“You’re all right,” he breathed into my hair. “Thank God.”
“Claudia and her pack were in there.” I fisted his shirt. “I don’t know if…”
“She’s okay.” He gave me enough slack to lean back and see around him. “One of her packmates got sick from the bar food they ordered, and she walked them back to their hotel. She must have left minutes after you.”
Heady relief swirled through me, and I braced my forehead against his chest. “The others?”
“She came in with five.” He stroked my head. “How many were with you?”
“Twice that.” I hadn’t counted them, but they had filled the bar. “Goddess.”
A scream too big to fit a human throat belted out behind us as Claudia hit her knees on the pavement.
Shoving away from Midas, I ran to Claudia and dropped beside her, afraid to offer her comfort.
Alphas weren’t supposed to show weakness. She might not have been alpha for long, but she had grown up under the direct rule of one. The tears in her eyes, the tremble in her body, the way she rocked back and forth, arms wrapped around her middle, might spell doom for her reign if her pack was as unstable as I had been led to believe.
A pack used to cruelty ought to find her grief a balm, but maybe not if they had no souls left to soothe.
“What happened?” Head bowed, too heavy to lift, she stared at nothing. “How did this happen?”
“A bomb.” I might as well confess the rest. “A magical bomb.”
“Who would do such a thing?” Voice a thready rasp, she asked the most damning question. “Why?”
Officially, the fire at Choco-Loco was still under investigation. The cleaners hadn’t published their findings to their database, which meant all we had to go on was what Gray told us at the scene. It would be easy to omit that, to cast this incident in a better light, a less damning one, but word would get back to her. The line between what happened last night, and the pack’s interest thanks to Midas’s involvement, would get drawn quickly.
I had a choice to make, and a split-second to earn an ally or an enemy.
“A coven of witchborn fae have infiltrated our city.” I gazed into the flames. “This…was meant for me.”
Once she started nodding, she didn’t stop, and when she finally did, the spark drained out of her.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“I want in.” Sucking in a breath, she lifted her head and cleared her throat. “I want to help.”
Right before my eyes, she transformed from a mourning, broken woman to a cold, determined alpha.
“This slight will not go unpunished,” she growled, crimson rolling across her eyes as she stood.
Midas joined us then, and so did Ford, but her own people kept back, cringing away from her fury.
“We’ll help you get vengeance,” Midas vowed to Claudia, but his eyes were on me. “The coven has been a plague on Atlanta for too long.”
“I’ll walk you to your hotel,” Ford offered, his voice polite, without a trace of the pity that might send her crashing back to her knees. “We’ll provide transportation for your pack.”
“Thank you.” She nodded to him. “I can’t…” She squared her shoulders. “I need to move.”
That right there, the way Ford anticipated her needs and met them, made him an invaluable asset to the pack, and an excellent friend.
“I’ll call Bishop,” I volunteered. “He’ll coordinate with Swyft and your hotel to get everyone there.”
Swyft had stolen all the paranormal business in town, but the personal vehicle factor made renting a van or other large vehicle on short notice easier. Lots of soccer moms and dads, parents in general, had spun their hulking rides into moneymakers.
Bobbing her head, Claudia went to address the cluster of packmates that remained after tonight’s fiasco. I couldn’t tell if they took comfort from her words. No one would look at her. I couldn’t decide if it was a fear response to her, to the situation, or to the shadow of the former alpha that loomed over their pack, but I didn’t imagine their exhales of relief when Claudia strode off, Ford in her wake, her hands clenched into fists.
“This just got more complicated.” I leaned into Midas. “Will this blow back onto the pack?”
“No.” Midas snaked his arm around my shoulders. “Mother warned Claudia about the coven.”
Not that I was pointing fingers, but I did wonder, “Why didn’t Claudia postpone her trip?”
“Mom awards an annual scholarship, more or less, for new alphas who inherit packs in distress.” His arm tightened, forcing us closer. “She takes one under her wing for a month, gives them a room at the den—not in the den, but in the house—and there’s a considerable financial aid packet that goes along with it.”
“I had no idea.”
“No one outside the packs would have reason to know.” He smiled down at me. “Now you do.”
“Claudia was hoping to snag it,” I realized. “She’s asking for help to heal her pack the only way she knows how.”
“That’s my guess.” He hesitated. “She has made advances in the past but—”
“I don’t think she’ll bother you again.” I kissed his worried brow. “She was just yanking your chain.”
I explained to him what she told me, that she would have taken an out if he had offered, but it was too late for that now, for either of them.
Fingers drumming my arm, he glanced down at me. “You two got along well.”
“Yeah.” I saw a lot of myself in her. “I guess we did.”
“You didn’t talk about…me…did you?”
Now it was my turn to frown. “Only in the abstract sense, why?”
“No reason.” He pivoted as Gray trotted over to us. “Hey.”
“Twice in one week?” He was out of breath, and his hair slicked to his scalp. “What the hell did you do?”
“Nothing I hadn’t already done,” I assured him. “Until now, the coven has been denned up, licking their wounds.”
“A very gwyllgi turn of phrase for you,” he rumbled, laughing.
“You know how it is with old mated couples.” I smiled at him. “Finishing each other’s sentences, wearing each other’s clothes, stealing each other’s food…”
“Stealing a predator’s food?” Gray’s eyebrows climbed. “It must be love.”
“It is,” Midas assured him. “Otherwise, she would have gnawed off my hands by now.”
Laughter boomed out of Gray’s deep chest, so at odds with the grim scene around us, and it felt good.
We all coped with grief in different ways, and laughter was the least self-destructive option.
“Aubrey has the fire under control.” He wiped the amusement off his face. “He says it tastes the same. It’s slightly off from what we encountered at the battle with the coven, but it’s identical to last night’s fire.”
Part of me wished I could share the intel, use Aubrey as a source, but we had a promise to Gray to uphold. We would keep Aubrey’s identity a secret for as long as possible. It was the only way to give the teen a taste of a normal life, considering what he was and what he was capable of.