Page 78 of Scarred Resolve

“There was a witch who…” I trailed off, looking at Davor. “You saw him too. He’d been one of the first to attack us when we were at a cabin a little further to the west than where we fought the werewolves. We had stopped at the cabin because it’s the weirdest thing. He…” I pointed at the body. “He had stopped there and stayed in the cabin for several days. None of us could think of a reason why?—”

“Wait, explain this to me. In detail,” Subira ordered, holding up a hand. “Not the witch, but the werecat’s movements.”

Davor, Niko, and I launched into it. From ignoring humans that it passed, avoiding civilization, only eating one meal over so many miles, and finally, the cabin it had stayed in.

“It had eaten only… five or six hours before we reached the cabin,” I said, looking at my brothers for confirmation.

“Roughly,” Niko confirmed.

“Food is energy. Energy gives someone the ability to fight,” Hasan said simply. “He was trying to shake the control, and that was a place for him to fight. Now, he wasn’t in his right mind. He was still lost to the Last Change, but a wild animal is still capable of fighting and its own intelligence, as we all know. No wild animal likes to be chained or trapped. He would have known he was chained.”

“So, he ate a good meal, then had the strength to fight but couldn’t break the spell,” Callahan said before cussing. “Poor kid.”

“Because it’s scarred into his back. That gave the witches the permanent hold no matter how much he fought,” Subira said, shaking her head sadly. “We can use that information in the future, hopefully. This won’t be the last time we see this. Perhaps, if we find one with the scar before it reaches this point, we can alter it and help someone break free.”

“Even a youthful werecat could fight the control, which means they have no chance of getting an adult. That’s good for the werecats,” Corissa pointed out. “And good for all of us. If you need it, we’ll send werewolves to werecats we know to help spread the word that the little ones need to be guarded.”

“It would be faster than our network sometimes is,” Hasan said, not even begrudgingly. “And we can do something for the werewolves. Werecats can look out for lone wolves passing through to tell them that they need to get with a pack and stay in contact with others. We’ll discuss it once we’re done here. We need to keep everyone accounted for.”

“We’ll look into all the werewolves that have gone missing over the last few decades as well,” Callahan said, sighing. “I think two of these are ones we had go missing several years ago. There are a few markings I recognize, but I need to check our records to verify.”

“Like the werewolves with Mygi,” Hasan said, snapping his fingers quickly. “Did you ever identify any of those?”

“Nearly all of them,” Corissa confirmed.

Hearing Mygi made me perk up, and I looked at my brothers with wide eyes.

“Mygi?” I said, remembering what we had seen in the documents.

“Pharma?” Niko asked. “That Mygi?”

“That Mygi,” Hasan said, nodding. “At the facility where they kept the cambions and the nephilim, they had werewolves contained in the Last Change, not in the facility proper. They had magic create boundaries where the pack of them could roam and kill whoever was trying to escape or get inside. Between Kaliya and those with her, then us in the Tribunal, they were killed while the cambions and nephilim were freed. Why?”

“We have some evidence that this might be related…” Davor said softly. “They have documents from Mygi Pharmaceuticals.”

“Fuck,” Callahan snarled. “We looked for months and months for more information about that, and it was all lost. Once that facility was broken into, other facilities were destroying their documents if they were doing anything we hadn't approved. The damn company was supposed to be finding a way to fix us, and instead, it figured out how to force the Last Change. We had hoped whatever they did had been lost to everyone because we only ran into dead ends.”

“It was stolen or kept by those who escaped, and now it’s being used here,” Corissa said, her eyes closed. “Of course it was,and if the cambions accidentally have documents on it, working with them to get those documents is a no-go.”

“Why?” Subira asked. “You can convince anyone of anything. You don’t find anything impossible politically, Corissa. There’s more to that.”

“Kaliya Sahni and Raphael Alvarez are isolationists. They don’t want to be bothered, and at this point, that’s for the best,” Hasan answered instead. “They’re at odds with the Tribunal now as well, and that’s Brion’s fault. They were good friends of Sorcha and continue to protect Cassius from his father, making him angry. There’s no working with them right now.”

“Not even for a potential war?” Subira seemed as confused as I was feeling. I didn’t get the vibe that they would let us flounder if they could help us.

“Hisao trained her well as an assassin. We could try to use that connection, but I don't think it would get us far anymore. She’s a queen in her own right, and her first responsibility is to serve her people. With tensions so high with the fae thanks to her connection to Prince Cassius and the late Lady Sorcha, she’s not going to want to involve her small community in anything more. She already had issues with the vampires in recent years that caused frustration with Isaiah.” Hasan shrugged. “She’s not wrong for wanting to protect her people. There are less than fifty people in her and Raphael’s entire community as far as the last count we could get.”

“That makes them vulnerable. They need allies. We could be those allies,” Subira countered.

“Oh, Kaliya and Raphael don’t need us, my love,” Hasan said gently. There was no lie in his scent, and the words were confident, even though they were gentle. “Far from it. If they show off their full power to the world any more than they have, everyone will be trying to convince them to fight in every conflict that comes about. With all that power, though, losing just onewould be devastating to them. The Tribunal decided as a group not to engage with them unless it might directly involve them, and this doesn’t. Demons, ancient legends, and other things that Kaliya might be the only expert on are within the bounds of what we can approach them about. Things of that nature.” Hasan waved at the body. “Let’s get back on track to things we can do something about. Jacky was telling us of a witch that stood out to her.”

I was grateful to him for getting this back on track. While that conversation was probably necessary, I didn’t care past hearing it would be a no if we asked for help from the naga queen. It was politics for politics sake.

“Yeah, so this witch came to fight with us when we stayed in that cabin. He was knowledgeable. Definitely knew the stories about me, but maybe that’s easy to know.”

“It is. You are the source of much gossip,” Hasan said, dry in his delivery as I saw a father’s frustration manifest but no anger.

“Well, when we attacked this place, I was able to get inside the cabin. I jumped through a second-story window to do it. Once inside, he showed up and just started… talking to me. He was mostly taunting, saying stuff about how I thought I could stop what was coming. He joked callously about how I killed his sister before she could get on the plane. He was annoyed that they had to let the werecat stay farther away than he would have liked… I eventually got annoyed and yelled at him in werecat form. I could talk to him.”

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