Page 54 of Bitter Discord

“But how would they know to takeArlo?” I suddenly asked. “How would they know where he lived? How are they covering their trail? If it was a werecat, we should know. The wolves should have gotten the scent. A Talent? Other magic? Could our BSA mole be involved?”

“Those are all very important questions, and it could be any of them,” Zuri said with a sigh. “While I interrogate everyone here, maybe you should head back to your territory and follow the trail the werewolves have. Talk to all of them, after Heath talks to them, of course.”

“Good idea. So you agree with me?” I searched her face, wondering if she would throw her trust and support behind the pack like I was.

“I trust… you know the werewolves in your territory and know who is and isn’t capable of something like this,” she said, pulling away. “I trust the ones capable of it were put in place not to be a problem while we were here.”

“Have you told the family yet? Reached out to anyone yet?”

“I reached out to Hisao first,” she said, pulling out her phone. “I asked him if he was still home.”

“And? Would he do this for Hasan? Would he lie for Hasan?”

“Hisao doesn’t like to lie to his eldest sister, not even for our father. He’s in his territory. He didn’t come here to push forward any scheme our father might have. The more I know about the missing werewolf, the less likely this is our family. Our father would never hide behind a werewolf when he wanted someone dead… not even to break your engagement. He’s a lot of things, but when he wants something, he’ll do it where everyone can see. Plus, as witnessed below, if Hasan had sent Hisao to kill Mason without telling us, he’s revealing another fracture in the family, something that makes us look weak.”

“We already have fractures,” I countered. “Big ones. Obvious ones.”

“You and Heath being together against his wishes is different from an execution done under our noses to make us look bad,” she fired back. “It wasn’t our family. Moving on, with confirmation Hisao is home, I sent a family email. You must have missed it. I told them you and I were in a situation and that we would handle it, then report back. It would look bad and make the situation worse if they arrived as if this was a bigger problem than it is. The werecats of the world are used to us being able to act independently, so having the entire family swoop in…”

“Looks like the family doesn’t trust the people here,” I said, nodding. “Well, the family trusts you, so whatever some may think of me—”

“Don’t do that,” Zuri growled softly. “You have proven yourself more than capable, and even if our father can’t admit it, most of our siblings can.” She quickly dropped the aggression and sighed. “Can you send up whoever you think should go first? Make it Everett, someone we can be reasonably certain is innocent. I’ll try to question at least one of them before Heath gets here. We have another hour. That should be enough.”

“Want me to stay down there until he arrives to make sure none of them leave?”

“I’ll hear if they try to leave, so don’t worry about that. I’m not putting you alone in the same room as them, so you wait in the office by the front door.”

I nodded, heading out. Once Everett was secured in the office with Zuri, I bunkered down in Shamus’s old office and waited.

And listened to the recording on repeat.

20

CHAPTER TWENTY

HEATH

Gripping the steering wheel, Heath’s knuckles were white. Every time he had to drive today, they had been tight enough to cause his hands to cramp. He kept his eyes on the road, stewing on the dozens of theories for today’s sudden turn of events. One night. He couldn’t keep his werewolves from causing problems for just one night. Now Jacky was paying for it, and so was he.

Beside him, he knew Landon was thinking of similar things. When Heath had shown his son what Jacky had sent, he had immediately jumped to the worst-case scenario. He’d looked Heath straight in the eye.

“Not all the wolves are going to come. At least one is going to be missing or ignore you reaching out. Just you wait. At least one of these fucking idiots did something, and they won’t want to see us. They’re going to run for their lives, probably back to Callahan, and beg for forgiveness.”

Landon had never held his packmates in the highest regard, not that Heath could blame him. Heath could find enough trust and devotion in the packs to keep from spiraling out like his son, but his experience with werewolves helped him understand why Landon believed what he did. Landon wasn’t broken by enemies. He’d become a twisted version of a werewolf because of what their own pack had done.

When Arlo turned up missing…

No one had expected it to be one of the boys, not even Landon. No one expected Jacky’s next piece of news to be the murder of a werecat.

“Teagan is probably smothering Benjamin right now,” Heath said, trying to start a conversation. They had been stewing long enough. He needed to clear his head by talking out the problems, and he needed Landon to talk about his own theories so they were on the same page. “The werecats won’t like Arlo when they learn about him. We need to think of ways to mitigate that. He’s skilled enough to have done this, and that’s a problem.”

“Arlo is a fine shot, thanks to Teagan, but he’s not steady enough at his age to kill a werecat in cold blood. That takespractice.It takes time and experience, especially the first time you kill someone. You know that, Pa. Arlo isn’t murderous. He’s shown no signs of having this in him. Teagan would have caught it. I would have caught it. You would have caught it years ago.” Landon’s sudden growl of frustration didn’t surprise Heath.

“Unless the boy is spelled. With how much magic the pack has been exposed to, there’s no telling who has been fucked in the head with a curse or two. With how well they controlled the information in Dallas, there’s no telling what Teagan, Arlo, and Benjamin could have been subjected to without remembering.”

“Exactly, and we need to lean on that. Not to make Arlo look guilty, but to set him in the light of a potential victim, a refugee from the previous pack in the city, who could be under the influence of something we don’t understand or didn’t catch. If we had known he was subjected to spells, we would have taken him to the right people to fix it or made sure he couldn’t be a danger to anyone.”

“That makes it our failing,” Landon retorted, shaking his head. “You know they’ll point that out. It’ll become a show of an incompetent Alpha, and Jacky doesn’t need her only friends looking incompetent.”

---