Page 31 of Scarred Resolve

“I built it, sent it to Zuri, and she shot at him,” Davor answered seriously. “I made a second while Jabari gave me thedetails on how it worked. Made alterations. They sent the first back; I sent them the second. While they tested the second, I made the first modifications to the original, then made more modifications based on new data. Rinse and repeat. I have two of these and brought both. The other is still in the car. The schematics are secure in case I need to rebuild and try again.”

“Oh. Okay.” Being stunned by the simplicity, I leaned back, trying to figure out where to take things from this point.

“I remember Subira saying she was sending things as well,” Heath commented. “Any word on those? Jacky and I haven’t heard a word.”

“And we have no idea what they could be,” I pointed out.

“She’s going to give us the rations we need,” Niko said, crossing his arms as he fell back, looking to get comfortable on the loveseat. “The food will be enchanted to help us stay alert and full, so we don’t need to haul food and coffee around the entire trip.”

“It’s not healthy to eat for more than a couple weeks at a time, so what we’ll do is eat normally at the beginning of a hunt, and once we’re in the thick of it, we hope we can kill the werecat before we run out,” Davor explained. “Or we’ll use it for a week, then back off long enough to have a couple of good meals, then go back on it to continue.”

“What makes it unhealthy?” Heath asked, frowning.

“It’s not proper calories. It’s energy that will fuel us just the same, but after a couple of weeks, we’ll all be a lot lighter,” Davor explained. “Magic doesn’t replace food. It never will. It can help, though. She’ll never be able to make it less dangerous to eat regularly, and she needs time to prepare it. It has a shelf life. We can’t keep it stocked for whenever we need it.”

“She actually perfected the recipe during the War,” Niko added. “She would spend a month making a lot of it, then let people run themselves into the ground with it. When we allneeded a month to recover, she made the next batch, trying to make it last longer, work better…” Niko shook his head quickly. “Either way, Davor’s right. It’s useful and something only she can do for us. She’ll get it here for us before we have to go.”

“I take it she doesn’t like having to make it,” I said softly, seeing how Niko needed to shake off memories.

“She doesn’t want us killing ourselves with it,” Davor clarified. “A werecat did during the War, running himself into the ground until his heart went out, barely skin and bones left because he was trying to avenge his father, who had died early on. She knows any one of us could be driven to try doing the same if we felt the need to, thinking we could recover.”

“She won’t give us enough to do that,” Niko added quickly as we all noticed Heath’s wide eyes. “It’s also not addictive, but convenience makes it easy for people to abuse when they aren’t thinking clearly.”

“That’s good,” my fiancé exhaled, tension leaving him. “Anything else?”

“Some protection charms. Nothing too powerful. She’s not one to make objects of immense power, at least not from what I’ve seen in my eight hundred years,” Niko continued. “Anything else will be from Zuri and Jabari and probably won’t be magical.”

Listening to that, I couldn’t help but wonder so many things about Subira. She was powerful, and I wasn’t sure if I even knew exactly how powerful. I’d seen her blow up every object in a room. When Aisha, Makalo, and Jabari were in danger, I watched her put a dying woman into stasis, halting her death until she figured out a solution with Jabari. Aisha survived that day thanks to the mythical power of Subira. She was mated to Jabari because of that day when Subira removed a dead mate bond Jabari couldn’t get rid of, thousands of years after hishuman mate died, and somehow put Aisha on the other end instead, connecting her and Jabari forever.

In an instant, Subira could do things of great power. However, the support she offered her children going on a hunt for a dangerous supernatural was magic rations and some protection charms.

“Have we heard from her about what Hasan might have to say?” I asked, having missed a good portion of the discussion about the protection charms.

“Not yet. She knows we leave tomorrow. It could be ten minutes before we go, but she will get back to us. I promise.”

“When she sets a deadline, she makes it,” Davor confirmed.

Nodding, I decided to get up and stretch. I didn’t know what else to talk about, so I went to get drinks for everyone, bringing out the scotch from earlier. It wasn’t even noon, but alcohol didn’t hit us without a lot of help. Specifically, magical help.

As we sipped and talked over the scene again, I looked at my glass and looked at the dart gun.

“Subira can brew alcohol that does us in, yeah? She saves it for family gatherings, vacations, and such, but she can do it.”

“Yup.” Niko was pouring himself another glass.

“Could she make tranqs that work on us too? Even on those in their Last Change?” I asked, swirling my drink around.

“Hit them with a drug and get a quick kill while it sleeps?” Niko frowned. Hearing it phrased that way made it seem distasteful to me, but it could save lives. It would give the werecat a less violent death. It felt like a good option.

“The adrenaline and magic of the Last Change probably make that difficult,” Davor said, sipping.

“Agreed, and if you can make a tranquilizer that powerful, you could accidentally kill a person with it,” Heath pointed out. I looked at my mate, studying him.

It wasn’t hard to figure out that he’d heard my idea before. It wasn’t a stretch knowing his background as one of the most prominent and connected Alphas in the States that he knew someone who didn’t just say it but also had the means to attempt it.

“What happened?” I asked him, taking my shot.

“Drug enters the system and sends the werewolf into a frenzied panic,” he answered. “Faster, desperate, and even more violent. Would fight so hard for so long that it burned off anything except a fatal dose. By a fatal dose, I don’t mean just a few milligrams too much. It would be faster to load a bunch of silver into it.”

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