39. Zephyr
Zephyr
“I’m going with him?” Beside me, Honey eyes Xavier in his suit and white lab coat like he might reach out and do something terrible to her.
It was a favor for him to come down to the compound to pick Honey up and take her to the nexus for us since we have urgent club business to attend to.
I know what she sees, though, and, in part, I can’t blame her. He’s the complete opposite of Phoenix and me. His well-tailored suit, one hand in his pocket, and the other with an expensive watch on his wrist, scream wealth and power.
The comparison is stark because I’m only pretty sure the jeans I’m wearing are mine and that they’re clean. Phoenix is absolutely wearing my sweatshirt, again.
Our older brother has always had this power-hungry look, just like his sire. And it can be off-putting, but at least it’s not the bloodthirsty one Fox gets.
“He’s our older brother. He wouldn’t hurt you. It’s his job to help omegas get well, and it’s one that he takes extremely seriously.” I try encouraging Honey to go with him.
Phoenix and I are supposed to be in the locked assembly room, working on decoding a boatload of new information that was found on omega shipments. But when Xavier texted, saying that she was refusing to go with him, I didn’t quite expect to have such a hard time convincing her to go.
Honey takes another step away from him, which puts her standing behind Phoenix and me.
I look over my shoulder at her, trying to rotate so I’m not giving either door in the room my back.
Honey is out of reach, but my shadow easily pulls her back to my side.
“Honey.” Xavier turns on the charm. I’ve heard him talk to omegas like this before, usually at boring parties where our parents force us to dress nice and ‘act civilized for one night,’ as our sire would call it.
“I assure you that you will be brought back here, unharmed, in roughly two hours’ time.
Two and a half hours if you allow me to treat you to a snack after the imaging. ”
She’s not having it. Honey shakes her head and steps closer to me, her arm brushing against mine. I don’t know when she got so clingy, so needy for protection, but I can’t say that I don’t like it. I like that she sees me as someplace safe.
My shadow wraps around her, and I raise my arm to pull her closer.
Just for her to hear, I lower my voice and let out words through a soft purr.
“I promise, he isn’t so bad. He just looks like a sleazeball.
It’s genetic. Him and Fox share the same dad.
The stick up their ass came as standard equipment at birth. ”
That gets a small huff of laughter from both Honey and Xavier.
But she still clings to my side. “I don’t trust him.”
“Phoenix, Zephyr!” Revenant growls from the door leading back to assembly.
We’re holding up the meeting.
Lazarus stands on the other side of Revenant, peeking out through the space alongside him.
“Someone has to go with her.” I look at Lazarus.
“Fine, Phoenix, go with Honey. Zephyr, we need you to translate this shit,” Revenant orders.
My spine stiffens. I’m as tight as Honey is.
I hate this. I hate that it’s an order. I can’t be away from Phoenix again. I struggle to draw a breath. I squeeze Honey tighter to me, not wanting to separate from her, not wanting to separate from him. If I cling to her, maybe we won’t part.
“I’ll go.” Lazarus places his hand on Revenant’s shoulder. “Two twins are faster than one with translating. You don’t need me for that. We’ll be back before it gets tactical.”
Revenant rolls his eyes. “Fine.”
Honey looks up at me with a tiny shake of her head.
Placing a kiss on her lips, I murmur, “What he did was wrong, but I trust him. Trust me, trust him, and I’ll see you soon.”
Her shoulders deflate, and she nods.
Lazarus and Revenant switch places, and then he offers his hand out to Honey.
Xavier sighs. “This really isn’t going to —”
“You’ll figure out a way to make it work. Or are you not as smart as you say you are?” Lazarus snaps back at Xavier’s pathetic excuse.
“Today, please.” Revenant hurries us away.
I steal one last kiss, and Phoenix does the same before walking behind me, protecting my back as we make our way to assembly.
The club members who were dismissed left their chairs out, and I grumble, pushing them in as I head back toward the head of the table, where Revenant’s chair is empty.
Mayhem is standing from his seat, hands on the table, glaring at the images he’s spread out on the tabletop.
A pen and paper with some scribbled notes rest next to his fist.
“I don’t understand how the two of you make heads and tails of this,” he grumbles.
“It gets easier the more you look at it. But when you read a pictographic language before the standard alphabet, it helps.” I look at the photos on the table. They’re new to me. But I don’t know if Phoenix has seen them before.
“Where did you get these?” he asks, answering my question about how new these are.
“This one.” Revenant hands me an image. The glyphs pictured aren’t written in the special glowing ink. They’re written in blood. “Was in the sequestering building at Honey’s old community. In the room that she allegedly shared with Iona.”
“There is no way Iona could have left all the encrypted messages. That wouldn’t make sense.” I look at Revenant, trying to piece together what he’s implying.
He nods and points back to the photo. “But if she knew we were looking, she’d leave as many messages as she could in any way she knew how. Just as long as she wouldn’t be caught.”
“The House of Apostles don’t know the secret code. We didn’t find any evidence of it anywhere in their community houses except for this.” Mayhem indicates toward the image in my hand.
I pass it to Phoenix, and he rotates it ninety degrees first, and then another, so he’s holding it upside down. He points at a spot on the image. “See?”
Nodding, I hold it back out to Revenant, poking the print where Phoenix did. “You need to get someone to go back here. There’s something stuck in the blood.”
Revenant takes a picture of where I’m pointing and then fires it off in a text message to someone. “Okay, on that, but what does it say?”
I pull up my secure cloud backup on my phone and go back through translations we’ve worked out. I set it down on the table in front of me, and my shadow plucks up the pen and notepad by Mayhem, bringing it to me.
Putting pen to paper, I start piecing it together.
“No, that’s a T, not an I.” Phoenix points back to a letter I missed.
I don’t like what the message says. I don’t like it, not one bit, but I hand it over to Revenant.
“MP St. Pierre, new lead,” Revenant reads, looking at me. “That’s it?”
Phoenix points out the letter combinations. Did Iona know Honey was a St. Pierre? Or was she warning us about St. Pierre? The questions I’m sure are ones that Revenant and Mayhem are asking themselves too.
I plop down in the chair across from Mayhem, and he shoves more images at me. They’re from another raid that another club did.
But as I work, my mind is wrapped up in what is happening to Honey. Fox ordered the testing, and I trust him. I trust Xavier to an extent too, but she must be so scared right now.