Forsaken (10 page)

"That's
the biggest long shot I've heard of someone betting on in a long
time."

Ash's
chuckle wasn't very comforting. "Yeah. We're all probably going
to end up dead, but I'm still going to bet on you. The reason the
Coun'hij is in power is because too many people were more interested
in trying to get their own slice of the pie. If more of us had united
solidly behind your ancestors, then there's a chance we'd be living
in a very different world. You're still plenty screwed up right now,
but even screwed up, you're still better than most of the alphas out
there. Besides, you're the only hybrid right now who has a chance of
standing up to those butchers. You're not there yet, but there's a
chance, which is more than anyone else has going for them right now."

I
nodded, even though he couldn't see the motion.

"Thanks
for your honesty. The rotation is going to be you, then James, then
Jasmin, then me."

"I'll
be ready."

By
the time Ash's mystery car pulled up in the driveway, all of the
shape shifters other than Addison and Andrew were gathered and
waiting. Addison hadn't liked being excluded from the challenge
matches, but James had backed me up on the ruling, so for once she
was doing what I'd told her to do.

The
woman who got out of the car looked like she was in her very early
twenties. She had long blond hair, was a little taller than average,
and moved with the calm assurance of someone who knew her limits and
was comfortable working inside of them. She looked us over, shrugged
her trim shoulders, and then walked up to me and put her hand out.

"My
name is Natasha Annikov. I'm not here to challenge you, I've got a
proposal for you instead."

If
she'd chosen that moment to pick up a two-by-four and hit me, the
blow probably would have landed. I was that surprised. The rest of
the packs had started cutting Donovan out of the grapevine shortly
after my father had been killed, so he and I had very little good
information when it came to the other packs. Shawn occasionally let
something slip, and Donovan sometimes managed to collect an important
tidbit through more conventional channels, but by and large I was
operating blind. Most of my resources had been aimed at keeping me in
the know when it came to Brandon, and I was woefully unprepared for
the larger arena in which I found myself.

I
looked over at Ash and he nodded almost imperceptibly, so I knew she
was really who she said she was, but that didn't mean I necessarily
knew what to do with her.

"On
behalf of the Sanctuary pack I welcome you to our territory. If
you're really not here to commit violence, then we'll happily extend
our hospitality to you."

"Surely
you can smell the truth of my words, Alec. You're reputed to be a
respectably powerful hybrid."

I
knew my smile didn't make it all of the way to my eyes.

"You
smell like you're telling the truth, but your assurances weren't very
comprehensive, and even if they had been, it wouldn't necessarily
surprise me if the heiress of the Tucson pack was able to lie without
giving off any of the normal signals."

"You're
being overly kind. We've had to shrink our territory down a lot over
the last few years. It would be fairer to say that we are the Sierra
Vista pack these days."

That
had been one piece of information that I had known, but frankly she
took me by surprise with her admission. Most dominants were touchy
about the size of the territory they controlled.

"May
I show you to a room?"

Natasha
nodded as she walked around to the back of the car and popped the
trunk. "That would be much appreciated. Where would you like me
to park my car?"

Dominic
stepped forward. "I'd be happy to park it for you and then bring
the keys to your room."

James
scowled a little. He knew that Dominic was a submissive both by
nature and ability, but he still didn't like it when she waited on
people. Natasha bestowed a smile on Dom as she handed her the keys
and pulled out a single bag.

"Thank
you, I'd really appreciate that."

I
turned to Donovan and raised an eyebrow. "Where would you
suggest we put Miss Annikov?"

Donovan
smoothly took Natasha's bag and motioned for her to precede him. "I
think that the Lilac Room is the best option we have available right
now."

My beast tried to make its presence known, but I stomped on the
flare of power before it could manifest into something strong enough
to show how much he'd rattled me. The Lilac Room had remained empty
since before Rachel had shipped Adri's clothes back to Manhattan. He
was purposefully reminding me of Adri's time at the mansion.

"The
Lilac Room it is. Ash, you're with us. Everyone else is free to go
back to whatever they were working on previously."

It
took only a couple of minutes for the four of us to make it to the
Lilac Room. Once we arrived, Natasha looked the room over and then
nodded at the soft purple accents and antique furniture.

"This
will serve just fine. I hear that you prefer to be direct when
possible, so I'd like to get to the point of my visit. Is this the
group you'd like to hear me out?"

A
petty part of me wanted to send Donovan away, but it really would
have been pure spite to do so. Donovan was the conduit through which
almost all of our intelligence flowed. It would be stupid to cut him
out of this particular discussion.

"Yes.
Do you want to have the discussion here or would you like to go
somewhere else?"

Natasha
looked around, as though confirming that there were enough chairs to
seat us all, and then motioned for us all to sit.

"Here's
fine. Do you have a privacy box somewhere that we can turn on?"

She
waited while Donovan turned on the white noise generator located next
to the door, and then joined the rest of us in the tiny breakfast
nook off to one side of the room.

"I'm
going to be blunt. I'd like to call you Alec and you can call me
Tasha if that's okay."

Despite
all of the minefields inherent in dealing with the representative of
another pack, I found a smile trying to work its way out onto my
lips. I was starting to suspect that Tasha would have had a hard time
being anything other than blunt.

"That's
fine. Ash is to your left and Donovan is to your right. Donovan held
things together after my father died. Ash is a recent addition to the
pack."

She
nodded respectfully at Donovan. "Your reputation is only a tad
short of legendary. My mother has mentioned many times just how
impressed she was with the way you managed the crisis after Agony's
first visit."

Tasha
likewise nodded to Ash and then shifted slightly in her chair, almost
like she was wishing that she didn't have to go through with whatever
it was she'd come to say.

"To
be perfectly frank, I have a very good idea of how much of a
bind you're in. You're a small pack, but even
worse, you're not all pulling in the same direction. You've had two
challenges so far, and during the first one, the dominants were at
odds with each other enough that the pack alpha had to get involved
in only the second round. There aren't very many ways that fight
could have gone down that would have been worse for your pack from
the standpoint of long-term survivability."

My
beast tried to rise up to the surface in answer to her allegation of
weakness, but once again I brought it to heel. Everything she'd said
so far was nothing more than the severely unfortunate truth.

"The
second fight went a little better, but only because Ash here skated
right up to the very edge of what he could get away with and shot the
challenger full of holes before James jumped in with both feet. To
put it simply, you don't have a big enough deterrent, and it's only a
matter of time before you get worn down from the constant fights and
someone either beats or kills you. The latter outcome is far more
likely."

She
said that last part looking directly at me. Again, I wanted to get
mad, but that would accomplish absolutely nothing.

"How
long do you think we have?"

"A
month, maybe two at the outside. It's hard to say for sure because I
don't know if your second hybrid is coming back and I don't know
which challengers you'll see when. Even giving you the benefit of the
doubt, nobody your size has lasted much longer than that without some
kind of doomsday weapon at their beck and call."

Tasha
took a deep breath and continued. "My pack isn't much better off
unfortunately, just for different reasons. The Coun'hij is keeping it
quiet, but we've started to see a decided uptick in the number of
forays up from south of the border. It's not just about the number of
cats we're seeing come up; it's also a factor of just how
strong some of them are."

It
wasn't the kind of admission that any wolf wanted to make
voluntarily. Once there was a perception of weakness it was almost
inevitable that attacks would follow. She was putting
the future of her friends and family in our hands.

"I've
heard rumors that you killed a southerner a little while back. Most
of the packs seem to be dismissing the piece of the story that
indicates that this cat was extremely dangerous, but I'm not. If
anything, I suspect the rumors are understating just how powerful he
was."

I
leaned back in my chair, trying to buy myself a little distance
mentally in which to think. She was trolling her bait very carefully
and she most definitely had my attention.

"Why
aren't you discounting that piece of the gossip?"

"Because
he came across our section of the border and he wasn't quiet about
it. He tore through us like we were a bunch of children, and the only
reason he didn't stay and wipe my entire pack out is that I bluffed
him into thinking the Coun'hij had a group of enforcers on their way
already."

Tasha
smiled at the stunned look on my face. "Exactly. You had six
effectives, seven with Ash, assuming that I'm right in thinking he
was in the mix for that one. Nearly half of your pack are hybrids,
but we hit him with fourteen people and my mother got in a couple of
blows that would have knocked any normal cat down for the count. He
shrugged them off and just kept coming."

Ash
spoke up. "You're not talking normal fisticuffs. You're implying
that your mom hit him with her ability and he shrugged off the
equivalent of a double Taser shot?"

"Actually,
the last time we measured her ability she was closer to four times
what a normal Taser hits for, and yes, that's exactly what I'm
saying. My mother leads from the front and she hit him twice. Either
discharge should have put even a very powerful hybrid down, but the
cat we were up against shrugged both attacks off and went on to kill
four of our pack. He almost killed my mother too."

If
what we'd just been told was true, then the Tucson pack was in almost
as bad of shape as we were. The border packs tended not to get
challenged as often as the rest of us simply because most of the
dispossessed weren't keen to take control of a pack that would be
faced with having to repulse regular forays from the cats out of
Mexico.

Even
if they managed to avoid a string of challenges like what we were
facing, they were still underpowered to be trying to stem the tide of
southern shape shifters looking to escape northward. Especially if
Tasha was right about the attacks becoming more numerous.

Tasha
gave the three of us a minute to digest the information and then
continued. "I think that this Anton that you took out was the
same cat who gave us so much difficulty. If I'm right, that means
whatever ability you manifested to kill Brandon is still working, at
least intermittently. As I said earlier, I've come, quite literally,
with a proposal. If I were to become Mrs. Alec Graves then we could
unite our two packs and solve most of the problems facing both of us
in one stroke."

Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah

Ash
and Donovan were each giving their best blank looks, but it was all I
could do to keep my composure. As soon as the words had left her
mouth, my beast surged forward in a bid to force a transformation. I
held on to my shape, but it was a close thing and the edge of the
table didn't survive.

Tasha
looked down at the tabletop that I'd just crushed and pursed her
lips. "Maybe I was a bit too straightforward. I'm not trying to
back you into any kind of corner. Go ahead and take some time to talk
it over. I'll be fine by myself for a little while."

I
nodded stiffly and motioned for Donovan and Ash to follow me as I
exited her room. A few minutes later we were safely ensconced in the
privacy of Donovan's study.

"Okay,
what do the two of you think?"

Ash
thought for a couple of seconds and then shrugged. "It has
potential. The Coun'hij has traditionally left the border packs
pretty much alone because they are so vital to the security of the
U.S. There's always a chance they'll still come after the Tucson pack
regardless, but we'd have a much better chance of completing that
kind of merger than we would with, say, the Chicago pack. A lot will
depend on what kind of guarantees Tasha's mother is willing to offer.
Everything I've heard is that she's one tough cookie."

Donovan
cleared his throat and then proceeded at my nod. "The rumors are
right. Jaclyn Annikov is incredibly dangerous. Many years before you
were born, there was quite a bit of pressure inside the pack for your
father to court her because she is nearly unbeatable in a fight. I've
seen her in action, and Agony would never have dared provoke her the
way he did your father."

This
was news to me. Donovan was generally careful of how much he told me
when it came to the thinking that had led up to my father's fight
with Agony. Sometimes it seemed like he was worried I'd be influenced
into following the exact same path. Not that he was particularly
happy with the path I was currently on.