Page 29 of Scarred Resolve

“Have a good day.” Dirk followed after Landon, not as wounded by the dismissal.

“Does Landon always look at you like that?” Davor asked me after their truck was long gone and no one else had begun speaking.

“He’s harmless,” I said with a wave as Niko choked on his own air, and Heath chuckled. “Come get something to drink.” I went deeper into the kitchen with Davor following me. Niko was still trying to fix his windpipe, but Heath settled down quickly.

“Harmless?” Davor asked incredulously. “You think that werewolf is harmless?”

“He’s my fiancé’s son and the most loyal man, werewolf or otherwise, I have ever met. I don’tthinkhe’s harmless. Iknowhe’s harmless… to me,” I finished, maintaining my casual smile.I brought out several options for my brother, including alcoholic varieties even though it was barely nine in the morning. He chose Heath’s scotch, so I got him the proper glass and let him pour for himself.

“I see…” Davor nodded before tasting the scotch. “Like Hisao.” He swirled the amber liquid before taking a sip. “This is good.”

“It is. We have a great collection if you want to try something else later.” I leaned on the counter, staring at my brother. He continued to test and taste the scotch, as if he was searching for every hint of flavor, trying to discover its age, to what type of barrels it was once in. He didn’t pay me any mind until he brightened up and smiled.

“I’ll need to see if my guess is right later,” he said, putting his drink down. I raised an eyebrow, and he chuckled, his cheeks filling with color. “A game I play with myself. I have now made a number of guesses about this vintage, and later, I’ll see if any of them are right. It’s nothing. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’ve just… never seen you do that,” I explained, swallowing at the reality of that. I had never spent alone time with Davor, not in person, not casually, even if the casual part was only temporary. “That’s fun. I own a bar. I should give it a try.”

“I didn’t start getting any guesses right until I was close to a hundred. I’m surprisingly bad at it compared to many of our family, who can do it quickly, as though they have tasted every variety and combination of flavors known to history.”

“I wouldn’t doubt if some of them have,” I said, commiserating with him. There was such a younger sibling energy to what he said that I couldn’t help but relate, knowing the feeling all too well. There was never going to be a day we properly caught up to the oldest members of our family. “They are always leagues ahead of us.”

His soft laugh made his face seem youthful and gentle.

“Yes, and if we ever get close to catching up in one way, someone will point out another way in which we can’t,” he said, sighing, but his smile told me he wasn’t upset. He picked his drink back up and toasted me. “Thank you for this.”

“It’s no problem.” I gestured toward the living room, and he went first, with me following behind him. Niko and Heath were sitting together on the loveseat with a laptop on the coffee table with the USB already plugged in. We didn’t normally do anything outside my office, but Carey was at class for the entire morning, so we had time to stretch our legs in the larger space before having to hide in the office while she was home. She had no idea something terrible was happening, just like the pack, only thatsomethingwas happening, and I was going to leave the next morning with my brothers. I planned on keeping it that way, and Heath, while disagreeing with me, was honoring that choice.

“I’ve studied these for the last day, and I believe there’s nothing else we can glean from them,” Niko said as we approached. He turned the laptop to Davor and me, showing me the pictures I had seen too many times.

“I looked through them as I flew here as well,” Davor said, sitting on the couch in front of the laptop. I sat down on the far end of the couch, not needing to see anymore. There was nothing except evidence of the problem we faced. “There’s not much to go on without being there, but I assume the scene was already cleaned up by humans.”

“Yeah. They had to identify the couple and notify the family. They can’t leave that stuff around there, thanks to the wildlife. Leave no trace and all that,” I said, nodding. “I did make a call last night, though. The BSA will give us access to everything in a storage unit in Fairbanks, where they have a small office. Instead of landing closer to Noatak National Preserve, we’ll just do theplane switch in Fairbanks, then send my jet to our original in-and-out point while we take a smaller plane into the Preserve with permission to get close to the site.”

“Fairbanks? Why Fairbanks? Couldn’t the BSA meet us where we want to be?” Davor frowned. Beyond him, Niko was putting it together, but Heath beat him to it.

“The BSA tries to have at least a small office in every city where an official pack resides, and if there are multiple packs in a state, they make the largest office in the same city as the biggest pack,” Heath explained. “So, anything that happens in Alaska would be sent to their Fairbanks office for cataloging and storage until it’s deemed it needs to be moved to a bigger office. There’s a smaller werewolf pack up there,” Heath continued to explain for Davor. “That pack, from what I remember, doesn’t like the BSA, not that any pack does, but they keep things more distant than most packs are capable of in large cities. So, you’ll be safe to wander around near the BSA office. If that pack hasn’t changed, there won’t be any werewolves nearby. However, I promise you that all the stuff from this campsite was taken there before the BSA even told Jacky about this, probably while they were scheduling the meeting. It would have been one of the first things they did because no one wants that sort of evidence of the dark part of our curse out in the open where it can be stumbled on.”

“Ah, thank you for that explanation,” Davor said, nodding sharply. “That’s good, very good. Having an expert in the way werewolves and humans work with these incidents makes this less troublesome.”

“Heath has proven more insightful about werewolves than I ever was,” Niko said, chuckling as he reached out to tap Davor in a good-natured gesture. “Probably helps that he’s been one for a few hundred years while I was only raised by them as a child.”

“Yeah, you were always shrugging and saying you didn’t know, you were too young to remember, you didn’t pay attention all the time. On and on,” Davor said back, a smile forming as I realized he was actually teasing Niko. “I mean, it’s good being a werecat reminds us of who our parents are every time we say our name, or you would forget that too.”

Niko’s laugh was loud, and his eyes danced as I saw the brotherhood I had been told about.

It ended too soon as Davor’s eyes dimmed a bit even though the smile remained. A dimming I recognized deep in my own soul but wasn’t ready to confront yet.

“I’m glad to be of assistance. Can I ask some questions? I just want an idea of how you plan to approach this.”

“Of course.” Davor waved for Heath to go right ahead, none of the fear he had with the pack left. He wasn’t nervous around my fiancé at all, but then, I had heard that Davor worked with Zuri and Heath about what was happening in Germany before Hasan had found them and figured it all out.

13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Knowing this talk would take the entire day, I texted in the family group chat. Not thinking, I realized when Zuri replied that I had texted in the wrong family chat, with Niko and Davor looking at me with confusion, and Heath stopped mid-sentence as he tried to figure out what was going on. Niko pulled out his phone as I retyped my text in the correct chat and sent it. Heath started to laugh a second later as more replies came in, with Davor joining in even though he was sitting right next to me.

“Okay, enough,” I ordered, putting my phone down. “I just wanted Carey to head over to Landon and Dirk’s home until dinner and for Landon to know she was coming. I know I sent that to the wrong chat and didn’t know in time to fix it.”

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