Chapter Twenty-One.

Everything moved quickly after that. Bodies collided in a blur, and the unspoken plan of ours was to defend rather than kill. The shifters, on the other hand, seemed intent on destroying or, at the very least, getting past us. But few of them shifted, which puzzled me. As I thought about it, I realised few shifters ever fought in animal form. I supposed that made Esther and Aiden stand out.

The shifters as a whole avoided fighting Aiden. They couldn't physically force themselves to fight their old alpha without a new one telling them to do it. So they came at the rest of us instead, backing off whenever Aiden got too close.

I knocked out a woman and moved on to an older man who gripped my hair when I deflected rather than attacking him. Aiden let out a roar that caused the closest shifters to flinch and lower their heads.

He jumped and pinned the strongest male, shaking him aggressively.

"Aiden, enough!" I shouted as the shifters backed away.

Aiden let go reluctantly and roared again. The alpha roar made me shiver, and I could see it had an immense effect on the nearby shifters. They refused to accept him as alpha any longer, but most of them still couldn't resist the pull of his power.

With their strongest fighters all wounded, the group slowly retreated, taking their injured with them. Aiden roared after them in warning.

Quinn tugged on my arm. "It's over for now. Let's go see what's happening with Esther." She knocked on the door and waited until somebody unlocked it. A couple of people ran out to attend to the dead shifter. I looked away sadly. Her death had been needless.

The rest of us went inside, leaving Aiden to do whatever he felt like.

He joined us in the waiting room a while later, dressed in an orderly's clothes. He sat across from me, an intense look of hatred on his face. "How is she?" he asked.

"n.o.body can tell us anything yet," I said.

"They're prepping her for surgery," Carl said. "But it's still touch and go."

"Is the pack gone?" Quinn asked.

"They were scared off," Aiden said. "Now that they've seen me, they'll forget about Esther and hunt me instead. If there are enough of them, they might even get brave enough to face me."

"It was you, wasn't it?" I asked in a quiet voice. We were on neutral territory, of a sort, and I wasn't ready to battle it out quite yet.

"What was me?" He leaned back, a look of daring in his eyes. He knew what I meant, and he didn't regret a thing.

"You killed Mac. And Greg. You tortured Mac."

He gripped his chair with tense hands, but his face looked completely relaxed. "I protected my sister."

"She hasn't felt very protected since you ran away and left her to take your punishment," Carl said.

"I didn't run away. I had things to take care of." Aiden shook his head. "I didn't know they were serious at first. n.o.body has taken an honour punishment in this country in centuries. And Mac was never that old-fashioned, no matter what he might have claimed. I didn't force the pack to change their ways. They modernised willingly. And he wanted to bring everyone back into the Stone Age, starting with my sister."

"So you decided to kill him," I said.

"I decided to find out what was going on," he said. "And I a.s.sumed she was with you and safe from harm. I know there's some kind of protection over you, and I know that she thinks you're her family now." His expression said he didn't agree, but I couldn't have cared less what he thought.

"So what changed your mind?" Quinn asked. "Why did you decide Mac needed to be tortured to death?"

He gave her a look that made me think he was disappointed she thought of him in that way. "Mac wasn't strong. He wasn't alpha. The pack was falling apart at the seams. Shifters were turning on each other. I could plainly see trouble coming. I had to do something. They're my pack, even if they don't agree."

"You looked like you wanted to kill that pack outside the clinic," Peter said sharply.

"Yeah, well, you know how it is, Peter. Survival first." Aiden gave a nonchalant shrug. "I tracked down Mac because I wanted to talk some sense into him, to help him find a dignified way to pa.s.s on the torch. He was terrified of losing his position, but he was never capable of holding it. A true alpha was going to come along and destroy everyone Mac put in his way as a shield. I wanted to find a way to prevent any of that nastiness."

Val growled. "How is torture a preventative measure?"

"Do you want to hear it or not?" He sounded as though he wanted to get it off his chest either way. "I followed Mac, and I ended up on that farm. I could smell the sickness on him. A weak mind in the place of an alpha can't cope, but he was diseased on top of that. He didn't stand a chance. He was dying, but he still refused to give up his place in the pack. He was a fool. He claimed he was bringing shifters there to protect them from the paragon, whether the shifters liked it or not."

"That sounds like you, actually," I managed to comment without a hint of anger in my voice.

"In theory, that's something I would do," he said. "But they took it further. They" He swallowed hard. "They were forcing some of the women to breed."

"But why?" I asked.

"They thought they needed more numbers to stay safe. But some of them were just sick b.a.s.t.a.r.ds desperate for a chance to dominate free shifters. And that's where he was planning on taking Esther. That was going to be her punishment. I could see it in his eyes, smell it in his fear. He wanted to do that to my sister to punish me, and it would have worked. I would have lost my mind. As it was" He shook his head, looking a little disgusted. "I let go of my human side, let the panther choose. And I went a little demented when I saw those women. I couldn't think about saving them even. I couldn't see them anymore. All I saw was I couldn't let Mac go after that."

"So you tortured him," I said, willing him to show even an ounce of regret.

"I killed a dying man," he said. "The pack is falling apart now without an alpha, but an alpha without a pack is in pretty bad condition, too. I couldn't take it, so I made sure Mac felt every ounce of pain running through my body. I gave him his punishment, and he squealed and begged for mercy-something he didn't give those women, something he wouldn't have given to me or Esther. He wasn't an alpha. He was a twisted man using fear and intimidation instead of power. I may have been bad, but he went way beyond those limits. Those people depended on him, and he turned his back on them in the worst ways. Protecting the pack was his only job."

"Then what about Greg?" I asked. "He didn't know about those women."

This time, his remorse was clear. "I know that now, but I a.s.sumed the second in command knew everything the alpha was playing. When I confronted Greg, we were both half-mad, and the conversation didn't go well. His death was needless, but if it hadn't been him, it would have been me. I didn't torture him. It was a clean kill. He died with honour."

"But you let everyone think we were responsible. Me, Esther, any number of our friends. You let the shifters try and run through us for a shortcut. You put Esther in more danger, and now look where we are."

He looked crestfallen, but that defiance still glinted in his eyes. "I told you. I let the panther out. And the panther took the risks it needed to take. And I was there when Esther needed me."

"You really weren't," Carl said, shaking his head in disgust.

"Don't start," Aiden said, a low growl simmering in the back of his throat.

"Enough," I said sharply. "This isn't the place to let the panther out."

After a few moments of struggling, Aiden eventually put the big cat back in its box. "It's getting harder," he said.

"So what are you going to do about it?" Peter asked. "Let yourself get further and further out of control?"

Aiden shook his head, giving Peter an earnest look. "I'm going to find my family. Esther won't come, so I'll go myself. I need to know how to live with myself, how to fit in without a pack now that none will take me. I'm ostracised amongst shifters, but if I can find out where we came from, where our mother came from, then maybe I can figure out the other missing pieces."

"Your mother might have run from wherever she came from," I reminded him.

"That's a risk I'll have to take. It's important to me to learn more about being this kind of a shifter. We never truly fit in here. It just wasn't going to happen that way for us. And I need an anchor, or I'm going to lose my mind altogether."

"So it's true?" I asked. "The whole untethered thing?"

"It's in our nature to stick together. We can't survive without a pack. I've tried, and I can't do it. That's why I'm leaving for real this time. I need to find a way to fit in or exist by myself."

"But Esther can do it."

He shook his head. "She isn't alone, though. And she's one of the few shifters in the country managing to live without an alpha. The only way to stop all of this trouble with the Senate and the other shifters is to put Esther back into a pack. It's the only way anyone will be sure that she's safe."

I thought about that for a long time, and I had a solution that could work. It would depend on Breslin and the Senate actually listening to what I had to say. We all hung around the hospital for hours. Eventually, I fell asleep on the chair in the waiting room, despite trying to stay awake when all of the others nodded off.

I woke up with a start when darkness had fallen. A nurse was pa.s.sing by, so I stopped her and enquired about Esther.

"Oh, didn't he tell you yet? Surgery went well. There was some swelling from a badly healing scar, and a slight aneurysm, but she's going to be fine as long as we keep an eye on her. I thought her brother would have woken you with the news as soon as we told him."

I glanced at Aiden's chair. It was empty. He was gone again. I felt only relief.

I sat quietly in front of the Senate, avoiding their gazes. I was still exhausted, there was dried blood on my clothes, and Breslin was doing most of my talking for me.

"Aiden killed the shifters?" Layla asked, sounding surprised.

"And we think that the Senate should step in and stop the aggression coming from the shifters toward Ms. Delaney and her people."

"I've already agreed to do that," Phoenix said.

I sat up straight as Breslin carried on.

"Be that as it may, there's still the issue of paragons and untethered shifters and the Senate's stance on all of the former. We don't trust the Senate to put Esther's best interests at heart, and we don't feel as though she is a threat to anyone."

"But the entire shifter pack has proved that wrong," Callista said gently. "The shifters need each other to stay well."

"No," I said. "They need a pack, yes, but it doesn't have to be a pack full of shifters."

"What does that mean?" James asked.

"She's tethered to us, to me," I said. "So is Val and everyone else under my protection. We're a family, a pack, and we depend on each other just like the pack does." I cleared my throat. "We're a little further into the twenty-first century, but that's beside the point. Esther's not untethered, and she never has been. Since she left her brother, she's been tethered to me, and that's the way it's going to stay until Esther decides differently. The free shifters found their own packs. Some of them were human, others not, but that's how they survived away from the pack. It's always been that way, no matter what frightened people like to think. We're a community, and it doesn't matter what species we are. It works. So just stop with the untethered-danger threats. The a.s.sumptions have cost us time and lives. The wendigo's actions were blamed on the werewolves, Aiden's actions were blamed on a whole bunch of us, and Esther was blamed for something that never even happened, some old-fashioned hysteria that has no place in this world. So you can tell your paragons and whoever else comes along that my people aren't a danger to anyone, and they're under my protection. If anybody wants to take them, they'll have to come through me, and that's going to cost them, no matter how important they think they are." I took a deep breath and waited.

"Well," Willow said, "the point's been proven enough for my liking."

"And mine," Daimhn said. "I'm sick to death of talking about shifters. Can we please move on?"

One by one, the Senate members agreed that the untethered issue was, in fact, a non-issue.

Callista beamed at me. "I'm preparing a new set at Gabe's-oh." She gave me an apologetic look. "I mean Finn's bar. You and your friends should come to celebrate everything."

"Maybe," I said. "Celebrations always go down well with my crowd."

Breslin and I made to leave, but James followed. I waited for a smart remark, but he looked impressed.

"I just wanted to let you know that I think you've handled all of this impressively well," James said. "For who you are, and what you are, I know I've made a.s.sumptions. Few people make me change my mind, but I've seen that sometimes a situation needs a second look."

"Is that an apology?" I teased.

"No, it's an admittance that I underestimated you." He gave me a curious look. "I'll have to be warier of you; that's for sure."

"Well, I'm just hoping I'm done with the Senate for at least another decade," I said. "And I really don't want to have to drag my solicitor out here again. He makes you all look kinda stupid."

And with that, I walked away, arm in arm with Breslin, who gently scolded me for not taking the higher ground. But it had been worth it.

Epilogue.

Finn's bar was alive. I had never seen it as busy in Gabe's time. After Gabe's death, walking through the doors had been hard for me, but I was getting used to the place again. I waited for my drink at the bar, listening to Finn's terrible jokes as people shouted at him to hurry up.

"A good drink, like a good joke, takes time," the redhead said.

"You need more staff," I said. "Hire people, you scabby eejit."

"I keep forgetting I can do that," he said with a wink. "The boss man is probably looking down on me and shaking his head at everything I'm doing wrong." He pushed a gla.s.s in front of me. "On the house."

I raised the gla.s.s. "To the boss." I narrowed my eyes. "And this better be juice."

"I'm working on something new," he said. "I'll test it out on you sometime."

"No, thanks."

He nodded at my companions. "You really enjoy fuelling the rumour mill, eh?"

"You know it."

The fae winked at me, and I left the bar with my drink. Callista's new set had pulled in admirers from all over the city. On one side of the room, I spotted Peter and Melody Love, politely chatting together. She looked nervous, but I thought that might have been because she was sitting very close to a sweaty fellow with horns that kept accidentally b.u.mping her chair. Peter saw me looking and raised his gla.s.s.

I nodded and turned away. In a darkened corner, Phoenix and Rosa were both looking in my direction as though they were talking about me, and their gazes sent shivers down my spine.

I pushed through the crowd until I found my table. Shay, Moses, and Carl were playing cards, arguing about the rules. I sat down and grabbed the cards to shuffle them.

"All right, boys," I said. "Let the games begin."

And with every card I dealt, a little stress left me. Once again, the world had taken us on. Once again, we were the winners.

I took a cup of hot chocolate and went out the back to sit under the moon. I relaxed under the glowing moon's gentle caress. The pub had been fun, but sometimes I preferred the peace and quiet of home. The moon had always called to me, but I had often avoided that part of my nature. It seemed dangerously close to the darkness that existed in the world. But since moving into the cul-de-sac, I had learned to relish the darkness-and the things that made me different.