Epilogue

 

 

 

The days rolled by and after Tagh’s second wedding to his mates, the tremors that had been constantly inside him had quelled. Both Eric and Jory were major players in his life. They understood that some days he left on council business and they would be home by themselves, but they were only a phone call away if he needed them.

Today, he was in a meeting with Lara and Simon. It had come to the guild’s attention that some people from their world didn’t want the Draconian Warriors to rise to a position of power again. These same people wanted the warriors culled before things got out of hand.

“If you think I’m going to allow any of my people to be murdered, you have another think coming. Tell these idiots, if they want a war, then that’s what I’ll give them.”

Lara clapped at his speech. “I told you Tagh would be put out by the suggestion.” She focused on Tagh. “Sweetie, lose the red. You have this whole creepy vibe going on. We need to talk about the rest of these zoos.”

Tagh concentrated on calming himself and slowly returned to normal. “Are we any closer to finding any more of them?”

“Yeah. Eland has had people out searching and we think we might have three potential sites. We’ll need to organize simultaneous hits so they don’t have time to warn one another.” She sighed and Tagh realized how tired Lara had been looking of late. “Adrian here has been checking on the building society accounts to see if we can trace them back to the original owners. We’ve had Gideon Bane under surveillance to see where he leads us. His son came and gave us the lead to the zoo where we found Jory. Apparently, he and your Jory are friends.”

Tagh already knew that. Jory had told both him and Eric what he felt comfortable sharing for now. The rest would come in time. “Where’s Henry now? Jory would like to know his friend’s okay.”

“He is for now. His father had the crap beaten out of him when that guard Rico told him that Henry had been visiting Jory.” She grinned. “Oh, how the tables have turned. They are all in their own glass cages now. Because of their crimes against all beings not fully human, we’ve moved them to a secure facility, and I can guarantee they’ll never see the light of day again.”

Tagh wanted to get the meeting back to why they were there. “When do you plan on taking out the next three zoos? And do we have somewhere to take the captives once they are freed? Because I can tell you now, our house is filled to the point of bursting.”

“Simon has graciously offered us the use of his home estate. He has plenty of space. I think that we should keep the warriors we come across there, so no one takes it upon themselves to start killing people they don’t even know, just because they’re scared.” Lara sounded furious and Tagh couldn’t blame her.

At that point, Simon joined in the conversation. “The only thing I worry about in having that many warriors in one place is that it will put a target on us. The rumor of us amassing an army could be misconstrued with gathering the warriors.”

“I was serious before. If our people come after us with the intent of harming any of the warriors, I will make damn sure my warriors are all battle-trained and ready. We will wipe out every last person who comes against us,” Tagh declared.

Simon shook his head. “It won’t come to war if we can help it, but, so you know, if it does come about, we’ll be standing right behind you. We’ll knock the ignorance out of them.”

Okay—that make me feel a bit better. “You get the shelter set up and I’ll go and fill in everyone at the house. We’ll come up with a plan. We’ll go in and free them, and everyone will be able to move forward.”

“Do you think it will be as easy as that?” Simon asked.

“No, I don’t. I think it’ll be damn hard. I think it will take everyone working together to be able to pull off hitting all three at once. Timing is going to be everything. We’ll need to have people we trust in charge of each group. I don’t want this fucked up because someone goes off on their own tangent. We’ve got to get this right before a lot of innocent people get hurt.” Tagh stood up and walked out of guild headquarters.

He needed to go home to his mates.

Most of all, he needed a sense of normality before everything went to shit again.