Page 46 of Storm Echo

She stared straight ahead. “If I don’t get the answer I want tonight, if it’s all a dream created by grief, I’ll confront him. Ask him why.”

She could feel Ivan’s attention as he waited for her to tell him the rest, but Soleil couldn’t speak. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about the loss of her pack, about all the dead, all the blood. And now, today, when she parted her lips, all that came out was silence. While inside her head played two cubs in the grass. They’d been so mischievous, so intent on creeping up on her and pouncing.

She’d always known they were there, of course, their small bodies making the grass rustle as they crept along on their stomachs. But she’d pretended to be startled, pretended to fall back onto the grass as they “attacked” her. Such small, warm bodies wriggling on top of her in excitement at having made a successful hunt.

She’d growled and grabbed them close to her chest, and they’d nuzzled at her.

Her hand lifted to her cheek, the echo of their small furry faces against her an almost tactile sensation. Her throat closed, the knot of grief in her chest expanding until it filled every part of her.

She could barely breathe, each inhale jagged shards in her lungs. So when that silvery web shimmered into her mind, stronger, thicker, even more dazzling, she grabbed hold of it, wrapped it around her like a glittering blanket, and used it as a shield against the grief.

It tasted of Ivan. Of course it did.

And somehow, in the strange comfort offered by the beautiful stone frost of the man who’d saved her life and now thought he had rights to it, she found her voice. “My pack is dead. SkyElm is dead.”

“There were survivors.”

“Yes, seven survivors—and me.”

Ivan didn’t question the way she voiced that, simply listened.

“A human neighbor told me after I finally remembered myself and came home.” She’d learned of Monroe’s rejection by then, but she hadn’t come back for her erstwhile alpha. “The neighbor had lived next to the pack a long time.” So long that even Monroe had accepted him.

“Only seven,” she murmured, her heart breaking all over again. “But it was more than none. It was enough for us to start again. Then …” She exhaled on a full-body shudder. “Then they all vanished one night, and when the neighbor went looking, he found blood in the aerie that belonged to my former alpha.”

Still, she had hoped. Knowing who Monroe had been, she hadn’t been surprised that he’d ended in blood. “After seeing the blood, our neighbor got in touch with a nonpredatory changeling he knew from his work. That person picked up the scent of a leopard.”

Their reaction had been stark terror.

“It took me a long time to track down who the leopard might’ve been. A lot of rumors, a lot of whispers, but in the end it came down to this: my alpha, Monroe, did something to bring DarkRiver’s wrath down on him. Lucas Hunter executed him.”

“A rumor?”

“No, that last part isn’t rumor.” Black-and-white images in her mind, the text of the message crisp and clear. “Such executions are listed in a master document that was set up as an adjunct of the Peace Accord that ended the Territorial Wars. It’s to stop revenge attacks when the execution was warranted.

“I’m not senior enough to have access to the document, so I don’t know why Monroe was executed. But I have a friend in another pack—a librarian—whose alpha has openly said that no one has any argument with Lucas Hunter’s actions.”

“Your alpha broke a changeling law that couldn’t be forgiven.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. And Monroe … he wasn’t a good person.” She felt no loyalty to the man who’d made her feel unwanted since childhood, then flat-out disowned her. “He was a bully and I think he picked the wrong target.”

“Yet you wanted to kill Lucas Hunter.”

“Because there weresevensurvivors.” She tugged the silver web tighter around herself in an attempt to ward off the chill that was the incipient death of hope. “Monroe and six others: our senior healer, Yariela; a submissive packmate; two young soldiers—and two cubs.

“All gone without a trace. My librarian friend was also able to confirm that SkyElm is now a dead pack. Our line no longer exists in any of the records kept among changelings, and our territorial lands have been forfeited back into the trust that holds open territories.”

She strangled the sob that wanted to escape; tonight wasn’t about tears but about answers. But she couldn’t stifle the pain that bled into her words. “I need them to be alive, Ivan. If they’re not …”

“Is there any other reason your pack would be listed as dead?”

“No. It’s tradition for a pack name to be put into a holding pattern even when they have no alpha and so need to join another pack. It leaves room for a child of the original pack to one day pick up the mantle. A pack is never listed as dead unless there are no surviving members.”

She’d made very certain of her understanding of that point. “But my pack stops at the moment of Monroe’s death. There is no continuity, no future possibility. And my friend confirmed that no one has had any contact with the survivors.”

Ivan could see why Soleil believed what she did, but he was a hundred percent certain that she was wrong. Everything he knew of Lucas Hunter told him the man was a protector. He might be aggressive in his defense of his pack, but that didn’t extend to harming innocents caught in the crossfire. Ena, too, had been known to get those innocents out of the way, even when she was on a quest for vengeance.

True alphas didn’t need to subjugate the vulnerable to be powerful.

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