Chapter Seven

Niko and I greeted Carey when she woke up and showed her face to the world, nearing nine in the morning. By then, he and I had decided not to talk about theories and just figure it out when we faced whatever this meeting would be. He helped me make her something to eat.

"Does he have to pick me up, or can he and Dirk just hang out here?" she asked, looking annoyed. "I'm old enough to stay home alone. It's not like I'm going to drive off to meet friends or anything. I'm over trying to deal with the kids from my classes."

"He'll probably leave you home alone for most of the day, but he's going to want to set some ground rules with you." I was sympathetic, but I didn't make the rules of her life. Heath told Landon to keep an eye on her for the day, and I wasn't going to undermine her father or her brother, not after everything we had been through.

"When will he be here?"

I spaced out for a moment, focusing on his moving signature through my territory.

"In about ten minutes. Once he's here, Niko and I are going to head out. We're going to be gone until tomorrow."

"And Dad is in Dallas for his own stuff…"

I reached out and touched her cheek.

"Hey… I'm sorry we're missing some of your days off right now. I know you're going to be busy with homework all summer, but we'll make this up to you."

Her smile and nod told me everything would be okay if we just tried when we had the chance. There was no way around what was going on today, but we had plenty of days after this one.

"We'll figure out something. It's been a long time since we've been bowling, hasn't it?"

"It has! That would be fun. Maybe I can force Landon and Dirk to go with me today or something. Or paintball!" With that grin I loved her for, she started to eat breakfast, mostly made by Niko, who was hovering but suspiciously silent.

Right on cue, Landon was driving up, and I listened to him park and get out of his truck as Carey ate. He came in as I was grabbing my bag.

"She's all yours," I said, smiling, then leaned in to whisper some advice to him. "Take her out for some fun with you and Dirk. Whatever she wants to do."

"Can do. I don't want her moping around the house because you and Pa aren't home," he said, giving a small nod before diverting his attention to his little sister. "Hey, kid. What's the plan? You got me and Dirk all day. All expenses paid."

"I'm really glad to have a brother that's cooler than all the kids at my school, but you can stop calling me a kid," she said, flipping some eggs at him.

"Okay, so I'm getting violent Carey today. Fair!" Landon grinned and waved me off.

I took the chance, waving as I left. Niko had already snuck out and was standing by his car.

"Do you want to leave that here? We can ride in mine, then you don't have to deal with our roads," I offered. He looked at his car for a second, then nodded. We had already talked about what to bring, and that was just ourselves. All the clothing Niko had in his Germany home had been moved to the mansion when he had to relocate, so we both had plenty of clothing available in Dallas for whatever situation. I texted Heath to let him know we were on the way and got us on the road.

We were silent for a good hour, listening to music. Since Niko had called out how suspicious this entire thing was, he had been quiet except for when someone addressed him. I couldn't stop myself from finally breaking the silence, though, as it began to worry me.

"What's going on, Niko? You've been too quiet."

"Secret meetings worry me. I don't like them, and I'm trying to think of reasons they might want one. Since I haven't directly run into them before, can you tell me more about the agency?"

"The BSA rides a fine line of keeping humans feeling safe with the procedures and rules concerning supernaturals, while also keeping many of our secrets as well to keep the peace. The BSA wants to know everything about everyone, however they don't want to expose most to the public. I don't trust most of the agents, and for good reason, but the agency doesn't want to be a group of fearmongers. I stick to Bethany Kirk, the agent assigned to me as a handler of sorts, not that they gave her a very strong leash to do anything. She's good, though. Trustworthy. I've made it clear to them that I won't see her replaced. It's a balancing act of deciding who is in charge of each situation, a battle where we trade blows without ever crossing a line no one can come back from."

"If they try anything, I'm not afraid to cross lines," he said, giving me a look that told me he wouldn't just cross lines; he would destroy them and never lose sleep over it.

"I don't think we're walking into a trap," I said, chuckling nervously. "I haven't done anything recently to warrant any hostility, Niko."

"Look at our world, Jacky. When does anyone need to do something to warrant hostility?" He shook his head. "I'll play nice."

"Thank you. We need to go in there at least showing them that we don't expect hostility. I need to work with these people and?—"

"That's what you're worried about?" Niko snorted. "Wow."

"No, what I'm really worried about is you getting violent the day they meet you and begin believing Carey isn't safe around you," I snapped. "This isn't the same world you've been living in, Niko. They have the power to take Carey away from Heath. We need her to reach eighteen before she's safe from their threat to her living with her own father."

He spoke in German for a moment, but the language switch didn't hide the curses from me.

"I… hadn't considered that," he finally admitted.

"We're subject to the laws of the United States. We're citizens of the country, not immortals hiding under its nose. Now, there are a lot of things we still get away with, but when it comes to human children and their supernatural families, we have to tread a very fine line. The BSA has already tried to pick that fight with Heath and me. We won that time. I don't want to take any more chances, and I damn sure won't let you risk anything."

I let him stew on that, and for fifteen minutes, it was just us and quiet music. I didn't know what was going through his head, but I knew he was going to remember what I had said about Carey's situation with us.

"It's already hard to raise kids in our world," he finally said. "I always worried about having to leave Dirk when I needed to go to a meeting that wasn't safe for him to be near. I taught him everything I could for his own safety. I got him that tattoo to protect him from being manipulated by other moon cursed, and there are very few witches who can pull that off." He rubbed his face. "You and Heath have to deal with all of that and then some."

"We make it work, but we have a lot more backup than you did raising Dirk."

"I thought I had backup," Niko said, his sudden bitterness making those words venomous.

Knowing that his bitterness came directly from inside the house, I tried to find anything I could say. We all worried so much about what the outside world could do to our children, which made the pain of what happened with Dirk tenfold. Who would ever think to protect a boy from his grandfather, who reportedly loved children? I had already had time to come to terms with it, being the person on the front line, trying to repair the damage slowly. I got to witness the love that made Dirk fight to live through the Change. I was the one he told the full truth of how he felt about the family he'd been adopted into and why. Niko rarely spoke of it, but I knew it was still an open wound.

"You have backup now."

He didn't say anything, and I didn't try to talk to him again.

Heath was already there when I pulled down the driveway to the ridiculous mansion I had gotten from dismantling the Dallas pack. I had renovated it, turning it into something useful to me, but I didn't spend much time at it. It wasn't my home, and it never would be. Niko followed silently, inspecting the building. I knew he had seen it before, but I couldn't recall how long he had spent there. I wanted him to move in when we arrived in Texas, but he wanted to be close to Dirk, and Dallas was two hours from my territory. That wasn't close enough to him. And most of the time, big cities and werecats didn't mix. There were some out there who made it work for them and enjoyed it, but most of us liked and needed something more rural.

"Hey, Jacky." Heath closed his laptop with a smile as I walked in to see him sitting at the bar.

"Hey," I replied as we quickly kissed. "Ready to hear about this?"

Niko went straight for the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water.

"Sure." Heath looked between me and Niko, clearly curious, but he didn't make any effort to pry.

"I have to be at the BSA with a plus one tomorrow at five in the morning. I wasn't allowed to bring you or any other werewolf?—"

"Stop," he said suddenly, the smile disappearing as quickly as he had lifted a hand to cut me off. "Don't say anymore."

"Oh, he knows something," Niko said softly, moving in a semicircle around me and my fiancé. "Well, that's even more interesting than this already was."

"Heath?" I asked, concerned now that I was walking into something bad.

"Follow every recommendation and order they've said, and don't pry," he said softly, leaning closer to me. "Don't make theories, and don't talk about ideas of what might be happening. If they haven't said you're in trouble, you aren't, so don't even consider that. Just be there."

"O-Okay." I was stunned by the shift in my fiancé's behavior, who looked deadly serious.

"I love you, and I should go now and get back to my own plans around the city. I'll be done by the end of the business day and will head back to Jacksonville, so there are no issues with me being too close." He kissed me almost fervently before grabbing his laptop. He waved at Niko as he walked out.

"He definitely knows something," Niko pointed out again. "Do you think he ever got a suspicious phone call to go to a mysterious meeting before?"

"I would guess he has." I tried not to take Heath's quick exit personally, but it was certainly out of character.

He would never do that unless he thinks doing otherwise would put me, Carey, or Landon in danger. I get it, Heath. I'll listen for now.

"Let's just settle in and get some food ordered. We've got to be up early." I grabbed my bag and headed for the stairs, leaving Niko in the kitchen with his water. Once I threw my bag into my room, I ordered enough food to cover for me and Niko through the next morning so we could have breakfast. When it arrived, I stashed it all in the fridge and went to hunt down Niko again. He wasn't on the main floor or in any of the rooms on the second. I didn't find him in the backyard, so I went down into the basement, finding him standing in the meeting room.

"Food is here," I said, watching him look around the simple room where I had held meetings with the werecats of the New World.

"This room. It didn't always serve this purpose, did it?" he asked, not looking at me as he continued to study it.

"Uh, no. It was the… It was where they caged werewolves when they got out of control under their Alpha after Heath. Since it's a secure basement, I decided to give it a new purpose."

"This is where you freed him," he whispered, moving a table to stop at a specific point in the room.

"Yeah, but how… How do you know that?" Crossing my arms, I tried to fight the uneasiness as Niko looked at me.

"I don't know," he said honestly. "I know the story of how you rescued him from this place. I'm a little sensitive to certain things, I guess. In the Black Forest, the vibe of something altered by the fae blends in with the rest of the world, but right here, I can feel it. There's just the smallest bit of residue that no amount of cleaning could get rid of."

"He was caged against his will because he was a threat to the witches trying to take over the pack. He was agitated. He and I exchanged some words, but I wanted to let him out, so I did. He stopped me from getting taken like Heath was by locking us down here since it has its own ventilation that's not connected to the rest of the mansion."

"Heightened emotions like fear, anger, and surprise… that makes sense." Niko nodded, licking his lips as he studied the spot again. "It'll finish fading away one day, but he really left a mark on this spot. Sorry. I never came down here during previous visits. Didn't know that Fenris was Rainer, obviously. I've scarred a lot of werewolves, and I hadn't seen him in a long time."

"He was unstable, so when the family came close to my territory, we kept him far away from everyone. He and Subira came across each other, but she didn't know about Rainer, did she?"

"Not at all, and considering what he had done to himself, there's a chance the fae magic protected him from her own abilities magically. To think my brother was so close and so far for so long…" Shaking his head, he came toward me. "Let's eat."

Nodding, I made sure he went up first and locked the door behind me. If there was just a little of Fenris left in that room somehow, I didn't want it disturbed.