CHAPTER 79

Anthony was torn. I could see it in the uncertainty that he hid carefully behind the anger on his face. He didn't know which one of us to believe, and he didn't like the outcome either way.

"Take their things and get them both out of here, keep them separate, and here, until we can investigate these claims," he emphasized the word 'here'.

"I think we should talk about this so called hit. Anthony, the caporegimes did not condone this action," one of the Caporegimes, a woman in her mid thirties with blazing red hair and tattoos up her neck commented.

"I am the alpha, you condone any action I see as necessary so long as you are under me," Anthony's voice rose, violence shivered in the air. The entire room shifted uncomfortably.

It wasn't something I could feel, necessarily, but now that I knew that others could feel me, I recognized the signs of Anthony's wolf showing its power. He would have gained extra points as alpha too, making resisting his dominance even more difficult.

I felt nothing. If I'd wanted I could have slipped out of this room during all the posturing and been on my way.

I should have, maybe. I had come, and given the information that I could. It was all out there now, all they had to do was look into it.

I looked at Martha, who sat a few seats down from Anthony. Her face a picture of misery. Micheal, too, was present and though he had his head lowered in submission, a muscle in his jaw twitched slightly.

And then there was Anthony. Confused and torn, desperately trying to hold everything together.

For the last five years these people had been my friends. My only friends in a world where everyone else had betrayed me, or were dead.

So this time I didn't run. I stood when Jacob approached me with a regretful sort of look, handed him my phone, and followed him out of the room and up the stairs, just behind Leanne, who seemed to have accepted her fate for the moment. I caught a glimpse of the side of her face though, and she was desperate and definitely plotting.

"I'd keep her a long way away from her room if I were you. Somewhere she can't access any fail safe she might have."

Jacob grunted, I thought it was an acknowledgment, but it might have just been frustration with me. Five more wolves, all members of the security team, followed us to what was once my room. Someone else had taken it over now, which was kind of weird, but in all my situation could have been a lot worse. The five security members spread out throughout the room, two at the window, two at the door, and Micheal himself loose in the room, his eyes never leaving me. He scowled as the door closed behind Jacob.

"What?" I avoided the bed, because sitting on someone else's bed felt weird, and pulled out the chair from the little desk in the corner. Plunking myself down on it. "I'm good to wait this time."

"And I'm supposed to believe you?"

I shrugged. "It makes no difference if you don't."

I'd gotten the ball rolling to interfere with the deportation of his wife, Yetta, before I'd entered the ranch house. I figured that even if he'd flaked on me and things went to hell before I could present my evidence I sort of owed him anyway. Aiden had promised one of his lawyers, though not his best ones, those were currently dealing with the onslaught of information and demands from the general public over the video that had been 'accidentally aired'.

Micheal didn't say much, which was fine. My guts were too twisted into knots to talk much anyway. I played with a pen and pad on the desk for a while, doodling squiggles, writing my name and sketching Leanne being run over by a bus, but none of it helped.

I wanted to ask what was going on. It wasn't like Leanne to go down quietly so she had to be scheming something, was she still being watched? As heavily as I was? Had she been questioned? Admitted to her faults?

Glass broke outside the door, followed by shouting and then the scent of blood. Leanne's blood, and a very faint hint of burning flesh.

"What is happening?" I demanded, pushing up from the desk.

My security team looked around to one another, some holding a hand to their old fashioned—compared to the Hoventech version—communication devices.

I forgot about trying to get information from my captors and stretched my senses out instead.

Leanne was laying on the floor of her room, which, in my opinion, was the first mistake Jacob made. The second was letting her anywhere near the window.

She was dead, or would be soon. She'd been hit by a wolf killer bullet. That was the burning flesh I was smelling. Her heart rate had nearly stopped, her breathing too shallow to sustain her. Three other wolves lingered in her room, professionally scanning the room itself for danger while Jacob pressed against the wall next to the window, ready to peer out into the yard to try to catch the shooter.

Only he wouldn't find him, because I was pretty certain the shooter was my werejaguar friend and he was well out of Jacob's range.

"Tell them not to go near the window!" I made for the door before being blocked by two large bodies.

Right, no matter what was going on outside, these particular wolves had been given priority over my containment. And they weren't going to end up like Micheal.

"Sit down, Raven," Micheal demanded, his own gun raised, and unlike the last time he'd pointed a weapon at me, this time he was dead serious. Not that he would kill me, most likely, but he would make sure it hurt like hell.

"Leanne's been shot. She'll be dead in a moment. It's the same sniper that took out Rob. If Jacob doesn't stay away from her window he's likely to face the exact same fate."

Micheal scoffed. "We're on standby, you have no idea what's going on because we have no idea what's going on."

"You were with me when we broke into Defense Medical, you know at least some of what I'm capable of. I can smell her death. There is no one else capable of making a shot like that from a distance, not while keeping his presence hidden from me. Tell them to stay away from the window, I don't know how many of us he's been ordered to take out. And have them search Leanne. She had to have some device of some sort that let them know everything had gone to shit. She probably tried to alert them..."

Micheal held up a hand, interrupting my ramble. I would have continued, argued harder, fought, if I had to, but he tapped his headset and repeated what I'd said to Jacob.

I gave him a relieved nod and gestured to the two wolves standing next to my window. It was on the opposite side of the house from Leanne's room, but better safe than sorry.

They gave me uncertain glares.

"You don't have to leave the window entirely," I told them, "just step to the side, so you don't end up full of burning holes. Trust me the result is not pleasant."

They stepped to the side.

The commotion had spread to the rest of the house now, and I could sense a hunting party had already dashed out of the fenced yard toward the trajectory that a sniper would have had to take to hit Leanne. Anthony was thinking fast, but it wouldn't be enough.

I wished I could pull them off, bring them all back. The werejaguar was a match for any of them...maybe all of them.

But a pack that couldn't protect its own, even when its own was a cowardly traitor about to be questioned and murdered for her crimes, was not a pack at all. They had to try, and so Anthony had sent them.

Downstairs conversation had turned serious, the voices of those who were left melding together. I could pick out individuals, if I wanted to, but it sounded like they were simply arguing about information I'd already figure out.

Five minutes later Jacob came through the door. His face was deadly serious his motions carefully calculated. He was furious, and he was scared.

"How did you know about this?" he held up the tracking device I had bugged the night I'd been in Leanne's room.

"I told you I bugged her. That was one of the two things in her room I felt were extra suspicious."

"Why would she use it? Why would she sacrifice herself? It makes no sense."

I shook my head. "I don't think she thought she would sacrifice herself. I think she believed she was calling in the cavalry. What she didn't count on was that she was not important to these people. None of us are. She was nothing but a pawn and as soon as she lost her worth they removed her from the board."

"How do you know this? What proof do you have?" He demanded again.

"It's a very long story, maybe I'll tell it to you sometime. But what you need to accept now is that she was an inside agent for the US military, a particular section of it called Thostchild and they're out to start a war with all of us."