Forsaken (16 page)

It
boggled the mind on so many levels, but suddenly pieces started
snapping into place for me. "Are you sure, Ben? What about the
secret compartments? Couldn't those be used to run drugs and stuff?"

He
didn't want to believe me. I could see it in the set of his jaw.

"I
don't know why I thought this time would be any different than the
others. Every time I get involved with any of Alec's crew I end up
screwed over in some way or another. I'm not quitting this job. It's
the best gig I've ever seen. Just leave me the hell alone."

Ben
pushed past the two of us and tromped up the stairs. I started to
follow him, but Dominic stopped me.

"I'm
sorry, Adri, but he's dangerous now. He wasn't before, at least not
any more than anyone else that has been embroiled in vampire nets,
but he's angry enough right now that there's no telling what he'll do
if you follow."

We
sat there in silence for a couple of minutes with Dom holding onto my
arm to make sure I wouldn't follow, before I mentally gave up on the
prospect of trying to find Ben and apologize.

"I
just wish Ben and Jasmin could get a break. Every time I stick my
fingers into that particular situation it seems like things get even
worse. I know you were just trying to protect me, but I wish you
could have played things a little cooler than that."

Dom
looked embarrassed now. "I'm sorry. You're right; I shouldn't
have come on so strong. I guess the things Mrs. Valencia said rattled
me more than I'd realized."

I
shook my head in astonishment. "I think that went beyond just
being rattled, Dom. I don't know what she said to you, but you picked
Ben up with one hand like he weighed absolutely nothing. I thought
you said you were feeling weaker and more tired than normal."

We'd
turned and started back the way that we came, but Dom missed a step
as she processed my words. "You're right, Adri. Normally I
couldn't have done any of that. It was suddenly like my beast was so
much stronger than it's ever been before. Maybe that's why I was so
aggressive with Ben."

"So
you're cured?"

"I'm
not sure what it means. I'm not sure of much as things stand right
now. The questions are arriving much faster than the answers."

Alec Graves
Sanctuary High School
Sanctuary, Utah

Now
that we didn't have the constant threat of Brandon's pack hanging
over us, the pack had started developing hobbies that expanded beyond
what you could do just at the estate. The fact that we weren't all
confined to the estate quite so much helped ease some of the tension
in the pack, but like so much else right now, it was too little too
late. With Dom in Manhattan and Rachel confined to bed, we had plenty
of extra vehicles, but Tasha had still started dropping me off at
school each morning and picking me up in the afternoon.

It
had an element of staking out her territory to it, which I didn't
particularly love, but it did have the benefit of keeping the girls
at school at arm's length. It also had the benefit of giving me a few
private moments each day with Tasha. I hadn't expected things to
progress as well as they had so far.

Physically,
Tasha was superficially similar to Adri. She had blond hair, a
slender build, and was more than just merely pretty. As far as
temperaments went, though, the two of them were markedly different.
Where Adri had been accepting and gentle, Tasha was challenging, and
when someone couldn't back up their position she wasn't above calling
them an idiot.

Adri
hadn't understood pack life because she'd only ever had a ring-side
seat. She'd wanted me to be better than the savagery that was part
and parcel of being a shape shifter. Tasha had lived in that ring her
entire life and understood exactly how hard I'd had to work to create
even the superficial bubble of civilization around the Sanctuary
pack.

I
exited the school and saw Tasha waiting inside her car for me. I
suspected she actually came to pick me up just as a way of getting
away from the estate. She seemed to keep busy, even from an entire
state away, helping her mother manage their financial holdings, but I
could already tell she was more social than I was. She didn't go hang
out at Sanctuary's one and only bar or anything, but driving through
town and seeing honest-to-goodness humans seemed to satisfy some
unspoken need for her.

"So
what great bits of knowledge did you learn today?"

I
shook my head at her recurring question. "School is just like
any other way of learning knowledge. You rarely learn something that
moves the world all on its own. It's more a gradual process. At the
end of it all, you realize that you're better equipped in some area
than you were when you started the process."

"Ah,
finally a decent answer out of you, Alec. That means I can go on to
my next question."

As
always, there was a hint of mocking laughter to our time together.

"If
school is merely a method of acquiring knowledge, then why haven't
you optimized your efforts the way you have in most other aspects of
your life?"

It
only took a second for me to realize what she was getting at.

"You're
saying that I'm wasting my time by going to school."

"Maybe
not in so many words, but yes. High school isn't optimized for
learning; it's optimized for a broader set of things. I would suggest
that you don't need much of what this school is still able to offer
you. Get your GED if you must, but your time would be better spent
running your pack."

I
didn't like the idea, but I suddenly realized I couldn't think of a
single rational reason to stay in school. I could learn faster on my
own, or with hired tutors. It was meaningless as far as helping me
get into a college. College might have been an option if my father
had still been alive, but the alpha of a pack couldn't be gone for
nine months out of the year.

There
wasn't even a social reason for me to be spending so much of my time
each day sitting in classrooms. I hadn't interacted with the rest of
the student body very much even before we'd killed Brandon's pack.
Since then, everyone had been polite but distant. I suspected they were
worried that they might somehow run afoul of me and suffer a similar
fate.

Adri
had pierced my armor in part because she'd come from outside
Sanctuary and arrived without the deference that most of the town
offered my family almost instinctively. There wasn't anything saying
that something like that couldn't happen, but ultimately, could I
justify bringing another human into my world? It had been more than
Adri had been able to handle. Odds were that any other normal human
would have an equally hard time fitting into my life. What was worse,
they would always be a liability. I'd never thought about Adri in
those terms before Tasha arrived, but it was impossible not to see
the differences between the two of them when it came to their
suitability to life as the mate of an alpha.

Adri
had been completely defenseless. Tasha wasn't a hybrid, so she was
only a step above Adri when it came to being able to protect herself,
but that one small step would still translate to fewer problems
inside the pack. More telling was the fact that Tasha had been raised
to rule a pack. I'd loved Adri. I still loved Adri if I was brutally
honest about it, but from a practical standpoint Tasha was right.
Marrying a shape shifter had destroyed my mother. There was every
reason to believe that it would do the same thing to any other human
I tried to bring into my life.

The
silence had stretched out long enough that it would have felt
uncomfortable with almost anyone else, but Tasha was content to wait
for me to think through her points. I finally shrugged and motioned
that we should get started back home.

"I
can't argue with your logic, but I find myself oddly reluctant to
abandon school right now."

Tasha
smiled as she dropped her BMW into gear. For once the mocking
undertone was gone. "That's a good enough answer for now. As
time goes on, you'll either come up with a real reason or you'll
realize your reasons are purely emotional."

I
nodded, but the truth was that I already had a pretty good idea that
my reason was emotional. That didn't mean it was invalid
though. That was one of the places where I was suspecting we didn't
see eye to eye.

We
drove in silence for several seconds before Tasha ventured another
question. "Do you trust me yet, Alec?"

I
shrugged. I'd already pretty much expected her to turn the tables on
me at some point in our conversation.

"I'm
not sure it really matters whether or not I trust you yet."

She
took her eyes off the road and gave me a frustrated look.

"It
absolutely matters. We're not talking about some kind of business
joint venture where we've only got a couple of million at stake.
We're talking about a complete merger between our packs and a marriage
between you and me. Trust absolutely has to be at the bottom of all
of that, or we all may as well just slit our throats right now."

"Okay,
point taken, but the truth is that I still don't know how far I can
trust you. Based on your actions so far, you're either honest or a
very accomplished liar. Do you trust me?"

Tasha
nodded without taking her eyes off the road this time. "Yes, I
do actually. I have the advantage of being here where I can watch
your interactions with your pack, all of whom have known you for your
entire life. You're honest. You're a decent leader, too, except for
the way you keep oscillating back and forth between trying to build
some kind of consensus and being more authoritative."

"So
you're all in then?"

She
shook her head. "No, I wouldn't go that far, but I can see my
way to dealing with some of the issues I think you bring to the table
with you. The real question now is how I go about managing to
convince you that I can be trusted. Mom figured that if we waited
long enough the pressure from the challenges would convince you that
you didn't have much of a choice but to jump into bed with us.
Dominic bought you more time than I expected with her little miracle
win though."

Tasha
didn't realize it, but it was comments like that which were still
putting the biggest brake on our relationship. I didn't think I'd be
falling in love with her any time soon, but I could have gotten past
that. Plenty of people had married out of duty in the past, but I
wouldn't put my friends and family in a position that was worse than
we were in now. I still got the impression that the other
members of my pack were little more than counters on a board for her.

I
waited in silence for another couple of minutes, and then, as we
pulled past the gate into the estate, she seemed to make a decision.

"Okay,
the only way this is going to progress is if one of us takes a risk
and exposes themselves to something that could really come back to
bite them. Since you seem to need the convincing, I'll take the
risk."

I
raised an eyebrow expectantly. She took a deep breath before
continuing. "We've been killing any werewolves we run across in
our territory for years now."

That
in and of itself was a pretty hefty admission. The Coun'hij had
outlawed werewolf hunts as part of the agreement that brought
Puppeteer firmly onto their side. It had been all but inevitable
really. He'd been much too powerful to let wander around loose, and
no other pack had wanted anything to do with him, not after he'd lost
control of one of his minions and gotten his original pack's alpha
killed.

"So
you guys hunt werewolves. Everyone kind of expects the border packs
to march to their own tune. I could maybe make life a bit more
difficult for you if I went to the Coun'hij and told them, but short
of them agreeing to let Puppeteer overwhelm you guys in a sea of
werewolves, it won't change the fundamental balance of power. They
still don't have anyone who can take your mom one on one, and you're
still too small of a group to really threaten their powerbase."

She
was nodding, already seeing where I was headed. "Right, and I
would have known you'd see things that way, so I risked very little
by telling you, because you would have known that the Coun'hij is
hardly likely to embrace you like a prodigal son. Even if you do turn
informer for them, it's not going to outweigh the risk you represent
as a rallying point for the rest of our people."

"Right,
so you haven't risked much of anything yet, Tasha."

"What
about if I invite you on a hunt with us? That's how your dad and my
mom started down the path to an alliance, you know. Mom chased a pair
of vacuums up into Utah and your dad heard about it somehow. He
brought four of his most trusted hybrids far enough south to help
trap both of the werewolves in a dry canyon somewhere around here.
When the dust finally settled, the combatants from both packs were
plenty the worse for the wear, but both alphas respected each other
for being willing to do what was right, even though it could have
created waves for them with the Coun'hij."

I
shook my head in amazement. It hadn't been one of the stories that
Donovan had shared with me. It was possible he hadn't known how the
first tentative steps had been taken towards an alliance between the
two packs, but it did sound remarkably like something my dad would
have done.

It
wasn't that much more of a risk than what she'd already done,
and it actually put me and the rest of the Sanctuary pack in more
danger. Agony and the rest would love nothing more than to catch us
hunting a few werewolves and use it as a pretext to destroy the
entire pack.

Even
so, it would give me a chance to take the measure of whoever
came north from her pack, and it would provide an opportunity to
see how their dominants and our dominants interacted.