Chapter 25
Serenity, Illinois, U.S.A.
Inside Trevor and Ella’s house at Village Fucktastic (VF)
Trevor Burbank, Lieutenant of the Khain Special Response Team (KSRT), mate to Ella, and father to Track and Treena, sat on his couch, legs spread wide, elbows on knees, with three notes in his hands. He stared intently at the notes, switching compulsively between them, reading them again and again.
One of his officers, Crew Arcoal, came down the steps behind him.
“I think the place is clear,” Crew said.
“But you don’t know for sure,” Trevor said, his voice pitched low.
“I don’t.” Crew’s voice was quiet but resolute.
“And you don’t know how she got the notes here in the first place.”
“Nope.”
Trevor shook his head slightly, dismissing Crew, who left out the back door.
Trevor raised the notes to his face, scenting them again.
The paper was clean, with no fingerprints and no accompanying scents.
The writing was a neat cursive script. Either the notes were written using straight up magic, or the writer wore gloves and something to block his or her scent completely.
The first note had come three hours ago, just before sunrise…
***
The house was full, with males and mates everywhere—because one of their own was dying.
Trevor’s brother Trent, suspended in perpetual wolf form his whole life, had been found unconscious in Wisconsin yesterday, then brought home with dragen travel, which had burned him.
He hadn’t woken and they didn’t know what was wrong with him.
His vital signs had gotten worse over the long night, nothing the doctor did changed that.
Trevor stood in the doorway of the room, watching the medical team work on Trent, who was limp in wolf form on the bed.
He hadn’t moved since they’d found him in the forest. He didn’t respond to their voices, to needle pricks, or to smelling salts.
His heartbeat was slow, his breathing labored. Liquid leaked from his mouth and nose.
Their brother Troy dampened a towel and wiped the liquid away from Trent’s face, then looked up at Trevor, his thoughts flooding strongly and suddenly into his scent. Troy thought Trent was dying.
Trevor shook his head slightly, just enough for Troy to see. ‘No Troy, don’t think it,’ he said in ruhi, but it was too late. Others had caught the thread, and a real panic began to sweep through the room.
Trevor stepped forward, meaning to do something—anything, but a fat POP sounded from the living room, making males growl from all around the house. Trevor ran that way. A lone piece of white paper lay folded on the floor between the couch and the TV. Trevor snatched it up and read it silently.
‘The wolves agree to grant Abigail White full amnesty for anything she ever has done or may have done. They agree not to seek punishment or reparations in any way. They all swear to be bound by means other-than-worldly, if necessary.’
Trevor read it again, baffled. Everyone was staring at him silently, looks of apprehension on their faces. Troy grabbed the note from him and read it, then locked eyes with Trevor, his expression as mystified as Trevor felt.
Crew took it and read it then held it up. “This is like the note when she told us how to save Eventine,” he said.
Trevor grabbed the note back, resisting the urge to tear it in half. “Right in the middle of my house?!” he growled. He looked to the ceiling and all the corners of the room. “Now?”
“Maybe if we say she gets amnesty, she’ll do something to save Trent,” Troy said.
Trevor growled. “Fuck that,” he said. “Trent’s going to be fine.”
A few males murmured. Ella, his mate, looked at him beseechingly.
Trevor read it again, pacing, thinking. All around him males talked animatedly, but Trevor paid them no attention, his thoughts loud in his mind.
Could Abigail White hear them? Could she see them?
He ran upstairs to where his infant daughter and son slept.
They were in their beds, undisturbed, thank Rhen.
Cerise, one of his mate’s sisters hurried after him. “Ella asked me to watch them,” she whispered. “Beckett’s on his way. We won’t leave them alone, promise. You go and deal with… everything.”
“Thanks Cerise, you’re the best.”
Trevor went back down the stairs and out the front door, ignoring the melee in the house, his only thoughts on whether Abigail White had some sort of access to them.
White was a foxen witch with the power to summon Khain the demon, and who knew what else.
His team of officers had been searching for her for months and they couldn’t find her or anyone in her family.
It was maddening and it should not be possible.
A truck pulled in the driveway—Harlan and Eventine. They parked and got out.
“How’s Trent?” Harlan said as soon as he saw Trevor.
Trevor only shook his head. He wouldn’t say. Instead, he mutely handed the note to Eventine. She read it, her expression turning fiery at once. She handed it to Harlan, who also read it, growling when he saw the name on it.
“Amnesty,” Harlan growled. “What the hell is this?”
Trevor motioned at his house. “It poofed into my living room five minutes ago. Find Ella, she’ll tell you everything.”
Harlan pulled his mate close to him and whispered something in her ear.
She nodded and patted his face gently. They went inside quickly, leaving Trevor alone in the driveway again.
He stayed there for a long time, turning the amnesty thing over in his mind, knowing he could never agree to it without knowing what the witch had done, but also knowing he couldn’t let his brother d—Trevor cut the thought out of his mind. Trent would be fine.
Rhen, are you fucking serious with this bullshit?
he thought viciously. He wasn’t one to question Rhen, but he was ready to fight someone and Rhen seemed as good as any, if she would make his brother d—SHIT.
Trevor paced and growled and drove thought from his mind, almost shifting and running but holding himself still, holding himself in non-shift with only the power of his will to be with his brothers and his mate and his young and his team.
He would not shift and run in uncontrol.
He would NOT. He would shift with purpose or with abandon, only.
He paced instead. He made one-sided deals with Rhen instead.
He pleaded years of his own life in exchange for this one blessing, but no one listened, no one heard, no one that he could sense.
Trevor paced. An hour passed with no change and no notes. Trevor paced. People came and went with news and food and drinks. Trevor paced. Trent’s heartbeat slowed more. Trevor paced. Another hour passed. He paced. Another hour passed. He paced harder. Trent’s breathing became ragged. Trevor paced.
Finally, Trevor couldn’t pace anymore. He went inside, thinking of nothing but the pure will that Trent come back to them, that Trent be saved.
Ella came to him in the kitchen, her face stricken, ‘he’s worse’ stamped on it.
Trevor didn’t let himself respond. He would not give up hope.
He would stay the course. Trent, strong and healthy and fine and HERE and alive and awake and talking and—
POP
Troy rushed past to the living room. Another note had fallen in the same spot as before. Trevor held his breath and Ella stiffened against him. All around the house, males growled and swore. Trevor squeezed his mate’s hand and she squeezed back. He let her go, heading for Troy and the note.
Troy looked at his own mate, then met Trevor’s eyes. “It says, ‘Use the hot portal.’”
Trevor took the note and read it several times as questions formed in his mind. “The hot portal—” he said, almost to himself, “—is that Graeme?”
POP.
Troy snatched the note out of the air and read it, “Not him. The pure one.”
Trevor’s head pounded and his rage quickened with the sudden and sure knowledge that Abigail White could hear him inside his own motherfucking HOUSE.
***
The hot portal had turned out to be Graeme’s infant daughter, Kendra, who was so hot no one could hold her but her mom and dad, but who also had advanced intellect for a baby.
She’d understood her part and done her best to reduce her body temperature drastically so she could touch Trent without incinerating him.
When she’d put a hand on Trent, he’d woken up immediately and shifted into a man for the first time ever.
Trent was alive because of Abigail White’s advice.
It had only been a few hours, but Trent was already up and out and working and by all reports had met up with his actual mate at the Harlem Reservoir north of town.
Trevor was tremendously grateful that his brother was alive, but he was also pissed beyond belief that Abigail White had the balls to pull her magical bullshit in his house.
Now to figure out if she was still around.