13. Chapter 13
thirteen
Piled into Cyrus’s car were Gabe, Cyrus, and Liliana.
Each armed with something more than their supernatural strength and fists to protect themselves if things went south.
It was a two-hour drive to the Lotuslacker pack house.
They didn’t want to risk bringing any more than just the three of them—Lily only because she’d insisted.
Cyrus drove down the highway about ten miles over the speed limit.
He didn’t much care about getting pulled over.
It was unlikely at that time in the morning, everyone who was headed to work had already gotten there, and there were very few people on the road, even when it came to the interstate of people traveling for the day.
Most weren’t going north, but the south side of the interstate would be another story.
“What if it’s not them?” Lily asked.
Cyrus chewed on the inside of his cheek.
“Then we’ll be at a dead end,” he mumbled.
He looked at the rear-view mirror and saw Gabe in the backseat with a concerned look on his face.
“The arrows are pointing in their direction,” Cyrus said with a slow tap or two on the steering wheel. “It’s them. It had to be.”
Lily sighed from the passenger seat. “I just hope they will be willing to talk things out,” she said.
“Me too,” Gabe replied.
Cyrus rolled down his window and reached for his cigarettes, only to find that he hadn’t brought any. He hadn’t even bought any since the last time he’d been smoking outside of the bar. No wonder he was so on edge lately.
Well, that and other things.
He rolled the window back up, much to the strange looks from Lily, and took a slow breath. Trying to decide if he wanted to pull over to a gas station to get a pack.
He shook his head at himself. No, it wasn’t an important enough stop.
“I feel so bad for Riktor,” Lily mumbled, and her gaze shifted to Cyrus, and he knew that look on her face. She wanted him to talk about the past. She wanted him to relate. He could see it, especially in the way she looked behind them at Gabe in the back seat.
“We’ve lost too many people. Too many people have been attacked,” Cyrus replied in the only way he knew how to without getting too emotional about it, “We need to figure something out before it’s too late.”
There was a long silence.
“Do you think Jasmine will even let us get into the door?” Gabe asked. Jasmine being the Alpha of Lotuslacker.
Cyrus clicked his tongue. “Well, if she doesn’t, then we know something is up, don’t we?” he asked. “Either way, we get our answer.”
Lily shifted in her seat uncomfortably.
“I hope they’re willing to talk,” she mumbled.
“Well, they can’t attack us on their safe property pack house,” Cyrus said. “Doing that wouldn’t just be a violation of our treaty but…of a whole handful of things the council would have an issue with.”
“The council wouldn’t have an issue with what they’ve already done?” Gabe asked.
Cyrus sighed. “Well, typically, they don’t get involved unless the issue extends to several districts, not just one against one.
It’s breaking the peace between packs, but that isn’t exactly in the council’s highest interest. When it starts spreading and becomes, more than one against one is when they usually get interested in taking it into their hands,” Cyrus explained.
“They’ll still want to know about this; however it’s settled. ”
He looked up to see Gabe shaking his head. “They should care when it’s small too, not just when it’s big enough to get their attention.”
“Yeah, well, these days, there’s a lot of debate on how they handle things, trust me,” Cyrus mumbled.
Lily sighed and leaned her head against the back of the seat.
Cyrus kept his eyes on the road and did his best not to over think the situation.
This was difficult, considering he was positive it was the Lotuslacker pack.
Their clipped ears made sense, them having done similar things in the past. He knew that Gabe and Lily were uncertain, and he wasn’t sure why.
They had all the evidence they needed. It was true that they were likely to show up, and the pack did not exactly want to admit what they had been doing, but Cyrus wasn’t sure who else it could be.
So the fact that his Alpha and Lily were not trusting his instinct and investigation more was frustrating.
This was the hardest not to over think about.
He tried to remember that Gabe was new, and Lily didn’t often deal with such serious situations.
She was part of their close-knit circle, but it wasn’t like they had near werewolf civil wars going on weekly.
Cyrus shook his head at himself as he switched lanes.
“I need you two to trust that it’s them,” he said. “You two keep speaking like it might not be, and…there’s no other option, okay?”
His gaze landed on Lily on the right side of him. She furrowed her brow but nodded.
“Alright,” Gabe replied. “You would know the best.”
Cyrus exhaled softly.
“Their inner circle has their ears clipped. They are the only ones around us with a violent or conflictual history with us,” he reminded them. “I’m not going to sit around and wait for them to show their faces. We need to confront them and whatever happens…we’ll figure it out.”
“I trust you,” Gabe said from the backseat.
Cyrus felt his heart clench in his chest. If he had it his way, he’d have just gone to confront the pack on his own.
He couldn’t stand bringing more people to get put in potential danger with him, but Gabe was Alpha, and Lily was one of the most likely to negotiate the peace of some sort.
She was kind, intelligent, calm when others weren’t.
He knew she would be of use, but that didn’t mean he was happy about bringing her along.
As they were hitting the hour and ten-minute mark, Lily spoke up beside him.
“I need to pee!” she insisted.
Cyrus sighed and started switching lanes to pull off at the next rest stop. His eyes followed the signs.
“Next rest stop is two miles. Can you make that?” he asked. He didn’t want to pull off into a city and a gas station. It’d be quicker to pull into a rest stop.
“Yes.” Lily nodded.
It was only a couple of minutes before he pulled in and quickly found a parking spot. As soon as the car was stopped, seatbelts were flying off. Gabe and Lily were both darting out of the vehicle.
“Gotta go too,” Gabe said before quickly heading off.
Cyrus shook his head.
He felt like the dad on a road trip. Unfortunately, this road trip led nowhere fun—exciting perhaps, but only in the darkest sense.
Cyrus looked at the clock for a moment before he finally got out and decided to hit the head as well before they got back on the road.
When he came out from the bathroom, Gabe was already out with Lily, and they were standing at the vending machines slipping dollars into it.
“Guys come on,” Cyrus sighed as he stepped over to them.
“It’s not like they know we’re coming,” Lily insisted. “And we’re hungry. We left before we even ate breakfast, remember?”
Cyrus blinked and then realized his stomach was rumbling.
“Alright, alright,” he mumbled. The anxiety welling up in his chest was hard to ignore. He wanted to get there and get things over with.
He watched as Gabe got some chips and a granola bar while Lily got a fruit bar and some cookies.
He slid a few dollars into the machine as well and pushed a few buttons, and out came a cheese Danish. He paid for a cup of the piss-poor vending machine coffee, and then they were on their way once again.
Cyrus listened to the crunching of food as he drove, sipping at his coffee, having not touched his Danish yet.
“I don’t understand how you two are so calm right now,” Cyrus told them. His hand on the steering wheel was tight.
“I’m worried,” Lily insisted. “I just would go crazy if I thought about it the entire drive.”
“Like Cyrus,” Gabe said from the backseat.
Cyrus rolled his eyes.
“I’m just trying to be rational,” he insisted.
“You’re the one who told us we were worrying too much about it not being them, but you’re worried about it being them,” Lily reminded him. “I can trust that it is them, but…then that leaves a million other things to worry about.”
“We’re just trying to save our energy for when something is happening,” Gabe added.
Cyrus saw Lily nod from the corner of his vision.
“Well, that’s good,” he mumbled as he sipped at his coffee.
“You should eat,” Lily insisted and started unwrapping his Danish to hand it to him.
Cyrus looked over at her with a cocked brow.
“Eat. It’ll make you feel better,” she insisted. “Trust me.”
He shook his head and did as she asked of him. Eating his Danish as he drove, and she wasn’t wrong. The anxiety lessened a bit, as did his racing pulse. It was hungrier than he realized.
They were coming ever closer to the start of the Lotuslacker district.
“Fifteen minutes, and we’ll be there,” Cyrus said.
“How do you know where their pack house is?” Gabe asked.
“Well, we have an agreement with them…so we know where it is. Plus, it’s not that difficult to find,” Cyrus explained. “It’s not supposed to be difficult to be found by other Weres, as much as it’s a safe space.”
He took a look at the GPS that he was following by sight only, as he didn’t prefer the voice to direct him.
He turned down yet another road.
Cyrus felt the anxiety and tension climb in the car as they grew ever closer to the pack house. Up a winding road until he caught sight of several cars in the driveway. He opted for parking several yards back from them, facing the direction they had come in case any emergency exit was needed.
Before they even got out of the car, curtains in the front windows were being pulled aside, and faces were looking curiously out at them—the house bigger than their own, but only by about a third.
“Well, lead the way, Gabriel.” Cyrus motioned.
Gabe looked at him nervously.
“You’re the leader of our pack. You go first,” he insisted.