Page 51 of Hunted

“Even if it united vampires and shifters in the conflict against humans?” When Rowan shook her head, I forged on, “If this works, we could leverage both the antidote and werewolf blood in exchange for a treaty, a real enforceable treaty. Any coven that refuses to honor it gets cut off.”

“I think that sounds wonderful, Ellie,” Jori said gently. “If only the tiniest bit naïve. I don’t say that to hurt you. You have the biggest heart. But you’re human, looking at this from the outside. The vampire-shifter conflict has been raging for centuries. Thousands upon thousands of lives have been lost on both sides. It’s hard to simply put that aside and start being friends.”

“You trust River. You trust Fallon.”

“Yes.” Jori stared me straight in the eye. “And it isn’t lost upon me that they see me as a means to an end. The vampire witch and trained bodyguard who will put her life on the line to save yours if it comes to that. But I do not doubt for one second that neither River nor Fallon would stay behind to save me if Matteo Rossi stormed the building, and I were trapped inside.”

“That isn’t true,” I whispered, reaching for her hand. “And I would never leave you.”

Jori smiled sadly. “That’s because you aren’t a wolf.”

“She’s wrong, you know,” River said a few hours later, as we walked through the university campus. The late October day was cool and windy. The last rays of twilight filtered through the live oak canopy overhead. “I get why she believes it. But we all fought together to clear out the prison compound Zara had underneath this campus. Things are changing.”

He nodded down to the street and I shivered, having heard the stories too many times around Caldwell barbecue dinners about the assault teams trying to breach warded areas in the secret tunnels beneath the university. “Vampires and shifters went in together to rescue everyone that day. We worked as a team. If we hadn’t, no way would we have gotten to my dad, Topher’s brother, or any of the other hostages. We saved two dozen people on that mission, shifters and vampires.”

“I just think she meant—”

“I know what she meant.” He toyed with my fingers as we approached the parking garage where Fallon was waiting with the SUV since River wasn’t yet medically cleared to dematerialize. “Guillermo can be a real hard ass to have as an Alpha. There are days we fuck up an op and he makes the whole unit do training drills for hours as punishment. We are a pack. We succeed or fail as a pack. But he can also tell you the name of every Tracer in the compound. He knows who is mated to whom. He makes it his business to know when someone’s mate is having a baby and sends a gift. He and August meet up once a month for video games and beer and when I got back from one of my scans, the nurse handed me a phone. It was Guillermo. After he reamed me out for not following procedure and putting myself at risk, he stayed on the phone with me for a half hour, asking how I was, promising I would have every resource I needed to get better.”

“How is August?”

River sighed. “I talked to him a little while ago.” We reached the car. “He’s trying to put on a brave face, as usual, but the psychological impact of not being able to shift is taking its toll. He’s never had a choice in any of this. He’s been living with this disease since he was five years old. And now he has no choice about taking Eclipse. It’s all so fucking unfair.”

River opened the door for me, hanging onto my fingers for a second too long so I couldn’t climb inside.

“Jori is used to taking orders from commanding officers who viewed her as a thing. She was disposable property to them, a resource to be used up and discarded. She watched her family die one by one and when she started to get sick, defected to join Vlad, who offered the only chance she had at survival. So I really don’t blame her for not trusting any of us. But I hope with time, she’ll allow us to prove that we aren’t like them.”

Inside the SUV, Fallon smiled warmly at me before addressing River. “I was able to reconstruct a location from the vampire we intercepted outside the safehouse. We sent a team to the apartment a few hours ago. No sign of Rossi, but we found a laptop.”

River rubbed his bottom lip. “Most likely, it’s a plant. It’s been a week since that safehouse should have detonated. Rossi will know from the fact that the mission failed and that he can still feel echoes of his rewrite in the drone’s mind that he’s still alive and we have him.”

“Probably. Which only begs the question, what’s on it that Rossi wants us to see?”

“You brought it?”

“I tried. Guillermo ordered it turned over before anyone on our team could look at it. His eyes only.”

“You gave it to him?” River swore. “Are you fucking serious?” He glanced to me. “Sorry.”

I waved, pulling out my phone to text Hayden. “I’m fine.”

“Please. What kind of amateur do I look like?” Fallon waved a hand. “I had Rowan get her ass over to the site and hack into the hard drive so she could copy it before I had to hand it in.”

“Good work. Both of you.” River exhaled. “Did you look at it?”

“Just a preliminary sweep. If it’s really Rossi’s, he’s… there’s no other way to put this. The guy is obsessed with you and Guillermo. Ellie, too. But she’s secondary to the two of you.”

I glanced over to River, watching a muscle tick in his jaw. At last he said, “Good work, Fallon. I know this can’t have been easy on you, taking so much time away from your son.”

She blew out a breath. “It never gets easier on days I have to go out on assignment. It really helps that Cal set up the daycare center at Blood Moon’s pack reintegration center. I was nervous about leaving Jonah with anyone at first. So many people would love to exploit him for his varewolf blood. But Cal explained my concerns to his caregivers and even the vampires were willing to drop their mental shields so I could read them and determine they had no intention of harming Jonah. And it’s nice that they have werewolves to work the day shift and vampires to work the night shift when I get called away unexpectedly.”

The pack reintegration center was a project meant to help shifters and vampires who needed assistance integrating into pack and human society. Sometimes it was because a newly Bitten shifter was struggling to control their wolf side and had gone feral. Some of the vampires were part of Vlad’s insurgency, former members of the lower caste who had escaped the Vampire Nation with nothing but the clothes on their backs and needed help finding jobs, community and shelter. London Blake ran a non-profit which helped place at risk people in jobs, and Cal, with his training as a psychiatrist, was running group and individual therapy sessions, in addition to leading the transitional housing compound Sofia and Ben Caldwell had allowed him to build out on some of the back acres of their ranch.

River’s phone vibrated. He swiped to accept the call. “London Blake. Talk to me, Alpha. You’re on speaker and I’m with Fallon and Ellie. Where are we on the mole?”

As usual, Brody’s wife cut straight to the point. “I’ve spent the past week running deep background checks on all my pack members that I have any reason to question. Rowan also went in and checked out records access, as well as any search histories on pack issued devices.”

“And?”