14. Callum
CALLUM
We meet outside this time, at the old tree that’s as much a part of this club, this pack, as the room with the wolf table.
We’re all here too: Flint, Mal, Lynx, Morgan, Nico, and Luke. And Jet, who’s looking pretty fucking murderous.
“You’re only telling me this now?” he snarls, pacing in front of the tree until he comes to a sudden stop and rounds on Lynx.
Lynx doesn’t flinch as Jet gets right in his face, but the rest of us do. Especially Nico. He gasps and takes a small step back, and that stops Jet in his tracks.
He looks devastated.
“Fuck, Nico.” Jet closes his eyes, breathes in and out a few times, while the rest of us watch. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You’re angry,” Nico says, voice soft. He edges closer to Flint. “I’ve never seen you angry.”
Jet holds out both hands. “Not at you, though. Never at you.” He glances at Flint, then back to Nico, scowling at whatever he sees, before quickly schooling his features.
“I’m angry at those fuckers who did this.
” He gestures to Nico’s leg. “Who kidnapped Morgan and made Luke fight until he almost died. I’m fucking furious at those who’ve got a fucking house where they keep shifters in cages like they’re animals.
” He never raises his voice once, and Nico slowly relaxes.
“I am too,” he says quietly.
Everyone here feels the same way as Jet. As Nico.
But we’re shackled by the possibility of ex-hunters being in Morgan’s house and the need to stay off the hunter council’s radar.
“Tell them what you told us,” Lynx encourages.
Luke takes the lead. He’s more confident than Nico.
The fight rings haven’t broken him in the same way.
I think a lot of that is to do with Nico being human when they captured him.
They turned him while he was already injured, pins holding his broken leg together, which they didn’t bother to take out.
The result is a limp that won’t ever heal.
Luke tells us about the house where they’re kept in between fights. The outbuildings on an estate that hold multiple cages. It’s just as horrifying hearing it for the second time. Still makes me feel sick to my stomach.
“I think,” Luke says, glancing at Nico. “I think that’s where Nico was changed.”
I look at Lynx. This is new fucking information.
Luke catches it and grimaces. “Sorry. I didn’t remember right away, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since we spoke yesterday.” He turns to Nico. “Do you remember that building set apart from where they kept us?”
Nico frowns. “I dunno. Maybe?” He rubs his arms and Jet growls softly. Nico smiles at him. “It’s okay. I just don’t remember much from being there.” He shrugs a shoulder. “Sorry.”
Luke winces. “To be fair, the only time I saw you there, you were pretty out of it. I think . . . I think whoever they had in that building is who they use to turn humans.”
Lynx snarls. “They’ve done it more than once?” He looks to me and I’m as fucking shocked as he is. We assumed that Nico was an anomaly. A mistake.
“At least a couple of times that I’m aware of.” Luke gestures to Morgan. “Well, three.”
Lynx snarls again, and Morgan puts a hand on his arm.
“I spoke to some of the others when I got a chance. None of them had ever bitten a human to turn them, and they’d never seen the shifter in that building.” He hesitates, gaze drifting to Jet. “We heard him though.” He doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t have to.
“And you’ve got no idea where this place is?” Flint asks, standing so close to Nico now, their shoulders brush.
Nico shakes his head. “Every time I went there, I was blindfolded, and their vans are soundproofed.”
Morgan faces Luke. “You tried to escape though, right? When they threw you in the van with me.”
“I did.”
He shudders. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been there.” Lynx reaches for his hand. I doubt either of them want to remember what happened after that.
Luke smiles at Morgan, though. “I’m glad I ended up there. It saved us both.”
The air ripples with tension. Talking about fight rings brings out our baser instincts, and we’re all feeling the rage and the need to protect right now.
“Do you remember anything?” Jet moves to Nico’s other side as he talks to Luke. This time Nico doesn’t flinch away, and Jet relaxes.
I share a look with Lynx.
We need to tread carefully there. For whatever reason, Jet has adopted a big-brother role where Nico’s concerned.
He lets very few into his circle of trust, and the fact that he’s done it so quickly with Nico makes me want to protect it at all costs.
I know Lynx feels the same. Jet lost his family once, and it took him a long while to accept us as his new one.
If he’s ready to expand it, then we need to make sure we don’t scare Nico off or make him reconsider his place here.
I’ve almost forgotten Jet asked Luke a question when Luke replies.
“I didn’t get far.” He winces. “They had more cameras around the perimeter than I was expecting. Security is super fucking tight.”
“Anything would help,” Lynx urges quietly.
“It was big.” Luke spreads his arms wide.
“The main house was set back with a long drive and a lot of land. Can’t be too many places like that.
It was roughly an hour away from the fight ring you found me and Morgan at.
I can’t say in which direction, but I’ve gotten good at marking time, and I’m pretty sure the drive there was around an hour. ”
I make a mental note to have a look at what that means on a map when we go back inside. “Thank you.” I move close enough to grip his shoulder, then glance at Nico. “I know this is hard to talk about, so thank you for going through it again.”
They both nod.
“You have a place here for as long as you want,” Lynx says, the undercurrent of alpha power underlining his sincerity. “But you are also free to leave if you choose. I need you to know that. You aren’t prisoners here and you never will be.”
Nico opens his mouth, hesitates like he’s searching for the courage to say what he wants, then softly asks, “And if we never want to leave?”
Lynx smiles, easy and reassuring. “Then you don’t have to.”
We wrap up the meeting. Nico and Luke have done enough talking about the trauma Fox and whoever else he was working with put them through. We want them to feel safe here, not harassed. And Jet was starting to give Lynx death glares.
Morgan goes back to the house with them, and Lynx watches them go before leaning back against the big old tree dominating the clearing and groaning into his hands. “I feel like we’ve got a giant puzzle to solve, but half the fucking pieces are missing.”
It’s an apt analogy.
“There’s too many questions we don’t have answers to.” I hook a thumb over my shoulder where Morgan and the others disappeared to. “They don’t know where they were taken, and apart from Fox and the other hunters in his group, they don’t know who was involved.”
“What about the ex-hunters at Morgan’s old house?
” Jet’s got his knife out, the one he lent Tanner Grey.
He’s sharpening the blade as he speaks, and I wonder if it’s significant that he carries that knife around with him all the time now.
I’m not about to ask, though. I’d like to keep all my appendages, thank you very much.
“We could pick them up for a friendly chat.” Jet grins, all teeth, and it’s so unnerving, I almost feel sorry for them.
Lynx hums, thinking. “Are we absolutely certain they’re all ex-hunters? That they aren’t here under council orders?”
Mal cuts in. “No.”
“They’ve all got those fucking tattoos,” Jet argues, tapping his wrist.
“All of them?” Mal looks to Flint. “Have you seen that tattoo on all the people coming to and from Morgan’s old house?”
Flint seesaws his hand. “Maybe? It’s not always obvious from the distance we’ve been keeping.”
“And they’re constantly on the phone,” Mal says, shooting Jet an apologetic glance. “Even if they are all from Fox’s old group, we need to find out who they’re working with before we jump them.”
“Agreed.”
“So what’s the plan?” Jet sheaths his knife and stares at us all in turn. “Because I sure as fuck can’t sit here doing nothing while they’ve still got people caged at that place.”
Lynx has his feelings locked down tight, but I know him better than anyone here.
I can see the war going on inside him. Part of him is so on board with Jet’s need for action that it’s making his fingers twitch with the control it takes to rein it in.
The alpha in him, the club president, knows that what we need to do now is nothing.
Because there’s too much at stake if we make a wrong move or a rash decision in the heat of the moment.
And he knows that no one’s going to like the decision he’s about to make.
Jet’s eyes narrow. Maybe he’s better at reading Lynx than I gave him credit for. “We gonna vote on this or are you acting as alpha right now?”
Lynx flinches.
Guess he wasn’t expecting that, and neither was I. I happen to agree with Lynx: that we need to wait, so I was happy to let him decide, but maybe it should go to a vote.
This is both pack- and club-related.
We all risk our lives raiding the fight rings, so we should all get a say in what we do with this information. I meet Lynx’s gaze. He raises an eyebrow. I give him a shrug in return.
He sighs, and I know Jet’s going to get his way.
“Hear me out first, and then we’ll put it to a vote.”
“Fair enough.” Jet nods, satisfied.
“Before we do anything, I think we need concrete proof that it’s ex-hunters staying at Morgan’s old house and that they’re not connected to the council in any way.
Like I’ve said before, I don’t trust that the council isn’t watching us after we rescued Morgan.
I don’t want to do anything to attract their attention or give them reason to come here.
We were lucky last time. They didn’t search the place, and they still don’t know about Luke and Nico. I’d like to keep it that way.”