Chapter Twelve

Davor landed without fanfare, and Niko picked him up while I prepared for a third werecat to be in my territory. A quick meeting with the pack had been called in my living room so Davor could see all of them, and they could see him. It was a safety thing, and none of us had the energy or time to deal with a dust-up because someone didn't recognize someone else. We had done it for Zuri and Niko as well, and though the energy of the meeting was different every time, it always worked out.

"He's only going to be here for a day," Kody muttered.

"Yeah, but it's Jacky's family. We might as well do this in case he visits again in the future," Shamus replied, his verbal shrug matching his physical one. I smiled at his good nature, grateful for him in the pack. Kody was his son and still young, and while he would jump to the moon for Heath and his father, he wasn't as experienced as he thought in the little nuances and bigger pictures many of us tried to deal with every day.

I considered it for a second, then smirked to myself. I knew a lot of old—very old—people who couldn't see the bigger picture every time, either.

"I think it's nice. We didn't meet the entire family when they showed up for…" Stacy trailed off, and I watched her glance at Arlo, who was sitting next to Benjamin on the floor by my big windows.

"There were too many of them to safely do it," I said quickly, not wanting anyone to drag up Arlo's ordeal to fill in where Stacy trailed off. Arlo was doing well, but no one liked to bring up that incident. "Plus, there were members of my family there I didn't want to introduce to the pack, not at that time."

"Which ones?" Kody asked, perking up.

"Don't ask Jacky to talk about specific family members in a way that would disparage them," Heath said, not looking up from the newspaper he was reading. There was no heat in his words, sounding like an automated reminder. "It could cause problems for her with them. They are her family."

"Oh, yeah, sorry," Kody said, not looking chastised but reminded of some discussion they had previously had about the topic.

I shrugged at Shamus, who shrugged back. I knew Heath had some rules, but I didn't bother knowing all of them. Most of them were done for my comfort, security, or privacy. I rolled with it, knowing it wasn't just for me, either. It was for the safety of the pack. It would be na?ve to think we could trust everyone in my family when it came to the pack. Some of them had already made it clear that they would destroy the pack if they thought it was the best course of action.

"It's no problem, but you have to be careful, especially with more of her family around," Heath replied, still not looking up from his paper. He was projecting a calm that the other werewolves couldn't ignore. Totally relaxed and uninterested, he was telling them that this wasn't a big deal. Davor was coming into town, then I was leaving on werecat business with both of my brothers. The pack wasn't told what was going on, and they wouldn't be. There was no reason to rile them up. Everything they had seen unfolding over the last day was swept aside with partial truths and dancing around the actual situation.

Landon and Dirk weren't inside, though. Because they did know the situation, they were hanging out in the security building together because they didn't have quite the level of control Heath had when it came to keeping cool for the pack as a whole.

I felt Niko and Davor enter my territory and turned in that direction.

"They're almost back," I announced, trying to stay as calm as Heath was. If my life had a doomsday clock, it was now one minute to midnight. Knowing I couldn't hide it well enough, I stepped out onto the porch, only to be followed by a distinct gait.

"You feeling okay?" Ranger asked me as he leaned on the fencing next to me.

"Not right now, Ranger." I wasn't going to open up to him, not at this exact moment. I stepped further away from him, my mind still tracking the speed of Niko and Davor's approach. "You should head back inside."

"Okay." He didn't argue or try to linger. The front door closed with a soft click. Because it was Ranger, I knew Heath wouldn't get onto him too hard for checking on me, if at all. He was one of the top werewolves in the pack, looking out for his Alpha's fiancée. It was a respectable thing. I didn't want Heath to get onto him. I just wanted space. I wanted air to breathe that didn't tell me I was being watched by everyone, that didn't smell like roughly twenty people all waiting on me to say something or do something.

When Niko parked in front of my house, I started heading toward him and Davor.

"I hope the flight was comfortable," I said as Davor got out, dragging a bag with him.

"It was a flight. Even the most comfortable… aren't," he said with a wavering smile. He and I stared at each other as Niko popped the trunk and started taking out a few other bags. It was uncomfortable, but it wasn't hostile.

"You, uh, look good. Got enough stuff with you? Who is going to carry it all?" I asked, trying to find something easy to talk about.

"Some of this is for you… for Dirk, I guess, but to help protect your territory while you aren't here." Davor looked back at the bags as well, but not for long. He turned to me again. "You look good. Healthy, like the Black Forest never happened. Are you ready for this?"

"Probably not," I muttered.

"None of us ever really are," Niko said, bringing over the bags. "Let's get this done and send all these wolves back to their own homes."

Niko beat us to the door, and before I could get around him to open it, Heath was there, holding it open for us.

Three of the youngest—and at that moment, most awkward—werecats walked into the living room of rogue werewolves.

"Everyone, this is my brother, Davor, son of Hasan. He's a little older than Niko. Come introduce yourselves and get his scent. Let him get yours, then you can all head out."

I watched it unfold, stepping back so the werewolves could go. Shamus went with both his children, and Teagan went with his foster boys, but other than those outliers, everyone else went in rank order, allowing the most dominant single werewolves to test the waters before risking younger members of the pack. Davor was quiet, subdued compared to all of my other siblings meeting the werewolves. I could catch the scent, very light, of fear from him, and if I could catch it, so could the werewolves. It was very light, though, so I had a feeling everyone would pass it off as nerves.

Once they were all gone, and it was only the family, Heath stepped up to shake Davor's hand.

"Thank you for coming to help Jacky and Niko with this," he said.

"No need to thank me. I'm not the best in a fight, but I have some tricks up my sleeve that should be useful." Davor was surprisingly sheepish in front of Heath.

Every time he had snapped at me, every mean word or cruel remark, was lost to this version of Davor. Not forgotten but further pushed into the background, left in the past.

"Dirk and Landon?" Niko asked, looking around. "Are they around?"

I whistled, and the boys were inside with us less than ten seconds later.

"There you go," I said, smiling a bit at my brother before finding a place to sit down.

"These are for you," Niko said, shoving the bags at Dirk.

"Some pieces I've been working on," Davor quickly explained. "Including a prototype automated drone. You can set its path with a flight, save it, and it'll navigate that path on a schedule. You'll figure it out. I'm certain."

"A prototype?" Dirk seemed interested, but his confusion was also clear.

I guess Davor doesn't give out prototypes all the time.

"There are some bugs I've been dealing with, and I think you trying it out while I go to Alaska may give you some insight into a solution I've missed or just give me more data to work with. Either way, you're the person I trust with testing it out safely and giving me good data when we're back." Davor shifting into a discussion about his tech was another facet I saw very little of. Everyone knew he was probably the most tech-savvy person in the room and he was happy for someone else to be nearly on his level. He was excited, proud, and comfortable, not condescending, rude, or dismissive.

"Yeah, I'll test it out," Dirk promised, smiling. "Let me lock this stuff up, and I'll be right back."

"Why don't you and Landon head home?" Heath suggested softly. It made Dirk and Landon look at him, his son narrowing his eyes.

"Come back for dinner," I said, reinforcing Heath's not-a-real-suggestion with an invite back to dinner. It was about the silent implication that they were going to leave that mattered.

Landon looked away from his father to me, staring me down, knowing in the end, I would win because I wasn't the one who felt the need to do this. I could smell his respect for me as he gave up, telling me that something about his stare-down had been a little test of sorts.

"Fine." He threw his hands up as he started walking to the door. "Dirk, bring all that stuff home. You'll just be distracted by the thought of it all day if you leave it here. Bring it back at dinner to secure it."

"Have a good day." Dirk followed after Landon, not as wounded by the dismissal.

"Does Landon always look at you like that?" Davor asked me after their truck was long gone and no one else had begun speaking.

"He's harmless," I said with a wave as Niko choked on his own air, and Heath chuckled. "Come get something to drink." I went deeper into the kitchen with Davor following me. Niko was still trying to fix his windpipe, but Heath settled down quickly.

"Harmless?" Davor asked incredulously. "You think that werewolf is harmless?"

"He's my fiancé's son and the most loyal man, werewolf or otherwise, I have ever met. I don't think he's harmless. I know he's harmless… to me," I finished, maintaining my casual smile. I brought out several options for my brother, including alcoholic varieties even though it was barely nine in the morning. He chose Heath's scotch, so I got him the proper glass and let him pour for himself.

"I see…" Davor nodded before tasting the scotch. "Like Hisao." He swirled the amber liquid before taking a sip. "This is good."

"It is. We have a great collection if you want to try something else later." I leaned on the counter, staring at my brother. He continued to test and taste the scotch, as if he was searching for every hint of flavor, trying to discover its age, to what type of barrels it was once in. He didn't pay me any mind until he brightened up and smiled.

"I'll need to see if my guess is right later," he said, putting his drink down. I raised an eyebrow, and he chuckled, his cheeks filling with color. "A game I play with myself. I have now made a number of guesses about this vintage, and later, I'll see if any of them are right. It's nothing. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I've just… never seen you do that," I explained, swallowing at the reality of that. I had never spent alone time with Davor, not in person, not casually, even if the casual part was only temporary. "That's fun. I own a bar. I should give it a try."

"I didn't start getting any guesses right until I was close to a hundred. I'm surprisingly bad at it compared to many of our family, who can do it quickly, as though they have tasted every variety and combination of flavors known to history."

"I wouldn't doubt if some of them have," I said, commiserating with him. There was such a younger sibling energy to what he said that I couldn't help but relate, knowing the feeling all too well. There was never going to be a day we properly caught up to the oldest members of our family. "They are always leagues ahead of us."

His soft laugh made his face seem youthful and gentle.

"Yes, and if we ever get close to catching up in one way, someone will point out another way in which we can't," he said, sighing, but his smile told me he wasn't upset. He picked his drink back up and toasted me. "Thank you for this."

"It's no problem." I gestured toward the living room, and he went first, with me following behind him. Niko and Heath were sitting together on the loveseat with a laptop on the coffee table with the USB already plugged in. We didn't normally do anything outside my office, but Carey was at class for the entire morning, so we had time to stretch our legs in the larger space before having to hide in the office while she was home. She had no idea something terrible was happening, just like the pack, only that something was happening, and I was going to leave the next morning with my brothers. I planned on keeping it that way, and Heath, while disagreeing with me, was honoring that choice.

"I've studied these for the last day, and I believe there's nothing else we can glean from them," Niko said as we approached. He turned the laptop to Davor and me, showing me the pictures I had seen too many times.

"I looked through them as I flew here as well," Davor said, sitting on the couch in front of the laptop. I sat down on the far end of the couch, not needing to see anymore. There was nothing except evidence of the problem we faced. "There's not much to go on without being there, but I assume the scene was already cleaned up by humans."

"Yeah. They had to identify the couple and notify the family. They can't leave that stuff around there, thanks to the wildlife. Leave no trace and all that," I said, nodding. "I did make a call last night, though. The BSA will give us access to everything in a storage unit in Fairbanks, where they have a small office. Instead of landing closer to Noatak National Preserve, we'll just do the plane switch in Fairbanks, then send my jet to our original in-and-out point while we take a smaller plane into the Preserve with permission to get close to the site."

"Fairbanks? Why Fairbanks? Couldn't the BSA meet us where we want to be?" Davor frowned. Beyond him, Niko was putting it together, but Heath beat him to it.

"The BSA tries to have at least a small office in every city where an official pack resides, and if there are multiple packs in a state, they make the largest office in the same city as the biggest pack," Heath explained. "So, anything that happens in Alaska would be sent to their Fairbanks office for cataloging and storage until it's deemed it needs to be moved to a bigger office. There's a smaller werewolf pack up there," Heath continued to explain for Davor. "That pack, from what I remember, doesn't like the BSA, not that any pack does, but they keep things more distant than most packs are capable of in large cities. So, you'll be safe to wander around near the BSA office. If that pack hasn't changed, there won't be any werewolves nearby. However, I promise you that all the stuff from this campsite was taken there before the BSA even told Jacky about this, probably while they were scheduling the meeting. It would have been one of the first things they did because no one wants that sort of evidence of the dark part of our curse out in the open where it can be stumbled on."

"Ah, thank you for that explanation," Davor said, nodding sharply. "That's good, very good. Having an expert in the way werewolves and humans work with these incidents makes this less troublesome."

"Heath has proven more insightful about werewolves than I ever was," Niko said, chuckling as he reached out to tap Davor in a good-natured gesture. "Probably helps that he's been one for a few hundred years while I was only raised by them as a child."

"Yeah, you were always shrugging and saying you didn't know, you were too young to remember, you didn't pay attention all the time. On and on," Davor said back, a smile forming as I realized he was actually teasing Niko. "I mean, it's good being a werecat reminds us of who our parents are every time we say our name, or you would forget that too."

Niko's laugh was loud, and his eyes danced as I saw the brotherhood I had been told about.

It ended too soon as Davor's eyes dimmed a bit even though the smile remained. A dimming I recognized deep in my own soul but wasn't ready to confront yet.

"I'm glad to be of assistance. Can I ask some questions? I just want an idea of how you plan to approach this."

"Of course." Davor waved for Heath to go right ahead, none of the fear he had with the pack left. He wasn't nervous around my fiancé at all, but then, I had heard that Davor worked with Zuri and Heath about what was happening in Germany before Hasan had found them and figured it all out.