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As soon as Lorelei stretched out a hand to the map, which put her too close to the alphas, he growled softly.
The shifters met his gaze first with a challenge in each eye, then with quick deference they backed up almost as one.
Lorelei met Seth’s gaze as she pathed, Really?
Yet again torn, he wanted to impress her with how she needed to keep away from other men. At the same time, he loved that she’d lightened the mood.
He went with the latter. I’ll try to control myself.
Good, because I’ve got some serious shit to discuss. She then spoke aloud and launched into a very visual description of an imminent attack.
He hadn’t seen her like this before, bent over the map sweeping her index finger down several different gorges, none of them far from Big Timber. She talked abo
ut two hundred extremely powerful wraith-pairs, in the air and coming for the Shifter Brigade.
“Are any of the Vampire Guard in the air?” Seth felt nerved up now. As battle-worthy as the Shifter Brigade was, they could only make speed as wolves, shift, then engage on the ground in the upright male form. They weren’t nearly as effective as his Vampire Guard against the Invictus, despite their powerful and extremely exact skills with daggers and bows-and-arrows.
She lifted her gaze to his. “Not a one.” She fell silent for a moment. “This will be a blood bath unless we do something.”
The four alphas paced and cursed.
When Seth started to lift a hand to stop them for her sake, she caught his arm and gave a squeeze, her voice suddenly in his head again. It’s okay. Let them walk it off.
He turned toward her, staring into her eyes. She was such an unusual woman that she didn’t seem to mind four men cursing up a shit-storm. But then she was part shifter.
You always surprise me.
I do? Her arched brows rose.
He nodded. Yeah, you do. He caught the underside of her arm and squeezed gently.
When the alphas had burnt themselves out on their damn-all-the-elf-lords-to-hell-and-back, each returned to the map, settling in on the area closest to the Big Timber conference grounds. Of all the species in his realm, the shifter community knew every crevice, gully, and feeder stream of the Shauck Mountains almost as thoroughly as he did.
He scanned the map as well, trying to understand just why Margetta would send a force into such a rocky, gorge riddled terrain. He drew closer to the four-by-six topographical map, spreading his fingers to encompass the four major gorges over which the attack would take place. He frowned then glanced at Lorelei. “And you’re sure you saw the battles here?”
Lorelei nodded. “Yes, absolutely. I’ve been over this terrain myself a number of times, tracking you more than once during the past four weeks, if you’ll remember. All of these gorges are between the Wheeling, Shauck, and Athalia Rivers. I even know their names: Bephotine, Clover, Emberith, and Inwether Gorges. Have I got that right?”
Cohoet leaned in. “Yes, exactly. These are some of the wider gorges in the entire range. They open occasionally into narrow stretches of land that can be farmed, and are maybe half-a-mile in width. We have dozens of hamlets and farms along all these lanes, and at least a thousand realm-folk.”
Valgus added, “A few times, homesteaders have tried to work the more remote regions, but the Invictus have wiped them out, no exceptions. Clover Gorge falls into my territory and I don’t allow homesteaders in the northernmost reaches, not since Mastyr Seth enacted the law.”
Having taken the alphas’ advice over a century ago, Seth had created and subsequently enforced a non-homesteading policy in the Shauck Mountains. The established shifter communities had a dozen safeguards in place, protecting a hundred hamlets that made up the intricate pack networks. Solitary ventures into wilder parts of the mountains had been banned for a long time.
A balancing force of good-natured troll families, who enjoyed mountain life as well as the earthy, volatile nature of the shifter packs, also lived, ranched, farmed and worked in the more habitable valleys and well-populated gorges, especially near the rivers and larger feeder streams.
The four gorge region that Lorelei’s vision encompassed represented at least thirty miles of territory.
“How the hell are we supposed to protect our people against a major Invictus attack?” Valgus’s cheeks turned a ruddy, angry hue as he scowled at Seth. “This is complete bullshit.”
But Ephyx stepped in. “Not bullshit. It’s the ancient fae. Margetta. Which means she’s after something.”
Lorelei straightened her shoulders. “That’s what I believe as well. These are her plans and intentions because for some reason she’s seen the future, that what happens at Big Timber with the Shifter Brigade, matters in a critical way to her war strategy. The sense I have is that if she’s not turned back at the Shauck Mountain Range, she will win her bid for total domination of the Nine Realms in the next few days. The vision also indicated that she’s been planning these recent attacks on each individual realm, beginning with Merhaine a few months ago, for at least the past nine hundred years.”
The men stared at her as though she’d just spoken in a foreign language. Seth watched her look around as she said, “What? Did I say something wrong?”
Alophi leaned forward slightly. “You’ve said what needed to be said, Mistress Lorelei. You’ve put your recent vision into words we get: war, the stakes, the purpose of the enemy, and the need for strategy.”
Seth knew that Lorelei had hit the right button and had ramped up the energy in the room in a positive way. Even he felt it now, the swelling of his battle vibration. “We need to establish our own strategy, right here, right now.” He pivoted slightly toward Lorelei. “And when does this attack take place? Do you know?”
