Chapter Thirteen

Knowing this talk would take the entire day, I texted in the family group chat. Not thinking, I realized when Zuri replied that I had texted in the wrong family chat, with Niko and Davor looking at me with confusion, and Heath stopped mid-sentence as he tried to figure out what was going on. Niko pulled out his phone as I retyped my text in the correct chat and sent it. Heath started to laugh a second later as more replies came in, with Davor joining in even though he was sitting right next to me.

"Okay, enough," I ordered, putting my phone down. "I just wanted Carey to head over to Landon and Dirk's home until dinner and for Landon to know she was coming. I know I sent that to the wrong chat and didn't know in time to fix it."

"It is humorous to see," Davor said, chuckling lightly as he put his phone down as well.

He wasn't wrong. I looked down at my phone again, seeing some of the replies as the family that wasn't here joked about how I had done that. Zuri was saying she didn't know a spell that could reach across the planet to deliver the message to Carey for me, while Jabari said he would ask Subira if she could manage it. Makalo asked if Carey could be added to this particular family chat, which got a maybe from Aisha, who also reminded him that Carey would be able to see the teasing things Jabari liked to share with the family. That got Makalo to backtrack quickly. Davor's reply was he had the chat records and was now in the correct house to share them with her father if Makalo really wanted to blend the families together by bringing her father and brother in as well. That made every adult in the chat laugh, while Makalo used all caps to scream no and beg his uncle to spare him.

It was astoundingly normal and funny to a group of people who saw and did immense and incredible things.

Knowing I'd left a lot of the family in a fit of giggles, I flipped my phone over entirely to try to ignore anything else. Heath could follow our family chat with his own phone if Landon had a problem with letting his sister hang out. He wouldn't have a problem because Landon would raze the earth to nothing for her and never missed a chance to help with her homework.

"Back on topic," Heath said, sighing happily as he stopped reading Niko's phone with him. "Amazing."

"I don't have their chat logs on me," Davor said, sounding a bit sorry.

"I would never ask you to give those to me," Heath said, smiling as he shook his head. "I trust that we're all adults and know what might need to be told to parents if something is mentioned in a chat. Beyond obvious safety concerns, I won't invade my daughter's privacy out of a need to know every little thing about her life."

"He wants to," I said, smiling at him knowingly as he tried to play off his urges. "Heath wants to know everything his daughter is doing at every minute of the day. He wants to know who she's talking to, what she's saying, and what's being said to her. He wants to know if a boy has even attempted to flirt with her or if she's flirting with a boy. Or a girl." I continued to smile as Heath tried not to react, knowing I was right about everything. "But he loves her, and he wants to be a good father that protects her while also letting her grow in the few safe places we can provide her in our world. She deserves to be a normal teenage girl with a few secrets of her own."

"I understand that constant battle all too well," Niko muttered, and I saw the tired father side of him peeking through.

"They're good kids," Davor said, not looking at Heath or me as he did, wearing a smirk that told me he kept an eye on them for us and knew some of the secrets Heath wanted to know but allowed his daughter to keep. "I tease Makalo, but Aisha raised him too well to ever need to see those chat logs. I don't tease Carey, but I can see you've done the same for her every time I do my typical glance at the logs, just in case."

"I had help," Heath said, his eyes on me for a second before he looked back at Davor. "And thank you for keeping an eye on them."

"No need to thank me," Davor repeated from earlier. "Now, you were asking about what sort of plans I had for this hunt, weren't you?"

"Ah, yes, back on topic. I was. I know Jacky would just charge through the wilderness, hunting a scent without some direction. She would find the werecat by running into it. Literally."

"Thanks," I said, shaking my head at that, trying to act annoyed when I knew he was right, and the teasing was good-natured. Niko covered his face and ducked down, muffling his laughter. Davor tried—and failed—to hide his amusement.

"Yes… Uh…" Davor's chest shook a bit from the contained laughter he was fighting. "She has done that, yes. I considered it. It's useful to have those who are brave and bold to lead a charge. We just need a way to give her a direction. Now, we'll still have to do some hunting in the traditional sense, but we have more resources than we once did. We've never found a way to initially find the target, but now we have a way to keep after it easier than we used to."

"Oh?" I leaned forward, hoping for more detail.

"Niko, you understand. What's the worst part about doing this?"

"The werecat is always too strong to take down in one fight," he answered at Davor's call. "We've each done this with Jabari. Even with Jabari, it's often a long hunt of wounding, slowing it down, getting it cornered, and knowing when to back off and let it run for another hiding spot where we can corner it. Because it's a werecat, it's good at traversing the forest on natural instinct. Doesn't leave a very good trail, loops back on itself, and sends its hunters into circles. When it thinks it can lose, it will do everything possible to shake those hunting it."

"Well, now we have technology." Davor got up and retrieved his bag. Once he was seated again, he opened it and pulled out a case. He handed it to Niko, who opened it and revealed a type of gun I was unfamiliar with. Not terribly hard to do, but I didn't even know what general thing it might be.

"A dart gun?" Heath leaned over and pulled out a piece of it, looking it over. "Not like one I've ever seen, though.

"Modified for us," Davor said with a nod. "It has the power necessary to sink what we need into a moon cursed. I tested it on Jabari since he's the oldest and biggest willing tester I could get." He made a face. "I wasn't asking Hasan, obviously."

"Every werecat gets huge when they enter Last Change, even the smallest of our kind. Good thinking," Niko said, studying the dart gun with Heath. "But tranqs don't work on our kind."

"Agreed. It's going to deliver this." Davor lifted a small box that he didn't open. "A small tracker. Now, the werecat's body will reject it quickly, but once we engage with it, we should have a few days to keep on it before it's pushed out, up to a week if my tests have been correct. I have more than one. Depending on the rejection time, we can hopefully track this werecat for up to a month."

"Can I see?" Heath asked, the cunning I knew he had in him coming to the surface. This was useful stuff.

"I would open it and show you, but it's delicate equipment, and I don't want to risk its integrity before we have a chance to use it. I have to engineer each one of these by hand, and they're all I have." Davor put the box away. "Afterward, I'll show them to you, though."

"When did you start making these?" Niko asked, putting the dart gun away.

"Right after Germany. I needed something to keep my hands busy, and I saw a problem that we hadn't faced yet because it hadn't happened in some time. The case I asked you to leave in the trunk has the computer I'll need to work all of this, hooked up with our satellite phone. Both should work just fine out there, thanks to that case."

"Impressive." Niko put the dart gun's case on the table, locked up once again. "So, we track it traditionally, and once we engage, one of us will get a tracker into it. When we know it's time to back off and let it run, we just track it that way without needing to make sense of all its ploys to throw us off."

"Exactly. There's one thing that could go wrong, but it's just how it goes. If the werecat realizes something hit it and left something unnatural… it can just chew at it or tear it out. It would be unfortunate, but then we'll know it's possible." Davor shrugged.

"How did you build these and test them with Jabari since April?" I asked suddenly, unable to get past that. Jabari was with Zuri and Subira since then, in the middle of nowhere.

"I built it, sent it to Zuri, and she shot at him," Davor answered seriously. "I made a second while Jabari gave me the details on how it worked. Made alterations. They sent the first back; I sent them the second. While they tested the second, I made the first modifications to the original, then made more modifications based on new data. Rinse and repeat. I have two of these and brought both. The other is still in the car. The schematics are secure in case I need to rebuild and try again."

"Oh. Okay." Being stunned by the simplicity, I leaned back, trying to figure out where to take things from this point.

"I remember Subira saying she was sending things as well," Heath commented. "Any word on those? Jacky and I haven't heard a word."

"And we have no idea what they could be," I pointed out.

"She's going to give us the rations we need," Niko said, crossing his arms as he fell back, looking to get comfortable on the loveseat. "The food will be enchanted to help us stay alert and full, so we don't need to haul food and coffee around the entire trip."

"It's not healthy to eat for more than a couple weeks at a time, so what we'll do is eat normally at the beginning of a hunt, and once we're in the thick of it, we hope we can kill the werecat before we run out," Davor explained. "Or we'll use it for a week, then back off long enough to have a couple of good meals, then go back on it to continue."

"What makes it unhealthy?" Heath asked, frowning.

"It's not proper calories. It's energy that will fuel us just the same, but after a couple of weeks, we'll all be a lot lighter," Davor explained. "Magic doesn't replace food. It never will. It can help, though. She'll never be able to make it less dangerous to eat regularly, and she needs time to prepare it. It has a shelf life. We can't keep it stocked for whenever we need it."

"She actually perfected the recipe during the War," Niko added. "She would spend a month making a lot of it, then let people run themselves into the ground with it. When we all needed a month to recover, she made the next batch, trying to make it last longer, work better…" Niko shook his head quickly. "Either way, Davor's right. It's useful and something only she can do for us. She'll get it here for us before we have to go."

"I take it she doesn't like having to make it," I said softly, seeing how Niko needed to shake off memories.

"She doesn't want us killing ourselves with it," Davor clarified. "A werecat did during the War, running himself into the ground until his heart went out, barely skin and bones left because he was trying to avenge his father, who had died early on. She knows any one of us could be driven to try doing the same if we felt the need to, thinking we could recover."

"She won't give us enough to do that," Niko added quickly as we all noticed Heath's wide eyes. "It's also not addictive, but convenience makes it easy for people to abuse when they aren't thinking clearly."

"That's good," my fiancé exhaled, tension leaving him. "Anything else?"

"Some protection charms. Nothing too powerful. She's not one to make objects of immense power, at least not from what I've seen in my eight hundred years," Niko continued. "Anything else will be from Zuri and Jabari and probably won't be magical."

Listening to that, I couldn't help but wonder so many things about Subira. She was powerful, and I wasn't sure if I even knew exactly how powerful. I'd seen her blow up every object in a room. When Aisha, Makalo, and Jabari were in danger, I watched her put a dying woman into stasis, halting her death until she figured out a solution with Jabari. Aisha survived that day thanks to the mythical power of Subira. She was mated to Jabari because of that day when Subira removed a dead mate bond Jabari couldn't get rid of, thousands of years after his human mate died, and somehow put Aisha on the other end instead, connecting her and Jabari forever.

In an instant, Subira could do things of great power. However, the support she offered her children going on a hunt for a dangerous supernatural was magic rations and some protection charms.

"Have we heard from her about what Hasan might have to say?" I asked, having missed a good portion of the discussion about the protection charms.

"Not yet. She knows we leave tomorrow. It could be ten minutes before we go, but she will get back to us. I promise."

"When she sets a deadline, she makes it," Davor confirmed.

Nodding, I decided to get up and stretch. I didn't know what else to talk about, so I went to get drinks for everyone, bringing out the scotch from earlier. It wasn't even noon, but alcohol didn't hit us without a lot of help. Specifically, magical help.

As we sipped and talked over the scene again, I looked at my glass and looked at the dart gun.

"Subira can brew alcohol that does us in, yeah? She saves it for family gatherings, vacations, and such, but she can do it."

"Yup." Niko was pouring himself another glass.

"Could she make tranqs that work on us too? Even on those in their Last Change?" I asked, swirling my drink around.

"Hit them with a drug and get a quick kill while it sleeps?" Niko frowned. Hearing it phrased that way made it seem distasteful to me, but it could save lives. It would give the werecat a less violent death. It felt like a good option.

"The adrenaline and magic of the Last Change probably make that difficult," Davor said, sipping.

"Agreed, and if you can make a tranquilizer that powerful, you could accidentally kill a person with it," Heath pointed out. I looked at my mate, studying him.

It wasn't hard to figure out that he'd heard my idea before. It wasn't a stretch knowing his background as one of the most prominent and connected Alphas in the States that he knew someone who didn't just say it but also had the means to attempt it.

"What happened?" I asked him, taking my shot.

"Drug enters the system and sends the werewolf into a frenzied panic," he answered. "Faster, desperate, and even more violent. Would fight so hard for so long that it burned off anything except a fatal dose. By a fatal dose, I don't mean just a few milligrams too much. It would be faster to load a bunch of silver into it."

"Oh, damn," I whispered.

"It was a good effort to learn. The call not to try it again was made by Callahan and Corissa, and at that time, I agreed with them. In that, I can't say my opinion has changed since I fell out with them. Hasan probably knows about it. It was reported to the Tribunal since it would have helped all supernaturals deal with a Last Change werewolf if one showed up." Heath paused for a second, then looked around. "You're all going to take silver, right? You were looking at my armory yesterday. Again, take whatever you need."

"Absolutely," Niko promised. "When the hunt gets to the fighting, we'll have a system. One of us will be in werecat form. In this group, it'll be Jacky, most likely. Sorry, you don't have the weapons training we do."

"I know," I said with a shrug. "I can also talk in werecat form, and it's sturdier."

"She's vicious as a werecat," Heath said, a compliment that reinforced my going as a werecat that wasn't just to protect me or because I was bad at something else.

"Yeah, so Jacky will be a werecat in the fights. She'll get the most attention, being in her werecat form. Her goal is to taunt, keep it coming for her, and move around whatever our arena ends up being. I'll be attempting to get some good hits in with silver in the melee, while Davor offers ranged fire with silver bullets. While I would love to say we discovered that we can just put a bullet between its eyes and be done, it doesn't work that way for werecats."

"Of course not. Even with werewolves, relying on a single good shot is foolish. You have to see someone going through it to get lucky enough to do that, while they're wrapped up in the pain and might not be reinforced by the physical changes of the Last Change," Heath said, running his hand through his hair. "After that, you just have to be lucky to hit it. A moon cursed in their Last Change can be very fast. Do you have practice hitting one?"

"I won't hit Niko or Jacky," Davor said quickly. "I'm a fair marksman. I would rather take a miss than hit a sibling or any ally. The hardest part is making a shot that hits the werecat in the right spot to do enough damage. Thick skulls, packed on muscle… I'll have to pick my shots carefully if I want them to help."

"Good, good. I'm going to leave you three, then. I need to check on the wolves, make a few business calls. You know."

"The work never stops," Davor agreed.

He swooped down to kiss me as he left, leaving me smiling. I knew he wasn't too busy today. I was glad he was making an effort to focus on his projects instead of hovering over me and this, but it was just a tactic to get him from stewing on this too hard. He'd asked his questions about how this was going to work, and he needed to leave before he tried to join us or, worse, fell to the urge of trying to convince me to stay behind. I knew he would still think about it all day, though, no matter what he was doing. He would tell us if he thought of anything when we saw him again. I was certain of that.

However, with his departure, an awkwardness settled on my living room. I was used to Niko in my space. Davor, on the other hand, was new, and I didn't realize how comfortable Heath made me until he was gone.

"So… you two worked this out?" Niko said, gesturing between us. "I see you're acting more like your old self. It's really good to see, Davor."

"I'm doing my best," Davor said with a tired smile as he stared at his glass. "Everything still hurts, but…" Davor glanced at me before focusing back on his drink, the sad smile fading as he did. "I've learned enough to know how to get through the day without destroying my life any further. It helps that some things have been put to rest, and I'm getting second chances I don't deserve, both of which I'm grateful for."

"Yeah, it's hard going when the source of the pain feels so unresolved," Niko agreed, reaching out to rub Davor's shoulder.

"I know I've said it before, but thanks."

It took me a second to realize Davor had directed that at me. I raised my glass in a silent toast—to resolution, to healing, to gratitude, and to family.

I barely knew this Davor, but I was glad to finally start meeting him.

"No need to thank me," I said with a smile.