Page 7 of Hunted
My beautiful, stubborn, fierce alpha.She was too proud to admit how much she was struggling.But I saw it.She hadn’t completely unraveled yet, but I had a feeling she was fraying at the edges with every passing day.
“We need to talk about this alliance with Acacia,” she said without preamble.“And what happens next.”
That was all she had to say.The room erupted.
Martina’s voice rose immediately.“I understand about Josh, but I can’t believe we are going to actually go along with this farce.We all know she’ll stab us in the back the second she gets the chance.She’s just using us.”Her voice got a bit growly as she added, “We should have killed the bitch when we had the chance.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Sadavir said in his halting voice.He rarely verbalized, but this was important to him.I could sense him lingering at the outskirts of the group.His strong green-and-earth aura was unsteady, flaring and receding periodically as he struggled with his emotions.His deep, blunted voice was all sandpaper and pain.
“Oh, we have a choice,” Martina snapped from the other side of the room, her dark tone making it clear that her choice involved murder.
Yukio’s tone of voice was flat and cool, unreadable, but I felt his aura sharpen, like shards of ice.“We don’t have to cooperate fully, Marty.Just enough to buy us time.We’ll stab her in the back long before she gets the chance to try it on us—literally.I’m looking forward to shoving an ice blade between her ribs.”He sounded downright gleeful at the thought.
“Why play her games at all, even temporarily?”Dusek said, voice like rolling smoke.“Martina’s right.I say we kill the bitch and be done with it.Move quickly before she can cause Josh more suffering than she already has.”
And that was the real reason he was in the “kill her now,” camp.Dusek might want to sound unaffected.But I knew better.He had as soft a heart as anyone.He was furious that Josh had been attacked, and the gamma in him wanted swift and decisive retribution.
I felt the others flinch around me as Dusek’s aura of terror flowed over us with his anger.I couldn’t really argue with him.I’d had the same thought, initially.As I’d crouched by Josh’s apparently lifeless body when the vampires dumped him on our front steps.As I realized that he was alive, then immediately despaired when I realized what that meant, what had been done to him.As I watched him savagely feed from Sadavir and Robin when he woke, no longer himself.As I sat by his bedside and tried my best to give him physical healing and relief even though he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I was a healer, a passivist by nature and by upbringing.But there was a line.And Acacia had tap-danced right over it on more than one occasion.In those moments when I’d had to bear witness to the aftermath of her senseless cruelty, I’d wanted to rip her heart from her chest myself with my bare hands.
But there was one little problem with that approach...
I felt a flurry of movement nearby—Cicely, signing furiously by the feel of it, even as he spoke in my mind using his mind speak.Killing her might kill Josh too!And we have no idea who will step up to take her place or what failsafes she has in place.Killing her, or even attempting to, could trigger a whole chain of retaliation.
I reached out to find his hand and squeeze it lightly, grounding us both.
Robin, for her part, didn’t play the alpha card for quite some time.She let everyone complain and mutter until they spluttered themselves out.Martina and Dusek wanted Acacia dead immediately, whatever it took.Sadavir, Sanka, and Cicely agreed but were more concerned about what might happen to Josh.
Yukio said Josh deal with things as they were for the time being, that he could suck it up until we had a real plan in place.He pointed out that if we just got rid of Acacia, there would be another corrupt bloodsucker representative ready to swoop in and pick up the mantle of terror.He also pointed out that the court had not worked for decades quietly undermining the syndicate just to show their hand too soon and throw everything away for one little ex-human because he had suffered a minor boo-boo.
I didn’t point out to him that kidnapping, torture, and forced vampire conversion were a bit beyond a “minor boo-boo.”He knew that.He was just being purposefully dismissive to get his point across.
Josh would live—we couldn’t change what had been done to him, but if we kept Acacia appeased, he should theoretically be fine until the court was in a better position to make a move.
I didn’t bother trying to offer an opinion or calm their argument.I saw the wisdom in what Robin was doing.She wasn’t letting them all argue for the fun of it.She was letting them vent.Letting them have a say, so they felt like they were at least trying to solve the problem.So they’d feel heard.I reached my aura out to hers in quiet support.Maybe if she checked the urge to go all alpha for a second, some of the pain would ebb.
But Robinwasour dragon alpha princess.So, they only got a short time to vent.Then she spoke.
“Are you all quite done now?”she drawled, her husky voice snaking through the fading mutters and grumbles, as unconcerned as ever.Like this was the most boring conversation she’d ever had.Even though I could sense her pounding headache from across the room.
“Martina and Dusek are partially right.With one minor addition.If we look at the situation logically,” she said in that same calm, even tone, “it would make the most sense to simply killJosh, so Acacia can’t spy on us or use him as leverage.She still might tattle on us to the emperor, though, so we should probably just get rid of them both for good measure.Although,” she said with a little pause, “Yukio is correct there—we wouldn’t be certain who would rise up to take over the syndicate vampires in Acacia’s place.That could make things more difficult since we’d be working around an unknown player and it would mean even more moving parts and what-ifs.”
There was a pause.A huff.
“Call her that again, snake,” Yukio said coldly, “and I’ll freeze your balls off,” clearly in response to something Sadavir had just signed to Robin.
I straightened my spine and opened myself further, letting more of my own innate magical nature wash over the room.The last thing we needed was the two most powerful alphas in the city trying to murder each other in the living room, though I was really tempted to allow it just so I wouldn’t have to play peacekeeper anymore.
I was knew Robin just baiting Sadavir with her suggestion about killing Josh, and was taking great pleasure in his reaction.AndSadavirshould know that too, and not rise to the bait.They were such children sometimes.
“That’s enough,” I said, letting just a thread of my magic slide outward.My voice wasn’t loud.It didn’t need to be.
Though I was always surprised when it happened, I knew everyone would defer to me.It was an omega thing, apparently.At first I hadn’t believed it.Hadn’t been comfortable accepting that all these powerful people were so attuned tome.But here was the proof.I was starting to see why some alphas preferred to keep omegas bound to them and subservient, rather than letting them remain unattached with their freewill intact.
“Robin,” I said evenly, feeling like a mother scolding a couple of toddlers.“Please stop trying to get a rise out of Sadavir.He’s suffered enough without you poking your fingers into the wound.”
Robin sighed as if I had just taken all her fun away.I almost smiled at her reaction.It was good to get a little glimpse of her usual personality, when I was beginning to get concerned about her losing herself.But the tension in the room was giving me a headache too.And none of this was productive.
