word in reprimand.
Today, as she focused on the faces deciding her future, aged by centuries of life, gray and allegedly wise, as she watched the group of her werewolf peers file in and take their places in the jury box, she saw them for what they were.
Really old guys with dusty robes and a bunch of people she used to see in the halls of her high school who knew nothing about her. Not a single thing. They didn’t know how deep her desire to have a family of her own ran.
The Accidental Werewolf 2: Something About Harry (Accidentally Paranormal Novel) Page 25