Chapter 8
TALBOT
It was difficult to drag myself away from Dawn’s side once she was tucked in bed, asleep for the night, but I had things to do, plans to make, and pack Alphas to destroy. Her story made bile rise in my throat, and I still hadn’t managed to swallow it back down.
I sat at my computer, searching, and looked in all the deep, dark holes for what I needed—the whereabouts of her cousins—but I came up empty-handed.
No, that was wrong. I came up with pages full of kids and teens being sold on the dark web, hundreds of them, until I stood up and vomited into my waste basket. Unfortunately, none of them fit the description of the children who’d been sold from Dawn’s pack.
I made a note of all those kids though, because I’d find them. I’d pass it off to the convocation too. While we started out as personal security, we’d quickly been approached by Alexander, the convocation member for the shifters, who’d heard about our side hustle and decided to make us legitimate.
Yeah, he decided, not us, because when a fucking dragon said, “You work for me now,” you didn’t protest. It helped that he gave some of our less legal actions official legitimacy.
So far, he hadn’t used us for personal gain, so it was a mutually beneficial arrangement and hadn’t gone against our strict moral code—if mercenaries had a code.
There was already some gray area considering we killed people for a living.
I slammed my laptop closed and cursed. After Vance made Alpha, we became security for hire.
When he took over, we got a good look at the sleuth’s finances, and let’s say they weren’t good.
We were also a little broken from Dawn cutting off contact the way she did, so when Franklin, of all fucking people, suggested that we could help people in our own, brutal way, it seemed like fate.
We linked up with some groups down south, mostly in the resistance against the Shifter Council, and started doing security jobs.
Sometimes we’d do hostage situations, find missing people, or do a heist, but we never kidnapped anyone, and we never, ever got caught up in the resistance’s politics.
We just wanted to live up on our mountain and complete a couple of jobs a year to keep the sleuth well stocked.
I did some small hacking jobs too, which was something I actually enjoyed. It had all the adrenaline of an operation but without the flying bullets.
My door creaked open, but I knew it was Vance, knew the feeling of his power against mine.
“Find anything?”
“Only some internalized rage we might need to look at,” I teased, but it wasn’t really funny.
“Franklin is sleeping in her doorway like a faithful hound.”
I grinned at that. I might be more emotionally aware than him, but that was only because Franklin felt everything at a hundred percent—joy, despair, fear, and yeah, once upon a time, love.
He fell in love with a girl we knew for a day and only ever spoke to using snail mail, because she didn’t have access to the internet.
He was a mess when she’d appeared in the den, covered in her blood.
I could still hear him running into the den, shouting for Vance, who was our field medic.
He was going to be a little traumatized as all that shit got bundled together in his brain, so I wasn’t surprised when he’d taken up residence in her room, but I’d be sure to ask her if it was okay.
Enough shit had been forced on her in this life. I refused to let any of us—even my twin—take away her choices now.
“Her story is pretty fucked up, Vance. He feels guilty.”
“We all feel guilty.”
Yeah, we did, but there was nothing we could have done back then.
We gave her an out and offered her somewhere safe, but we didn’t have the protection of a fucking dragon behind us then.
We would have been hauled up before the Shifter Council and probably jailed for kidnapping an Omega.
It wouldn’t have mattered what Dawn said.
She was “just an Omega” in the eyes of the old fucks who ruled the Shifter Council and still subscribed to the idea that being an Omega somehow made a person weak.
No, the only way to get her any justice would have been to go to the convocation member himself, and honestly, throwing yourself on the mercy of Alexander the motherfucking dragon would have been petrifying to us as teens. Hell, it was scary as hell now.
I looked at Vance. “Are we going to do something?”
Vance nodded. “We’ll ask what Dawn wants, but if there are more people like her or those pups in that goddess forsaken pack? Then yeah, something needs to be done.”
“Are you going to pass it by Alexander first?”
Vance sighed. “Yes.”
“And if he says no?” I didn’t think he would, because despite the fact the man—er, dragon had nothing but disdain for humanity in general, he wasn’t the type who would turn a blind eye to an Alpha selling off his pack’s young.
Dragons procreated slowly, or not at all now that he was probably the last one left, so he treated them with the utmost respect and care.
It didn’t matter if they were shifter or human, beta or Omega.
He still wasn’t very nice to them, but he would protect them at all costs.
Alexander wasn’t really nice to anyone.
“If he says no, then we’ll go ghost mode and kill the Alpha. Either way, sanctioned or not, that piece of shit is soaking in his last days starting now.”
Good. I went back to work. I wanted to find those pups for her and help her put her own ghosts to bed.
Vance disappeared then reappeared with a muffin and a large travel mug of cocoa. I gave him a quick smile and continued to work. He patted my back softly. “Don’t forget to sleep, T. We don’t need to solve the problems of the shifter world tonight.”
I shrugged. “No, but the longer we wait, the more those kids’ trail goes cold.
” I emailed him the spreadsheet I was keeping.
“Actually, if you talk to Alexander, tell him to clean up the Shifter Council’s mess before it gets worse.
” The spreadsheet held all the details of people who were selling shifters.
Vance’s face went hard. I knew my Alpha.
He’d want to be on that taskforce, but I’d argue against it, because we had our own we needed to protect right now, and she was sleeping in the room next door.
Finally, he nodded and left, and I started a new spreadsheet, chasing leads through the depraved and disgusting underworld in search of a hint I could use.
I was still working as I leaned back in my chair and my eyes closed for the night.