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She nodded. “We were going to my rental house to pick up the dossier Brent had sent me about the tigers, and then we were going to meet with you so I could tell you everything.”
“Dossier?” Midas asked.
“Yeah, he had a whole folder about the tigers, information he’d gathered from having spies tracking you and your people. He had one on the wolves too.”
“How long was he following us, do you know?”
“A few months. He and Buck, the guy that Romeo just killed? They did a lot of the recon for downtown Cleveland where you were working on the bank remodel for the vampires. He did order the bombing of that remodel, in case you weren’t sure it was him. And also the tire slashing at the club, which I told him was stupid.”
“Why was it stupid?” Maya asked.
Ashley shrugged. “It put all the shifter groups on edge. It was one thing to target the tigers and make you guys crazy, but the thing at the club just told all the shifter groups that someone was after them. Brent didn’t always make the best choices when it came to going after a group. The shifter bar was a bad choice.”
“I agree with that,” Maya said. “Everyone got paranoid.”
Ashley blew out a breath. “How long is Romeo stuck like this?”
“A few hours,” Midas said. “We came together so you can ride back to town with us. Do you need to see a healer? We’ve got a couple wiccans in the ambush as well as a healer.”
She suddenly was aware of all the aches and pains again. Her adrenaline was definitely leaving.
“I don’t know. Maybe? I’m healing, but I’m only half wolf so I don’t know how fast that will go.”
“How old are you anyway?” Maya asked.
“Twenty-eight.”
“You look young. Are you sure?”
Ashley froze. “Actually, I’m not. Maybe I have long-life?” She hadn’t even had time to comprehend how Romeo was aging slowly, and if she was human, she would not have aged as well as him by a long shot.
“You should if you’re half shifter,” Midas said.
“Would the blood test tell me?”
She told them that she’d gone with Romeo to get bloodwork to confirm that she was half wolf.
“It should,” Midas said. “There’s a lot we can learn from the bloodwork of our people. So if you believe you’re twenty-eight, then you’re actually eighteen plus ten. Shifters age one body year for every twelve years that pass after eighteen.”
Ashley couldn’t really comprehend that. No wonder people always questioned her age.
She and Romeo moved off to the side and waited for the supernatural division of the state and city police departments to show up, along with medics and others from all levels of the government.
She was interviewed by several people, with Midas and Maya nearby and Romeo not leaving her side. She was exhausted to the core, her energy sapped and the part of her that was wolf receding into her mind. Her claws and fangs had disappeared by the time the police had come to talk to her.
“We can head out now,” Midas said after coming back to them when he’d been called away by someone from the supernatural police. “They may call for clarification of some things once the humans start talking, but we’re all cleared.”
“No one’s in trouble for this? For any of it?” she asked, looking at Romeo.
Midas shook his head. “You were abducted, first of all. Whatever you had to do to get free was fine. But we have laws protecting us if we have to defend our mates, even if someone is killed in the process. Romeo won’t be held accountable for anyone’s death, and neither will the ambush. Everything that happened in that building was in defense of our people’s way of life.”
Ashley blinked at the sudden sting of tears.
Maya gave her a hug. “It’s okay. I cried a lot after I was abducted. It’s amazing to see the ambush come together like this.”
“Thank you,” Ashley said.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Midas said.
