by Laura Taylor
“Where would you like this put?” Genna asked George as she arrived in the kitchen with an empty dessert tray. Since she’d begun living with this Den, she’d got to know a few of its members a little better and had taken an instant liking to George. He was a quiet man, spending a large amount of his time in the kitchen, but she’d learned that once you got him talking, he was fascinating to listen to, with dozens of stories about things he’d done with his wife in his younger years.
“Just by the sink will do,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll put them all in the dishwasher once this load has finished.”
Genna did just that, then carefully washed her hands and looked around for something else to do. It wasn’t just her desire to help George that was keeping her skulking about in the kitchen. The atmosphere outside had been decidedly awkward, with a significant part of the tension centred around Genna herself, and any excuse to avoid the throng of people for a while was welcome.
There was nothing else to do for the moment, though, so she was about to head reluctantly back outside when the door opened. Luna pulled up short as she stepped into the kitchen, surprised to see Genna standing there. She glanced from her to George. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m not getting in the way, am I? I just wanted a glass of water.” She held up her empty glass awkwardly.
“Not at all,” George said, on his way out the door. “I’m just gathering up the plates and trays at the moment. There’s only a little bit of cleaning up left.” He disappeared out the door, and Genna moved to follow him, sure that Luna wouldn’t want to get stuck with her.
“How are you?” Luna blurted out, as soon as George was gone. She darted forward to grab Genna in a rough hug. “Are you all right? Are they treating you okay?”
Genna flinched back at the unexpected embrace, baffled for a moment by Luna’s sudden concern. “I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Why do you care, anyway?” Since they’d arrived in Scotland, not a single one of her old pack had come to talk to her, or asked how she was, or even said hello. After they’d heard about the Treaty, she was fairly sure they all hated her anyway. Even if they believed that Sempre and Lita had done the organising, she couldn’t deny her role in the illegal meeting.
“I’m so sorry,” Luna said, letting her go. “Sempre’s forbidden all of us from speaking to you. She said you’ve betrayed our pack and that you’re trying to defect to Il Trosa. Anyone caught associating with you will be punished.”
The news was no surprise, nor was the fact that until now, no one had dared break the rule. “Then what are you doing here?” Genna asked, as Luna ducked over to the door and looked out into the hallway, then quietly closed it. Her furtive behaviour was nothing new. It was a constant guessing game where Luna was concerned, whether she was going to offer an encouraging word and a morsel of food, or cosy up to Sempre and curry favour with the senior wolves. “Don’t you hate me for breaking the Treaty? And running away, and killing Feriur?”
“I was rather shocked about the Treaty part of it,” Luna admitted quickly, glancing over at the door again, then lowering her voice. “But you running away… I’m only surprised you didn’t do it sooner. We all saw the way Sempre was treating you. I’m sorry we didn’t stop her, but none of us knew how to help without inviting the same punishment on ourselves.” Genna was starting to feel a little better. She knew all too well how the pack worked, that everyone was terrified of Sempre, and it was heartening to think that people had wanted to visit her, but just hadn’t been able to find an occasion to sneak away. “And killing Feriur… I can’t really say I’m sorry about that one. She had less power than Lita, but her temperament was just as bad.”
“I only did it out of self defence,” Genna said, the one part of her tangled story that remained steadfastly true. “She was trying to strangle me.”
“That’s what Eleanor told us. And for what it’s worth, I believe you.”
She did? Perhaps Genna had been wrong. Perhaps everyone wasn’t set against her after all…
But then Luna went on. “Did Sempre really order you to meet with the Noturatii?” she asked, eyes wide, hands gripping her glass like she was trying to crush the thing. And that’s when her devious charade came crashing down.
“What are you playing at?” Genna asked sharply, taking a sudden step back. “You didn’t come here to see if I was okay. You came to dig for information.”
Luna looked affronted. “That’s not true! With all the things Sempre has done in the past, it’s not hard to believe she’d break the Treaty as well. I just thought-”
“You’re as two-faced as they come,” Genna snarled. “You give out gifts with one hand and stab us in the back with the other. Well, don’t bother trying to play innocent with me. Until you can decide whose side you’re on, I’m done with you.”
Luna said nothing, her face suddenly pale, and an odd determination settled in her eyes. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” she said quietly, hastily going to the sink and filling her glass. Keeping up appearances for when she went back outside? But why, if she’d broken Sempre’s rule just to try and trap Genna anyway? “It wasn’t my intention. I’ll leave you alone.” She opened the door, then turned back just before she left. “I truly admire you, Genna. Your courage is something that all of us could learn from. May Sirius guide you.” And then she was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Out in a private alcove deep in the estate’s gardens, Kajus shifted back into human form, after spending a moment listening carefully and scenting the air to ensure he and Linnea were alone. Linnea followed suit, and then he resumed their conversation right where they’d left off.
“The demonstration itself was nothing impressive,” he said dismissively, but then went on. “Genna is young. Both as a wolf and as a human. She’s been a particle mage for less than six months, so there’s absolutely no point in trying to judge her skills yet. It’ll take years for her to master the magic. But the fact that she exists at all is… significant.”
“I agree,” Linnea said. “She’s extremely valuable to the Watch, especially now we have a far greater understanding of science than ever before. This is a unique opportunity to understand our magic better.”
“I’ll say it again; we still have little to no information on exactly what happened for the Treaty to be broken,” Kajus repeated, knowing he was about to push his luck in a big way. If Linnea wasn’t the ally he thought her to be… “But even now, I would say that keeping Genna alive has to be a major aim of these talks. I’d be willing to offer Il Trosa significant compensation for her.”
“As would I,” Linnea said grimly. “But the Council just recently bought this estate. It’s got to be worth a few million pounds, at the very least. So the whole of the Grey Watch put together wouldn’t have enough money to make it worth their while to overlook the potential loss of one of their Dens for the sake of one girl.”
Kajus sighed as he chewed over that one. Linnea was right. “But if Genna wasn’t responsible for the breach,” he said slowly. “If it turns out that Sempre was actually the one who planned it…”
“You’d be willing to convict an innocent woman for the sake of keeping Genna alive?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Kajus snapped. “I’ve said time and again that the talks haven’t even started yet. We have no idea who’s innocent or guilty.”
“I’m not putting words in your mouth. Just trying to understand your perspective.”
“And what would your perspective be?” He’d said too much already, and he wasn’t saying anything more until Linnea gave some indication of her own position on the matter.
A weighty pause followed. “I agree: Genna is valuable,” Linnea said, her tone low and cautious. “And I think it would be worth looking at possibilities to keep her alive. But you realise that you and I will not be the only ones having private talks in the hedgerows. There may be others working together to achieve completely different aims. Some may even wish to disrupt talks altogether, in the belief that
war between Il Trosa and the Watch may benefit one side or the other.” Kajus nodded. It had been obvious as soon as they’d all arrived that alliances would form, deals be made. “So we would have to consider that you and I voting against Sempre wouldn’t be enough. It would take a joint and consistent effort – and no small measure of subtlety – to convince a majority of the others to do the same.”
“We can’t do much more until we hear the details of the breach,” Kajus said pragmatically. “There are too many unknowns to form any real strategy yet. But we’ll talk again tomorrow. It looks like you and I are going to have our work cut out for us.”
Tank smiled and nodded as he passed one of the Panel members – if he’d cared enough, he might have been able to remember her name – and headed over to the drinks table to grab another beer, dumping his empty bottle in a bin to be recycled later. Though the shifters knew how to throw a party, they were also very environmentally conscious, and everything that could be either reused, or recycled, was.
He twisted the top off the next bottle, his fourth for the evening, but the alcohol wasn’t even touching the sides. He was a big man, and getting drunk was something that was only really possible with high doses of straight whiskey. Whatever was in the beer was just getting burned off as quickly as he could drink it.
Heading off to the edge of the clearing, he sighed and leaned against a tree. The evening had been a moderate success, everyone a little tense and awkward, but if they were ever going to break down the social barriers between them all, they had to start somewhere. Alistair, he saw, was working the crowd with a smooth charisma that made him both very likable and very good at his job as a freelance journalist. Kwan was making more than a token effort, with Aaron as his ever-present shadow, and a handful more had started out in a nervous huddle, but were now mingling with the Panel members.
Sempre’s pack, on the other hand, seemed to be keeping mostly to themselves, and as the evening wore on, Tank noticed that half of them had already disappeared back to their own camp.
But there was one person he had been keeping an eye on all evening, and he frowned now, noticing that she was looking rather worn out. Genna appeared out of the manor’s front door, and Tank assumed she’d been helping George clean up in the kitchen. She seemed to have taken a liking to the older man, and he supposed that friends were hard enough to come by that she’d take whatever company she could get, since aside from the desire to be helpful, the two of them seemed to have little in common.
He watched as she wandered over to the dessert table and eyed the few pieces of pecan slice that were still left. She’d been eating like a horse since joining the Den, and he was glad to see she’d filled out her thin frame a little. But she was still too light for his liking.
As he watched, she glanced around, as if worried she was about to be caught doing something bad, and then gingerly took a slice, nibbling the edge, her eyes half closed in pleasure-
“What do you think you’re doing?” a voice said, and Tank was startled to find Miller standing right beside him. Bloody hell, he should have heard the man approaching. Where was his usual focus today?
“Doing about what?” he asked, trying to hide his unease at being surprised like that.
“Genna is accused of breaking the Treaty,” Miller said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “So what are you doing going around making moon eyes at her?”
Denying the fact was Tank’s automatic reaction, but he stopped before he actually said the words. Somehow, saying ‘I’m not’ just seemed to lend credence to Miller’s accusation. “I’m just worried about her,” he said instead, not a lie, but a convenient adaptation of the truth. “You’ve heard enough stories about what Sempre’s pack has been up to. She needs our help and our protection.”
“I’ve heard the stories,” Miller confirmed. “But so far, that’s all they’ve been: stories. Your pack has a rather strong dislike of theirs, so I’ve been taking the accusations against them with a grain of salt.”
Tank turned to glare at him. “Genna was raped during her conversion. At Sempre’s prompting, by a member of her own pack. That’s not a fucking story,” he snarled, disgusted by Miller’s calm acceptance of Sempre’s crimes.
But Miller suddenly paled, and he made a choking sound. “Jesus Christ, are you serious?”
“As a grave.”
Miller seemed at a loss for words. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard that bit. I just… Sorry. People have been fairly quick to judge me, based on where I come from. I just thought maybe I should be giving them the benefit of the doubt.”
Tank sighed, telling himself to calm down. “It’s a noble sentiment,” he admitted. “I’ve been guilty enough at times of trying to see the best in people, while ignoring the reality in front of me.”
“People like Genna?” Miller asked, causing Tank’s scowl to return. “She’s already admitted to meeting with me, and the Panel hasn’t even begun unpacking whether or not Sempre was involved. So aren’t you being a little quick to paint her as the victim?”
Okay, patience be damned. This was pissing Tank off. “What’s it to you?” he asked softly, the threat in his voice all the more potent for the lack of volume.
“She’s been watching you all evening. I don’t think it’s fair to her for you to be giving her the wrong impression. Even if Sempre is found to be responsible, you know as well as I do that this pack would never accept her as one of its own. So don’t go getting her hopes up by whispering sweet nothings in her ear.”
Once again, Tank opened his mouth to deny it, and once again, he stopped himself. Was that what he’d been doing? Giving her promises, however inadvertently, that he wasn’t prepared to follow through on?
“She’s young and impressionable,” Miller went on, not realising that Tank’s mind was wandering, “and she’s looking for a rock to cling onto in the middle of a storm. You’re 2IC to Baron, you’ve managed to rescue her twice already, and you have a strong personality. It would be very, very easy for her to develop some inappropriate feelings there.”
All at once, Tank felt like an awkward teenager. At the age of thirty-four, he’d rather forgotten what it was like to be young and shy and to develop a rip-roaring crush on someone. He’d taken Genna’s occasional stand-offish-ness to mean that she wasn’t interested in him. But maybe she was just young. For all that her eyes told stories of suffering and she carried an air of determination like a shield, she was still only, what, twenty-two? Twenty-three?
“I see your point,” Tank said, glancing back at Genna. She had finished her snack and was now standing with her arms folded, glaring at the ground and kicking the gravel on the driveway in a way that said clear as day that she wished she was anywhere but here. “And you’re right. I may have misled her about my intentions.”
Miller gave him a sympathetic smile. “I don’t mean to give you a hard time. I just think we have enough drama going on around here already without anyone inadvertently getting their heart broken.”
That was something that Tank genuinely liked about Miller. He still had a low rank, and a lot of people hadn’t really learned to trust him yet, but he never let that stand in the way of him saying what he believed was right, or standing up for someone who couldn’t stand up for themselves. One day, once he worked past the antagonism surrounding where he’d come from, Tank had little doubt that he’d end up as a high ranking wolf. “Leave it with me,” he said, slapping Miller on the shoulder, then frowning as Genna disappeared around the back of the manor. Where was she going now? “I’ll have a word to her and straighten things out.”
After her conversation with Luna had ended so abruptly, Genna tried to act natural back outside with everyone else, but she’d ended up spending the whole time feeling horribly self-conscious. She was rather regretting what she’d said to Luna, taking the immediate defensive, rather than just sticking to her story and agreeing that yes, Sempre really had sent her to meet the Noturatii. She’d spent the last fiftee
n minutes twisting herself in knots, replaying the conversation over and over again, thinking up clever things she should have said instead, and in the end, she’d slipped away around the back of the manor, desperate for a little time to herself.
It was getting late, and she was starting to feel tired, but she was still too restless to go inside to her bedroom. She missed sleeping outdoors. It was nice to be able to get out of the rain when she wanted to, but her bedroom was silent and still, a stark contrast to the far more comforting creaks and rustles of the forest at night. There were frogs she could hear through the window – which she habitually left open now, despite the rapidly dropping temperatures – and the occasional call of an owl or some other night bird, but it wasn’t enough to compensate for being truly immersed in nature twenty-four hours a day.
The soft pad of wolf paws caught her attention, and she turned to see a grey wolf approaching her in the darkness. She couldn’t quite identify who it was in the dark, so she shifted, turning to meet the newcomer defensively. She wasn’t particularly popular around here, after all. But the moment she was in wolf form, the scent of the newcomer provided ample introduction. It was Dee.
Dee sat down and cocked her head to the side in typical canine fashion, then she shifted, a brief spark of blue electricity announcing the fact before her body changed.
“I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you,” she said softly, not waiting for Genna to shift back herself. “I know you’re probably tired after today, and maybe you just want some time alone, but if I may, I wanted to talk to you about something.” She paused, staring off into the distance for a moment, before she continued. “Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Faeydir wants to talk to you. Or, she wants me to talk to you, since she can’t do it herself,” she explained awkwardly. “Is that okay? I know you’re not really comfortable around her.”