“Why do I sense a but coming?”
“And it’s a big but, I cannot lie.” Quade did his best to grin, but he wasn’t feeling it. “The miner that Alfie had stopped from hurting Lil? He was fired and couldn’t get another job. He heard that Alfie had struck it rich and figured Alfie owed him. So he went out, got himself shit-faced, and decided that the time had come to collect. He trekked up the mountain to Alfie’s house and found Lil and Dandrot alone.”
Caden started to get up. “Stop. I don’t need to hear anymore.”
“You asked—now you’re going to listen,” Quade barked. “You want to know why you’re staying, and I’m going to tell you, so sit the fuck down and shut up.”
For a second it looked like Caden was going to argue, but instead he sat, his expression showing how unhappy he was.
“The miner was fucked in the head. He was a shit person in a shit town at a shit time. And even though it was his own fault he got fired, he took it out on Lil. The beating she missed out on that night at the bar? Not this time. It was brutal, and it took hours. When Alfie got near the house, he heard Dandrot screaming. He rushed in and found the miner standing over Lil’s body. He saw the dried blood around her mouth and ears, her limp body, her glassy eyes. See, dwarves don’t hurt people if they can avoid it. It’s not in their nature. That day, Alfie took out every drop of rage he had on the miner. His pickaxe punctured the man over two hundred times. When he turned himself into the law, they had to scoop up the miner’s body to get it out of the house.”
Caden was looking a little green. Quade wanted to feel bad about it, but he didn’t. Everyone who lived in Sanctuary had to hear the story, needed to know their history. Yeah, one of the counselors would have sugarcoated it, made it just this side of the tragedy it had been, but Quade wasn’t built like that. He wouldn’t ever lie about Alfie’s life or Lil’s death.
“The police let Alfie go. They talked to one of the miner’s cronies, and he told them how angry he was and how he swore he’d get even. They said Alfie was justified in what he did, but it didn’t matter. The love of his life was dead. He left Dandrot with some people, marched off to the mines, and no one ever heard from him again.
“Dandrot grew up in a human household, learning human values. He was seventeen when he inherited what Alfie had left him and, one day, came up here to survey the land. When he did, he discovered a group of dwarves living in the mines. This was Alfie’s family. They had settled on the land after his death, thinking no one lived there. When they met Dandrot, they recognized him as one of their own. The human blood in him didn’t matter to them. They took him in, fed and clothed him, and told him his history and what had happened that awful day. Dandrot knew he didn’t fit in with people. He was despised because he had no parents, had no identity, was short, smelled funny, and a whole host of other bullshit reasons. The dwarves welcomed him, and Dandrot walked away from the human world. For years Dandrot’s family worked this mountain, making money hand over fist, buying up more land, and bringing in more demihumans to live here.”
Quade drained the rest of his beer, then reached for the other.
“Do you want something to eat with that? I guess you know what I have better than I do.”
Hell, yes, Quade was hungry. That stew, good as it was, only lasted so long.
“Steak, bottom drawer on the left-hand side. You don’t have to cook it—just slap it on a plate and I’d be happy.”
The face Caden made was pure gold.
“I’m a lycan. Yeah, we’ll eat cooked meat, but at heart we’re wolves so raw foods don’t bother us.”
“It’s not that. I worked in a restaurant when I was younger. I have no problem with steak tartare.”
“Then why are you looking so green?”
“It’s just not for me. I don’t eat meat.”
“Yeah, I figured that when I first met you.”
“So then why stock it in my refrigerator?”
Quade grinned. “Maybe Ten knew I’d be coming for dinner. Little bastard knows things before most of us.”
“You care for him.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah, I do. I didn’t know his parents well, but Ten helped me a lot when I got here. I got into some deep shit—and before you ask, no, I’m not going to tell you—and this little boy went into my head and sifted through the memories there and somehow was able to make them not so horrific anymore.”
“He sounds like a great kid.”
Quade didn’t want to get into why he cared so much for Ten. How the boy had taken a man who was broken beyond measure and pieced him back together. Lycans didn’t admit their weaknesses, and Ten knew every single one Quade kept buried deep. Ten didn’t judge him, didn’t tease him, and, best of all, didn’t mention them to anyone. As far as Quade was concerned, Ten was almost like family.
“Yeah, he is.”
Caden came back with a steak, dripping in juices, and handed it to Quade, then took his seat again. “Okay, so back to your story.”
He practically inhaled the food, belched, and leaned back to finish Dandrot’s tale. “Right. Well, the place continued to grow, and problems rose with it. The town Lil had come from was getting bigger, as more people came for the rich ore veins discovered in the hills. The demihumans thought they should be made to move, but Dandrot knew these people had sunk their lives into the area. But, of course, when there were places that were off-limits, the humans got curious about what kind of people lived here. They were constantly snooping around, but were rebuffed—gently—by the dwarves. By now, Dandrot and his people owned the entire mountain and most of the surrounding area. In total, it was over two hundred thousand acres, and they were still planning on buying more. Shit, at the rate they were going, they probably could have owned the state.
“Then another disaster struck. A cave-in, which was almost unheard of for dwarves who have a special relationship with the earth. Much to Dandrot’s surprise, the townspeople came en masse to help. They set up rescue stations, went underground themselves to look for survivors, and tended to the injured. When he was a kid, Dandrot didn’t have much use for humans, but this opened his eyes to the fact that they weren’t very different from him, and it softened his heart. He wanted a place for his people, but knew they couldn’t keep the humans away. So he came up with a compromise. With the money they had amassed, Dandrot and his elders were able to see the President. They sat down and worked out a deal. Dandrot and his followers would be allowed to create a city within Mount Katahdin and underground, while humans would be given access to everything over that. Dandrot would still own it, but the government would be the ones who oversaw it. It took sixty years for Dandrot and the rest of the dwarves to create Sanctuary, and in that time, it grew from being a dwarven city to embracing other demihumans as well. Today there are six thousand of us living here, safe from prejudices of the outside world, and keeping them safe from those demihumans who aren’t as openminded.”
“So what happened to Dandrot?”
“What do you mean?”
Caden huffed out an exasperated sigh. “Did he live to see all this come to pass?”