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She eyed him as if expecting a punch.
My son unwrapped the thing he was holding, broke off a small piece of the chocolate bar, put it in his mouth, and chewed.
She watched him.
He held the rest of the bar out to her. “Chocolate. It’s good.”
The girl reached out, hesitant.
Conlan held perfectly still.
I thought she would snatch the chocolate out of his hand, but she took it very slowly, watching him the whole time, brought it to her mouth, and bit into it.
Her eyes went wide.
Conlan smiled.
I sighed and watched as my husband and our people tore the Pale Queen to pieces.
EPILOGUE
Four days later
“He’s taking this herding thing a bit too far,” Troy said.
I glanced up from the piece of paper in my hand. We sat on the porch of what we were calling the front office. The building had three levels, and we were on the second floor, accessible from the ground by a wide stone staircase. The new front gate was directly in front of us. Technically it wasn’t a gate yet. Right now, it was a gap in the wall, located where the Pale Queen’s favorite tower used to be.
I had done more damage than I thought with that sword strike, and once Curran and the Pack had taken the Pale Queen down, the tower cracked and was judged unsound. My husband and the rest of the shapeshifters demolished it.
He was standing by the gap now, with Paul, our general contractor, who was saying things. I couldn’t hear them from my spot—they were a full hundred yards away—but I knew that expression. Yes, it can be done. It will be expensive.
Expensive now was relative.
Between my husband and us, Owen was walking along, carrying a large stick. He had a big straw hat on his head. Behind him, three juvenile giant rhinos ambled along. One of them nudged Owen with its horn. The werebison turned around and tapped the rhino with his stick. The rhino ran in a circle, making short hops like an overly excited baby goat. Owen rolled his eyes.
I’d offered to get him a cowboy hat instead of the straw one, but apparently, he had an intense dislike of all things cowboy.
“Where are you taking them?” I called out.
“Southern pasture, away from the mastodons,” Owen yelled back.
I waved.
My guess had been right. The fortress was square, although calling it a fortress was grossly inaccurate. The outer wall, composed of a multitude of towers, enclosed an area of almost one and a half square miles. The towers doubled as storage facilities, and we had managed to look at the first eighteen so far, although the shapeshifters had done a quick run and checked all of them to make sure nothing alive was trapped inside. We had found some crazy stuff.
In the center of the inner space rose a crude palace. A multitude of structures surrounded it: barracks, living quarters, more storage facilities, some weird platform that was likely used for rituals, and barns. Lots of barns housing a variety of Ice Age animals. We found a small family of mastodons, all of them freaked out beyond all reason, some kind of weird huge camels, more stag-moose, and the juvenile giant rhinos. Owen immediately declared that as the only herd wereanimal present, he wanted to be in charge of all the herds, and Curran and I couldn’t sign off on that fast enough. The baby rhinos were his favorite.
“As long as he isn’t herding us,” I told Troy.
The werejackal shook his head.
“How are the Agers?” I asked.
“Better. Food, clean water, and showers can do miraculous things.”
My desperate claiming had managed to save the lives of nine horned shapeshifters and two hunters. A drop in the bucket. They hadn’t been treated well by the Pale Queen. In fact, the animals had been probably treated better, and they were all still traumatized. The shapeshifter living quarters didn’t even deserve that name. If I could’ve set that place on fire, I would have.
We installed the shapeshifters into barracks, where Troy administered first aid. The hunters must’ve been higher in the hierarchy, because their barracks were a little better, but not by much. Although we had found a room filled with dried meat, we dumped it all because we had no idea what it was and we’d brought food in from Penderton. Watching people try fresh bread for the first time was an unforgettable experience.
“Here she goes again,” Troy murmured.
One of the hunters, a tall woman with light brown hair, climbed up the stairs. Her legs had been damaged in her desperate attempt to escape the Pale Queen. Troy had healed her, but walking was clearly difficult. Even so, as soon as she could walk, she climbed the stairs and parked herself on the side guarding them. If I got up and went somewhere, she would try to hobble behind me. She took the morning shift, and the other hunter, a man about her age, would take the evening.
