“Young versus old,” I said quietly, and Connor nodded.
“I’m wondering how much is caused by his attitude.”
“Leadership matters,” I agreed. “Hard not to learn that lesson growing up in a House with a Master. No one is perfect, but the Cadogan vampires respected my father. Same for the Pack and your dad.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Until you find the groups like this where the Pack is no longer number one.”
“And what is?”
“That’s what we have to figure out.”
Cassie, Georgia, and the others began to descend from the top tier of the waterfall and head toward us.
“All right,” Connor said. “Let’s go meet the family. And keep the rest of this to ourselves.”
EIGHT
Hey, Connor,” Cassie said, pressing a kiss to his cheek when they’d descended to our level of the cascades. “It was wonderful of you to drive up.”
“Glad to be here,” he said, shaking Wes’s hand. “My parents send their regards.”
“Appreciated,” Wes said.
Cassie looked at me, eyes appraising above a bright smile. “And you must be Elisa.”
“I am. It’s nice to meet you. And thank you for the invitation.”
“I wasn’t aware I had a choice,” she said, sliding a grin toward Connor.
“Don’t be dramatic,” Georgia said, stepping up to us with Alexei.
“Aunt Georgia,” Connor said. “This is Elisa.”
“Welcome,” Georgia said, frowning at a smudge of something she tried to wipe from her grandson’s face. “Lovely ceremony, wasn’t it?”
“It was beautiful,” Connor said.
Cassie smiled, danced in place to keep the baby smiling. “And Will was surprisingly well-behaved.”
Right on cue, the baby burped, gurgled spit-up across his front and his mother’s new dress.
“He has good timing,” Connor said with a grin.
“We’ll see how good his timing is,” Cassie said, putting the baby into Connor’s arms before he could object. But he situated the baby like a champ, tucking him into his hip and tapping at his little round belly with a fingertip so Will flashed his toothless grin.
I hadn’t grown up with many babies—seeing as how I’d been the only baby vampire—but I did find them fascinating. Since that probably wasn’t a thing a human mother wanted to hear from a vampire, I kept the thought to myself.
Will reached out, grabbed a lock of my hair, began babbling at it.
“Sorry,” Cassie said. “He’s in the grabby stage.”
“Not a problem,” I said with a smile, and offered up my index finger. The baby dropped my hair, wrapped his chubby fingers around mine and smiled like a madman.
It twisted my heart a little to see Connor holding Will, the depth of his enjoyment—and match that against my biological weirdness. And the likelihood I couldn’t have children.
What would I be forcing him to give up? I wondered, and hated the way the question tightened my gut.
I forced myself to ignore it, to shake off the worry. We’d just started dating. Planning was fine, but it was unfair to both of us to put that much weight on the relationship. We’d cross that bridge—that very large and unstable bridge—when we came to it.
A kid came running back toward us, a teenager of thirteen or fourteen with hair in tiny blond tufts at the top of her head, like fuzzy little ears. She was thin, with the slightly awkward build of a girl still growing. She reached Cash, who stood a few yards away, and stopped, nearly out of breath. “You have to come.”
He frowned down at her. “What’s wrong, Ellie?”
“There’s . . . Someone hurt Loren. He’s dead.”
Connor turned back to Cassie, carefully shifted the baby back into her arms.
“Show me,” Cash said, and the girl nodded, turned around again, and took off.
Connor, Alexei, and I followed them at a jog. Georgia walked behind us, along with the other shifters who’d heard Ellie or seen the commotion.
We moved toward the edge of the plateau, then jumped down the five-foot drop to the next level. The creek narrowed here, the rest of the space overtaken by trees and undergrowth. There was another trail, and we followed it to a small wooden bridge that arched over the creek.
Ellie led us onto it, then pointed to the water below.
Loren lay in the shallows at the edge of the creek, arms and legs spread like an “X” marking the site of his own death. And by the look of him, that death had been hard.
His body had been horribly mauled. His skin had been cut, ripped away, streaked with bruises. Bones were broken, exposed. His clothes had been shredded and lay like streamers from a ruined party among the leaves and stones.
Something settled heavy in my gut. Sorrow and sympathy mixing with anger. Death was a bastard. Death was a waste.
Was this the thing the Pack had anticipated? Feared? The reason they’d seemed uncomfortable? Maybe they’d scented death, the dark smear of it beneath magic and joy and tumbling water, but hadn’t known its source. Or maybe they’d been the ones who’d done this, who’d left this body to be found by a child, the possibility of which only made me angrier.
The scent of blood was faint—streaks across grass here and there, not the pools that should have gathered given the sheer number of his injuries, the depth of his wounds. But even in small amounts, it was still the blood of shifters. Potent and full of magic. Enough to make a vampire literally drunk on power.
The monster stirred, curious. I let it look, let it see, let it evaluate. But not too close—still well hidden behind my eyes. Fortunately, its interest was only mild. The power was interesting, but the death repelled it.
I blew out a breath and rolled my shoulders, trying to push out some of the tension. I happened to look over and found Georgia’s gaze on me, face drawn and brows furrowed.
My heart thumped once, hard, and I swallowed down fear, kept my face blank. Maybe she’d think I was just dealing with a little run-of-the-mill bloodlust.
Georgia finally shifted her gaze back to Loren, then to the child. “Ellie, go back to the cataracts.”
Ellie prepared to argue, but a hard look from Georgia sent her on her way.
“I don’t coddle children,” Georgia said as Ellie disappeared down the trail. “But she’s too young to see something like this.” She sighed heavily, and there was grief and weariness in the sound. “What the hell is happening in our clan?”