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Jacki
Once breakfast was over, Alena and Orion took the children to their cabin, and as the door closed behind them, Jacki leaned back in her chair with her coffee cup in hand and turned to Lokan. "Now, you can ask me whatever you want."
He arched a brow. "How did you know?"
She shrugged. "I don't need a paranormal talent to figure out what's on people's minds, and that includes immortals. You kept glancing my way, opening your mouth, and then closing it. Obviously, you wanted to ask me something."
"Yeah, I did, but Syssi kept reminding us that we shouldn't talk about upsetting things in front of the kids. Carol and I heard the main points of what you saw in your vision, but how did you know that it happened recently or that it happened at all? You could have seen the future."
"I just knew." Jacki leveled her gaze at her brother-in-law. "But that's not the real question, is it? You want to know how I convinced everyone of the veracity of my horrific vision, andthen had them chase after the kidnapped women and tear the monsters who committed the atrocities to pieces with their fangs just based on what I told them, which could have been untrue."
Next to her, Kalugal shifted in his chair and squared his shoulders, ready to defend her, but Jacki didn't need his intervention.
"Yes," Lokan admitted. "I don't doubt what you saw or that those monsters were guilty of everything you said they were. The women you rescued are proof of that. My concern is that it was done based on a vision, and we all know that foretelling should be taken with a grain of salt."
"I'm not a compeller, and I didn't force anyone to accept my vision as truth. I'm not a convincing orator, either. I just say things as I see them without embellishing or diminishing anything. That's why I was believable when I described those horrific acts of cruelty. Still, Kalugal would not have ordered the attack without first peeking into the minds of several of the women and seeing exactly what I saw in my vision."
Annani lifted her hand to get everyone's attention. "If you are up to it, I want to hear it from you, Jacki. I heard a highly censored version from Kian, but I do not need to be coddled, and I want to know if there was anything in your vision about who ordered the massacre and the sexual assaults."
As horrible as that was, it hadn't been the worst of it, but evidently Kian had chosen not to tell his mother in order to spare her tender feelings.
Jacki wasn't as worried about the goddess's ability to handle the information as she was about Carol's.
Across the table, Carol was chewing on her lower lip and winding a curl around her finger, releasing it, and then winding it up again.
Jacki hesitated.
Carol was a survivor of torture and repeated sexual violation by a sadistic Doomer. She'd not only survived but had also become an undercover agent and gone on a highly dangerous mission. Still, Jacki had no doubt that she carried deep emotional scars.
"Carol, sweetheart. Perhaps it's better if you wait out on the balcony while I tell the Clan Mother what I saw."
The tiny blond shook her head. "Don't worry about me. After what I've been through, I'm no longer naïve or softhearted. I know the depths of depravity monsters can sink to."
As tears prickled the back of Jacki's eyes, she shook her head. "No, you don't. What I'm about to say is worse than anything you can imagine." Bile rose in her throat as the images played before her eyes, and she knew that verbalizing everything again would feel like acid was eating her from the inside, but hiding evil deeds to spare people's feelings was wrong.
The good people of the world needed to know because evil needed to be stopped and wiped off the face of the earth.
"I want to hear it," Carol said. "I'm a survivor, I'm brave, and I don't cower under the blanket, hiding from monsters. I kill them before they can get me."
"As you wish." Jacki sighed. "But don't say I didn't warn you."
When Jacki was done talking, all the males had their fangs fully extended, Syssi, Nathalie, and Mia were sobbing, Amanda was crying quietly, with rivulets of mascara running down hercheeks, Sari's eyes blazed daggers, and the Clan Mother looked infinitely sad.
But Carol looked catatonic.
Jacki took in a deep breath and turned to Lokan. "I think Carol needs some fresh air."
"We all do." He helped his mate up and walked her out the open balcony doors.
"How do you do that?" Syssi blew her nose into a napkin. "How are you so strong? After what you told me yesterday, I couldn't sleep all night, and you didn't even tell me the worst parts. You didn't tell me about what they did to the children, the babies." As her sobbing intensified, Kian pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her.
Jacki closed her eyes and then immediately opened them as the horrific images flooded the space behind her closed lids. "I'm only as strong as I need to be to do the right thing."
"And what's that?" Amanda lifted a cloth napkin and wiped her mascara-stained cheeks.
"Rally the troops, rescue the survivors, and go to war. I did all three."
Frankie
