Page 22 of Scarred Resolve

“Carey?” I asked Heath, knowing it was probably best she wasn’t in the building for what might be talked about.

“I sent Carey with Teagan and his boys,” Heath explained. “I take it the meeting didn’t go well?”

“Well…” I huffed. “Callahan and company were there, but that’s all politics. The BSA got an earful from me, and so did the werewolves.” Pausing, I tried to find the best way to tell him the important part.

“They know Rainer is dead,” Niko said for me.

“Yeah, they know that Fenris is gone.” My words on it were considerably softer than Niko’s.

“Okay…” Heath sat down slowly. “And?”

“I told them to respect my sister as the daughter of Subira that she is,” Niko added, a vicious smile taking over his face, changing him.

“And the meeting itself?” Heath asked, eyeing Niko before looking at me. “How bad is it? We’d only be taking this many precautions if this was something ugly.”

“You’ll see,” I whispered. “I don’t want to repeat myself. Best to get all the facts we know out at once.”

“Fair.”

“Niko, any word?”

“Try Davor. He wasn’t far. Everyone else can join.”

I did just that, calling Davor.

“I’m here,” he called out from beyond the screen. “I’m just putting away some expensive parts I was tinkering with when Niko texted.”

“It’s fine. We’re waiting on everyone else.” Right as I said that, Zuri’s name showed up. When she entered and her feed appeared, it wasn’t only Zuri. As expected, Subira and Jabari were there as well, with the twins flanking the matriarch of our family.

“Niko said this was bad news, and we needed everyone?” Zuri sounded perplexed and worried. “We don’t really need another bad time right now. You both realize this, right?”

“We didn’t do anything,” Niko grumbled. “Jacky was called into a meeting by the BSA?—”

“Let’s just wait for everyone to get here,” I ordered, putting a hand up to stop my brother. I put the USB drive in and fiddled with making sure everyone would be able to see my screen so they could see the files I had been given. I hadn’t even looked at all of them myself, but the pictures were the main thing to worry about. After that, we could get into the dirty details of the killings, but first, we had to establish this was exactly what we believed it was. I was certain. Niko and the werewolves had been similar, but the resident experts were on this call, not in the BSA meeting.

“Mischa and Hisao won’t be attending. Mischa has been off the radar since she left Germany. I’ve had Hisao tailing her for her safety. He checks in regularly, but it’s not reasonable to ask him to attend while he’s keeping an eye on her,” Subira explained. “Do you think this is a meeting that requires Hasan?”

Davor sat down finally, looking confused. I felt bad, the image of him sitting alone hitting me in the gut. We were all grouped up right now except him. Even Mischa, being thepetulant, temperamental bitch she was, had Hisao looking out for her, even if she didn’t want him or anyone else to be near her.

“I’ll let you decide,” I said, swallowing as I loaded up the image of the campsite and started to explain. “This meeting was sparse with the details before we arrived. Hasan might hear a few things from Callahan since he was there in his role as a member of NAWC. They know my name change now. You can thank Niko for that.”

“Good. Thank you, Niko,” Subira purred. “Continue, Jacky.”

“Okay… Well, we were shown these images. The national reserve these were taken in has never had a bear attack before. It’s in remote Alaska, which puts it in the BSA’s jurisdiction. If it was in Canada, we never would have known. So, there’s something to be grateful for.”

“Something very small,” Niko muttered.

“Get to the point, you two. I don’t like when either of you dance around problems,” Jabari cut in, his hard stare making it harder to do exactly that. Instead of speaking, I started clicking through the pictures. I had started with the destroyed campsite, and there were a few pictures of that, recording the damage, and the last few had the remains of the couple. When I reached the first print, the big paw of a werecat, Subira held up a hand.

“A werecat did that or found it?” she asked simply.

“Did that,” I said, clicking to the next picture—the animalistic human handprint or human-like animal print, depending on how someone wanted to look at it.

No one spoke for a long time. I kept my nose to the room, judging the emotional reactions of those with me who were just finding out about this. I could smell fear off Heath, but also resignation. He had known something like this was coming, but it didn’t lessen the blow of the information. I looked at him, wondering if he could tell what I was thinking. He had been tothose meetings and knew why they were so secretive. Based on his grave, knowing expression, I knew I was right about that.

Both Landon and Dirk were afraid as well. Dirk’s fear was greater than Landon’s, but there were a couple of reasons that could have been the case. Dirk was a younger and weaker werewolf, which made sense but didn’t match the depth and intensity of his fear. He also grew up with a werecat. Niko would have told him all the dangers of this particular situation. That made more sense to me.

Niko and I were already past the shellshock and paralyzing fear. It didn’t reduce the underlying fear we had, but it didn’t rush to the forefront again.

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