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Honestly, there’s a good chance I’d have hidden from him, so I’d be free of him through death.
No. If I hadn’t been able to put the real me into that box, and then open it and re-find myself later, I’d have been his happy little thrall. The thought made me sick to my stomach, and I hoped to all that was holy that our people were busy coming up with a war strategy to defeat the motherfucker. I worried they were working on an escape plan, though, because the bastard was so damned powerful.
Meanwhile, I spent my spare time doing pushups, crunches, lunges, and other exercises one can do without equipment. On my second day, Aaron brought some weights down for me, sized for a werewolf intent on being battle-ready. I only had them in a room when alone, because it isn’t good to give someone with a possible back door in her brain something she can use as a weapon, but that was okay. I understood why I had to go into a different room, empty of everything, before I could meet with Aaron, and why he was the only person I saw face-to-face.
On the fourth day, I was told to change into my wolf, and while I didn’t know it at the time, this was so all the shield and brain people could look through my wolf’s head, to make sure Ell hadn’t done shit to it, also. He had, of course, but it was easier for them to fix those things.
When I awakened on my fifth day, I pressed the spot on the wall that would contact whoever was manning the control room, and Chance told me the door was unlocked. I tried it and wanted to jump for joy, but I asked, “What is my new perimeter?”
“Stay on that level for now. The stairs and elevators won’t open for you, but everything else should be available. I believe Sophia has been waiting to eat breakfast with you.”
I went into the main meeting area and sure enough, Sophia was seated in a comfy chair, curled up with a book. She moved her ribbon bookmark, closed the book, and stood when she saw me.
“Well, if you’re here, and no one’s around to protect you, Aaron must be really sure I’m safe,” I told her.
She laughed. “Yes, you’re good. We removed several backdoors and a few…” She shook her head. “Aaron has a report for you to read, to explain what we found in your head, and what we did to fix it. I’m here today to go over some options with you.”
“Whether I go aboveground where Ell can find me, so I can join in on whatever we’re preparing for, or whether I remain below ground until we get ready to either fight or flee.”
She smiled. “That’s a big question, but before we get there, we need to know whether you want to, as you put it, fight or flee. Marco is assuming you’ll want to fight, and that you’ll want to put all the blood bonds back in place. He’s been working to amass as much power as possible, but his plan only works if the two of you are a power couple, leading the battle, with everyone else your warriors, doing your bidding. Your meaning the two of you, as a unit.”
“Yes, that’s what I want to do. He was right to make those assumptions.”
“Okay, I need it to be just us girls for a minute. He wants to have a huge orgy in your field. We thought hundreds of people in the initial planning stages, but now, it’s looking like we’ll have well over a thousand people, maybe several thousand, because Marco’s getting a lot of response from both inside and outside the territory. No one wants to risk being a vassal of Ell. The plan right now, since we’ll have so many wolves, is for all monogamous couples to bring a small tent, and he’s got the maximum footprint each tent can be, and those couples will have sex inside their tent, assured no one else will cop a feel. He needs me and Aaron to be there for the start, and Aaron’s agreed, though he’ll send me away soonish, banishing me to Faerie, and then he’ll…” She waved her arms. “We’ll get to that later. The point is, the field will be a free-for-all orgy with the single wolves, all the vampires and their shapeshifters, and other shapeshifters who aren’t big on monogamy.”
“Right, and he’ll power up from the orgy.”
“Yes. Off to the side, the plan is to have a smaller section of people being tortured, so Etta can feed from the fear. Aaron will move to that section after I’m gone, and will torture someone. Marco says he has twenty-three shapeshifters and vampires who can be tortured without a safeword and with zero hard limits, other than the shapeshifters have to be able to heal within twelve changes, and the vampires within six weeks. He also has four people with a death sentence, who’ll be tortured to death. He’s working to find more. So far, we have nearly fifty people who excel at torture. Some, like Kendric and Becca, will be just as happy to join the orgy if there aren’t enough victims, while others, like Brooke, are only interested in torturing.”
Wow, I so didn’t want that energy on my land, but I completely understood why it was necessary.
“What has Kirsten said?”
“She’s fine with it if you are. She says she’ll want us to do something really good on that section of land later, to negate whatever bad energy is left there, but as Marco’s Secundo, it’s important we power Etta up as much as possible.”
“I agree with Kirsten. Also, Kendric and Becca aren’t part of Marco’s territory.”
“Nathan ordered Becca to come, and we figured Kendric is coming because she is, but he’s informed Marco and Nathan he’d have come without his lioness being ordered.” She sat back. “The biggest surprise is that Mordecai is going to join in the orgy, and that he has about a dozen of his half-divine offspring coming. He says it’s Kirsten’s influence again. The order is that the gods and goddesses don’t interfere in the affairs of men, right? So Marco has no human men coming. A few hundred human women who are part of a vampire’s flock will be in the orgy, but they’ll be secured away before the fighting starts. Everyone who actually fights will be vampire, shapeshifter, fae, or Olympian.”
I laughed, and couldn’t help my smile. Kirsten and her loopholes had indeed been quite the influence on the supernaturals in her life, including me.
“We have Fae coming to help?”
“I’m sending some of my castle guard, and Aaron is sending some people. Not a whole lot, but the idea is to give Marco as many different kinds of energy as possible. None will be Aos Sí because we don’t want to risk their energy affecting him as their blood does.”
“Thank you for that.” Time to get to the nitty-gritty. “Which brings us to the question of whether I remain hidden until the orgy, or I go aboveground now. I’m assuming we think Ell can find my energy in much the same way Kirsten and Mordecai can? I mean, he can’t teleport to me, as far as I know, but he can fly to me, or drive, or whatever.”
Sophia nodded, opened the file folder in front of her, and handed me a piece of paper. “Pros and cons of both options.”
Four columns, two showing the pros and cons of me staying put and coming out at the last moment, and the other two showing the pros and cons of me coming aboveground now. The only pro I felt had merit for coming aboveground now had to do with the morale of our people. They’d also listed my desire not to be seen as hiding, but my own ego had no place here. I’d acted as bodyguard to people who were idiotic about not wanting people to think they were hiding when they had a damned good reason to hide for a short time until we could secure them, and I wasn’t going to be stupid about this.
The morale factor was big, but the pros for staying put were much bigger — namely, that Ell wouldn’t know for certain whether I was alive or dead. My staying hidden would mean Marco could act as if he was plotting for revenge, making Ell think he was being stupid to stay and fight, rather than flee and save his own hide. It would keep Ell from looking to see how many people we were bringing to us.
“Ya’ll knew I’d stay, you just wanted it to be my decision.”
She shrugged. “I figured as much. I have no idea if the others thought the same, but we all agreed it had to be your decision. Aaron could order you to stay here while you were a possible danger, but now that we’re certain you aren’t, no one has the right to tell you what to do.”
“So do we bring everyone here at once to do the blood bonds?”
