5. Logan
CHAPTER FIVE
logan
“Shit. Beheaded? Who was beheaded?”
If my mate had approved a beheading, then I’d missed a shit ton since I’d been hunting Acheron in the wilds of Louisiana. I climbed to my feet, turned toward her, and offered my hand.
Emma sighed, sat up, and let me help her up. She smoothed her hands over her hair.
“Emma,” I pressed.
Her shoulders drooped. “Salali.”
I leaned back as the revelation slammed into my stomach. “Salali? The alpha of East Nuttal Delta?” I echoed, incredulous. “She was one of your strongest supporters. What the hell did she do?”
“I caught her listening at the window of the office in the manor. Then, I followed her to the edge of the woods, where she met a raven shifter, gave the bird a report, complained about fawning over the multimorph, and made it clear that she was not on our side. Evie, Ahmie, Reuben, Benjamin, and Levi brought her before the council, and I used the artifact Marcus and I found to link me, Torbin as the delver, and twelve others who were chosen as her jury. The stone amplified everything.”
“So, that’s why the energy I siphoned from you was so strong. That’s why I was able to…” I clamped down on the rest of the sentence. Telling her I’d twisted shifters’ souls into something else, something hateful, wasn’t on the table. Not yet.
“That’s when the surge of primal power nearly electrocuted fourteen of us, yeah.” She sniffed and chewed her bottom lip.
“I’m glad it didn’t,” I muttered. I cleared my throat. “What happened next?”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, her chest expanding with effort.
“It was determined by the twelve that Salali had allied herself with Acheron. The alpha was declared a traitor.” She swallowed, her chin quivering, and she shrank with the admission.
“The council sent us out of the Gathering Place, deliberated, and sentenced Salali to death.”
“Go on.”
“Her own warriors beheaded her.” She scrubbed a hand over her face, tears already pouring down her cheeks as she rolled away. “I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I’d sworn to let them choose, and I’d promised to uphold and approve whatever the council decided. My hands were tied.”
I gripped her shoulders and turned her to face me. I pressed my palms to her face, brushing away tears with my thumbs, but she wouldn’t meet my gaze. My mate had been baptized by the fire and responsibility of being an alpha.
“You had to watch?” I asked.
“I am the multimorph.” Her voice cracked, but she kept her face pointed down, her eyes on the ground. “For better or worse.” She bit back a gag and yanked her chin out of my grasp. “I allowed it, Logan, so I had to witness it.” A tremble worked through her body.
“Tell me all of it, my love. You’ll feel better after.”
She wrapped her arms around her middle. Horror and sorrow rippled through our bond.
“After they’d chopped off her head, it rolled away, Salali’s eyes wide, her hair cut short in places, blood everywhere.
I tried not to look and squeezed my eyes shut, but I saw glimpses anyway, and it was like Salali’s soul accused me.
It was awful. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that sound,” she whispered.
“Because you are good.” Drawing her into my arms seemed like too little, too late, but it was all I could offer. I pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
She shook her head side to side and tried to pull away from my grasp. “No, no, I’m not. I’m not.”
“You are good,” I repeated. “You are having trouble processing it because you are good.”
She relaxed against me, and she spoke in a numbed, monotone voice. “I should have stopped it, Logan. Instead, I used the incident to fortify my position and warn others that all traitors would be treated the same.”
I squeezed her to me. “You are the multimorph. You are the leader.”
She jerked her head up and jumped out of the bed, her arms waving. Her eyes flashed with a fervor I hadn’t yet seen. “I’m never going to let that happen again, and I have a plan to make sure a beheading isn’t an option.”
I frowned, climbed out of the bed, and crossed my arms. “How do you think you’ll manage that?”
“I’m going to declare an end to packs and clans.
We’re all one. By that, I mean we’re going to ignore boundaries and borders.
However, you may keep your own alphas. By linking, the council will determine who is and who isn’t a traitor, but I will decide punishment from now on.
No warrior will be required to pronounce sentence or enact it on their alpha.
I won’t let that happen to any of them anymore. ”
“Death is the correct sentence for a traitor.”
Her gaze narrowed, and she jabbed her finger toward me and then herself. “Only if I decide it’s so.”
I didn’t answer.
She put her hands on her hips. “Our army isn’t ready to attack Acheron without training, so I’m headed to the next territory soon.”
“Come again?”
“I’m headed to the next territory, whoever’s in line for training with the multimorph. East Nuttal Delta was the first one. Maybe that didn’t go so well with Salali, but her warriors were some of the best.”
“Which clan is next? Bears? Raccoons?”
“I have no idea. Gotta check with Olivia. She was keeping track of which shifter groups sent five warriors, and she’ll know.
I want to contact everyone today to let them know where I’ll be and in what order.
As soon as possible, I’m going to run a training boot camp here at Six-Mile and invite everyone to train here regardless of clan or pack or herd. ”
“Over my dead body,” I snapped.
“Listen, I’m not going to hide, Logan. I have to put myself out there and make it clear that I’m following through on my promises for training.
It’s the only way to ensure as much loyalty as possible.
Beyond that, everyone has to learn to lose their suspicion of other animal shifters.
We can’t afford to behave like Marcus or Ville Platte.
” She froze. “That’s something else, Marcus—”
“I’ll be going with you.”
“You can’t. You have to stay here in Six-Mile and take care of your pack.”
“I can do that from wherever you go. Olivia can be my stand-in.”
She sighed. “It’s unfair to have her run Blackwood Construction and keep track of everything with the pack. She’s a beta, not an alpha. Doesn’t putting her in charge make Six-Mile seem weaker?”
I pressed my lips into a tight line. She wasn’t wrong, but Olivia could handle it. She’d been handling it since Emma had strolled into my life.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll fight it out later. Any more to this crazy-assed plan of yours?”
“I’ll announce new pack assignments this week.
We need to mix them up as much as possible…
a kind of shifter exchange program. That’s what we’ll call it.
Surely, there’s an easy way to get the mix as diverse as possible.
Once we upset the hierarchy, more traitors will be shaken out of their trees, and we’ll build relationships across the current lines. ”
“Shifters don’t inherently trust others outside their family groups.”
“That’s why we have to do this.”
“Gonna be a hard sell.”
“But you’ll support me.”
A grin twisted my face, and I raked my gaze over her from head to toe and back again. “Till death do us part. For better or worse.”
She paled, blinking rapidly.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Why did you say that?” she rasped, her hands drifting to her throat.
“Till death do us part?”
“We’re not married.” She took a step backward. “You’ve never even proposed.”
I guffawed then. Sharp barks of my laughter echoed.
“Fated mates might as well be, but we can put a pin in it. Shifters don’t typically go through the trouble of having a wedding, but I might throw a big-ass party if you decided to put a ring on it.
” I held up my hand, studying my naked ring finger.
“Groomzilla has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? ”
Her eyes went wide. “You want me to ask you?”
“You’re the multimorph, so… yeah, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Her shock cracked, and she laughed, doubling over. “God, you’re an asshole.”
“Alphahole,” I corrected. “Don’t you forget it.”
When she straightened, she took a deep breath. “Felt good to laugh like I meant it, but it’s time to get back to work. Too much to do, and we’re running out of time. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Lead the way, Multimorph.” We didn’t bother with clothes. What was the point? “Oh, what were you going to say about Marcus?”
She frowned, and her mouth turned down. “He’s blind.”
I blinked. “He’s blind? Ville Platte Cats won’t take that well.”
She shrugged. “I think it happened when his sister nearly killed him.”
My mouth dried. Marcus’s sister was the same woman I’d wanted to save, back before I had destroyed those shifter souls in the woods. “How?”
“Not sure. When we were at the creek, she linked with him somehow, and she was in his head the whole time we were off getting the linking relic. It nearly killed him.”
And I nearly killed her… She’d lost her mind. Maybe she was too polluted by Acheron, too far gone to come back from it.
“His sister might be my birth mom,” she murmured. “That’s the secret I’ve been keeping from you.”
“Acheron told me.”
She whirled to face me. “Acheron told you?” Her voice went up several octaves. “When? Over tea and crumpets?”
My mouth pinched as I considered her for a long moment. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had crumpets.”
“Oh, okay,” she snapped. “Focus on that part of what I said.”
“Well, Acheron is an asshole, and he did the whole asshole bit. If I know Marcus’s sister might be your mother, I’m less likely to… to…” My words died in my throat.
“Less likely to what?”
“To end her life.”
Her gaze hardened. “Did you?”
“I don’t think so, but I attacked Acheron when he threatened you, and he had her and her son in the building I assume I brought down.”
“Is that when you pulled all that energy from me?”
I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I studied her profile and wished I didn’t have to clear the air, but it was time to tell her what I’d done. Admitting it might dim her respect.
“Yeah. I ripped some shadow mages apart, reassembled their souls, and sent them back to Acheron’s lair with all the hate I could muster. Based on the boom, there’s probably not much left of the building they’d been in.”
She crossed her arms over her middle and stared at the area rug on the floor of our bedroom. “That’s why it was so much energy from me.” Her gaze jumped to meet mine. “It always takes more power to pervert a shifter’s soul. That’s why Acheron never has enough.”
I said nothing.
She placed her hand on my arm. “That’s why you’re different now. Destroying them destroyed a piece of you.”
Coughing barely covered the shuddering breath I sucked in. “Yeah, maybe.”
She considered me, nodded, and then withdrew her hand. “We all must do what we don’t want to. We’ll be lucky if we’re the same people at the end.”
“No. There’s no chance.” I shook my head sadly. “Whoever’s left alive after the final battle won’t be who they were when it started.”
Without speaking, we made our way out of the bedroom.
In my estimation, the best we could hope for was that maybe we wouldn’t all be left with twisted, wounded, mangled, grotesque souls after we sent Acheron back to hell.