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“The girl giving you a blow job when Kyra and Autumn came to visit you?” Jax snarled.
“Oh, please, if you’re going to clutch your pearls and have an attack of the vapors, do it to someone else. What they saw was an illusion of sorts. At that point, neither Brie nor I wanted anyone to know I was in league with the Shadow Sisters. Neither my sister nor Autumn bothered to look at her. Kyra might have recognized her, so she kept her face hidden.”
“In your lap?”
Colby shrugged. “Trust me if I could have come up with something better on the spur of the moment, I would have. They burst in on me, unannounced, so we went with something I knew Kyra would believe.”
“You never gave Kyra cause to think better of you once you returned.”
Colby knew the smile he flashed them was cold. “And none of you thought to ask me or even question anything.”
“Would you have told us?” asked Ash.
“No.”
“See?” snapped Jax. “I told you. This is a fucking waste of time.” Jax stood up.
“Sit down, Jax,” said Ash. “I’m not sure it is. What happened to you when you got separated from the unit?”
“I was tortured. I survived. I learned a lot,” Colby answered civilly.
“Was that when you realized what the League was up to?” asked Jax, suddenly calm and seemingly willing to listen.
Colby nodded. “I saw random bits of things—nothing to really hang my hat on, just little bits and pieces, only when I started trying to fit them together, the puzzle began to take shape. I remained mostly in my lynx form and made my way up into Russia and then through Europe collecting snippets of information. I reached out to one of the Council members when I reached France. I watched as he and his family were assassinated.”
“Devereaux and his family?” asked Ash.
Colby nodded.
“Jesus,” breathed Ash.
The Devereaux family had been one of the oldest wolf packs in the world. Their alpha, his wife and children, and several other leading alphas had all been killed by what had been deemed a gas explosion.
“The explosion was no accident. The League had figured out what I was up to and somehow linked me to a meeting with Devereaux. Uncorroborated evidence coming from me could be easily dismissed, but if Devereaux had thrown in with me, we might be looking at a far different playing field.”
“So, you distanced yourself from everyone but the Shadow Sisters,” said Jax, nodding his head. “Smart.”
“I figured the enemy of my enemy was my ally. At first the alliance was tenuous, but the more I distanced myself, my clan, and Windsong from the rest of you and the shifter community, the more they trusted me. Besides, having contacts within real criminal organizations and the cartels not only helped my credibility, it kept the rest of you at arm’s length…”
“Long arms,” joked Jax.
“Not to mention your activities made you incredibly wealthy,” quipped Ash, a small grin lifting the corners of his mouth.
“Hey, supporting my clan, my intelligence assets, and the Shadow Sisters is an expensive proposition.”
“You’re still a bastard,” said Jax with the faintest remnants of anger in his tone.
“True enough.”
“You should have trusted us,” said Ash quietly.
“Maybe, but I wasn’t willing to put you, your people, or Mystic River at risk.”
“Okay, now we have to forgive him because he was being noble,” teased Ash, the strands of friendship from their youth knitting themselves back together at a rapid pace.
“I still say we should punch him in the nose,” chuckled Jax.
“That’s because you always want to punch everyone in the nose.”
