Chapter Twenty-Six

We got to the cabin quickly enough, not running into a single soul who might pose a threat to us. We knew the cabin's fate long before we could see it. The smell of the smoke hadn't left the area, though we were fortunate not to be dealing with a forest fire. I did a run around it, looking for anyone who may have still been around, but all the scents of those who had attacked us went in one direction and were gone. With that, I met Niko and Davor, where they waited farther away.

"There's no one else here. They moved east together. The witches did. The werecat's scent trail was erratic, but I didn't see or hear any evidence it was still nearby either."

We moved forward together, approaching the cabin. All the wood was either black or ash, and much of it had collapsed entirely.

"How did it burn so fast? We weren't gone that long, right?"

"Six hours," Niko said, glaring at the destruction. "It probably would have burned naturally in that time, but they probably sped up the process by feeding the flames with magic."

"They must have," Davor agreed. "It's already cool. They would have gotten what they wanted, realized we were on the run, and made their own hasty retreat. It strikes me as odd that they wouldn't want to make sure we died. They must have other priorities."

"Like hiding the werecat they're controlling,"I said, stepping closer to the cabin. "We should see if anything of ours survived, I guess."

"We should," Davor said with a sigh, clearly the more upset brother with the idea that our things were gone. I was sympathetic. He brought a lot of technology, things that would have been really useful, but now he was probably going to have to remake all of it, and the idea of testing any of it was lost to this disastrous turn in our mission.

Niko just seemed pissed as he stomped to the cabin. We moved large pieces of burned wood together, me having to use my shoulder thanks to the lack of proper hands. We found Niko's bag first, at least what remained of it.

"Let's see…" It wasn't ash, but nothing about it was salvageable. "So much for fireproof," Niko muttered.

"Keep looking." Davor was still clearing stuff, and I could smell the desperation coming from him, the need to find anything. His movements were hurried and frantic, and I could smell blood before I saw his hands, carelessly cut on pieces of metal and stabbed with splinters.

"Hey, be careful,"I said, adding a chuffing noise to make sure he knew I was talking to him.

"It's fine. They'll heal," he said in return, digging through the debris without pause.

"Davor, come on. You don't need to hurt yourself." I padded toward him, but a growl made me stop.

"I have to find it. It would have survived the flames, and I need it to be here," he said as Niko approached.

"Davor, take a deep breath." Niko reached for him.

"If they have that case, our entire family is at risk!" Davor snapped, pushing him away. "And I'm not exactly in the right place to make sure it doesn't pose a threat right now! I can't even warn the rest of the family. They can give false reports to Jabari. They can possibly hack my log-in and see all the conversations I've had for years with everyone in the family. I have access to all of your accounts. They would have Tribunal secrets through Father!" Davor went back to clearing debris, throwing it as he hunted. "I should have grabbed the entire damn thing before I ever came outside. I can't believe I was this careless."

Niko and I started digging through the debris as well, hunting fervently as it sank in just what sort of problem we were actually looking at.

"It's not your fault, Davor. None of us thought about it. We were blindsided by witches with a werecat on a leash," Niko said, huffing as he moved a large piece of the wall or roof. I pushed my body against it, giving Niko all the help he needed to get a better grip on it and chuck it away from the wreckage of the cabin with more ease.

"I should have thought about it sooner," Davor hissed. "I know what you're saying, but I brought a sensitive object that can put our family at risk?—"

"We weren't thinking about others being involved in this. We had no reason to think of extra protections or anything."I spoke up because I had to, trying to talk him out of the guilt spiral we were about to see.

"And lost it!"

"Jacky is right," Niko said, moving more as I used my mouth to pull a beam out of the way. "We didn't think anyone else was involved in this. If this was just the werecat, we could have dropped it and gone back for it without a problem. We weren't prepared for this."

We went through all of it. We found sad scraps of our things among the mostly ashen debris of the cabin, but there was no secure case that might have survived. Not a single warped or dented bit of it.

Davor, fully defeated by the time we stopped, sat down on the rocks by the creek, leaving Niko and me still in the messy debris. Soft splashing told me he was cleaning himself up, and I knew Niko and I probably needed to do the same, but I wasn't certain Davor wanted both of us bothering him.

"I'll go sit with him if you want to check the scents to verify what I said,"I said, beginning to pad over to Davor.

"We should stay close to each other right now," Niko murmured and followed me. "I trust your nose."

I sat beside Davor as he rubbed his face, having splashed it with the clear creek water.

"I used to give you all sorts of trouble about every little mistake," he said, sighing. "Let me have it."

"Shit happens. We'll fix this,"I said, lying down to put my head on my paws.

"Thank you," he said, washing and rinsing his hands for seemingly a second time. I could see how much damage he had done to himself, but none of it was severe enough to require stitches, and I wasn't worried about an infection from the water.

Niko went to a knee and began cleaning himself off as well. In the silence, I stood back up and got into the water, letting it rinse away most of the shit from the cabin's charred remains. I shook far enough away not to splash them and drank some of that very same creek water before sitting back down, waiting for them to feel ready to move. We had to. We had to chase them down, and we had to do it quickly.

Only a minute later, Niko stood back up and helped Davor up.

"This isn't your mistake," Niko said firmly.

I was suddenly thinking about Heath and once again, I knew exactly how much of the werewolf way of things actually sank into Niko and never left. He spoke like Landon, Ranger, or Shamus to the lower-ranking wolves. Not an Alpha with that supernatural authority, but a leader, nonetheless. "We all fucked up. Jacky was hit in the head, and we had to go. Alive is better than anything else."

"He's not wrong. Alive is much better than the alternative,"I said, nodding my feline head. "We can fix everything else."

"You can," Davor said softly, smiling wryly as he looked at me. "You seem to be the master of getting out of bad situations. I'll just hope that some of that rubs off on me today."

"She is, and it does. Trust me." Niko slapped Davor's shoulder. "Jacky, lead us to where the witch scents meet and begin heading away from here. You said east, right?"

"Yeah."

I went that way, moving a bit faster than my brothers, but they were fine jogging to keep up. I stopped where I had noticed many of the scents had converged. Five different humans. The werecat had gone off in a different direction, which I knew we could follow, but I had a feeling.

"It's here and continues on that way." I pointed my body to the east. "The witches, at least. The werecat ran off a different way. I figure the witches have to take a more direct route back to wherever they came from, though. Better to follow them."

"I believe you're right. The werecat might have been searching to see if we were making a quick circle back to get them and defending them while they did what they wanted and moved out," Davor said. "The scent is still fresh enough to think it's only been a couple of hours."

"It's a good thing the smell of human stands out so much out here," Niko said, beginning to walk, his path going with the scent trail I had brought them to. "Let's keep as silent as possible, just in case."

Once again, we were moving, and the repetition of our mission was now killing me. Run this way, run that way. Follow that scent trail, ignore that one. I began to ponder things more, the shock of the witches now worn off, and really began to consider what we were dealing with.

"I have a question and a theory, sort of wrapped together if you two want to hear it."

Davor nodded but didn't speak while Niko kept a watchful eye on the trees around us.

"Do you think this was a test run of their werecat? They got it under their control and sent it out to kill two people to see if they could?"

Davor seemed to ponder it, his expression changing from thoughtful to curious to concern.

"Why are you considering that line of thought?" Davor asked in a whisper.

"Dallas. They wanted to control Tywin to control the pack, then unleash it on cities, build a bigger pack, and all of that. Imagine someone trying that with a werecat. Instead of amassing numbers because werecats don't work that way, they would control it and see if they could get it to kill someone without it slipping."

Davor nodded, his scent and expression telling me he very much understood how I was approaching this.

"Political assassinations with a monster that no government agent or military could stop quickly enough before the target was dead, then immediately order it to get out. It sounds crazy, but… What happened with the Dallas pack sounded insane, too, but they nearly made it happen. They had been plotting it since before I was ever involved with Heath. The coup was part of it. Their first attempt to get control with one of their own, the witch werewolf, Emma."

"And now the werecat here, controlled by another group of witches," Davor continued, still in that low whisper that only Niko and I could have ever picked up.

"Able to hide the scent of their magic just like the witches in Dallas. This has to be something. This must be connected."

"We'll figure it out once we eliminate the threats," Niko said, looking over his shoulder at us, his eyes flicking between us. I sniffed the air and caught a smell I wasn't prepared for.

Fear.

My brothers were afraid of what I was saying.