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“On what?”
“Prey. What else would I feed on?”
“You can’t just kill—”
“Prey is any animal that is weaker than us,” he rumbled. “That hasn’t changed. You can friend them all you want—”
“What have you done to humans?”
“Nothing they don’t deserve.” He met my gaze. “The modern humans don’t have enough to do. They play games and think they can hunt us! And instead of challenging them, you hid.”
“It’s complicated.” I sighed.
“Tell me these complicated ways, and then I’ll give you my proposal.”
“Humans are in charge now—”
“How did you let this happen?” he roared. “Look at you, you’re one of them.”
“I was a little outnumbered.” I gave him a chance to counter that, but for once, he had nothing to say. “For a long time, I kept to myself. Until a wolf pack asked if I could help with security. I was only supposed to work with the animals in their shifted form. But then Hannah, the human, needed my help. She’s connected to the pack by something called a television show. I felt something for her, but I never expected her to feel the same way. Now, I’m part of the show too. If all goes well, I’ll claim her.”
Leif scoffed. “If all goes well, you’ll stop embarrassing yourself and abandon this ridiculous plan. Here’s what I have in mind. We reunite the idols in their original location. By my estimation, the beasts who perished because of my mistake have a good chance of coming back.”
“So you want to repopulate the village.” I’d dreamed of it many times, but there was no way it could actually work.
But my brother was willing to admit he made a mistake, and that was huge.
“Yes.”
“Everything is gone. The land has changed. These beasts would be lost in modern society.”
“You seem to be doing okay. And Armand and his wolves have adapted quickly.” He shook his head in disgust. “Wasted no time getting themselves some human whores.”
“They’re hunting us,” I reminded him. “The minute you step outside of that mountain, you have a target on your back.”
“I refuse to cower to humans.” He huffed. “We bring the idols home. We stop hiding. Lars, there are some amazing creatures who suffered for my hasty decision. They deserve another chance.”
“We’d be sentencing them to die all over again.”
“The Scepter’s kept you alive all these years.” He raked his gaze over me. “What if we could bring Tanyth back. Would you do it then?”
My heart slammed against my ribcage at the sound of someone else saying her name. “Tanyth didn’t die because of you.”
She’d fallen ill, and the medicine we had at the time wasn’t enough to save her. Just because we had the ability to live indefinitely didn’t mean it was guaranteed.
“But what if she’s trapped like I was? Waiting for her power to be given back to her?” His lips curled up in a grin. “Or have you turned your back on your mate for a human?”
nineteen
Hannah
“Where the heck have you been?” It wasn’t like Zoe and Destiny to totally disappear on social media. Not only had they not answered my direct messages, they weren’t posting in the forums, either. Which after my video post faux pas, was a major cause for concern.
Usually by now we’d be deep into crisis counseling in private chat. But this time, nothing.
The video had seemed like a world-ending disaster at the time, but after Lars shifted live on TV and his brother mysteriously appeared, it was the least of my worries. Even though the squatch hunters had gotten ahold of the story and insisted I was being held captive by a band of wild Bigfoot. Bigfoots? Bigfeet? Didn’t matter. No one cared that such a thing didn’t exist, because headlines like that got clicks by the boatload.
Those hunters were getting bolder, claiming that Lars had attacked some of them. I couldn’t roll my eyes hard enough in response.
