Page 71 of Resurgence of the Pack

And thus begins a beautiful friendship,Terrance said warmly into my mind.Thank you for that. We would havebeen very lonely without each other. We had our moments, of course, but generally we got on very well.

I’m glad,I sent back and I knew that he felt that I was.

‘Who the hell are you?’ a naked man asked as I exited the seat of power. ‘And how do you still have your clothes on after a shift?’

I smiled at him as I answered the second question first and waggled my fingers. ‘Magic. Who I am is not important right now. What is important is that the orb has been lost and our air powers with it. I vow that I am here to track down the thief and restore the orb to the seat of power. I hold no ill will against the Staffordshire pack.’

I glowed yellow as the oath took a hold of me. It was the quickest way I knew to get them to believe me because if I were lying the oath-breaking magic would kill me as surely as they would.

‘My companions and I will track down the thief and restore the orb. You have my word. In the meantime, you must protect the seat of power.’ I paused. I supposed it was best to sow some seeds. ‘She’s not herself at the moment. Cut off from the Great Pack, lost to the orb – she’s unstable. You must keep others from entering her walls until we can restore it. Where is your alpha?’

The man – the beta, I was guessing – frowned. ‘He’s away on business,’ he said gruffly. He frowned; hewas thinking that heads would roll for this fiasco, and the first head to bounce would be his.

I looked at him with sympathy. ‘You couldn’t have prevented this.’

‘That’s not how he’ll see it.’ He swallowed. ‘Go. Find the thief. Maybe you can restore the orb before he returns – that’s the best I can hope for at this point.’

I didn’t tell him that his hopes were overly optimistic, I just took the opening he gave me and left with Langston and Greg in tow. We stumbled our way back through the forest, all feeling the metaphorical shade of Torrance stalking us.

‘Talk to me about this “go-bag”,’ I said to Greg as we walked back to the carriage.

‘Go-bags are incredibly expensive – it takes a witch weeks to rune a matching pair. But basically, you put something in one and that object pops up in its paired twin. They’ve fallen out of favour in modern times because now you can courier stuff almost as quickly and without paying the witches an arm and a leg. The only dragons that still use them are old-school fussy ones like Leonard.’

‘Who’s Leonard?’

‘Leonard is –was– part of Emory’s dragon court. He handles the court’s finances.’

‘And you’ve seen him and his brethren use go-bags?’

‘Many a time.’

‘I’ve never seen one before.’

He sighed. ‘You wouldn’t have. They’re almost exclusively a brethren trick, a way for those of us who have no magic of our own to secure treasure for our dragons.’

‘Oh boy. Does that mean…?’

He nodded, looking grim. ‘Oh yes, our thief is brethren. The orb is being held by a dragon – and I can probably tell you who.’

‘Who?’

His jaw worked. ‘I worked as one of the leaders of the brethren for a couple of years. To do that, I had to know all the prominent families.’

‘And this guy was from one of the families?’

‘I’m not certain, but near as dammit – I’d bet a year’s wage on it. Some traits breed true, like those narrow eyes and aquiline nose.’

Yep, I could see how they would be distinguishing features. ‘So who is he?’ I asked impatiently.

‘He’s part of the Hunter family.’

‘And that means…?’ I coaxed.

‘It means the dragon his family serves is Geneve.’

Chapter 36

I stewed all the way back to Birmingham. Geneve: fucking Geneve. She’d stolen the orb from the werewolves, hidden it from us for centuries. Why? Did she just want us to be weaker? Again,why?

---