Page 18 of Keeper of All

That was the big question. Ekon had no clue right then how to answer when everything was so new. He looked sideways and said the first thing that came to mind. “Help me scan the files. You hold them while I scan.” At least then he wasn’t going to be blasted with magic and old memories. He hoped.

“I can do that,” he murmured softly. “I suggest we set up camp first.” He glanced around, those dark eyes shrewd and assessing. “But not in here. You need some separation.”

Ekon wasn’t sure about the separation part when it made his gut churn with anxiety. Until he figured whether that was his or the shadow man inside him, he agreed. “If we camp just outside the entrance, then no one can sneak past us.”

“Agreed.”

Mao didn’t let go, and Ekon’s lips twitched with amusement. “You might wanna let go because walking like this will be a little tricky.”

A sexy, possessive growl made the hairs on his neck stand up. His cougar purred its pleasure at the possessive sound. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

He’d barely finished when Ekon was spun around and hiked up as if he weighed no more than a tiny child. Mao’s grin was all teeth and challenge. “See.” He stalked back out of the bunker with Ekon, who released a noise that came out more like a giggle.

He blushed with mortification as Mao nuzzled into the side of his neck where his mate's claim was. Ekon’s blood fired with need, and he groaned, hands reaching to slide around Mao’s neck. The plan for camp set up could wait, he had more pressing things to deal with. Such as kissing his mate. Getting his trousers off. Oh, and yes, sliding that fat cock back into his ass.

Yes.

That was a much better list of priorities.

Chapter Ten

Mao

Mao wasn’t sure what was worse, knowing how many records there were Ekon had promised to scan, or not knowing how many there were and just getting on with the job. No matter how he looked at it, the job was mind-numbingly boring, and it was going to take a really long time.

One day down, and they’d barely made a dent in the number of files that, if Ekon’s word was to be kept, still needed scanning. Mao wasn’t going to object to spending time in close contact with his mate, except he could think of a million things he’d rather they were doing. Standing in a stuffy bunker, laying out pieces of paper for Ekon to run some freaking scanner over them didn’t even rank in the top five hundred.

Being so close to his mate as they worked, there were other things that Mao had noticed—concerning things—that made him wonder about whether what they were doing was a good idea or not.

For a start, Ekon seemed to avoid physically touching the papers and files himself. The few times contact had happened, apparently by accident, when Ekon’s hand had missed a swipe across the files or whatever else, Ekon seemed to wince. Then almost fold in on himself for the briefest of moments before he continued on. Mao wasn’t sure what that was about, and it didn’t seem an opportune time to ask, but it bothered him.

Being the nosy cat he was, Mao had also tried skim-reading the files as they were being scanned. It wasn’t easy, Ekon was working quickly, but some sentences just stood out… quite a few repeated ones especially.

…subject was four…

…exhibited unusually high levels of pain response…

…poor reaction to serum DX954…

…screaming, frothing at the mouth, bleeding from all orifices…

And if that wasn’t bad enough, a statement kept coming up repeatedly. Experiment failed. Body disposed of… followed by a date and time.

Mao wondered if that was why Ekon didn’t want to touch the files. Is there something in his magic that allows him to absorb those details through touch alone? Or is it forcing him to absorb those details. Mao didn’t know, but he couldn’t avoid the sinking realization that his mate had been one of those subjects—with a file of his own—just the same as Ben’s mates Teilo and Nico, and Kylo’s mate Conrad.

File after file. Yes, there were an infinite number, and Mao had no doubt they’d get through them all eventually, but just handling the evidence of crimes against innocent children had Mao rethinking his idea about blowing up the files, the way he’d been paid to do.

Surely there’s a case here, he thought, as he kept laying out the pages. Ekon apparently had the stamina of ten men and didn’t seem inclined to stop, and so Mao kept going too. Only that niggling disquiet, the knowledge that he couldn’t forget how Ekon was taken and changed…

Clearly, he didn’t know the details, and neither did Ekon—his file hadn’t come up yet. Ekon had started from the back of the large bunker where the older files were kept, and they worked their way toward the door.

Fortunately, the mysterious keeper did have a thing for tables—they were placed at the end of every second row. It wasn’t difficult to grab a pile of files, lay them out, scan them, and put each one to the side as it was done before scanning the next one.

Unfortunately, that sort of mindless work gave Mao far too much time to think, and his thoughts were running a whole gamut of emotions. He was angry at the fact the crimes had been committed at all. As far as he was concerned, anyone with a conscience would feel the same way, just as he had said to Ben. What had been done to harmless children, innocent children, stolen from their homes or from their family at least… it defied belief, and yet the details of those crimes were in Mao’s hands.

Having one victim of such a crime where a child was stolen and then experimented on, mostly to the point of death, was awful. If they survived, they were taught to kill—that was an atrocity. It wasn’t a random experiment. It wasn’t even a month-long experiment—some sick idea of a thirty-day challenge. Some dates on the papers stretched back decades. In some cases, the papers in the files were so thin and brittle they crumbled at the edges when Mao turned the page so Ekon could scan the next one. Decades, possibly centuries they had done this… the mere thought made Mao sick to his stomach.

Two names kept cropping up repeatedly—the names and signatures of the people overseeing these experiments. One name Mao recognized as the council member who turned out to be a changeling. The other name that cropped up repeatedly was Andromeda. It was those two names—those two reasons—why Mao knew his thoughts of getting justice for all the shifters who were the actual faces behind the file details, was a waste of time.