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“They talking about us?” I interrupted.
“No, they want to help Kalchik celebrate his birthday with two kegs. I imagine it’s also safe to assume it’s not his birthday.”
Justine didn’t answer, just held her clasped hands against her lips, closed her eyes and shook her head like she was arguing with herself.
“Kalchik won’t know why they are attacking his pack,” she said, her hands shaking violently as she continued to hold them by her mouth. “He’ll hit back hard. He has more soldiers, more weapons.”
“And more juveniles and cubs,” Onyx said, the she-wolf joining her mate in the corridor. She bobbed her nose in my direction. “Braeden has called church for the entire pack. That includes all of Mallory and company. Doone, too.”
As she spoke, she flicked her gaze first at Justine and then at the curtain covering the alcove a dozen feet deeper into the cavern.
“Like he could keep me away if Mosa is there,” Doone rumbled, pulling back the curtain and leveling a death stare at everyone in the corridor other than his mate and mine.
Hopping down, he turned to lift Mosa out of the alcove. I could feel the burn of her cheeks from where I stood. Whether or not she liked him lifting her down or speaking for her, she thanked him anyway.
Her calm, sweet tone relaxed the giant.
“Okay, then,” Onyx said. “Follow me.”
I realized before we reached the central cavern that Onyx might have twisted our leader’s arm into calling church. My suspicion was confirmed when we arrived. Braeden quickly scanned the area to see that everyone was assembled, then yielded the floor to Onyx.
Usually one to hold back and quietly observe, she began to pace as she recounted the two biggest outside threats the pack had encountered in the last year. The first had been triggered by her arrival. The second had been when one of our own females had been taken by a feral pack of hyena shifters addicted to meth or some other foul shit the humans had invented.
“We will always be a target for the Illinois shifters until we take their current leadership down,” Onyx said at last, her angry pacing threatening to carve out a new trench in the cavern’s limestone floor. “That’s the truth of it. It will only take the slightest provocation before they are back here with their weapons and their bloodlust.”
Pausing, she scanned every face in the room with her black gaze, stopping on mine.
“And our recent excursion, one that many of you have just learned of, was no slight provocation.”
“Get to your point,” I growled at the she-wolf.
Her words already spoken over the last five minutes and the tone she used confused me. Had she objected in private with Taron about his going on the rescue? The bear did owe me—if I was keeping track. But I only kept track of scores to settle, not debts due to me.
Until now.
Justine and Mosa meant the world to me. Whatever reminders I needed to make to those shifters I had kept alive in Night Falls, I would.
“You mistake my intention,” Onyx smiled, her fangs slightly extended as a cold white fire glittered in her eyes.
“Then state it, directly,” Clover piped up, her gaze not lifting from her computer screen.
“Fine,” Onyx said, shoulders squaring. “The situation with the Great Lakes’ shifter communities hasn’t been this volatile since the beginning of the pack wars. But the world was different then. Today, there are high-res video cameras and satellite relays in every damn person's pocket. We are surrounded in a country of over three-hundred million humans who need something or someone to unite against because they are tearing their world apart in other ways every day. We need to control the situation.”
She paused to once again look everyone in the eye—at least those who would meet her fierce gaze.
“And we control it by bringing our adversaries to heel immediately.”
My head jerked with surprise. I had to roll my lips to keep from smiling. The wolf in Onyx had been all but killed by an accident when she was a child that resulted in her receiving multiple transfusions of human blood. Instead of every alpha in her pack working to heal her wolf once the humans released her, she had become a pariah among them. Fleeing a sadistic brother, she had accidentally landed in Night Falls. That was when our troubles with the Champaign wolves began.
Outgunned and outnumbered, we had still managed to kick their collective asses badly enough they retreated. But the small war included the leader of the largest Champaign pack being murdered by his own guards during the fight. The power struggle to fill the void was short-lived, Kalchik ended it with another half-dozen dead who might have challenged him as the new leader.
All of that led to the simple fact that the whole damn Great Lakes area was a powder keg waiting to go off.
“How the fuck do we do that?” Fletch shouted from his spot at the back of the cavern, his lazy ass perched on a rock while a few older shifters stood nearby. “I joined because there’s supposed to be safety in numbers. That means fuck-all if you’re ready to start a war.”
“Then leave,” Clover said, standing to show Onyx what was playing across her computer screen.
“Can't start a war that's already begun,” Onyx said, her expression turning as dark as her eyes. “Kalchik is dead.”
