Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
The rest of the pack staggered in an hour later, the faint scent of decay clinging to them.
Thierry came through the door first, his clothes and hair caked with blood—some his, most of it not—and his movements sluggish from exhaustion. He made it barely two steps before collapsing into a chair in the entry hall.
Chapel and Kennedy followed, both just as haggard, just as gruesome.
“Fuck,” Chapel cursed under her breath.
She didn’t elaborate.
Saint filed in last, ragged and disheveled, but with a swagger in his step that exuded cockiness.
Fair enough. Objectively, they had set out to do what they intended. The vampires at the manor house had been exterminated, and the shifters had been freed.
Dominic, however, couldn’t consider the mission a success.
Nine of the twenty-eight victims had died in their cells. Three had been driven to the brink of madness and would likely spend the rest of their days locked inside their own minds.
One of the teenagers taken from the Valdosta Pack had disappeared entirely.
Whether physical or psychological, the rest of the survivors would suffer lasting effects from their time in captivity. Dominic hoped for the best, but realistically, he knew it would be a long road to recovery.
Worse, he didn’t get the sense that their intervention had solved anything. Evidence suggested this was one piece of a larger puzzle, and the pack had merely disrupted a supply chain.
“The sentries?” he asked.
“Bruised and battered, but okay,” Saint responded, sobering. “Jepsen dislocated a shoulder, but he’s healing.”
Dominic nodded, studying his pack. They were clearly running on empty, but he wanted to know what they had learned from the shifters before time distorted their memories.
“Clean up and meet me in the library in half an hour.” When he received a chorus of groans in return, he sweetened the pot by adding, “Sammy made muffins.”
Kennedy beamed and rocked back on her heels, making her blood-soaked pigtails swish around her face. “Bet.”
“He made muffins? In the kitchen?” Thierry asked, stiffening in his seat.
“No. In the bathtub,” Saint snarked.
“Don’t worry.” Gliding into the foyer as if he’d been summoned, Sammy came to a stop beside Dominic. “I put everything back exactly how I found it.”
Thierry shot Sammy a sidelong glance, his jaw tensing before he looked away, focusing on rubbing blood off his hands with exaggerated care. He didn’t say anything, but the subtle stiffness in his posture spoke volumes.
Dominic choked back a sigh.
“What kind of muffins?” Chapel asked, unreasonably suspicious about simple baked goods.
“Apple strudel.”
The female wrinkled her nose. “You know werewolves don’t really like sugar, right?”
Sammy smiled back at her, his eyes glittering with a hint of challenge. “I might have heard that somewhere.”
“So, you just—” A feral growl ripped from her throat when Saint hooked an arm around her neck, bent her double, and began marching her up the stairs. “Get off me.”
“No.”
“Saint, knock it off.”
“No.”
Chapel bared her fangs and swiped out wildly, but Saint easily blocked her.
“Let me go, or I’m going to rip your fucking balls off.”
Saint chuckled. “I’d love to see you try, sweetheart.”
“Oh, fun!” Kennedy gave a little wave and a girlish giggle before bounding after them. Halfway up the staircase, she called over her shoulder, “Come on, old man!”
Thierry grumbled something under his breath about “disrespect,” but he pushed to his feet and trudged after her.
Alone in the foyer, Dominic settled his hand on Sammy’s hip and guided him closer. “Don’t mind Chapel.”
“She’s exhausted and stressed.” Sammy relaxed into him with a shrug. “Besides, I’m not offended. Everyone says that at first.”
“Who says that? Give me names.”
Sammy’s laughter reverberated throughout the foyer as he pulled away and headed down the hall.
Dominic let him go, a strange sensation blooming in his chest as he watched him disappear around the corner. Satisfaction? Contentment? Indigestion?
Of course, he’d been joking about the names—mostly—but it felt damn good to see his mate smile for once. Not one of those forced, strained smiles either, but something warm and genuine, accompanied by the kind of laughter that couldn’t be faked.
Twenty minutes later, he and Sammy carried a couple of serving trays laden with muffins, fresh fruit, and brewed coffee into the library. They had just finished setting everything out on the coffee table in the corner seating area when Kennedy strolled through the doorway.
Her platinum hair hung wetly down her back, the strands a couple of shades darker than usual. A pair of pink cotton pajama shorts showed off the scratches on her legs, each in a different stage of healing, and an oversized sweatshirt hung off her shoulders.
Barefoot and fresh faced, she looked incredibly young. Innocent. No one would guess that a few hours ago, she had ripped out a vampire’s jugular with her teeth.
And laughed about it.
“Coffee?” Stepping forward, Sammy held out a smoky gray mug by the handle.
“Thanks.” Kennedy clutched it between her hands and brought it to her nose, inhaling deeply. “Oh, that’s nice.”
She settled into the corner of the leather sofa and tucked her feet under her. While she sipped her coffee, Sammy plated a muffin for her, along with a couple slices of fruit and a paper napkin.
“Thanks!” She snatched the muffin up and tore into it like a fucking savage. “That’s really good,” she mumbled, her cheeks puffing out like a chipmunk. “Did you bring any butter?”
Sammy frowned. “Uh…no?”
Shrugging, Kennedy ripped off another bite with her teeth. Then, in a deep voice dripping with Texas twang, she added, “It’d be a lot cooler if you did.”
Sammy stilled and blinked a few times before glancing up at him. “Did she just—?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then.”
The kid was obsessed with the nineties, despite the fact that she hadn’t been alive yet. Given that Sammy was only a couple of years older, Dominic was kind of surprised that he’d picked up on the reference.
“I watched a lot of movies as a kid,” he said when he caught Dominic eyeing him.
While technically a complete statement, and a benign one on the surface, it reeked of subtext. Before Dominic could question him further, however, Saint and Boone strolled into the room, soon followed by Chapel and Thierry.
Thierry looked…bad.
The male always had a bit of a stretched appearance. After the fight, though, he looked sunken, hollow. Dark bruises swept under his eyes, and deep cuts stood out in sharp relief against a complexion one shade warmer than a corpse.
Their eyes met, held, and Thierry dipped his head with finality. He was fine, and if he wasn’t, he still wouldn’t be discussing it.
Once everyone had settled on the sofa or in the matching armchairs, Dominic sank onto the loveseat, pulling his mate down with him. Sammy looked at him with wide eyes and parted lips, clearly surprised at being included in the meeting.
“Problem?”
Sammy shook his head quickly, but he didn’t relax, sitting stiffly on the edge of the cushions.
“By the goddess,” Kennedy snapped, drawing everyone’s attention. “Just eat it.”
All eyes turned to Chapel.
She held a muffin close to her nose, sniffing at the crumble on top while pulling a face as if it had personally offended her.
“If you won’t eat it,” Saint said, reaching for the pastry, “give it here.”
Chapel snatched it out of his reach. “Get your own.”
She made a big production of pulling the wrapper back and biting into it with an air of sheer stubbornness and spite.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then her eyelids flared, her fingers tightened reflexively, and a low, satisfied growl rumbled from her throat.
“Told you,” Kennedy muttered.
Saint looked across the coffee table at Sammy and winked.
The trio continued to snipe back and forth at each other for another minute, but when Dominic leaned forward and cleared his throat, the atmosphere instantly shifted. Smiles faded, postures stiffened, and a palpable tension settled over the room.
“What the hell did we just step in?”
The pack exchanged glances, but as usual, it was Saint who spoke first.
“Only a handful of the shifters were well enough to be questioned, but they didn’t really know much.”
Dominic bit back a growl. “What do we know?”
“They weren’t taken all at once,” Chapel answered. “Some had been there for weeks. Some only a few days.”
“Most of them are shifters,” Thierry added. “But there were also a couple of fae.” His voice lowered to a murmur, and he glanced away. “They didn’t make it.”
A tense silence washed over the meeting, palpable despite its brevity.
“We know it wasn’t localized.” Sitting forward on the sofa, Kennedy shook her head. “They came from all over. Valdosta. Augusta. Jacksonville. Tallahassee. Montgomery.”
Dominic’s scowl deepened, and a dull ache throbbed between his eyes. Dozens of victims from across three states? It seemed like a lot of effort and a long way to go for a snack.
What the hell was going on?
As if reading his thoughts, Chapel said, “A vixen was taken from Jacksonville almost a month ago. None of the vamps ever fed from her, but she said they forced all the shifters to turn on the full moon.”
Despite what many humans believed, shifters and weres didn’t experience a compulsion to shift during the full moon. They felt the pull, yes, and it took years to master control, but even younglings didn’t spontaneously explode into fur and fangs.
Force already implied something unpleasant, but the only real way to trigger a shift was through sustained physical or emotional trauma. Some would be able to resist longer than others, but they could only withstand so much.
“The bodies we found,” Saint interjected. “They couldn’t have been dead for more than twenty-four hours, and not all of them were drained either. Some of them hadn’t been bitten at all.”
Which likely meant they had died as a result of whatever methods had been used to force their shift. It also sounded as if the vampires had fed from any of the captives until after the full moon.
But it all came back to the same question.
“Why?”
The pack glanced between each other again, then shook their heads. Surprisingly, it was Sammy who spoke up.
“It sounds like some kind of test.” His face flushed a soft pink when everyone turned to look at him, and he twisted his hands together in his lap.
“Go on,” Dominic encouraged.
“You said some of the shifters were missing?”
“At least two,” Saint confirmed. “Why?”
Sammy looked at Dominic before answering. “I think—” He paused, took a deep breath, and forced the words out through trembling lips. “I think the missing shifters are the ones who passed.”
Dominic didn’t have to think about it long to see the logic. The theory made sense, but it didn’t answer what the hell the bloodsuckers were looking for in the first place.
“There was an old vampire.” Thierry adjusted in his armchair and rubbed the back of his neck. “He only came once, but the vixen said he looked important.”
“Important how?”
“He was dressed in a suit.” Thierry stared at his knees, his words slow as he recalled the information. “He had guards with him, also dressed in suits.”
“How did she know he was old?” Boone asked, speaking for the first time since the meeting had begun.
“She didn’t say. A feeling, maybe?”
“Powerful,” Chapel elaborated. “She said he wasn’t like the rest of the vampires, and the others seemed afraid of him.”
“Did she hear a name?” Dominic asked.
Chapel shook her head. “But she said he had an accent. French, I think.”
“It’s escalating.” Perched on the arm of the sofa, Saint growled as he dragged his fingers through his damp hair.
From the outside, it did seem that way. When they had first been contacted, less than a dozen shifters had gone missing over the course of a few months. Dominic would argue, however, that they didn’t have all the information. They never had.
“We don’t know that.”
“Bullshit,” his brother snapped back. “Something is going on. I don’t know what, but it feels big.”
To that, Dominic could agree. They had set out to rescue a few shifters, and instead, had walked into something far more disturbing than any of them could have anticipated.
“Let’s say you’re right.” He was. They both knew it. “What would you have us do about it? We don’t even know what ‘it’ is.”
A long, tense silence followed, broken only when Saint shoved to his feet with a growled curse.
Dominic sympathized, but he also had to be practical. Right then, they had less than nothing to go on, and unless that changed, there was little they could do.
He glanced at Sammy from the corner of his eye and felt the familiar squeeze in his chest.
Time was running out, and not in some abstract way. He had been careful to project calm and confidence, but in truth, he didn’t know how to help his mate any more than he did the shifters. As much as he might want to hunt down this rogue coven, he had problems closer to home at the moment.
And if he had to choose, Sammy would win every time.