Chapter Nine
~Leo~
When Felix and I made it back to my office, Darius was already inside, scowling down at the report I’d printed out the previous evening.
“Is this even written in English?” he muttered as Felix dropped into the seat next to him and I rounded my desk to fire up my computer. “I can’t figure out what the hell I’m looking at.”
“It’s not very intuitive,” I had to admit. “There weren’t a lot of options out there for supernatural alarm systems. I had to get what was available.”
“What does it show?” Felix asked, leaning over Darius’ shoulder to take a look for himself. “Does it tell us why the alarm went off last night?”
“Kind of?” Honestly, I still hadn’t entirely worked it out myself.
“From what I can tell, there were temperature and energy anomalies that the system picked up on. I adjusted the parameters to be a little less sensitive, which stopped triggering the alarm. So, whatever set it off, it wasn’t a significant change. ”
“But there was a change, right?” Felix confirmed. “I mean, one minute it wasn’t going off, and the next it was. Something must have happened.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“What happens if you switch it back to the original settings now?” he wondered.
Opening the program, I toggled between the new settings I’d programmed and the default setting. Almost instantly, the alarm screeched again.
“Son of a…” Darius clamped his hands over his ears. “Turn that off!”
At least I’d restricted the output so it only activated inside my office; still painfully loud, but better than deafening the entire pack house again. I hit the silence override, and the room sank into a heavy, humming quiet.
All three of us exhaled in relief, and Felix rubbed his temple. “Well, that confirms whatever set it off last night is still hanging around.”
I wouldn’t go that far. “The system is still picking up the same environmental irregularity, but that doesn’t mean a supernatural being is responsible for it.”
Darius agreed with me. “The setting might just be wrong. We sent out an extra patrol last night and covered most of the territory, but no one saw anything. If something had crossed our border, we would know.”
“Unless that ‘something’ isn’t visible,” Felix pointed out. “The same way the fairies set off the alarm at the Vermillion pack when they came through the portal.”
“But our regular, natural alarm didn’t get triggered,” Darius countered. “That happened with the fairies. This time, only this new, experimental system went off. I still think it’s a glitch.”
I wanted to agree, but there was other evidence, scant as it might be. “That doesn’t explain the strange scent in the forest. I’ve never smelled anything like it on our land.”
It also didn’t explain the feeling I’d had of someone watching me the night before, but that part, I kept to myself. It sounded paranoid, and I’d always preferred logic to vibes.
Felix nodded in agreement. “A lot of beings leave an imprint, whether that’s a scent or a change in temperature or energy, the exact things this system monitors.
Assuming the system is malfunctioning would be a mistake.
After all, the Ravenstone pack alarm didn’t pick up Kalo on their territory.
They didn’t know he was there until he literally knocked on their front door.
I think we need to start with the hypothesis that something was here, is still here, and go from there. ”
“And do what?” Darius challenged, more out of frustration than aggression. “How do we look for something we can’t see?”
Before I could respond, Calista’s voice entered my mind.
Leo, we’re heading back now. Kalo said he saw someone in the distance, but I didn’t see anything. To be safe, we’ll head inside.
I straightened, my heart immediately beating a little faster. Understood. Thank you.
“What is it?” Felix asked, not missing my shift in posture or the way my eyes had glazed over as I listened to the Luna.
“Calista says Kalo saw someone out in the woods, but she couldn’t see it.”
Darius swore under his breath, but Felix brightened.
“That might be a clue. A big one, actually.”
Somewhere along the way, I’d fallen off his train of thought. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Kalo was a genie, right? He had crazy amounts of magic. And even though he no longer has it, he might still be tuned into different planes, the same way I could see Evalina after visiting the fae realm, even when no one else could.”
That made some sense to me. “So, certain species might be visible to him and not to us?”
“Exactly. Maybe whatever it is was even drawn here by him if he’s still giving off some kind of magic signal.”
Silo growled in my head, and I had to agree. That didn’t sound good at all.
“I’ll get to work with Calista,” Felix continued. “We’ll make a list of every species historically tied to illusion, concealment, dimensional overlap, or selective visibility. Anything that could cross into our territory without triggering physical perimeter systems.”
He stood up, and Darius followed close behind. “I’ll go check out that scent for myself. My team needs to know what they’re sniffing for. Let me know if you figure out anything else we need to be aware of.”
He addressed that to both Felix and me, so I nodded in response.
“Okay. I’ll fiddle around some more with these alarm settings and try to figure out what the threshold is.
That might help narrow down both what we need to look for and what kind of being it might be.
We can reconvene this afternoon and report to the Alpha. ”
With our plan laid out, the other two men headed out, and I turned back to my computer monitor. The alarm still flashed in silent red pulses, like a heartbeat, across my screen.
Methodically, I adjusted the settings, lowering the temperature limit and increasing the electrical activity setting until the alarm stopped once again. I made a note of the new parameters before switching over to my inbox and all the other tasks that awaited my attention.
However, the words quickly blurred on the screen as Kalo’s voice came back to me.
I simply wished for it.
That was the explanation he gave for how he became a genie, but in my mind, there was nothing ‘simple’ about it. A man didn’t just wake up one day and decide to become an immortal being.
Why did he wish for it? Why had he thrown away his humanity? What kind of pain or fear drove a man to choose eternal servitude?
Almost before I realized I’d made the decision to go and ask him, I was already on my feet, following that pull beneath my sternum that tugged me in his direction.
Silo stirred with approval in my head. Yes. Go. Talk to him.
He wanted to be close to our mate, and I couldn’t fault him for that. I needed it too, but more than that, I needed to get to know him and start to understand who he’d been before fate pulled him into my path.