Jono finished texting Patrick an update before he got out of the car. He breathed in and got a lungful of icy winter air, the wind smelling like snow and the metal-and-smoke scent that permeated the New Rebels pack territory. Beneath it was the usual mix of urban street smells, but Leon was right. Jono couldn’t smell any trace of Estelle and Youssef’s New York City god pack.
“It doesn’t mean they won’t show up,” Jono said.
The door leading to the closest apartment building was pushed open and a man almost as tall as Jono stepped out. He was lankier though, with a friendly smile on his face.
“Thanks for coming out,” Austin Capaldi said, sounding relieved as he approached the pair.
“That’s what I’m here for, mate,” Jono replied as he and Leon stepped onto the sidewalk.
Austin came to a stop in front of Jono and tilted his head to the side, showing throat in an act of submission that always looked easy for him when it was Jono standing in front of him. Jono had seen Austin show throat to Estelle and Youssef in the past, and it always looked like the DMZ between North and South Korea in physical form.
Austin’s pack had come to them in early January, looking to switch alliances and ready to argue their case if Jono had any doubts. Not that there’d been any. Austin and his beta had come to Tempest one night, introduced his pack, managed to get two sentences into his request for protection before Jono had agreed to take them on.
With fifteen werewolves in their pack, all of whom called Brooklyn home within three blocks of where they stood, the New Rebels might have been small in numbers, but they made up for it in connections. Austin originally hailed from Los Angeles and had followed his wife to New York City for her medical residency. He’d left behind his old pack whose alpha had been married to a member of the Los Angeles god pack.
That two-hundred-member god pack was the largest in the United States, young in terms of years active, but not without power. Bringing Austin’s pack into Jono’s circle of protection meant they had an avenue of communication with the Los Angeles god pack, something Estelle and Youssef lacked.
Most god packs tended to honor pass-through rights of visiting members from outside their territory. Estelle and Youssef’s rigid pack laws over the years had made entering New York City difficult for many. Whatever goodwill had existed before they came to power had definitely been squandered.
The only god pack Jono had opened up communications with was the San Francisco god pack. That one was small, half their numbers made up of werecougars rather than werewolves, but he’d had to broker pass-through rights for Emma’s pack due to their work in the tech industry. Jono hadn’t reached out to the Los Angeles god pack yet, but he knew when the time came, Austin’s willingness to support Jono’s god pack would go a long way toward a good first impression.
Still, Jono knew he’d have to make more of a stand, take on more of the packs within New York, for any of the other major god packs in the country to acknowledge his status. Until then, he would continue to care for the packs that came to him for help.
Jono dropped his hand away from Austin’s throat. “Any sign of Nicholas tonight?”
Austin shrugged. “Haven’t caught his scent or anyone else’s from their god pack.”
“Your newest all right?”
“Lira is a little rattled, but she gave as good as she got until we arrived to back her up. I told her she didn’t have to come tonight, but she insisted.”
Behind him, a couple more werecreatures came out of the building, wearing light jackets like he and Jono were. Werecreatures ran hotter than mundane humans, and it was easy to forget they weren’t cold when they needed to act like it to keep their identities hidden.
Lira Tran was a slender Vietnamese American woman in her early twenties. She didn’t look like she could bench-press a car, but looks were always deceiving. She smiled tentatively at Jono before showing throat.
“Hey, love,” Jono said gently before scent-marking her. “Heard you had a bit of a rough go of it the other night.”
“I’m okay,” Lira said.
The handful of others who’d come to support their alpha showed Jono their throat, and he went through the ritual greeting quickly. Then he stepped back and nodded at Leon. “Keep watch here while we get their borders marked.”
“Be careful around the playground,” Leon warned.
“I know.” Jono gestured at Austin and the others as he started down the pavement. “Let’s go.”
Patrick had joked once that werecreatures could just piss to mark their territories. Jono had smacked him in the face with a sofa pillow. Werecreatures marked territories by a pack member walking it daily and touching designated spots. It built up over time, creating a marker that surrounded a pack’s territory. The scent people carried—both their own and their pack scent—could only be tracked by someone with preternatural senses, and werecreatures were better at it than most.
It was why pass-through rights existed, allowing someone to cross a territory that wasn’t theirs without retribution. Lately, Estelle and Youssef had taken to breaking through all marked territories of the packs Jono had laid claim to and assaulting the people under his protection. It was a challenge he refused to let slide, and he had a few ideas on how to handle it.
“Where’s Patrick?” Austin asked.
“Working,” Jono replied.
He didn’t go into detail, and the others didn’t ask. Patrick co-led their pack, and any decisions Jono made, he knew Patrick would back him up.
Austin pointed out the locations of his pack’s markers on the walk around their small territory: light posts, post boxes, certain bricks on building corners, a sewer grate, and more. Solid items that would rarely be moved or replaced were the best for carrying scent. Jono pressed his hand to every spot, overlaying his god pack scent into the territory claimed by the New Rebels.
They were three-quarters finished when the wind picked up, carrying the faint hint on the breeze of something that smelled bitter and rotten. The bitterness reminded him a little bit of Patrick’s scent—a recognition that had Fenrir howling a warning that made Jono’s soul twist.
Jono reacted on instinct, hauling Austin away from the manhole cover the other man was about to crouch next to and mark. “Scatter!”
Preternatural speed meant none of them got hit by the four crossbow bolts that cut through the air, hitting asphalt and someone’s car instead of live bodies. The smell of silver and aconite hit Jono’s nose hard, making his eyes water. He shoved Austin behind a parked car on the other side of the street, in the opposite direction the bolts had come from.
“What the fuck was that?” Austin hissed. “Who the fuck uses crossbows?”
“You’d rather whoever the fuck they are use a gun instead?” Jono retorted.
Austin made a face. “No.”
Jono grimaced, not liking what the unusual choice of weapon meant. Crossbows weren’t normally most people’s first choice of a weapon in a fight against werecreatures, but they did the job of keeping the shooter out of the range of teeth and claws. In an urban environment, when people didn’t want to catch the attention of authorities, weapons other than guns were sometimes preferable. They made less noise and could be just as deadly.