“We have to go,” I replied, not wanting him to finish the sentence. “Rob’ll kill us if we stuff around here. I’ll put some food and water out for the dogs, in case we’re back late.”
He shook his head. “We won’t be home late. C’mon, then.”
Chapter 14
“Shan!” My head whipped around to see Jaz and Rita with Nicky, Eddie’s sister. “What’s going on? The phone’s been blowing up. Everyone’s been called in. Do y’know what for?”
“I dunno if I’m allowed to say,” I replied. We stood clustered on the outskirts of the big area out the back of Rob and Beth’s house. There were kids and adults everywhere, milling around. Some of the pack were helping the senior men that needed it to their seats, others strode through the crowds, the mass parting on automatic to let them through.
“This is big,” Rita said, scanning the group. “I dunno if I’ve ever seen this many people in one place.”
“The Clearys are here,” Nicky said. “They don’t come to any of these things. This is serious.”
“Jacob’s looking all right though,” Jaz said, nodding her head to one of the younger men who’d arrived, his family staying clustered on the outskirts.
“That’s enough of that,” Nicky shot back. “You’re spoken for now, stuck with my brother.”
“Stuck with? Pfft…” Jaz snorted. “If you knew what he did with his—”
Nicky slapped a hand over the girl’s face. “You do not want to finish that sentence. Especially with Mum and the aunties around.”
“Speaking of brothers and mums, how’s things going with Jai?” Rita asked me. Each of the girls turned to stare at me. I took one step back, making the three of them smile. They just kept on staring and smiling as I tried and failed to think of a way to describe what had been going on.
“Probably shouldn’t say too much. Mum’s heard you’re staying with Jai, and she’ll want a word,” Jaz said.
“What?”
“That’s the way it is, with pack men. Mums, aunties, they help all of us adjust, but let’s just say she wasn’t too happy to hear you were staying at his.” Mary Heller was a formidable woman. Unlike the girls, she had inherited her German grandmother’s stocky frame, but she was also bloody tall. My eyes flicked over Jaz’s shoulder to see the woman herself walking over.
“Shit! Your mum is scary as fuck,” I yelped.
Jaz’s hand slapped down on my arm. “Running won’t help you, Shan. Nothing gets away from Mum. I trampled her tomato patch when I was a kid, running away from Jai. I took off to Aunty Rose’s, up on the hill? Hid around her chook shed, hoping to avoid a belting. Just got three beltings when she caught up with me. One for the tomatoes, one for hiding from her, and one for not facing up to my problems. The more you run…”
I could see it then, in the girls’ smiles, their similarities to the men’s beasts. Their teeth glimmered in the low light as the sun set behind their heads, their smiles sly.
“That’s what I keep telling her.” A pair of masculine arms wrapped around me, making me jump out of my skin, much to the girls’ glee. Rabbit they used to call me at school, always jumping, always running away. “The alphas are ready for us, Shan.”
Their eyes went to goo when he placed a kiss on top of my head, entirely oblivious to my fate. Nevertheless, he turned me around and steered me towards the senior men, people moving out the way as we passed. Kids called out to me, wanting me to stop and play with them. I waved and smiled and felt like a prisoner on the way to the scaffold. That was only reinforced when I came to stand before the pack.
The shifters moved from wherever they were to stand together, united. The younger men sat at the feet of the alphas, while the men coming up, like Rob, took position behind them, several generations standing strong, as they had for centuries. Silence fell automatically over the crowd, even the kids going quiet, even if it was just due to being hissed at by mums or aunties. Rob moved around until he stood between the pack and the rest of the family, the link between them.
“We got some information today, something that we knew had to be shared with everyone. You all know Shannon, Moira’s girl. She grew up with our kids, kept to her grandmother’s ways, but never used that twist she has against us.”
There was some mumbling about that.
“You’ve all seen how the prison on the ridge was turned into this…Capricorn Institute.” Rob spat on the grass. “The council turned down our bid for it because someone had deeper pockets. Today, we found out why.”
He surveyed the crowd slowly, as if meeting the eyes of every person assembled. “Shannon was taken inside. The man who runs the place wants to employ the staff at the vets, buy Wilson out. The place is a sperm bank, supposed to be for rare predators, to try and make sure they don’t go extinct, but…”
The crowd hung on his every word.
“Every single one of the animals in there is a shifter.” The mumbling got louder, more insistent now. “They’ve got facilities in there to keep shifters caged, to drug them and take sperm samples. Machines to clone animals, to mess with their DNA. They brought a shifter breeding facility here to our land. But all those sperm samples? What are they for? They’re only one half of the equation.”
Rob’s eyes slid to me, so everyone else’s did as well. My rabbit heart beat fast at that, but Jai’s hand kept me where I was, something people noted. There was more muttering about that.
“She spoke to several shifters there with that twist of hers, mind to mind.” That put the cat among the pigeons, the chatter growing. It took one of the old men to thump his cane on the ground for quiet to return. “Saw how they caught them, how they got brought here. What they want. They want her, to make more of them, of us.”
“Looks like Jai’s on the job already,” one guy said, the crowd around him erupting into laughter, breaking some of the tension.
“And if he is? The alphas have approved Shannon as his mate. They want shifters in a valley full of them? Will these men sit up in their place on the hill and let that opportunity go? Or will they come in the night for us? Our kids?”
That was it. Pack families had their differences, some groups rarely mixing with the others, but this was one thing they held dear—kids. They were the future, the focus of everything. People moved instinctively, creating barriers around the kids, hiding them behind their legs, despite their attempts to see what was going on.
“Maybe.”
Just one word, but everyone turned at that, their focus sharpened, their mouths closing. One of the alphas, Rusty, spoke the word, his mouth buried under a great big beard, his hands wrapped around his cane.
Rob deflated somewhat, stepping back and out of the man’s line of sight.
“I’ve seen you grow, little rabbit girl,” Rusty said, looking my way, my eyes dropping down to the ground. “Moira was a strong woman, had a power we don’t see often. I know young Rob and Jai have their ideas, but you, you’re still an outsider girl, not raised like ours are. Seen plenty of strong outsiders, promise everything, but deliver…” His gnarled hands opened to show how much they’d actually done. “Your Jai argued long and hard for you. We had his mate lined up already, but he said it had to be you. You want to take one of the pack as your mate, then you need to show us.”