CHAPTER NINE
Iwent into the house, steaming mad and too fast, only to run into the brick wall of a chest that was Alexius.
“Fuck! Ouch!” I yelped, throwing my hand up to my nose.
“Oh, Everly,” he said quickly, reaching out to grab my chin. “Let me see.”
“It’s already bleeding.”
“I can smell that. Let’s get you some blood and tissue.”
“I’m fine!” I roared. “Just fucking—”
His hand was on my lower back and shifted to my hip, tightening. I felt his breath on my ear.
“I’m not the one you scream at like that, not when I’m trying to help you. Once we fix your nose, you can tell me what has you heated,” he said, each word careful and to the point.
I followed him into the kitchen, and we got me cleaned up. After his warning, I didn’t fight as he decided to clean up my face for me and make sure my nose wasn’t entirely broken.
“You should be fine by next sunset,” he said eventually, too close to me, one hand holding my chin, the other wiping my face with a soft cloth as he looked me over. “Now what happened? I wasn’t expecting you to be home for another couple of hours.”
“His girlfriend dropped by for a surprise visit, and that led to a very large can of worms,” I explained, wincing as he gently poked the bridge of my nose.
“Not broken. Just… watch w here you’re going, please.” He finally released me, and I found a seat, still holding a cloth to my face for the bleeding. “What can of worms did the girlfriend open?”
“She’s a werewolf and didn’t tell him.” I laughed angrily.
“While on my way out, she made some comments that will have me investigating the rest of the night. They met through work, and she said that he works for the pack, so he falls under their protection. She doesn’t want me around at all.
Not because I’m a threat to them, but just because I’m a vampire.
She actually showed up with cookies. She was excited to meet his sister until she learned I was a blood sucker.
” I threw the cloth down. “Declan gave me his work details, and I’m going to break them.
I want to know everything and every werewolf in his life that he didn’t realize. ”
I stormed off, leaving Alexius in silence. Finding my laptop, knowing this wouldn’t be easy since I didn’t have anything at the ready, I was about to start in the office when a masculine hand shut my laptop.
“You can’t do that,” he said simply.
“Like hell I can’t,” I hissed up at him from the little desk in the office.
“We’re in Los Angeles. He works for some company under Callahan.
The L.A. pack is immense. There’s a chance Callahan doesn’t even know the company hired your brother.
There’s a chance that while it’s owned by the pack, it’s run by humans, who would be even less involved in pack and supernatural knowledge.
There’s a chance she was one of two werewolves working in the office or what have you.
” He leaned down. “You cannot break into their records or do anything to disrupt their business. It will cause more problems than you think it will solve. You’re just being hot tempered when there’s an easier solution. ”
I hissed again, no words this time.
“Everly, you have met Callahan and helped one of the packs with a vampire problem at your own risk and injury. Certainly, you can get a number to the Alpha from someone and give him a call and set up a meeting before the situation with Declan’s girlfriend… her name?”
“Lexi… Alexandra, I don’t know her surname.”
“Set up a meeting before this situation with Declan and Alexandra escalates,” Alexius finished, now having a name. He kept his hand on the laptop and handed me his phone. “Now. He’ll be up. He’s Tribunal. He barely sleeps.”
I took his phone and unlocked it, knowing his passcode since I was the one who kept having to set it on new phones.
He had a number under Callahan, so I called it.
It rang three times.
“Alexius? Can I help you?” Callahan’s voice came through, confused.
I felt paralyzed for a moment, eyes darting to Alexius.
“Everly has a situation with a werewolf in Los Angeles,” he said loudly. “She’ll be speaking from here.”
“Ah.” Callahan went from confused to disappointed in a single syllable. “Miss Abbott. Please explain the situation.”
My mouth went dry.
“Everly, he won’t laugh. It’s not a petty, childish thing,” Alexius said, huffing.
“But it could seem petty and childish without context,” Callahan said softly. “Noted.”
“My human brother lives in Los Angeles. We’re here to visit him. Tonight was the first night I’ve seen him in some time. He’s dating a girl. She showed up—”
“This does start like it would be some high school drama,” Callahan said with a heavy sigh.
“His girlfriend is a werewolf,” I bit.
“There’s the bad news,” Callahan muttered. “Her name?”
“Alexandra, goes by Lexi. Said she had a high-ranking father.”
“She does,” Callahan confirmed. “I am in a meeting. He’s here. Let me put you on speakerphone. He’ll need to be part of this conversation now.” The audio changed, everything sounding a little different as Callahan did as he said. “Lukas, your daughter has gotten into a spot of trouble.”
“Who am I killing tonight?” a deep male voice broke through some murmuring.
“No one because you don’t stand a chance against Alexius the Hunter,” Callahan replied, casually, like the threat and the warning were nothing. “Have you met Lexi’s boyfriend?”
“Declan! Good human man. Smart, even though he’s clearly a beach bum at heart. Mature enough to handle business. Relaxed enough to know how to kick his feet up. But what does he have to do with Alexius the Hunter of the vampires?”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said about my brother,” I said with a chuckle. Lexi’s dad didn’t seem that bad.
“This is Everly Abbott, his younger sister and the young vampire working for Alexius. The Abbott siblings come from a family of humans who worked for Jacob’s nest on the East Coast.”
I don’t remember telling Callahan that or hearing Alexius tell him. Maybe Isaiah?
“Oh, shit,” Lucas groaned.
“I feel for you, old friend,” another werewolf said. “Good luck with that.”
“Lexi left earlier tonight to see Declan. She wouldn’t have known about you, Miss Abbott, or I would have heard about it.”
“Yeah. The real problem is she wants to keep my brother away from me, and she never told my brother she was a werewolf.”
There was a beat of silence before something made a boom in the background.
“Damn it! I told her she couldn’t be doing that!” Lucas roared. “I told her to tell him everything!”
“You go deal with that,” Callahan said, almost indulgently, almost like a grandpa telling his children to discipline the grandchildren.
“Thank you, sir.” There was stomping, and a door slammed.
“He’ll handle her, so—”
“He said they met at work, and she claimed he works for the pack,” I continued.
“What are you asking, Miss Everly?” Callahan said coolly.
“Did you hire my brother on purpose? Does he work for your pack?”
“Yes,” he answered. That made me furious once again.
“But the building is only humans. If Lexi met him through work, she would have been doing a delivery from a different office. It was unintentional that he would have ever known about the werewolves that signed his paycheck. He doesn’t actually work for my pack.
He works for a business that my pack has a controlling hand in.
But he services humans with human needs and nothing that would be considered official for the pack. ”
“Why did you—”
“Because you didn’t do anything to handle his protection,” Callahan said simply.
“I had already done a background check on you because you worked near my werewolves, so when I saw his name, I realized who he was easily enough. Saw you had no one here tailing him; he was living in normal human accommodations, and at the time, it seemed like you had no contact. I decided to keep him close. Better me than one of Alexius’ enemies.
“He was also qualified for the job, so even before I recognized the name, everyone underneath me had him at the top of the list to hire. You being related to him would have actually lost him the job if I had considered it in the other direction. But you helped my werewolves in Alaska, so I thought I could help with your brother. He’s paid well, and if he misses work, we can investigate.
If anything ever happened, we would have reached out immediately.
Though… I didn’t know he was dating Lexi.
It seems like that bomb was waiting to go off on all of us, thanks to her not wanting to disclose what she was. ”
“He doesn’t want anything to do with the supernatural,” I said softly.
“That’s something both of you are going to have to come to terms with.
He grew up with the supernatural. He’s never really getting out.
Certainly not now if he still wants to be a family with you.
If you really wanted to keep him away from the supernatural, you wouldn’t be in Los Angeles on vacation to see him, painting a giant target on his back.
Not that he didn’t already have one. I’ve been hearing rumors about how you pissed off ancients in New York, and Alexius already has enemies.
He doesn’t really need to make more for someone to start being concerned about people near him. ”
My hand was shaking.
“We’ll handle Lexi. She’s young and still has all the old nursery rhymes and warnings about vampires in her head and has never been too close to one her age.
She can’t force you out of L.A. or away from your brother.
You have the prior claim over Declan.” Callahan hummed as I heard the scribbling of pen on paper in the background of the call.
“That should be everything. I’ll send Lucas’s information to Alexius for you.
From here on, you can contact him about problems with his daughter.
” He made a noise, and some werewolf in the background growled softly. “Alexius, can you hear me?”
“I can,” Alexius said softly.
“Please make sure your keyboard warrior genius doesn’t break my stuff because of this.”
“I have her laptop already.”
“Thank you. Have a nice evening, both of you.”
Callahan hung up on us.
“What the hell was that last part about?” I hissed, indignant.
“He knows what you can do. He probably quickly let another werewolf know to make sure their digital security was secure, then asked me to make sure you couldn’t get any small revenge on him, which would have been uncalled for. Nothing he said was a lie, and he’s dealing with Lexi.”
“He hired my brother.”
“And we should be grateful. Better him than Maria. He will never feel the need to use Declan against you. He just needs to go to Isaiah or Maria and make a request.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because there is nothing he could want from you that would serve him to help the werewolves in such a big way that he would risk my wrath,” Alexius answered, finally moving his hand from my laptop.
“Which is why you will not act against him and break his things, as he so aptly put it.
While your beautifully hot temper is useful when it comes to killing vampires, it's not useful here. Supernatural politics, and the structure of our world revolves around being polite to the right people. Callahan and Corissa are two of those people.”
“And Isaiah and Maria, right?”
“Yes.” Alexius leaned down. “And me. I’m one of those people.”
“What would you do?” I asked, unable to look away from him.
“I’d wipe him and his best werewolves off the face of the Earth if the offense was great enough.
He knows I wouldn’t care if Corissa was my enemy afterward.
He knows I wouldn’t care if it sent the werewolves into a downward spiral of chaos.
So no, he would never act against me. He doesn’t have a reason to, and the repercussions would outweigh what he could possibly earn.
He’ll always be polite with you because you are an extension of me.
I’ve made it very clear to all of them that I protect you. ”
“Therefore, Declan is safe.”
“Declan is immensely safe,” he confirmed. “Even if he had a secondary motive, what could Declan really get him? Gossip about you and me?” He raised an eyebrow. “What is there to gossip about?”
“What indeed?” I said with a tight smile because he still hadn’t left my personal bubble. “So, how was your evening? I actually wasn’t expecting you home.”
“She told me what she needed, and I got what I needed from her and came back. I was going to be reviewing everything tonight. Tomorrow I will be out.”
“You can ask for help, you know,” I said, eyeing him as I shifted to make space.
“That would defeat the point of the trip.” He turned away and left, taking his phone with him.
I was left sitting with my closed laptop.
I would have considered calling my brother to tell him what had just happened, the phone call and all the details of it, but I knew my brother was probably getting to sleep by now, and I wasn’t going to be the one to disturb him.
I passed the time until it seemed reasonable to text, an hour before sunrise, just letting him know that I did some asking and he worked for a human company that the L.A.
pack had ownership of, but the werewolves wouldn’t bother him with werewolf business.
I warned him that we’d need to talk more about it when I came over.
I hoped he would be fine for the day. I hoped none of the werewolves harassed him at work. I hoped this would be resolved.
I just wanted to spend time with my brother, and it got so complicated so quickly.