Padding across the driveway in wolf form, Kajus huffed out a sigh as he approached the courtyard where the talks were to continue this morning. It was the third day of the hearing now, the first day thankfully behind them as it had been a tumultuous mess of arguments and accusations. After interviewing Miller, they’d heard from Baron and Caroline regarding the struggles their Den had been facing since they’d first discovered that the Noturatii had somehow linked their pack with the Lakes District. The Noturatii’s latest efforts apparently included sending a handful of operatives to roam the local towns with photographs of one of their members, as reported by the human caretaker they’d left at their estate in their absence, and Baron had been understandably irate about the news.
Yesterday had been no less intense. They had started filling in the details of daily life in the British Grey Watch pack with a number of the women being interviewed, of both high and low rank, and it had quickly become apparent that the current situation was far from ideal. The women had confirmed that their conversion ritual included a ‘mandatory mating’. They had willingly admitted that Lita, their former mage, had carried out blood rituals involving the sacrifice of wild animals. And then, when Kajus had thought things couldn’t get any worse, an idle comment on the part of one of their interviewees, to the effect that she didn’t blame Genna for killing Feriur and only wished someone had done it sooner, had led to the Panel bringing that part of the hearing forward. They’d called Genna back to question her on how and why she’d ended up killing the pack’s second-in-command, finding out about how Sempre had been trying to force her to perform the blood rituals in Lita’s place and had locked her in the cage as punishment for her disobedience. By the end of it, Oana, of all people, had declared that Feriur’s death could not realistically be considered anything other than self-defence and had challenged anyone to offer her a good reason why she could possibly be wrong.
No one had said a word, and so that aspect of Genna’s crimes, at least, had drawn to a close.
By mid-afternoon, everyone had been exhausted, so the Council and the Panel had called a temporary halt to the interviews to discuss how much progress they’d made so far and to make plans for the following day.
And that had led to this morning’s line-up, a series of interviews which were promising to make Kajus regret getting out of bed this morning.
Inside the courtyard, he waited until the last moment to shift, agitated by the need to spend long hours in human form when he’d normally be spending a great deal of the day hunting or patrolling his pack’s territory as a wolf. The local wolf packs knew they were there and tended to leave them alone, but human hunters were still a hazard now and then, and vigilance was always their first line of defence.
The Council arrived and took their seats as the last of the Panel straggled in, and shortly afterwards, Baron’s 2IC was showing in the first shifter to be questioned. It was Sven, one of the males in Sempre’s pack, and Kajus fought to hold back a groan. By now they all had a fair impression of how Sempre’s pack was run, and he’d argued against this particular interview, hoping at the same time to dismiss the other two males as well, seeing questioning men as weak and beaten down as these to be a complete waste of time.
Tank led Sven to sit at the table at the head of the courtyard, then made himself scarce. Over the past few days, Kajus hadn’t quite managed to get the full measure of Tank, but nonetheless, he’d developed a begrudging respect for him. He seemed confident and capable, obeying orders from his superiors without question, and yet, when official proceedings were finished with, he seemed equally willing to speak his mind, and Kajus had even caught him having a heated argument with Baron one evening. A good 2IC, as he himself well knew, needed to have an independent mind and pay close attention to what was going on around him, and yet still be willing and able to back up his alpha when it came to the crunch.
Sven, on the other hand, was another matter entirely. He wore a collar about his neck, his gaze remained steadfastly on the ground, and his bearing spoke of a man who expected to be beaten at any moment. He was more pet than wolf, and Kajus failed to understand why any of the Panel would bother interviewing him. The Council had argued for his presence, of course, but he rather considered the three of them to be bleeding hearts who would listen to the opinion of even a domestic dog, if one ever learned to speak.
“Your name is Sven, correct?” Eleanor asked, opening the discussion.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sven replied, without looking up.
“And you are a member of Sempre’s pack?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How long have you been a shifter?”
“Eight years, ma’am. I was converted when I was sixteen years old.”
That got Kajus’s attention. Sixteen? That was rather young for a man to be stepping into a role like the one Sven occupied. If what he said was true, that meant he was now twenty-four. He looked older.
“What is your role in your pack?”
“I am to provide sexual services for the females,” Sven told them flatly. All of them already knew that, and yet it was still something of a shock to hear it said quite so bluntly.
“And in general,” Eleanor went on, not missing a beat, “would you say you were happy with your life in Sempre’s pack?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sven replied in a monotone, still looking at the ground. “My life is excellent.”
No surprises there, Kajus thought darkly. They weren’t going to get anything useful out of this man.
“How do you feel about Sempre? Do you believe she’s a fair and just leader?”
That made Sven pause, and Kajus waited for his reply, feeling a faint thread of curiosity about how he would answer the question. “Sempre is an excellent alpha,” Sven said finally, sounding like he was announcing his own funeral, and Kajus sat back in his chair, losing the small amount of interest he’d had in the interview.
“I’m sorry, may I interrupt for a moment?” It was Linnea who spoke, and Eleanor graciously waved for her to continue. “Sven, are you aware that none of what is said here will be relayed back to Sempre? And that nothing you say will be used against you? You’re not in any trouble here. We’re merely trying to understand how your pack runs on a day to day basis.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Sven replied woodenly. “I understand.”
Kajus watched with amusement as the others glanced at each other, baffled and frustrated. Had they actually expected Sven to tell them the truth? If he even knew what the truth was, of course. After being under Sempre’s control for so many years, it was perfectly possible that she’d brainwashed him to the point that he actually believed the drivel he was telling them.
Sempre was smart, Kajus admitted to himself, even as his stomach rolled at the dark intentions behind her cleverness. Sven had been converted when he was only sixteen, and Kajus had to wonder how old he’d been when he was recruited. It would have been an easy task: find a handsome teenager roaring with hormones, offer him not only mystical powers, but endless sex with a bevy of beautiful women, and he’d have strung himself up like a prized hog and delivered himself straight into her hands.
Only to discover how deep the lie ran after the fact. The Grey Watch was a firmly matriarchal society, after all. Even Kajus’s own pack didn’t have a male alpha, just the female and himself as her 2IC. But if anything happened to her, or she retired, then Kajus wouldn’t step into her place. She would be replaced with a new female, and the firm matriarchal leadership of the pack would continue. While not many packs took it to the extremes that Sempre had, there was a definite leaning towards female control within the Watch, as there had been as far back as the group’s inception in the 1400s. And if Sven knew that, then no amount of coaxing in the world would get him to speak against the woman who, as far as he was concerned, governed his entire world.
But maybe there was a way around that, Kajus thought, uncomfortable with his own lack of satisfaction over the way his sex were treated and equally uncomfortable with leaving Sven to hang without even trying to help him.
“Sven,” he said, as the others muttered in quiet conversations around him. “See if you can answer this: has Sempre threatened you in any way, before you came to speak to us?”
Sven didn’t answer right away, but Kajus wasn’t interested in his words. He was paying far more attention to the man’s body language. And the moment he heard the question, Sven’s whole body changed. His shoulders tensed, his breathing quickened, beads of sweat broke out over his face… and his hands clenched into fists. Interesting. Very, very interesting.
“Have you been threatened?” Eleanor asked softly.
Sven said nothing, and Kajus wasn’t surprised. Though she didn’t realise it, Eleanor had just made it far more difficult for Sven to answer with her innocent question. He might, just might speak frankly to another male, but never to a female. Kajus waited, praying that no one else said anything, as Sven clearly fought some unseen battle within his own mind to find a solution to the question.
Finally, he lifted his eyes, staring straight into Kajus’s. “They say that Fenrae-Ul has risen,” he said, softly but clearly, his gaze not wavering in the slightest. “I would like to ask her to kill me.”
“Has there been any more news?”
Leon looked up from his computer, schooling his face into an expression of frustrated disappointment. “Unfortunately, no,” he told Melissa, knowing exactly what she was referring to. “Just the one report from Chu, about the captive being spotted in Lancaster. None of the other agents have found anything yet.”
Melissa flopped down into her chair, huffing out a breath in frustration. A handful of reports sat on her desk, and she flipped through them idly. Then she sat up straighter and counted the reports, not looking pleased with the result. “Have we got the rest of the agents out in the field yet? I told you right up front I wanted a dozen of them.”
“And I told you,” Leon said, firmly, but not angrily, “that making sure the men were trained properly and that the weapons facility wasn’t left defenceless was not going to happen overnight. We have seven agents in the field. The rest will be joining them in a week or so.”
“But it was four days ago that Chu got that intel,” she complained. Leon reminded himself of the six figure salary he was earning doing this job and counselled himself to ignore the way her voice was rising to a near-whine. “What have they been doing since then?”
“It’s a tough call, during the week,” Leon pointed out. “Harried mothers, pensioners and the unemployed. That’s all you’re going to get Monday to Friday. And people these days are a difficult lot. They either don’t notice any strange goings on, or more likely, they simply don’t care.”
“But on weekends, it’s even worse,” Melissa argued. “All the tourists come out, people from London, people who know nothing about the area or any of the locals, and the haystack gets even bigger.” She sighed. “Okay, so how about we stop targeting the general public and go after more specific people? Mechanics, for example. The shifters seem to have a barn full of those damned white vans. Someone must be maintaining and repairing them. Or shopkeepers. They still have to buy food and clothes, just like everyone else.”
“True,” Leon said, in a tone that implied he didn’t agree with her in the slightest. “But these days, it’s absolutely remarkable what you can order online. So if you were trying to disguise your existence from the rest of the world, wouldn’t you just order anything you needed and get it shipped to you in neat little cardboard packages?”
Melissa glared at him. “I find it really annoying how often you’re right,” she said, wry humour leaking through her irritation, and Leon couldn’t help but grin.
“I’m told that’s why they sent me here. Do your job well and apparently, people start to notice. And then you get told to pack up your things, get sent to another country, and get a fifty thousand Euro pay rise. Bothersome stuff, all that extra money. Oh, but it’s pounds here, isn’t it. Sorry.”
Melissa dismissed his slip with a wave of her hand. “We’re talking about people who regularly recruit new members. They bribe police officers. Our operatives run into them on the streets often enough. They have to be going out in public sometime. And when they do, people have to see them.”
“Maybe the locals are protecting them?”
Melissa looked aghast. “You’re saying the Lakes District is full of shifter-sympathisers? Bloody hell, what is the world coming to?”
“No, no,” Leon clarified hastily. “I’m not saying they’re protecting the shifters. In all likelihood, they know nothing about any of that. I’m saying maybe they’re protecting their friends. Colleagues. Customers. If you’ve got someone who makes large orders and pays cash on a regular basis, it’s bad for business to turn them in to the police.”
Melissa scowled. “And there’s you being right again. Fine, well… keep at it,” she said dismissively, standing up and heading for the door. “I’m going to see Evans in the lab. Hopefully someone in this damned base has discovered something useful today.”