Page 38 of War Games

“So, I’m not in trouble for not thinking it was Dirk as quickly as I should have?” he finally asked.

“Not at all. If you didn’t immediately hate yourself for it, I would have gone to tell Zuri and had a wonderful laugh about it with her and Aisha,” she said before nipping his ear. “But now that you aren’t angry at the world, you seem to keep finding ways to be angry with and hate yourself.”

“I don’t hate myself. I am… very aware of all of my mistakes right now.”

“And my mate’s ego can’t handle being too aware all the time like this,” she teased.

He couldn’t resist, smiling as he turned his head to see her perfect face. His powerful, loving, extraordinary mate who made him want to be better. Had always made him want to be better.

The guilt he felt from losing his way threatened to ruin the perfect moment with her.

“Your mate needed a reality check and a bruised ego for a little while,” he said, his words hoarse. He cleared his throat as he looked away. “Like everyone needs at some point in their life.”

“Agreed. Now, what have you been working on?”

“No more about this wedding?”

“Well, neither of us are invited. Dirk and Landon want a small wedding, and they will have one. We’re going to support from afar. Only Niko and Jacky will be going from our side of the family.”

“I see.” He could accept that. He also knew that even if Subira and everyone else were invited, he would not be. He had no right in that space. He would miss this important moment for his family, and it pained him, but he accepted he was just going to have to live with that pain.

I was awful to those boys. I was awful to Niko and Jacky.

“Distract yourself,” Subira whispered.

“You could?—”

“Tell me what you were pondering on when I walked in,” she ordered, cutting off whatever idea he had to distract himself. With her hanging on him, he hadideas,and those ideas were always a pleasant distraction he was willing to take.

Instead, he remembered the problem that had consumed his thoughts as he tried not to think of other things. One of the many things he was constantly thinking about. One of the many pieceshe had to juggle to keep some semblance of peace in the world and protect them from their enemies, known and unknown. For a moment, he felt overwhelmed, for there were a thousand problems he could tell his mate about. There were problems with the vampires. There were problems between the fae, the nagas, and the cambions. The witches were in a state of disarray because of the growing hostility between the species, mostly how the werecats and werewolves were cutting ties with them around the world.

Which made him think of the problem he had to carefully dance around with Callahan and Corissa, a problem they were dealing with, but he had to be informed.

“Callahan and Corissa… we had the meeting, as I said we would…”

“Yes, I’ve been waiting on an update to that.”

“They are having a hard time getting some packs to fully support their efforts, even though the threat from witches we’re facing is so unprecedented. Some packs are disregarding their command about cutting the business ties or helping to find missing werewolves. They’ve gotten packs that have quietly told them that they don’t respect the authority of the Tribunal or the Alphas who stand as their representatives.”

“Why?”

“I’m not allowed to say,” he answered hoarsely, truly hating the reality of the situation.

Her eyes went wide for only a second in realization but quickly turned sad. She wasn’t going to be able to say anything, either. They could meddle in a lot, but they could not meddle in this. There was an important line he and Subira couldn’t cross. By informing him of the issue, they had put a chokehold on him. They invited him into their private discussions about an issue that had started over a year ago, further back if they really wanted to reach for it. He couldn’t act on it. It wasn’t a werecatproblem. Whatever Callahan and Corissa did to resolve their problems would just have to be the way things went.

“What can you say?” she asked after some time.

“I was grateful to them for opening up to talk about it. They didn’t have to.”

15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

By the time Dirk and I got home on Friday evening, we were exhausted. Sixty witches across Texas. Some had skills that could have made them a good lead, some had businesses, some had facilities, and some had connections.

All of them were dead ends.

Grueling work that led tonothing,and that pissed me off, a terrible combination with the exhaustion. I was snappy once we arrived home.

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