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“So you’d better find someone to turn over the feed store to as quickly as possible,” Ryder advised. “Because you’re going to be too busy to run it.”
“Planned to,” Dennis said with a quick grin. “Trust me, I’m already too busy. It’s just I’m someone they trust. And right now, they need that.”
Jessie grimaced at that. Ahh, Bjorn, she mourned. Ambition was a dangerous drug. She caught Ryder’s quick glance, and she squeezed his hand. She was fine. Killing the man who’d abandoned her was a fine cure-all. The Alpha was dead, her grandfather was dead.
And your family?Ryder asked gently.
She didn’t respond. What could she say? Maybe.... give it time? She grinned to herself at that and refocused on the conversation.
Beyond the serum information, Benny hadn’t said anything yet. Neither had Titus. She watched the two of them. Titus was just taking it all in. Well, he’d been a pack Second for 40 years. He probably wasn’t surprised by much. But Benny? She could read him. And he was troubled. He’d talk when he was ready, she guessed.
“Anything else I need to know about the businesses, or the people?” Ryder said finally. “And yes, we’ll be glad to join you for dinner tonight. But my guards are pissy that I ditched them last night, so there will be six of them plus the four of us.”
“Not a problem,” Dennis answered. “Be prepared. There are a lot of McKenzies.”
“All right, Benny,” Ryder said. “Let’s have it.”
“I wish I could resurrect John McKenzie and kill him myself, and I’d make it hurt, and make it last,” Benny said sourly. The men flinched because Benny meant it, and they could tell. For the first time, she saw the feared intelligencer, not the easy-going shifter playboy with the charming smile. “And when I finally get a hold of Dad —or Okami or Ito for that matter —I’ve a few things to say about them leaving that bastard in place 15 years ago.”
“A total of 127 men died in that,” Duncan said quietly.
“Should have been 128,” Benny said coldly. “But Dad refused to take the Alpha position here and merge the packs. And neither Okami nor Ito were going to do it. So they figured they would teach him a lesson, and then went on their merry way.”
“I take it he didn’t?” Ryder asked.
“Not the lesson they hoped he would learn,” Benny said.
“Wait,” Jessie said, a bit desperately. “What happened 15 years ago?”
Benny explained tersely, “Tanaka pack had gotten too big in Seattle for then Council Chairman Johannsen’s comfort, but he wasn’t dominant enough to take Tanaka down, especially not with Haru Ito as Tanaka’s Second. So Johannsen and the Chairman of the World Council, Anton Vuk, conspired. They decided they would kidnap Ito, make him into a berserker wolf, and send him after his own Alpha. And they had the perfect catspaw in mind, John McKenzie. McKenzie provided the manpower. Johannsen kidnapped Haru, and Yui Ito, Haru’s niece. And then they brought them out to the lodge — where we are apparently going for the funeral pyre tomorrow night — and tortured them for 10 days. Okami had been sent off on some fool’s errand, and I was loaned out to the California pack —and someday California is going to have to learn to solve their own damn problems,” he added as an aside. “So when Okami got back, he mounted a rescue. By that time the two of them were barely alive.”
Benny was almost in tears, Jessie realized to her horror.
“It was bad,” Duncan said quietly. “I don’t know what all went down out there. John used mostly the single men in the pack — the loggers and his guards. But I do know it was bad.”
Benny shook his head. “I need some air. Titus? You know the story. You tell them rest of it. While I go convince my wolf that he can’t kill every damn one of you.”
Benny pushed away from the table and stalked away. His hands shoved in his jacket pockets.
And what had triggered that, Jessie wondered. Old wounds.... Jessie looked at Titus. “Tell us,” she said.
“He’s right. Tom should have done it, and he knew it. But he’s a stubborn old bastard, and he didn’t want to be Alpha of any pack, much less expand to take in Penticton too,” Titus said. “But bad doesn’t begin to cover it. Do you know how you make a berserker wolf?”
Jessie shook her head.
“You torture someone near and dear to the shifter —usually a mate, but a child has been used— until the shifter will do anything to stop their pain. Haru Ito could have taken his own torture and laughed in their faces. Pretty sure he did. But his beloved niece? They raped her, skinned her alive, broke every bone in her body. And dosed Haru with drugs so that he felt all of it, through their family link.” Titus was blunt and grim. Jessie saw the growing horror on Dennis’s and Duncan’s faces. Had they not known?
“I was part of the cleanup team,” Titus continued. “Okami swept in to rescue them with a bunch of lone wolves so that there wouldn’t be any blowback to the Tanaka pack — because that would be just the opening Johannsen and Vuk needed to take Tanaka out. And Vuk could bring the entire World Council resources against Tanaka. Okami healed Yui, I don’t think she would have made it, without their mate bond. And if she had died? Haru really would have gone berserker, and I’m not sure he would have left anyone alive, man, woman or child, in this pack, or in the Bellingham pack, or any other pack he thought might have had something to do with it.”
“Wait, Yui, as in Okami and Yui? That’s who they tortured?” Jessie asked with horror.
Titus nodded. “You’ll hear the story of Okami rescuing Yui and finding out they were mates as some great romantic love story,” Titus said. “But....”
“We didn’t know,” Duncan said desperately.
“You should have known,” Titus said coldly. “Your Alpha plotted the torture and murder of a pack Second and his niece — it went on for 10 days, McKenzie. And no one told on him? No one came down in the night, and said Duncan, do something about your brother? Dennis? I’m like Benny, to be honest. It sets hard, that this pack was ever allowed to rise again. And now it appears we’ve got another disaster on the world stage because of that bastard. So don’t say you didn’t know, as if that excuses you.” Titus got up. “Think I’ll go check on the boy, see if he’s OK. Make sure he hasn’t killed anyone.”
The four of them sat in silence. They were the only table of people left in the room, except for the MC guards, who were busy pretending they weren’t paying any attention.
