“Makes me sick. The way we just slunk away and left them to die,” Steve said.
“You didn’t slink anywhere. You were entrusted with his family. You did what he asked, and successfully so.”
“We might have been able to make a difference.”
“You might have died with them. And so would Gwen, and her babies, and the rest of these females and their kids, too.”
Steve nodded, but didn’t seem convinced.
“We’re planning to see what’s left,” Jack said.
Steve’s gaze snapped to Jack’s quickly.
“You can come if you like, but you can stay here and watch over Gwen like Grail asked. It’s your choice.”
“He told us not to come back. Never come back. And he told her the same thing. I don’t know what the other males told their mates, and a few of the females didn’t even have mates, so I don’t know what they’re planning to do.”
“The females are not part of this. We’re going to see what we find, if there’s anything, or physical proof that will tie anyone to the attack.”
“Or bury the dead,” Steve said.
“And bury the dead,” Jack echoed. “We’ll decide what to do from there.”
“When are you leaving?” Steve asked.
“It’s in the beginning stages, so not a definite date yet, but within the next few days.”
“I’ll let you know,” Steve said.
“My personal opinion, you need to do what Grail asked. But if your heart says otherwise, I’ll welcome you on the trip.”
Steve looked Jack in the eye unflinchingly. “My personal opinion, Alpha Laighin, is that you should stay here with the majority of your people, males, sentries and fighters especially. Be prepared to protect what’s yours. We thought we were, but now everything is gone. Send a small team to investigate. But make sure they’re prepared to fight when they get there, just in case.”
“I don’t get it. My impression was that your Pride was well trained, overly prepared. How did another Pride get the drop on them?”
“After so long of being on alert, and fending off small attacks from time to time, it became routine. We became lax, overly confident. Went through the motions but never expected to have to actually defend against someone we couldn’t beat. If you want to see for yourself what remains there, send someone. Don’t go yourself. To my knowledge, we didn’t do anything to antagonize the Falwell Pride, or the Variant, or whoever else the Falwells had with them. This was simply because they wanted what we had, or they wanted to eliminate us. Either way, don’t leave your Pride unprotected to go see what happened to another. You’ll end up like we have.”
~~~
Rance stood near a window, a broom in hand as he looked around his house. “Not bad. We knocked this shit out pretty quick.”
“Pretty quick? You call three hours pretty quick?” Niko asked.
“Considering its condition, yes.”
Niko tied up the last trash bag and carried it out to the porch and tossed it into the yard. “Next time you start to build a collection of pizza boxes and beer and whiskey bottles, maybe collect them in garbage bags so we can just throw them out instead of having to pick their nasty, sticky asses up off the tables and floors and shoving them into the damn garbage bags.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Rance said.
Niko looked at him and raised his eyebrows. “It was. It really was.”
Rance shrugged. “Whatever. It’s done now.”
“No, it’s not done. We have to clean the bathroom and we have to…” he paused as he looked back at the kitchen. “Well, the kitchen’s not dirty, because you don’t bother to cook, but it does need a good wipe down. What’s the bedroom look like?”
“Shouldn’t be bad. I haven’t been in there.”
“So it probably needs a good wipe down and dusting, too.”
