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Aaron looked to Rafe and then back to Kai. “Are you sure you want the human to hear it?”
Rafe opened his mouth to reply, but Bram cut him off. “Rafe has earned his right to be here. Whatever you have to say, it’ll stay in this room.”
Aaron gave Rafe one more doubtful glance before shrugging. “If you say so. The secret is huge, though.”
Kai grunted. “Just spit it out, Aaron.”
“Fine, fine.” Aaron put out his hands. “Killian O’Shea isn’t the leader of Clan Glenlough.”
“What?” everyone asked at the same time.
Aaron smiled. “I told you it was a huge secret.”
“Aaron,” Bram said in warning as he took a step toward the dragon-shifter. “Get to the point.”
“Their leader is actually Killian’s sister, Teagan. Apparently, Glenlough has a history of female leaders,” Aaron answered.
“A female leader,” Nikki murmured. “I had always thought they were myths.”
“Don’t get any ideas, Nikki. At least, until I’m dead,” Bram said. He then looked to Aaron. “What’s the reason for the deception?”
“To most males, hearing ‘female’ equates ‘weaker.’ To avoid proving herself over and over again, a male is always the public face of the clan.”
“Just something else we need to try to change,” Nikki muttered.
Jane leaned forward. “You don’t suppose I could talk to this Teagan, do you?”
Before Aaron could answer, Kai jumped in. “First, tell us if the mission was successful. My guess is that the Glenlough didn’t want electronic or even voice communications in case someone was listening.”
Aaron nodded. “There were quite a few reasons for the restrictions, which I’m not yet able to disclose. However, I worked with Killian—who is Glenlough’s head Protector—and we found the few dragon hunters looking for recruits. They had no idea we were looking for them.” He looked to Rafe. “For that, thank your source.” Rafe nodded and Aaron continued, “If Bourne thought picking off Glenlough would be easy, he should now think differently.”
“I don’t like the secrecy, but I’m glad the hunters didn’t succeed with Glenlough,” Bram replied. “What are the stipulations for Brenna’s return? I have a feeling they were reasonable, or you never would’ve left her.”
Rafe was starting to see how much Bram trusted certain members of his clan. It took a lot of faith to delegate high priority duties and decisions.
“Teagan wants an in-person meeting with you. Until that happens, Brenna volunteered to stay.” Aaron smiled. “Not that volunteering was any hardship for her, I think. Brenna was rather taken with the idea of a female leader.”
“I will arrange a meeting as soon as I can. But we have some more pressing issues to deal with.” Bram dismissed Quinn and Sebastian. Once the pair were gone, Bram explained about Jonathan Christie’s appointment and Rafe’s idea to find concrete evidence linking Christie to the hunters.
It looked like Rafe and Nikki’s plan had been approved.
Bram continued, “The human male we need to find used a fake name, but Zain managed a composite sketch before the prisoners were handed over to the human authorities.”
Aaron looked around the room. “So you want to connect the person with the highest authority over our kind to a staged hunter attack and all we have is a bloody composite sketch from a bunch of rebel hunters?”
“Aye,” Bram answered.
Rafe half-expected Aaron to moan, but instead, the dragonman slapped his hands together and rubbed them. “When do we get started?”
Bram wrapped his arm around Evie and squeezed. “Evie’s trying to find out what she can with the DDA.” He waved toward Jane. “Jane is trying to find the source for the video footage of Nikki being shot down that was used on the broadcast.” He pointed to Nikki and Rafe. “You’ll be working with those two on identifying the man behind the attack.”
Rafe met Aaron’s gaze. After the dragonman had assessed him a second, he looked to Nikki. “So that means you’ll be my boss for this assignment?”
Nikki smiled. “I’m in charge of the Stonefire contingent, so I guess yes, that does make me your boss.”
Aaron winked and Rafe was tempted to growl. However, Nikki leaned against his side, cooling his jealousy at the dragonman flirting. Nikki only had eyes for him. Rafe needed to remember that.
Bram spoke up again. “Everything said here today stays in this room. Zain can be included as he already knows all this anyway and probably can provide more information from his interrogations. But no one else.”
