Chapter Twelve

Nomad

The conversation Gabai had with Bree, the local wolf pack leader, was brief. She agreed for them to drive up to the pack house, where they could guarantee privacy to discuss what steps to take.

Nomad had considered sending Harley and Cosmo back to the club, only neither were for budging on this. They wanted to go with him, and Gabai shrugged at Nomad's argument they also had a club to run.

It was Asher who'd pointed out Rocco was more than capable of managing whilst they decided if they could count on Bree and her pack for what was to come next. Nomad had gone straight into battle planning. This was how he did things. He asked Gabai for a list of all those in the club who'd aided them with Asher's old pack. In his mind, they were all trustworthy if they had gone to that pack with what they now knew about it. If any of them had any associations with that pack, they would have been prepared for what was coming for them.

They hadn't been and the pack, from what Gabai explained, had gotten wiped out. And most of the top enforcers by Cosmo. Their cutie had sat on Harley's knee sucking his thumb, looking like butter wouldn't melt. The combo of innocent and deadly really was so alluring it made it hard to concentrate. Not something Nomad was used to.

All of this seemed to keep circling back to the council, and that made it even more important to do this right. Because Nomad considered, they'd get one shot and only one at keeping Cosmo and themselves safe. Their old life was over, not that Nomad cared. How could he when he had Cosmo and Harley?

"Take the next turn on the right. There's a gate."

Listening to Gabai, Nomad slowed to take the exit he needed to. Slowing and pulling up to the gates, guarded by what he scented were wolves, as he lowered the window to advise who they were. Gabai waved at them, and they wordlessly opened to let them through.

Again, Nomad became impressed by the house and the surrounding lands as he drove up the drive. "It's beautiful around here," he commented.

"Why do you think I set up home here? When I came to town, there was very little here. The town has grown and with it, it became a haven for shifters who might not have felt accepted elsewhere for whatever reasons. The club is part of that community. "

Nomad nodded, sensing Gabai's pride in what he had helped create. Something Nomad had for the work he'd done, which had gotten lost with all the revelations about who employed him.

Before he'd come to a stop, a statuesque woman strode out of the house, a riding crop in her hand. Dressed all in black, with thigh high leather boots, Nomad recognized she was a dominant besides the pack alpha.

Gabai got out of the car and went up the porch steps to greet her, giving her a big bear hug. When she pulled back, she eyed both Nomad and Harley with an inquisitive expression. "So, who do we have here?"

Harley

Cosmo, who had hold of Harley's hand, tugged him towards the steps. "This is Daddy Harley and over there is my other Daddy, Nomad."

Harley's grin widened at the pride coming from Nomad, but also at how pleased Cosmo felt to have two men to introduce to the alpha.

"Why is that so? Aren't you a lucky boy, Cosmo."

His grin was pure mischief. "Only when I'm not getting my bottom spanked." The flirty look he sent Nomad spoke to how much he'd like to be classed as naughty right now.

Are you pushing Daddy?

Harley's lips twitched, and he looked away to stop himself from laughing at how Nomad's tone only encouraged their cutie.

"Why don't you come in and we can talk about what brings you here with such urgency?" Bree didn't wait for anyone to agree and swung around heading back through the door now held open by what Harley suspected was Bree's second in command by the watchful way he eyed them and kept us between him and his alpha, having her back.

The inside was plush, big furniture that looked inviting, polished wooden floors and wide open spaces that allowed a person to not feel closed in. Large windows let in a lot of light and everything glowed as if polished to within an inch of its life.

A young man came into the room they'd been led to and stood, head down, his hands clasped behind him, waiting until someone noticed him.

"Would anyone like a drink?" Bree asked as she sat, flinging one leg over the arm of the chair she'd chosen. Her over all relaxed pose didn't hide the tension as the crop swung from her hand back and forth.

"Coffee, if you have it, and juice for Cosmo," Harley answered, tucking Cosmo on his lap where he liked to sit.

Bree glanced at Nomad, who nodded agreement. "Coffee works for me."

Once Gabai chose a drink, the silent guy left. That anyone did not address him felt odd, but Harley didn't think it was his place to ask.

"Gabai, what's the issue?"

Harley liked her straightforward approach and waited to see how Gabai handled things. They didn't know the alpha and Harley sensed she wasn't someone to piss off.

"Cosmo is under threat," he started with, paused, sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Or maybe we all are…" he ran through everything they'd told him back at his house while Bree remained quiet.

Once he'd finished, Cosmo sat forward, Harley's thumb he'd stuck between his lips got pulled out. "I've files and information if you need to see it. I believe if we don't do something to intervene now, it will have long-term implications for all of us." That mere seconds ago he'd been thumb sucking and now was laying out the seriousness of the situation, showed just how much Cosmo could adapt. It was fucking scary, and a miracle all rolled into one gorgeous ball of deadly cuteness.

Harley was so fucking happy with the universe.

Bree was silent and Harley switched gears to speak. "Are you willing to help?" he asked with deadly seriousness. "We'll need more than your pack. I suspect those that helped with Asher's issue before might be willing, but we need a powerful alpha and a pack willing to fight, too."

She held his stare, and he felt more than saw Nomad bristling at the show of power. Only Harley wasn't cowed and got she had to figure out who they were. So he held her gaze. "What do you offer to this situation?"

It was Cosmo's turn to get upset, and he hissed.

Harley ran a comforting hand down his back. "It's alright cutie. She's every right to ask. Nomad and I have worked in undercover ops for over twenty years. It's how we met. We've dealt with the worst scum on the planet. Been trained to be invisible, to blend, to get in and out of buildings and situations, leaving no trace behind of the destruction we create. We are damn good at what we do. It's why we're still alive and haven't had to use any of our nine lives." He threw in the joke to break a little of the tension building from those waiting on the outskirts of the room, protecting their alpha.

When no one laughed, he sighed. "You have a total of ten wolves at this present moment guarding the four exits. Two have throwing knives in their jackets. The two just outside the main window there have long range sniper guns. By the scent coming from the two behind you, they've both recently had sex in the last hour… with each other—"

Bree held up her hand. "You've proved your point." Her hard gaze traveled to the two wolves, who now wore sheepish expressions. "I'll speak to you both later." The crop hit her boot in such a way that Harley got the impression it wasn't just for show.

When her attention returned to him and Cosmo, a genuine smile graced her lips, reaching her eyes. "Let's talk about who Cosmo thinks our pack can help with."

Cosmo

"Bash and Micha have been working with me to help return stolen shifters to their homes," Cosmo said. "They'll be able to help for sure and bring more rhinos and jackals. They're the ones I've been working with the most, and Kit, the fox shifter, he's got ties with the reds and the grays. He's been helping me pass information to the people it needed to get to."

"Why have you brought none of this to me before?" Bree asked, sounding more curious than pissed.

Cosmo rubbed his Daddy Harley's thumb against his lips, more soothing than because he was eager to suck on it again. "I needed to be certain of where you would stand," Cosmo explained, meeting her gaze and holding it. "Then everything happened with Asher's old pack and I got given a new assignment, which led to them burning my house because of the things I uncovered. Things for just the council to know, that they would sit on information when they can't profit off of or benefit from. If the wrong council members found out the things I knew, it would be a total scorched earth policy of eradicating or moving all the missing shifters, and we'd get forced to start all over again."

"That's fair," Bree said. "I'd have been cautious too, under the circumstances, especially if I didn't have any backup of my own. "

"I wouldn't have told my Daddies if they hadn't seen me fight the enforcers that were supposed to kill me," Cosmo said softly. "I thought they were just regular cats at first, so I ignored them. I was afraid that all they'd see when they looked at me was someone who liked to play with toys, color, and curl up to watch a movie. I didn't want mates who only wanted someone soft and cuddly who they'd feel the need to protect."

"But there's more, isn't there?" Bree asked.

Nodding, Cosmo rubbed his Daddy's thumb across his lips again and nipped the tip, enjoying the grumble that rolled through his mind from Daddy's reaction. "Just that I'd have had to keep a bunch of secrets and that was okay if they were normal panthers. You can't keep secrets after you've claimed someone and been claimed by them, because if you think about anything too much or for too long, then they'll know, and I'd have had to keep them safe too and not let them get caught in the crossfire if the council came after me."

"Only discovering that their training by the very people who trained you has changed something between you?"

"Yes. It meant that they understood, and they wouldn't be afraid of me, or disgusted, if they ever found out about what they'd taught me to do," Cosmo explained. "They know, and they still wanted me to be theirs. Now I just want the dangerous members of the council to be taken down before they can ruin anymore lives."

Her crop steadily tapped against her boot in a steady rhythm, one that clued him in on just how deeply she was thinking about everything she'd learned today. It was patient, steady and consistent, leaving Cosmo to reason that the times it sped up were when he was providing her with information of things she hadn't suspected. The rest he got the sense that she had some prior knowledge of .

"There have been whispers for the last year of things like you've described," Bree said, as if echoing Cosmo's thoughts. "But there is very little proof until now. I've had a wolf subtly digging into things for a little while now, but Lir hasn't been able to uncover much."

A little lightbulb went off in Cosmo's head, and he felt himself flushing and pressing that thumb back against his lip, his fangs scrapping over the skin.

"Uh-huh," Bree murmured. "Something tells me you've had a hand in that."

"I'm sorry," Cosmo replied. "I thought he was working for the council. I may have sabotaged some of his efforts."

"May have?" Daddy Nomad and Bree said at almost the exact same time.

"Okay, I have, anytime I caught him nosing around one of my targets," Cosmo admitted. "It wasn't easy to throw him off the scent, but I've managed to confuse him enough to do what I needed to do and get away with the information I wanted."

"Which was why there was nothing left for him to find," Bree concluded.

"I'm…not sorry," Cosmo hedged, shrugging a little. "He's well trained, but he's not trained like I am."

"Exactly how old were you when the council took you in and started your instruction?" asked Daddy Nomad, frowning.

Cosmo squirmed a little before answering, because it was still so new and there was still that tiny, niggling doubt in the back of his head that left him worried his mates would look at him differently if they knew the whole truth about him.

"I don't have no other family," Cosmo explained. "Most of them died when I was thirteen or so. My cousin and I went to live with a family that took in orphaned shifters, but there were so many of us there and they only wanted us because they were getting money from the council to house us. Sometimes a woman from the council would come and spend the entire day with us before she left, only sometimes she'd take one of the older shifters with her. She did that with my cousin and I never saw him again. They'd never tell me where he was or if he was still alive or anything. I think not, because I've never been able to find him or any information about him, even when I was free to look."

"And how old were you when she took you?" Bree asked.

"Fifteen," Cosmo admitted. "Well, almost. It was really close to my birthday, and I'd gotten myself lured into a bit of a trap. I was outnumbered, but I took out two before she showed up to help me. She destroyed the rest of them, then said she was gonna take me to a new home, but that first we were going to stop and get presents. They were knives, my first set. I still have them."

Daddy Nomad scrubbed his hands over his face, but Cosmo was still so new to the bond that he couldn't read what his Daddy was thinking, just that he didn't look happy, leaving Cosmo to wonder just who exactly would pay for the furious look that currently darkened his Daddy's features, and the flash of fangs that wouldn't remain hidden, even when his Daddy wrinkled his nose and looked like he was trying to smother the level of fierceness in his gaze.