Page 16 of Scarred Resolve

“She’s all yours,” I said, smiling, then leaned in to whisper some advice to him. “Take her out for some fun with you and Dirk. Whatever she wants to do.”

“Can do. I don’t want her moping around the house because you and Pa aren’t home,” he said, giving a small nod before diverting his attention to his little sister. “Hey, kid. What’s the plan? You got me and Dirk all day. All expenses paid.”

“I’m really glad to have a brother that’s cooler than all the kids at my school, but you can stop calling me a kid,” she said, flipping some eggs at him.

“Okay, so I’m getting violent Carey today. Fair!” Landon grinned and waved me off.

I took the chance, waving as I left. Niko had already snuck out and was standing by his car.

“Do you want to leave that here? We can ride in mine, then you don’t have to deal with our roads,” I offered. He looked at his car for a second, then nodded. We had already talked about what to bring, and that was just ourselves. All the clothing Niko had in his Germany home had been moved to the mansion when he had to relocate, so we both had plenty of clothing available in Dallas for whatever situation. I texted Heath to let him know we were on the way and got us on the road.

We were silent for a good hour, listening to music. Since Niko had called out how suspicious this entire thing was, he had been quiet except for when someone addressed him. I couldn’t stop myself from finally breaking the silence, though, as it began to worry me.

“What’s going on, Niko? You’ve been too quiet.”

“Secret meetings worry me. I don’t like them, and I’m trying to think of reasons they might want one. Since I haven’t directly run into them before, can you tell me more about the agency?”

“The BSA rides a fine line of keeping humans feeling safe with the procedures and rules concerning supernaturals, while also keeping many of our secrets as well to keep the peace. The BSA wants to know everything about everyone, however they don’t want to expose most to the public. I don’t trust most of the agents, and for good reason, but the agency doesn’t want to be a group of fearmongers. I stick to Bethany Kirk, the agent assigned to me as a handler of sorts, not that they gave her a very strong leash to do anything. She’s good, though. Trustworthy. I’ve made it clear to them that I won’t see her replaced. It’s a balancing act of deciding who is in charge of each situation, a battle where we trade blows without ever crossing a line no one can come back from.”

“If they try anything, I’m not afraid to cross lines,” he said, giving me a look that told me he wouldn’t just cross lines; he would destroy them and never lose sleep over it.

“I don’t think we’re walking into a trap,” I said, chuckling nervously. “I haven’t done anything recently to warrant any hostility, Niko.”

“Look at our world, Jacky. When does anyone need to do something to warrant hostility?” He shook his head. “I’ll play nice.”

“Thank you. We need to go in there at least showing them that we don’t expect hostility. I need to work with these people and?—”

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Niko snorted. “Wow.”

“No, what I’m really worried about is you getting violent the day they meet you and begin believing Carey isn’t safe around you,” I snapped. “This isn’t the same world you’ve been living in, Niko. They have the power to take Carey away from Heath. We need her to reach eighteen before she’s safe from their threat to her living with her own father.”

He spoke in German for a moment, but the language switch didn’t hide the curses from me.

“I… hadn’t considered that,” he finally admitted.

“We’re subject to the laws of the United States. We’re citizens of the country, not immortals hiding under its nose. Now, there are a lot of things we still get away with, but when it comes to human children and their supernatural families, we have to tread a very fine line. The BSA has already tried to pick that fight with Heath and me. We won that time. I don’t want to take any more chances, and I damn sure won’t let you risk anything.”

I let him stew on that, and for fifteen minutes, it was just us and quiet music. I didn’t know what was going through his head, but I knew he was going to remember what I had said about Carey’s situation with us.

“It’s already hard to raise kids in our world,” he finally said. “I always worried about having to leave Dirk when I needed to go to a meeting that wasn’t safe for him to be near. I taughthim everything I could for his own safety. I got him that tattoo to protect him from being manipulated by other moon cursed, and there are very few witches who can pull that off.” He rubbed his face. “You and Heath have to deal with all of that and then some.”

“We make it work, but we have a lot more backup than you did raising Dirk.”

“I thought I had backup,” Niko said, his sudden bitterness making those words venomous.

Knowing that his bitterness came directly from inside the house, I tried to find anything I could say. We all worried so much about what the outside world could do to our children, which made the pain of what happened with Dirk tenfold. Who would ever think to protect a boy from his grandfather, who reportedly loved children? I had already had time to come to terms with it, being the person on the front line, trying to repair the damage slowly. I got to witness the love that made Dirk fight to live through the Change. I was the one he told the full truth of how he felt about the family he’d been adopted into and why. Niko rarely spoke of it, but I knew it was still an open wound.

“You have backup now.”

He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t try to talk to him again.

Heath was already there when I pulled down the driveway to the ridiculous mansion I had gotten from dismantling the Dallas pack. I had renovated it, turning it into something useful to me, but I didn’t spend much time at it. It wasn’t my home, and it never would be. Niko followed silently, inspecting the building. I knew he had seen it before, but I couldn’t recall how long he had spent there. I wanted him to move in when we arrived in Texas, but he wanted to be close to Dirk, and Dallas was two hours from my territory. That wasn’t close enough to him. And most of the time, big cities and werecats didn’t mix. There were some outthere who made it work for them and enjoyed it, but most of us liked and needed something more rural.

“Hey, Jacky.” Heath closed his laptop with a smile as I walked in to see him sitting at the bar.

“Hey,” I replied as we quickly kissed. “Ready to hear about this?”

Niko went straight for the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water.

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