33. Logan
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
logan
Six-Mile
The Cold Moon
Before Moonrise
My task was to hold the alliance together through the last hours so that whatever came out of that dome tonight, there would still be one people standing afterward.
Months of favors, leverage, grudging respect, and hard-won trust came together.
I cashed in every chip I’d stacked since Emma’s crazy-assed integration plan turned my compound into a middle school before moonrise.
Win or lose, by tomorrow, the board would be swept clean.
Today was the last day the pieces were mine to move.
As the flightiest of shifters, the ravens were first in line, and I needed them nailed down for their task.
They’d bunked at the far edge of Six-Mile since the day they’d arrived, posted their own watch, and trusted nobody’s eyes but their own. Their speaker had spent the whole war looking for an exit from “The Great Unification,” as Dr. Wise had taken to calling it.
The raven alpha sat on the ridgeline of the mess hall roof, probably where the ravens went to feel superior.
I intended to offer him an olive branch. I raised my hand, gesturing for him to join me in the yard.
He cawed and flew down, shifting midair and landing on his feet.
“When this is over,” I said, “and the multimorph’s council writes the treaty that governs all of us, we’ll grant you autonomy in writing.
Raven territory, raven watch, raven law inside your own borders, answerable to the council only and no other clan.
You stop being somebody’s aerial reconnaissance and start being your own nation.
” I let that sink in. “I can’t give it to you myself, but I can promise you Six-Mile’s vote for it, and Red Tail’s, and Bear Trees’s, and I can promise I’ll say so in front of everyone so I can’t take it back. ”
He tilted his head, eyeing me in a twitchy, avian way. “And in exchange, what happens tonight?”
“Tonight, your birds fly a containment ring around the multimorph’s dome. You’ll know it when you see it.”
“Why us?”
“Because no shifter in Louisiana spots like your kind, and if anything comes over that boundary, I want it seen before it lands.” I held his black gaze.
“You’ve spent this whole war being dubious of everything we’ve done and every choice we’ve made.
Fine. Watch. Trust me as far as tomorrow. That’s all I’m asking.”
The raven alpha considered me for a long moment.
“The first council after the Cold Moon,” I said, “your territory-state will be one of the first items on the docket.” If we have a council after tonight…
He stuck out his hand, and we shook on it. “We’ll do as you say.”
Garrick was the prickly stick in the asshole I had to deal with next.
The northern wolves were both easier and harder.
Garrick had wanted to hit back at Acheron since the day he’d arrived in Six-Mile, had called my mate’s whole strategy a bus schedule, and had led the crowd that wanted Marcus in chains.
He’d also sent his best into the Void and gotten some of them killed.
Despite his shortcomings, he’d been loyal.
I found him sitting in the corner of the mess hall alone, sipping an Irish coffee, the scent of the whiskey on his breath the dead giveaway.
“How can I help you, Logan? I doubt this is a social call.”
“No reason to beat around the bush.”
He held up his coffee mug. “Care for a morning cap?”
“Morning cap?”
“Not a nightcap.”
“Ah. I want to go over our positions for the fight.”
He nodded. “Go on.”
“First honors,” I told him. “When the containment forms tonight, it’ll look like a dome.
The northern packs hold the line closest to it.
The point of the spear, so to speak. If the horde tries to break in to reach her, you’re the ones who meet it first.” I watched his broad shoulders shift, as though adjusting to the weight of the responsibility.
“You wanted to matter in this war, Garrick. I’m handing you the most dangerous ground on the field.
That’s not a punishment. That’s the honor your dead paid for. ”
He was quiet a long moment, and then he put his fist to his chest in the old salute, the one that predated all our clans. “The north stands closest. On my honor and theirs.”
Under all the bluster and noise, he’d only ever wanted to be told his people counted and were remembered. If we survived, I planned to meet with Dr. Wise and make sure Garrick wound up in her histories.
The raccoon alpha cornered me by the mess hall with a piece of paper and a look of tremendous purpose. “About the menu,” he said.
I closed my eyes. There was a monster in the Void. My mate was hours from the fight of the age, and the raccoon alpha blocked my path with a menu.
“The feast we never got to eat under the Beaver Moon,” he said, with great dignity.
“The horde interrupted it. My people had prepared. I submitted a menu.” He held it out.
“When this is over, when we win, and I know we might not, there should be a feast. A real one. I would like it noted, on the record, that the raccoon clan is to cater it. Our way, though nothing washed after it’s cooked. ”
I considered that ridiculous, defiant piece of paper. He was doing exactly what I was doing. He was working on the assumption that there would be an after to spend for all of us. A raccoon planning a menu the night before the end of the world was the bravest kind of stubbornness there was.
“Approved,” I said and shook his hand. “Raccoon clan manages the victory feast. Officially. Nothing washed.” I paused. “And you personally get to tell my mate’s mother that her sweet potatoes go on the menu whether the raccoons approve of them or not, because I am not fighting that war twice.”
He blanched. Even the raccoon alpha knew better than to cross Sophia Carter.
By late afternoon, the alliance was as whole as I could make it with promises and the last of my leverage. They’d all agreed to the plan…
All except for Ville Platte.
Marcus sat in my study in one of the good upholstered chairs in front of my desk. Della waited near the door. He turned toward the window until I crossed over the threshold. He twisted in his seat, his blind eyes trained on a point past me.
“They still won’t have me,” he said. Not a question. “Even now.”
I’d spent all afternoon ensuring peace between our clans during the most important battle of our lives. Maybe we wouldn’t be at each other’s throats, but I couldn’t bargain my way into Marcus being accepted by the collection of shifters in Six-Mile or in Ville Platte.
A Steele had walked at the front of the enemy’s horde, and a Steele had sat quietly inside our warding with the enemy’s own voice in his skull for weeks and had never said a word.
Garrick’s faction had shut up about it, out of respect for the success of the raid, but quiet wasn’t the same as settled, and Ville Platte’s own people were on the fence about Marcus’s ability to lead them.
“When I go home, I go home whole, or I don’t go home at all,” Marcus had repeatedly vowed.
He’d meant his eyes. However, the lack of sight was the smaller problem.
A blind alpha, cats might have begrudgingly permitted.
A blind alpha whose loyalty ran with the enemy?
That Ville Platte would not accept. Remaining in Six-Mile insulated Marcus from the fallout, but it was coming.
“There’s a way to make it work,” I said. “You’re not going to like it, but I’m going to make you do it anyway.”
He frowned. “You’re going to open my head.”
“I’m going to ask you to allow it.” I took a seat on the other side of the desk, put my elbows on the surface, and folded my hands. “Become an open book, as it were.”
“So not you?”
“No. Torbin delves. You know that. He sifted through Salali, and he’s the one shifter in Louisiana no one, not even Garrick, will call a liar. Your sister’s lucid in stretches now. The whispers in your head are coming in clearer.”
“True, but what does that have to do with this?”
“Torbin delves the link in your head with Emma’s help, and the link in your sister’s head by proxy, and we witness what you both have to say.
” I leaned in. “We won’t do it in a corner.
We’ll do it in the open, with the relic and a jury who can see everything with their own eyes.
The same relic and the same delving that condemned a traitor are going to clear you. ”
His jaw worked. “And what if what Torbin shows them is worse than they think? If some of it is his but it looks like mine?”
“Then it looks like yours, and you go down in the open, with the truth on the table instead of death by rumor,” I said.
“You’ve never been an alpha I get along with, but I’ve stood next to you for months, Marcus, and you’ve helped keep my Emma safe.
That’s worth some respect.” I showed my teeth and then quickly recalled he couldn’t see my expression.
“But if anybody asks me, I won’t fucking admit it. ”
“The feeling is mutual,” he said, showing his teeth. At least I could see them.
“I’ve also watched you refuse to go home broken, and refuse, every single day, to be the pitiful cat they were all sure you were.
I don’t think the truth is worse than they think.
” I stood. “I believe it’s one of the best stories in this whole damn war, and you’ve been too proud and too afraid to let anyone hear it.
Let them see it all before the moon comes up. ”
For a long moment, Marcus said nothing.
Then Della’s quiet voice came from her place near the doorway. “Let them understand it all, Alpha,” she said. “I’ve carried your secret. I’m tired of being the only one who knows you’re not what they whisper to one another. Don’t let me be the only one who knows you for you.”
Marcus was quiet another moment. Then he bowed his head. “Bring the relic,” he said. “Tell me where to stand, and let’s get this over with. The multimorph has a war to wage.”