Allegiance of Honor (22 page)

“You’re holding our alpha hostage.” It was a tired statement from the male half of the pair. “We have to act.”

“I’ll incapacitate you in seconds,” Lucas said over Monroe’s screaming at them to intervene. “At which point your remaining packmates, including the cubs, will be helpless.”

The two soldiers looked at Monroe, who continued to demand they fight. Faces growing tight, they stepped back to take up watchful positions by the door, their hands clasped in front of their bodies as per Lucas’s order. Their actions told Lucas this alpha-pack relationship had been all but broken long before Lucas arrived—Monroe’s unthinking orders had simply put the final nail in the coffin.

Holding the other alpha’s wrists in an unbreakable grip, Lucas grabbed a navy blue scarf from the floor. It must’ve been the healer’s. He dragged the alpha into a chair, then used the scarf to tie the other man’s hands to the back of it, so that they could have a face-to-face conversation.

He didn’t think Monroe Halliston was thinking clearly enough to attempt to break his bonds by semi-shifting, but if he did, Lucas would
do what he had to do to control the other alpha. “You blame DarkRiver for the deaths of your packmates?”

Eyes now a pale greenish brown with an elongated black pupil, the alpha bared his teeth. “It all began with you!” he yelled. “You and your Psy
mate
.” He spat on the floor, as if he’d tasted something foul. “Without you, the Psy would’ve remained in their world and we would’ve remained in ours. Safe.”

This wasn’t the time to tell the ocelot male about the rot in the PsyNet and how it had infected Psy minds. The outbreaks of insanity had been inevitable. It was Sascha and other empaths like her who’d stopped the massacres from being even worse. Without the domino effect of Sascha’s defection, those Es might’ve never awoken in time.

“You hired mercenaries to kidnap my child,” he said, a heavy feeling in his gut.

A sly look flitted over Monroe Halliston’s face as the healer lifted a trembling hand to her mouth, while both soldiers visibly blanched. “Prove it.” It was a challenge.

“DO YOUR PACKMATES
know about the two million dollars you transferred into an offshore account in the Caymans?” Lucas asked. “The mercenaries tell us that the full fee was four million.” An irresistible amount. “That second payment would’ve cleaned out your pack’s savings.”

The ocelot alpha curled his lip, but the healer spoke before he could spit out further insults.

“How
could
you?” It was a shaky whisper. “That money was the only thing we had left to give the cubs. Their parents are gone, their grandparents are gone, their friends are gone! At least with that money, they could have a good life, have choices!”

Baring his teeth at the elderly woman, the alpha said, “Shut up and get out.”

He didn’t seem to notice the reaction of his soldiers, but Lucas did. The two were staring at their alpha not only in shock . . . but also in disgust. The healer was sacrosanct in a healthy pack. No one,
no one
in Lucas’s pack, would ever get away with insulting Tamsyn. He might disagree with her at times, might even get angry with her on very rare occasions, but even he would never talk to her in that ugly tone.

“No!” The healer’s entire body trembled as she came to stand next to Lucas. “You don’t get to give me orders anymore. I don’t know who you are, but you are
not
my alpha!”

Hissing and growling, the ocelot alpha attempted to get up, chair and
all. Lucas slammed him back down but didn’t speak. Instead, he gave the healer the chance to say whatever else she needed to say.

When Monroe Halliston ignored her to shout, “Get this traitor out of here!” to the two other dominants, they didn’t respond.

The once-alpha had lost them.

As if realizing that at the same time, the older man began to yell. “You’re fools! Don’t you see what he did? He opened the floodgates and
we
were caught in the flood! Your brothers and sisters and parents would still be alive without him! My mate would still be alive. My
son
would still be alive!” Another growling snarl. “Why should he get to keep his mongrel child while my son lies dead?”

Lucas’s claws sliced out but he forced his enraged panther into patience. There was more here than met the eye. Monroe was too unstable to have pulled off what he appeared to have pulled off. First of all, according to the conversation Lucas had had with Bastien prior to leaving for Texas, Monroe couldn’t have done the financial maneuvering involved.

“He doesn’t have the skill,” the man in charge of DarkRiver’s financial assets had told Lucas. “The steps it took to move that money from the Caymans’ account without leaving any kind of a trail? It requires years of experience and an in-depth knowledge of banking systems.”

Bastien had thrust a hand through the dark red of his hair, his green eyes sharply intelligent. “To put it another way—you couldn’t do it and you’ve got way more financial expertise than the ocelot alpha. The only person in San Francisco who could is talking to you right now.”

And since Bastien’s level of expertise was in no way common, it was highly improbable that Monroe Halliston had simply hired someone.
Especially
when Bastien had found zero indications that the ocelot had paid out any money but the two million down payment to the mercenaries. No one that good would work for free.

Unless they had an ulterior motive.

“Mongrel child?” one of the SkyElm soldiers said into the stunned quiet, her voice trembling. “Is that how you think of me, too? My father was human, after all.”

Her former alpha stared at her and when he spoke, he betrayed far more than he intended to. “It would’ve been a lot better for the world if we’d all stayed in our separate corners, human, Psy, and changeling.” The ocelot’s tone was broken rock, harsh and grinding. “This so-called Trinity Accord, it’ll just lead to more death, more destruction.” Volume increasing, he said, “The smartest people have already realized it. They’re working to get us back to where we should’ve been from the start!”

That sounded very much like it could be Consortium rhetoric, but Lucas wasn’t about to rely on guesswork. Before he could speak, however, the male soldier said, “Those aren’t your words.” A steady tone but one that demanded attention. “Who did you betray us with?”

Monroe jerked. “I didn’t betray this pack!” His voice shook with the force of his passion and resolve. “Everything I’ve done was for you!”

“Oh?” the soldier asked. “What were you intending to do with the DarkRiver cub? Murder her in vengeance?”

The man who’d once been alpha to these people suddenly paled, as if realizing how far he’d gone. “Of course not,” he whispered. “I don’t murder children.”

“So where was she supposed to go?” the soldier insisted. “Did you expect us to take you at your word and accept her as falling out of the sky, never mind that DarkRiver would’ve ripped apart the world searching for her?”

The sarcastic question made Monroe Halliston snap. Wrenching at his bonds, he said, “My friends made preparations for the child to be shipped out to Australia!”

“What friends?” the healer asked.

“I never knew their names.”

“You trusted anonymous
strangers
?”

“Strangers who saw the truth, who wanted to
help us
get vengeance.” A smile meant to intimidate. “The ship was ready and waiting in San Francisco Port. That was the genius of it—our enemies would’ve been scrabbling to find clues and all the while, the child would’ve been locked up in a boat in their own territory.”

“You’re a fool if you think that would’ve worked,” Lucas said quietly, though his blood was raging. He didn’t need more from this pathetic excuse for an alpha. Luca’s people were more than good enough to find the ship in question, given the relative scarcity of vessels bound for Australia that used San Francisco Port. “Do you really think a single ship, plane, or car would’ve been allowed to depart San Francisco had Naya been taken?”

“You don’t have that much power.”

Lucas shrugged. “We have enough.” And they had friends, including a woman who had the authority to ground entire fleets of planes, and an ally who controlled vast areas of the sea, but he wasn’t about to share those details with this man who was about to die. “Go,” he said to the soldiers and the healer. “You know there can be only one outcome here.”

Had Monroe Halliston been mentally ill, with no awareness of right or wrong, Lucas would’ve swallowed his rage and forced himself to show mercy, but grief alone wasn’t an acceptable excuse for what this man had almost done. He had taken actions that could’ve led to the murder of Lucas’s mate with her warm, empathic heart and smile that was his world, and the abduction of his barely one-year-old cub. Naya’s fear would’ve been a traumatizing wound carried forever in her heart, as Lucas carried the scars of his parents’ deaths.

No, he could not,
would not
forgive such a crime. The world had to understand that DarkRiver protected its own and that to come after
anyone
under Lucas Hunter’s protection was to sign your death warrant. Yes, he could act civilized, but he remained a panther under the skin.

At the door, the SkyElm dominants came to attention. “We’ll stay, bear witness,” the female soldier said in a quiet voice.

Her partner nodded.

Accepting their right to remain, Lucas glanced at the healer. “Go,” he repeated in a gentler tone. “You don’t need to see this.”

The woman was sobbing, but she didn’t argue with him.

Waiting only until she’d left, Lucas looked down into the face of the man who’d betrayed his own pack in a selfish desire for vengeance.
“Changeling law is clear. You sent outsiders into my territory. Those outsiders had orders to take my child, even if that meant killing my mate. The penalty is death.”

The air around Monroe began to shimmer, as if he’d finally figured out he could shift and escape his bonds.

Lucas didn’t hesitate.

His claws sliced through Monroe’s carotid and jugular in the split second before the shift took hold.

•   •   •

“HE
was good once,” the healer whispered to Lucas while the two of them stood below the aeries, waiting for the soldiers to return.

They’d gone to bury the man who’d once been their alpha, giving him that much at least, even if they could no longer give him their respect.

“Arrogance became a way of life for him well before the Psy attack.” The healer hugged herself. “I could see it settling in, tried to counsel him, but he would never listen. He always knew best.” She swallowed. “Even his sentinels couldn’t get him to pay attention, see what he was doing to the pack.”

“Then they should’ve walked away.” A pitiless answer, but that was how a pack was supposed to function—an alpha had no automatic right to the loyalty of his strongest men and women. He earned it. If he didn’t have that loyalty, he didn’t have the right to be alpha.

“Yes.” The healer sighed. “I think they stayed because we had so many elders and children and . . . because of inertia.” Her hand trembled as she wiped away the remnants of her tears. “The money cursed us in a way. It made it easier to stay with the pack than to strike out and find a new life.”

Lucas tried to be charitable toward the dead, but the truth was that their choices had helped doom the pack as much as Monroe’s mismanagement.

“But don’t blame those two,” the healer whispered urgently as SkyElm’s sole surviving dominants reappeared in the distance. “They wanted to roam and explore, were held back by our lack of dominants. And they’re babies for all the responsibility they’d taken up.”

Lucas had already figured that out—these two couldn’t be older than twenty-two, twenty-three. In DarkRiver, they’d be junior soldiers at most.

Waiting for the two to reach him, he said, “It’s done?”

They snapped to attention. “Yes, sir,” the female said.

“We didn’t place a marker,” the male added defiantly. “He doesn’t deserve that.”

A pause followed . . . before the healer seemed to realize she was now the highest-ranking member of SkyElm. “I don’t know what to do,” she said bluntly. “I don’t know if another ocelot pack will take us—they’re all so small, and we’d come with only two soldiers as opposed to four people who need protecting.”

“I think you’re selling your submissive packmate short.” Lucas had silently checked the other aerie after cleaning up the blood on his body, discovered the submissive had armed himself with knives and was waiting behind the door. “Call him down. All the adults need to be here.” And the survivors of this pack needed to learn to forget bad habits starting right now.

Submissives in DarkRiver were treated as equal packmates, simply those with a different skill set and strength. Never would they be excluded from such decisions.

Only when all four adults surrounded him did Lucas say, “Did any of you know what Monroe was up to?”

They all shook their heads, the submissive having been briefed on what had happened. Lucas picked up no signs of deception. He’d already been certain about the soldiers and the healer. Now, having just seen an example of how this pack had thought of its nondominant members, he realized the submissive was the last person Monroe would’ve trusted with any plot.

“I’m extending an invitation for you to join DarkRiver.”

Relief crashed over their faces, too powerful to be hidden. Changelings who weren’t loners by choice were lost and broken without a pack.

“But,” he said before anyone could speak, “we function very differently from SkyElm. You’ll have to learn our rules and abide by them.” He
pointed at the soldiers. “You two will be demoted to what your rank should be, given your age and skills.”

Both nodded so quickly that Lucas realized neither wanted to be in a position they couldn’t handle. Intelligent then. Good.

“I already have a senior healer,” he said to the oldest member of SkyElm. “But she’d welcome help.” Lucas’s pack was growing day by day; there was plenty of room for another pair of healing hands.

“I know Tamsyn,” the other woman said with a smile that lit up the weathered lines of her face. “She’s brilliant and far more suited to a strong pack like DarkRiver than I’d ever be. And . . . I’m tired.” Sad, too, her expression told. “I’ll be happy to assist her where I can and to care for our orphaned cubs the rest of the time.”

“Those cubs will need parental figures.” Lucas included both the healer and the submissive in his next statement. “Do you want that responsibility?”

“Yes.” The submissive’s voice was firm, though he didn’t have the dominance to meet Lucas’s eyes. “The less disruption to their lives, the better—they’ve barely started speaking again after the trauma.”

Lucas nodded. “I’m leaving tonight. Pack up what you need and be ready to leave here in forty-eight hours.” He’d send a team to secure the aeries, put anything his new packmates didn’t need into storage.

By changeling law, the land itself would be forfeit if SkyElm had occupied it through historical rights. By
general
law, humans and Psy were locked out from claiming such vacated land, but it would be available for a changeling pack to claim, so long as they could defend it. If, however, SkyElm had purchased the land, then Lucas would make the decision as to what happened to it. These people were now his responsibility and that included taking care of their financial legacy.

“Can we leave tomorrow?” one of the soldiers blurted out. “It won’t take long to pack what we need and the rest we can come back for at a later time.”

Looking around, Lucas saw no disagreement on the faces of the other ocelots. There was too much pain here, he realized, too much loss. They
needed to escape. “I’ll organize it.” He slashed a claw down one side of the male dominant’s face, did the same to the female dominant.

Neither flinched.

Lucas then touched the submissive’s cheek with his palm and pressed a kiss to the healer’s forehead. “Welcome to DarkRiver.”

The submissive began crying, his shoulders shaking with the force of his sobs.

Lucas embraced him, holding the other man until he no longer needed the touch, until his animal understood and accepted that it no longer had to carry this unbearable weight alone. He had an alpha he could rely on.