The ugly alpha let go and shoved me back a step, mostly to save face.
My fangs retracted as I looked over my shoulder. My Garda friend was surrounded by pairs of the integration agents under his command, at least two of whom were shifters. None of them looked as though they felt any comradery with Mac.
“And what do
you
want, human?” Mac asked, folding his arms across his chest.
Shifters’ hearts beat at a faster rate than humans’ did, but I was struggling to count Mac’s. He was in fight-or-flight mode.
“You’ve gotten your money’s worth,” Shay said, his voice uncharacteristically cold. “Now leave. You didn’t find Esther. I highly doubt she’s hiding behind the bookcases.”
Mac strode over to Shay, getting in his face. The shifters on Shay’s team moved to block the way. The male looked down at Mac, unflinching. I didn’t understand why Mac wasn’t calling them untethered. They obviously weren’t loyal to the pack anymore.
Mac scoffed before waving his hands. “Come on, boys. We’ll be back for the second round soon.”
I glared at the shifters still loitering in my hallway. “You heard him. Get out.”
They reluctantly followed Mac, who exchanged a few more barbs with Shay’s shifters before showing signs of actually leaving.
Shaking his head, Shay met me halfway across the cul-de-sac. “Everyone all right?” he asked.
“He threatened the kids.” I folded my arms across my chest. “And he had a stupid piece of paper telling me that I couldn’t do anything about him. I was powerless. I
hate
him.”
“We’ll make sure they all leave.” He avoided my eyes. “If there’s anyone you need to go see today, you might not want to use the front door.”
I nodded gratefully to him and his team as they escorted the shifters out of the cul-de-sac. Shay might have distanced himself from us over the last few months, but I could count on him in a crisis. And Mac counted as a crisis.
I signalled to Peter then stepped into my house. The shifters had trashed the place. I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat as I walked right through and out to my back garden. I soundlessly climbed the wall, too full of anger to worry about falling off. Mac had come into my territory and threatened my people. I had to figure out a way to deal with him before he destroyed everything. I jumped off the wall, barely missing a thick hedge, and ran through the property behind my house. Though it looked abandoned, I secretly owned it.
I ran through thigh-tall grass as best I could, counting each step to focus my boiling rage, then rushed through a small wooded area. I finally reached the back roads that would eventually lead me to a block of flats. Being forced to go to such lengths to visit a friend was ridiculous, but the world wasn’t as safe as I’d imagined it would be. We had changed everything, and yet so much had stayed the same.
I ran, careful to make sure I wasn’t being followed, and had calmed down significantly by the time I reached the place where Moses lived. A couple of women waved at me, giving me warm smiles that drove away the cold Mac had embedded into my chest. He’d made me feel vulnerable, but worse, he had surprised me. I hated that. I knew the nearby brethni would sound a warning if Mac finally figured out that he should search the flats—that was the only reason I had agreed with Esther when she wanted to return there when Mac became troublesome. I had wanted to ask Val if Esther could stay in the sanctuary, but I wasn’t sure where Phoenix would stand on that matter, so I left the half-hellhound out of it.
At least for now.
I jogged up the stairwell to Moses’s flat. He answered wearing a white-and-orange knit hat with flaps that dangled over his ears. It didn’t mesh with the thick gold chain around his neck or the oversized medallions he wore on his chubby fingers.
I blinked a couple of times, feeling disoriented for the second time that morning. “What’s with the hat?”
Sheepishly, he pulled it off his head. “Ah, yeah, that. I knitted it myself.”
I snorted. “No, you didn’t.”
“I did! Me ma got one of those knitting loom things because Esther thinks her hands are like paws holding knitting needles. Esther got bored after five minutes, but I dunno—it’s kind of relaxing.”
I kept my face blank, hiding my amusement. “Cool. Knit me a scarf or something. So can I come in, or are we going to stand here, swapping patterns?”
“Yeah, come on.” He moved aside and waved me in. He was starting to plump back up again, and it suited him better than the gaunt look that worry had given him. “Anything going on?”
I nodded then smiled at his mother, who always seemed to clear the room when I arrived. Esther was scowling on the sofa, flicking through stations on the television, when I stepped into the living room. She brightened when she saw me, leaping up off her chair to embrace me.
“Hey,” she said excitedly. “How is everyone? Any news? I’ve been trying to call.”
“I’ve warned everyone not to call, just in case. Mac was back today.”
She scowled. “What’s new?”
“He got permission from the Senate this time—that’s what’s new,” I said. “He let his shifters trash my house, and he threatened everyone, even the kids. I couldn’t do anything. It was so frustrating.”
“Hold on,” Moses said. “Why would the Senate even agree to that?”
I shrugged. “They must have voted. Shay showed up before things got too tense, and Mac left, so I assume he wasn’t supposed to actually destroy anything.” I groaned. “I probably brought that on myself. I made a comment about him trashing that shifter woman’s house because she left the pack to be with a human.”
Esther clenched her fists. “That shifter woman left
Mac
to be with a human. I tried to contact her, you know.”
“
Esther.
” She wasn’t supposed to be communicating with the shifters while wearing that big neon target on her back.
“I had to try. And get this—nobody’s heard from her since then. She’s vanished.”
“You think Mac hurt her?” Moses asked.
“Actually, I think he forced her to stay with the pack. He could be keeping her prisoner, for all I know.”
I gently kicked her shoe. “Then he’ll do worse to you. He has permission to take you in since he somehow convinced the Senate that you’re dangerous because you’re not aligned to a pack.”
She snapped her fingers. “So that’s what he’s doing. I’ve tried to reach out to lone shifters, the ones who don’t associate with the pack for whatever reason. The only ones I can track down who aren’t with Mac are with Shay.”
“So if he goes after you, he’ll have reason to go after Shay’s shifters, too,” Moses said. “If the Senate backs Mac, then Shay won’t be able to protect his own people. I’ll have to warn him.”
“Do that,” I said. “It’s better coming from you. Nobody in the Senate knows you now, not really. And you’re human. But if they come here…”
Moses cracked his knuckles. “The brethni will help us teach them not to come back. This is serious shit, Ava. I might not be scary anymore, but I’m not about to let any shitebag shifter come here and try to show us who’s boss.”
“He’s really making enemies for himself,” I said. “Why even bother? He’s acting like a nutcase.”
“He’s trying to assert himself. There might be rumblings of somebody else challenging him,” Esther said. “This will keep them in line for a while. I mean, who else would want to go against so many people?” She frowned. “And all for an ancient rule that nobody even thinks about anymore.”
“Think somebody ancient put it into his head?” I asked. “He was boasting about higher powers on his side.”
“It’s possible, but who? And what would they have to gain?” She thrummed her fingers against her chin. “I’m missing something here. I have to be.”
“He said he’ll be back,” I told her. “I don’t like it, but it means you can’t visit us, Esther. It’s not safe. I have to take the back route just to get here. I can’t risk leading them to you.”
“This is all on me,” she said. “I have to deal with him, Ava. I think I’m going to have to challenge him.”
“There’s no way,” I said. “You can’t challenge the alpha. You’re still recovering.”
She made a face. “I’ve been recovering for a year, Ava. This is the best I’m going to get.”
“Do you really think he’ll fight fair?” I demanded. “He’s adamant that a woman will never be alpha, particularly one like you.”
“What does that mean?” Moses asked. “Because your father was human?”
She shook her head. “I’m not the right kind of shifter. My mother wasn’t even European, never mind Irish. We’re a different type, and he’s playing on that.”
“Different type?”
“Think of the real animal world,” Esther said wearily. “A new predator amongst an established ecosystem creates havoc. He’s trying to scare people into thinking that shifters like Aiden and me are the predators who don’t belong.”
“You’re not a predator,” I said softly. “You’re not what he says you are.”
“Well, maybe it’s time I showed him what kind of predator I am,” she said coldly. “Because if I don’t, he’s never going to stop, and all of the people I care about are going to get hurt because of me.”
“None of us feel that way,” I said. “None of us blame you for his actions.”
“You don’t have to,” she said. “I’m doing enough blaming for all of us. And I’m done with hiding, Ava. I want to come home. Moses has been great. Everyone here is great, but I want to stop running. The shifters should be my people, but they’ve cast me out. It’s time I showed them that I’m not scared. It’s time I faced Mac.”
A chill spread up my spine at the determined look in her eye. Esther would never beat the shifters—not alone.
Chapter Three
I managed to convince Esther to stay put for at least a little while longer. When I felt confident that she wasn’t about to run screaming for the nearest shifter, I returned home and found a few of my friends cleaning up my house.
“Oh, get out,” I said, secretly pleased. “It isn’t up to any of you to clean this mess up.”
“We wanted to surprise you,” Dita said. “Mam’s making you cookies and everything.”
“That was my idea,” Emmett immediately said.
She thumped him in the arm. “Was not.”
I rolled my eyes. “All right, you two. Was a headache part of the plan, too? Why don’t you go make sure Anka puts extra chocolate in this batch? I think we deserve it, right?”
They hurried out the door, each child trying to shove the other out of the way.
“You can head on, too,” I told Carl. “I’ll finish this off.”
“No chance of us leaving you alone with this.” Carl swept up the remains of a painfully expensive vase I had been preparing to sell. “We’re all in this together.”
“I feel sick right now.” I reached for a dustpan and got on my hands and knees to help. “Esther thinks she should challenge Mac.”
He knelt next to me, the colour draining from his cheeks. “She can’t do that. She’s not strong enough.”
“Try telling that to the poked bear. She’s just done with hiding. To be fair, she was done months ago, and we persuaded her to wait it out. Maybe I was wrong.”
Carl hissed as he sliced his finger on a piece of broken ceramic. “Damn it.”
“I have plasters in the kitchen. Come on.”
He trotted after me like an obedient puppy. Once, the sight and smell of his blood might have tempted me, but that side of me had been growing steadily easier to control since I’d joined the Eleven. Even I had to admit there were some bonuses—just not the ones I had imagined.
“Mac’s lost the plot,” Carl said as I washed his wound. “If Phoenix or Elathan were here, none of this would have gone down.”
“Wouldn’t it?” I asked. “I mean, Mac managed to get the Senate on board with this. We can’t trust anyone there now.”
“He got a couple of votes. That doesn’t mean the entire Senate is against us,” he said.
I dried his hand and wrapped a child’s bandage around his thumb as best I could. “Well, I plan on finding out. I’m going to reach out to Daimhín first. She might be the most devious member of the Senate, but conversely, she’s the most likely to be frank about where she stands on this. I may have just run out of favours with her.”
He leaned his upper body on the counter so I wouldn’t have to look up at him. “Stupid vampire if she turns on you.”
“She’s never been my biggest fan. But did you notice how weird Mac was acting today? Every time I see him, he’s lost a little more control. Why is that?”
“He looks terrible,” Carl said. “And he was putting on a show for the others.”
“The shifters?”
“Yeah.” He nudged me. “You know, to let them know he’s in charge of all the things.”
“The big weirdo.” I frowned. “I better go see the damage upstairs. I swear, if those shifters were rooting around in my underwear drawer, I’m going to break their fingers.”
Sniggering, he shook out a fresh bin bag and followed me upstairs. “How’s Esther really dealing with all of this?”
“She’s pissed. So am I, for that matter. I should have done
something
. None of you deserved to have shifters nosing through your things. There are benefits to having people afraid of you.” I sighed as I opened the door to my bedroom. “Maybe I’ve mellowed out too much.”
“You did the right thing by not protesting too much, Ava. That’s probably exactly what he wanted.”
Inside the room, I scowled at my clothes flung all over the place. “It’s infuriating. Esther told me he’s bringing up old rivalries or something. He says because she and Aiden aren’t technically the right kind of shifter here, they’re a threat. People will happily go along with that kind of mentality if it gets him off their backs.”
“And we’ll happily go against it.” He picked up a bra and tossed it at my face. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. We’ll deal with this the way we deal with everything. Together.”
I fell silent. We had been like a family, but everyone had moved on with their own lives. Dragging them back into more drama wasn’t fair.
Carl picked up a broken picture frame. “Shay wasn’t happy, for the record.”
“Of course he wasn’t.” Peter came into my room, cradling a small ornament that was cracked down the centre. I hadn’t even realised he was in the house. “I found this in your bathroom. Thought it looked valuable. Maybe it can be fixed.”
I groaned when I realised which talisman it was. “There’s no fixing that. The power’s already leached through the crack. That was going to feed me for two months. Bloody shifters.”
Peter tutted sympathetically. “This kind of thing is probably the reason Shay isn’t working with the Senate anymore.”
“He still has to work
for
them,” I corrected.
“But Mac scarpered when Shay showed up with his team. That counts for something.”
Yet I felt sure that Mac had already been desperate to leave. “But is it always going to be like this? Us caught in the middle and having to fight back against whoever is in charge?” I chanced a question I hadn’t dared ask before. “Has Val mentioned when Phoenix will come back?”
Peter rubbed the back of his head, again looking uncomfortable. “She doesn’t talk about the fae much.”
“Is she pissed that Lucia hasn’t come back yet?” Carl asked.
“That’s her business.” Peter turned his back to me. “She won’t be happy to hear about this.”
“You going into the office tomorrow?” I asked. “Will Val be there?”
He looked at me, puzzled. “Yeah, but why not go see her at home today?”
“I want to finish up here,” I said. “I need to check inventory and see what I’ve lost to Mac’s tantrum.”
“I keep telling her she should keep her stock elsewhere,” Carl said. “Tell him why you won’t, Ava.”
“What? I like looking at it all. What’s wrong with that?”
He grinned broadly. “She decorates her place with the stuff before she sells it on.”
The men exchanged amused glances.
“Oh, stop that, the pair of you.”
“I’ll help you check your inventory,” Peter said. “I’ll even drive you over to Val afterward.”
“Can’t.” I grimaced. “I’m going to face Daimhín later and see what she knows about the direction the Senate is taking right now.”
“Is that safe?”
“Is anything?” I shrugged. “I need answers before Esther tries to fix this herself. If Mac gets his hands on her, I can’t see any of us sitting back and watching. This is the kind of trouble he seems to want. I’m not even sure he’s after Esther. I think he just wants to take care of a lot of things with one fell swoop.”
“I’m pretty sure he still wants the werewolves to join his pack,” Peter said in a warning tone. “You can’t fight the werewolves.”
“I won’t have to,” I said sharply. “There’s no way Phoenix will let that happen.”
He seemed about to say something but sighed instead. “You’re right. And maybe Aiden will face the music before Esther has to so we can stop worrying.”
I breathed deeply and moved on with the cleaning. I had a nasty feeling at the base of my spine that we had jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.
***
I warily eyed the man and woman standing guard outside Daimhín’s mansion. I didn’t recognise the pair, but I had used my other senses to double-check their species. Definitely shifter. They gave me blank stares in return, but my mind had already put plenty of numbers together. The shifters were working for Daimhín, maybe in exchange for a yes vote.
“I’m here to see the queen,” I said tersely when they hadn’t moved aside.
The blonde nodded at her male companion and stepped out of my way. The hair on my arms stood up as I walked between them. They were poised for attack, but they didn’t make a move as I stepped up to the house. Although she always made it clear she was the boss, Daimhín never overdid the drama surrounding her home, unlike certain other vampires I had come across.
A young human volunteer opened the glass-paned front door with a cheery smile. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Of course you have,” I said as I brushed past him. I didn’t need directions to Daimhín’s living room, and I didn’t hesitate outside the door. I barged right in, much to the volunteer’s dismay.
Inside the cream-toned room, the Irish vampire queen was holding court with her current favourite vampires and volunteers. They lounged on soft furnishings, looking sated and comfortable, but I barely recognised a face amongst them. The child seer, Eloise, was nowhere to be seen, and Daimhín’s old bodyguard Zion had been murdered by the very first vampire the year before. A lot had changed since I’d first met Daimhín. I used to be scared stepping into the lair of the vampire queen. Nowadays, I wanted to slap her for being so bloody stupid.
Daimhín raised her eyebrows at my appearance, but that was her only greeting. She looked as neat and relaxed as always, maybe even a little too comfortable. Her decrepit skin was brightened by a flush in her cheeks that only a recent feed could have caused.
“I see the new staff is a little bit alive for your usual requirements,” I said. “Were they a ‘please vote yes’ bribe or a ‘please don’t eat me’ gesture?”
“A little of both, probably.”
I couldn’t hide my distaste. “Just like that.”
“The Senate has given me a good position, and the volunteers have been climbing over each other to offer themselves up. I’ve never been this well fed in my entire existence. And if I have to say yes to make a shifter stop talking every now and then, then so be it.”
“That alpha is out of line.”
The corners of her mouth twitched. “He’s exceptionally annoying, isn’t he? All he has going for him is… actually, I don’t know what he has in his favour, but he certainly has no foresight.”
“Then why are you siding with him? Why did the Senate let him destroy my house today?”
“Well”—she made a lazy gesture with her hand—“technically, the Senate merely allowed him to look for a shifter. As far as he’s concerned, all of the shifters in Ireland belong to him.”
“Well, they don’t!”
“And he’ll discover that soon enough. I wouldn’t worry about the shifter alpha. I have it on good authority that a more… nomad tribe is returning home this year. He won’t be alpha for long, as it happens.”
“But in the meantime, you’ll accept his gifts and do his bidding?”
She leaned forward scarily fast, her eyes blood red with only dashes of blue in their midst. “Careful what you insinuate, tainted one. I’m in no mood for your insults tonight.”
“But you’re finally coming out in the open, aren’t you?”
She blinked a couple of times. “Out in the open?”
“You’re choosing a side,” I said. “You’re standing against me, and you’re picking the alpha. Good to know.” I turned to leave.
“Ms. Delaney—”
I held up a hand to cut her off. “The new bodyguards aren’t a patch on Zion, just so you know.” And I left the vampire queen behind, knowing I would find no ally in her lair.