She smiled and put her hand on her stomach. “Five months along. I can’t wait.” I impulsively walked up to her and gave her a hug with my free hand. She was stunned at first, then hugged me back. I got the feeling she didn’t get a lot of hugs in her line of work.
We all followed Black Ker up the stairs and into the plane.
It was quite an elegant decor; rich cherry woodwork, supple black leather seats, and white carpeting. I put Charlie into a seat near the door that reclined back into a bed and buckled him in. One of the pilots came back, not even glancing at us, and pulled up the stairs and closed the door. “Twenty minutes to wheels up,” he said as he returned to the cockpit.
The three of us sat around the table in facing chairs; a wonderful-smelling array of food was laid out for us. I picked up a Maryland blue crab sandwich, the crab cooked to perfection with Old Bay and mayonnaise on top. Soon my plate was full of foods I’d dreamed of, or not known existed. There wasn’t a lot of conversation as I pigged out on food that most definitely wasn’t Army issue. Finally, my belly distended like I was four months pregnant, I leaned back in my chair as we took off.
“Where are we headed?”
“Minot, North Dakota.” Al smiled at my reaction. “Hey, this is a much more comfortable return than your trip from there.”
I smiled back, that armored car ride had sucked. “I finally get to go home?” Their faces fell. “Wait. What aren’t you telling me?”
Al opened his phone, flipping through the photos until he got to the one he wanted. It was a satellite photo of my home and the street; the house that I grew up in was in ruins. “I’m sorry, shortly after your arrest Homeland Security started to dig into your background and activities. They concluded you were either a werewolf or harboring werewolves. An assault team was sent; they used flash bangs to enter, they didn’t find anyone but it set the house on fire. They wouldn’t let fire crews in, so it burned to the ground.”
I looked at the phone, tears rolling down my face as I thought of everything I had lost. “What about the others in the neighborhood?”
“Only Tom and Shelley still live there. The other houses have been empty since you were taken.” I nodded, it was probably for the best. Without the cover of the main house, none of the other houses could support and protect the entire Pack.
“So where are my people?”
“We think they took refuge in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation,” Ker said. “We didn’t push too much, but the beach on Lake Sakakawea is where we photographed Craig. My surveillance guy didn’t want to spook him.”
“So why would they be in danger if they are hidden away?” I was so thankful we had been friends with Alpha Rose Stormwater, enough so that she helped my little Pack.
“Well, the FBI has been trying to track down a group of cyber-saboteurs who have been hampering the war effort. They’ve been successful in narrowing the search area down to an area that includes the reservation. It’s only a matter of time.”
I smiled, thinking that Josh was still getting it done two years later. Who would have thought that the most successful actions on our side would be done by teenage hackers? “So are they meeting us?”
Al shook his head. “They have no idea we are coming, no idea we got you. Ker left a message for them to contact us since we brought in Alpha Marvin, but we haven’t had a response yet. It was only two days ago we found out you were still alive and where you were being held. I made some phone calls and got permission to have you transferred to my custody; the Department of Defense didn’t fight it too much because they haven’t gotten anything from you. That brings us up to now.”
“So you don’t know where he is, and he doesn’t know I’m coming.”
“Yep.” Ker smiled at me. “He’s in for a hell of a shock.”
We talked for a few more minutes, but when the conversation slacked Ker leaned her chair back and promptly went to sleep. “She’s a cat,” Al said, “She does that all the time.”
I was a little jealous, the years of captivity had trained me to stay alert during the day and to sleep lightly at night. “It’s all right.”
“You fascinate me, Ella. You’re everything she told me you were, but more.”
“What do you mean?” We had met exactly once before, when she snuck into my bedroom while I was in the shower. It didn’t mean we were besties.
“Well, take what happened with Alpha Marvin. Here’s a man who helped kill both your parents, who tried to kill you several times, who stole millions of dollars from you and has been in hiding for two years. Yet, when you are left with him, you killed him with all the emotion of a person stomping on a spider that they find in their bathroom. It wasn’t what I expected.”
“I killed, but I’m not a killer, Al.” I didn’t like where this was going.
“Yet you kill, and do so efficiently and without emotion, yet you aren’t a psychopath. It’s a rare ability.”
I snorted. “Not one I wanted, just one I ended up with. You wouldn’t understand.” I reached forward and took one of the Cokes that was in the bucket of ice. God, I had missed caffeine.
“Explain it to me then. Tell me how you can show such compassion towards someone like Charlie, while being so detached with someone like Marvin.” He sat back, his hands folded over his belt.
“You know the basic history. How the four Alphas conspired to auction me off as a mate so one of the sons could take over my Pack, and bring power and money to the alliance with them.” He nodded. “The first man I killed was my rapist. I was desperate, my dreams were over if I submitted to him, and I almost died fighting him off. My wolf DID die, leaving me alone and shattered. Still, it was self-defense. I never regretted for a second what I did to that bastard.”
I looked at him, he was studying me as I continued the story. “I made a blood vow to my parents after that, that I would avenge their deaths. My parents were everything to me, they didn’t deserve the death they were given; those men were without honor. They sacrificed their lives in a hope that I would get away. With no wolf and no Pack, I thought that I would use the money they left me to kill the four. I hated them; I wanted them to suffer, to have everything taken from them just as everything I had was taken from me. Only then did I want them to find out I had done it, and I wanted to be the one who killed them. This is what gave me the will to continue on when my heart wanted to give up.” I took a drink and checked Charlie, he was still dead to the world.
“When Marvin came to my hospital room and offered a truce at a price, I agreed because money was the least of my worries. I needed time. I didn’t think he would give me up so quickly. The second man I killed was going to capture or kill me, he underestimated me and paid the price with his lift. Again, self-defense, but now I’d killed two. I slept just fine, thank you.”
“Yet, you didn’t have your revenge.” He grabbed a slice of turtle cheesecake off the table, I’d already had one and it was fabulous. He saw my eyes and handed it to me, taking a piece of chocolate cake instead. Wise man.
“I was good for a while. I had found a lover, and then found I was pregnant. I may have killed men, but I was never going to kill an innocent baby. Finding myself pregnant with what later became known as my rapist’s twin boys, that changed everything for me. I wanted revenge, but that was no longer the only thing left in my life. I also found out that the bonds of family and Pack were deeper than I had anticipated. Darry, Marge and Mabel stuck with me, even though I had no wolf and no bond with them anymore. They plus Mark gave me reasons to live.” I smiled, thinking back of that time. “I hadn’t cared before if I died fighting the Alphas, because I didn’t see a life past that anyway. I’m so glad I had the help of Doug and Remi, and their Pack.” I had to stop for a moment to wipe my eyes, it still hurt to think of them.
“When the Packs attacked me, Remi, Renee and Darryl, I was fighting for my family and myself. The three I killed, the six others that died, I had no remorse for what I did. I later regretted the way we disposed of their bodies, because they were wolves just following their Alpha’s orders. So now my body count is up to five.”
“In aviation, you’d be an ace.”
I snickered. “Yeah, I’ll get stickers for my truck.” I took another bite of caramel cheesecake heaven. “I started to second guess my strategy after that. I wanted the Alphas and Lunas who had killed my parents to die, because that was justice for my parents. I didn’t want to see innocent wolves in their Packs suffer for the lack of honor their Alphas had. It became less personal to me. I wanted them to suffer and die, sure, but I was all right if someone else did it. When Dennis told me what happened with his daughter, I didn’t mind that he was the one to end Scott Tanner. I was satisfied that he died in front of his Pack which had turned its back on him.”