Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
But maybe she’d been swayed by the fact that it was a nice RV. Very nice. No longer being a vargulf made a difference, it seemed.
“Still not big enough,” he said, as if reading my mind.
“What would be?” I eyed him. “How many are we now?”
“About the same. Eight hundred, give or take—”
“Eight hundred?” I stared. That was not the same. “How the hell—”
“We’ve had a few more arrivals,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to worry you—”
“And why would I be worried?” I asked tightly.
He sighed. “Most of them are… geriatric. Word got around that we were taking in old vargulfs, and I think some of the clans took advantage to dump some of their unwanted elders on us.”
“Cyrus!”
“I know, but we’re in talks with the Guardians about expanding their facility. They already have a place out by their hospital, only it’s pretty small and mostly for those who need nursing home-type care. But if we add an assisted living building beside it, we should have room for…”
He trailed off, seeing my face.
“Who is paying for all this?” I demanded.
“That’s what I’m in talks about.”
“With who?”
“Lia—”
“Let me guess. And let me guess what Sebastian wants in return!”
Son of a bitch!
“I was going to wait to discuss this until you’re better,” he said, grabbing the beer that Luis tossed him from the ice chest, because I guessed he could tell he needed one. Or was about to.
But to my surprise, he popped the top for me. Maybe I looked like I could use it more, and he wasn’t wrong. I drank it resentfully.
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” Cyrus said seriously, sitting on the nearest chaise. “But we need to talk.”
“About what?” I looked at him over the bottle, my eyes squinting against the sun, although they would have been doing that anyway. Because there was nothing to talk about here!
He ran a hand through a mess of dark curls. “Too many things to list,” he admitted.
“Then let me help you out,” I said savagely. “Sebastian will fund our newly expanded clan, if we become his army—”
“Not an army—”
“Strike team then? Seal Team Six with more hair? He knows, doesn’t he?”
To his credit, Cyrus didn’t try to pretend that he didn’t understand. “The word ‘Relic’ has yet to be mentioned—”
“But he does.”
“He’s been… more insistent… about the idea of a force with us at its head lately, yes.”
“So he knows.” Damn Sebastian and his freaking spies! “Has he bugged the goddamned house?”
“No.” I raised an eyebrow because that sounded sure. “I checked,” Cyrus admitted.
Damn it! I’d prefer to think I was being paranoid, which was entirely possible right now. But Cyrus was the least irrational guy I knew, and if the same things were occurring to him…
“There were people in HQ that night,” he reminded me. “And not all were Corps. Were guards, secretaries, adjutant officers, paper pushers… Plus, enough money in the right hands…”
“I know the drill,” I said sourly. And then a flash of temper overtook me, and I almost threw my beer can. Almost.
I thought about crushing it instead, but refrained because there were kids here and I was Lupa. I remembered my counterpart’s eerie calmness, even in extremis, and felt a flash of shame. Start acting like you have some freaking self-control, I thought.
“Sebastian is thinking about the wider war and political spectrum,” Cyrus said quietly.
“I have had to remind him that our focus is and must be narrower. People are watching us. The whole Were world is watching us. If our clan fails, people will lose hope. The other clans will start speaking out again, and the usual ‘vargulfs can’t be trusted’ crap will reemerge.
I can hear it now. And if we morph into a strike force, every vargulf in town will have reason to think that our clan is nothing but a Council ploy to round them all up for slaughter—”
“Then I assume you told him not only no, but hell, no?” I asked because Cyrus had managed to put my fears into words more eloquently than I could.
“No. We need his support, Lia,” he added, when I started to protest. “We expected a few dozen boys, maybe as many as fifty or so, in time. Not this. And whatever you may think of my pockets, they aren’t this deep. We can’t float so many people for long. Not alone.”
“Then you’re stringing your own brother along?”
“I’m… being judicious about what I share with him.
Until some things are worked out. Besides, we have all of five Relics, including you and me, in this pack.
Most of the rest are young Weres with damned little fighting experience.
Even some of the Relics fall into that category.
Noah got overly ambitious and would have paid for it with his life if not for you. ”
His hand tightened on my thigh, where it had come to rest. “We’re not some get-out-of-jail-free card that Sebastian can pull out of his ass whenever there’s a problem, and I did make that very clear.”
“Good.” I looked at him, and then I kissed him, because I felt like kissing him. And the emotion in his voice was in his kiss, too. “You’re angry,” I said.
“Am I?” Whiskey dark eyes met mine, and the hand moved slightly on my skin, as if reassuring himself that I was there, that I was all right, that I wasn’t as fragile as I probably looked right now.
Noah wasn’t the only one furious at me, I realized; Cyrus just controlled it better.
“I wonder what reason I could have for that?”
I sighed and let my head fall back against the chaise, wondering how much fun it had been for him these last few days.
Or watching me in the operating room, not sure whether I’d come through or not.
Or balancing his own rage at the insanity the universe insisted on throwing at us lately, while having to remain calm for the kids.
While all I’d had to do was sleep, and I currently felt like drifting off again, despite doing absolutely nothing since I got up.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re not doing this now.”
“If not now, when?”
“When you’re better.”
“And have all this hanging over my head? I’m not going to rest that way.”
“Try.” He kissed me again, softly this time, and then got up to go inside, probably to get me some more of the bland ass food I’d been getting for days. And I would eat it because it would make him feel better. And then I’d bring this up again, when a little time had passed, and we’d figure it out.
We always did.