7. Chapter 7
seven
Forty-five minutes later, Tiki walked Martin’s injured ass into the pack house and tried to get him onto the nearby bench as Cyrus, Gabe, and a few others came rushing out as they heard the door slam closed.
Cyrus’s gaze fell on Martin’s, and he noticed that he had several bandages on his legs and arm, his face was bruised, but it looked like it may very well have been worse when things started.
Cyrus rushed over to look with Gabe trailing him. He brushed his fingers through his hair as he knelt to look at Martin from a less towering perspective.
“What happened?” he asked.
Martin looked at him anxiously.
Cyrus eyed him. “It’s fine. Whatever happened, you can tell me,” he said.
Martin chewed at his slightly busted lip and cringed.
“Another wolf attacked me. I don’t know if it was one of ours or not, but…they were talking business,” Martin said as he looked around for a moment.
Cyrus’s ears heated.
“Well, if one of our own attacked you, then we have an issue,” Cyrus said slowly, then looked behind him.
Gabe was standing there with a nervous look on his face.
“This is Gabe, new Alpha,” Cyrus explained, stepping to the side. He tried not to take up his place there, handling the situation and giving Gabe a chance.
“Uh, well,” Gabe said slowly, “we should send a few out to look at the place you were attacked.” He suggested though it didn’t sound incredibly confident.
Cyrus looked to the side for a moment, waiting to see if Gabe would say anything else.
“Who?” Martin asked. “I don’t want anyone else getting hurt. Maybe it was just someone who has something against me.”
Cyrus rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything.
Gabe faltered.
“Who do you think we should send Cyrus?” he asked.
Cyrus took the torch that was passed to him happily.
“If it was someone who has a bone to pick with you, then we need to do some talking about what you’ve been up to Martin, but either way, we should send Patrick and Nina,” he said and then looked over at Gabe.
“They work in the police department. They’ll be able to handle things if it gets sticky while they’re there. ”
Gabe nodded.
“If you insist,” Martin said, and his gaze shifted not to Cyrus but Gabe.
“Yes,” Gabe said, with only a slight pause.
Cyrus nodded in turn and then looked at Martin again.
“Alright, well…you can rest up in one of the remaining spare rooms we have until you’re feeling better while we get in touch with Patrick and Nina,” Cyrus told him and looked to the side where Tiki was leaning against a wall, besides Michelle.
“Michelle, will you take Martin upstairs, Tiki? You can help yourself here or head home, wherever,” Cyrus said.
“Anything you’d like to say, Gabe?” Cyrus said.
Gabe shifted from foot to foot. “Nope, that sounds good. We’ll call…Patrick and Nina.”
Everyone dispersed, and Cyrus led Gabe up to his bedroom.
“How do you remember so many names?” Gabe asked.
Cyrus waved a hand. “I have been a close-knit member of the pack since I was young and second in command for almost a decade. I don’t remember everyone’s names, but the important names I never forget. It’s hard to when you’ve lived with them forever.”
He looked up at Gabe as he sat on his bed and pulled out his phone.
“…But you don’t remember all names…got it,” Gabe said slowly. There was a glitter in his eyes.
“Unfortunately not,” Cyrus replied slowly. “Look, it’s not a big deal, you’ll meet people, you’ll remember, or you’ll be reminded.”
Gabe’s throat moved with a swallow.
Cyrus started to click through his phone until he found the contact.
“Okay, pull out your phone. You wanna be Alpha. You make the call,” Cyrus told him.
Gabe blinked, and his mouth opened for a moment, but he didn’t object. Instead, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Cyrus.
Cyrus put in the number and noted down the spot Martin had said he was when it happened and then handed it back.
Gabe faltered for a moment before pushing the call button and placing the phone to his ear.
“Nina Prescott?” Gabe said with a deep breath after a moment, “This is Gabe…Sinclair. The new Alpha, yes.”
Cyrus’s brow knit. Sinclair. Familiar, but…no, that was too coincidental. The Sinclair’s he knew had moved years before and weren’t even part of the district anymore.
“Someone was attacked in the woods outside of I-97, we—I need you and Patrick to go check it out and see if there’s anything suspicious, anything left behind,” Gabe said. He was a bit slow with his words like he was figuring them out.
“Cyrus is here, yes,” Gabe said, and his eyes shifted from staring into the floor to Cyrus, who tilted his head to the side.
It was up to Gabe if he wanted to hand it over, up to him to decide if it would be showing weakness if he let Cyrus speak instead of insisting they listen to him, or if it was for the best.
Cyrus waited to see what he would do.
Gabe handed the phone to him.
“Hey, Nina… Yeah, Martin,” Cyrus said as he stood up. “Good, thanks, get back to m—Gabe, as soon as you can,” Cyrus told her and then hung up the phone and handed it to Gabe.
Gabe took a breath.
“So, what should we do now?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Cyrus replied.
He leaned back on his bed just long enough to grab the laptop he had placed there and open it up.
“I have to get the write-up sent to the council, need to write another one after hearing back from Nina and Patrick if there’s anything to hear,” Cyrus started and then looked at Gabe, who was inching closer to the bed.
“Why can’t I write the reports?” he asked.
“I’ve always written them,” Cyrus explained. “Liam helped, but he counted on me too, and I…”
Gabe nodded slowly. “You know the pack better than me, I get it, but I need your help, what I was trying to say before…” Gabe said.
“Don’t say it, okay, I know. You need me to help you. I need you to prove you belong here. It’s a mess. I get it. Right now, there’s nothing you can do, no big decisions to make, so…just relax, and let me send this email,” Cyrus told him.
Gabe suddenly looked deflated and frustrated, but Cyrus didn’t say anything else. He simply let Gabe leave the room and went about sending the email.
As he was closing his computer, none other than Lily came waltzing into the room with a worried look on her face.
“Please don’t tell me we have some kind of werewolf civil war starting right after we get a new Alpha?” she asked.
Cyrus shook his head.
“I don’t know what happened, but I’m sure it wasn’t that. One wolf attacking one wolf isn’t…a ‘werewolf civil war.’ We have people looking into it,” Cyrus assured her.
Lily sighed and sat down on the end of his bed.
“You are always worrying too much,” Cyrus mumbled.
“Me?!” Lily said. “You’re the one who is worried Gabe isn’t good for our pack and being a stubborn ass.”
Cyrus shifted toward the edge of the bed after his laptop snapped closed.
“Well, you’ve been calling me stubborn and an ass most of your life, so you should be used to it by now, shouldn’t you?” he asked her and stood up from the bed.
Lily also stood up, looking up at him as he towered above her.
“Snarky,” she mumbled. “So are you going to tell me what happened when Gabe followed you outside at the bar?”
Cyrus blinked, his ears hot.
“What?” he asked.
“You both came back in at the same time when Michelle went out to smoke, but she came with you, so…she didn’t smoke,” Lily told him.
Cyrus sighed. “Always reading into things,” he said as he moved to step around her.
Lily stepped in front of him.
“So you’re saying nothing happened, no talking, arguing, anything?” she asked.
“No,” Cyrus lied.
Lily eyed him. “Oh please, don’t gaslight me. Something is weird between you two. Michelle looked like she’d walked in on someone naked.”
Cyrus swallowed hard.
“What happened between Gabe and I stays that way, Lilian,” he told her.
She furrowed her brow. “Since when do you keep stuff from me?” she asked. “You vaguely hinted that you wanted to challenge Liam even though that’s skirting a close line. You never hide things from me,” she told him.
Cyrus clenched his jaw. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“So you’ll tell me eventually?” Lily asked.
Cyrus grabbed her under her arms that were on her hips and lifted her.
Lily squeaked as he set her to the side.
“Please just let it go for now, okay?” he asked her and headed out of his room as she cursed at him under her breath.
Cyrus headed for the room Martin was in. There was only one spare room left, so he knew it was the only one he could be in.
He knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Martin said from behind the door.
Cyrus stepped in and closed the door behind him.
Martin was sitting up propped against some pillows in the bed while pausing something on his phone.
“You haven’t heard anything else yet, right?” Martin asked.
Cyrus folded his arms over his chest.
“No, but I forgot to ask what the other wolf looked like. Color, any particular marks that might stand out,” Cyrus asked.
Martin looked at the ceiling for a moment.
“They were red,” he said.
Cyrus blinked. “Like…auburn?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Martin nodded. “I don’t remember anything else. I think there was something up with one of their ears, but….” He sighed. “I was a little busy eating when they attacked, I didn’t have much time to do anything else. I’ve never been a fighter.”
Cyrus nodded. “You’re a bank teller. Why would you need to be?” he assured him.
It was easy to forget that not all wolves were trained like him. Gabe certainly wasn’t trained to the extent that Cyrus and Liam had been. His movements had been sloppy, but they’d gotten the job done one way or another.
Martin, Tiki, were regular people who happened to be werewolves. Strong, but by no means trained to fight to the extent the close-knit inner circle was.