“We could try pulling it out of your nose, but we might pull your brain right along with it,” Jen said, her voice sounding like her typical sarcastic self.
“There will be no brain pulling,” he warned. “If you took me out then you wouldn’t have a historian who knew all the archives—digital and paper—like the back of his hand. I am strictly off limits.”
“To anyone but Zara, right?” Jen asked.
Wadim glanced at his mate whose face had gone a shade of red that made him think of red roses containing a haze of morning dew.
“What do you need, Jen?” he asked, ignoring her remark, not wanting to embarrass Zara any further.
“Vasile is pacing, Decebel is giving the unknown fae the death stare, Fane is practicing being like Decebel, and Costin is trying to make the fae, who have the blankest faces I’ve ever seen, laugh. I’m serious. No smiles, no facial movement at all. They’re handsome and the one called Ona is beautiful, but their personalities leave much to be desired. In short, I had to get out of there. The tension was tight and, knowing me, I’d be the one to make someone snap.”
“So you came here for refuge?” Wadim said as he turned his chair to face her.
“I wanted to see Zara,” Jen said. “You’ve kept her prisoner down here for the past couple days, and I needed to make sure you hadn’t tied her to your bed.”
“UGH.” Zara groaned. “Could we please not talk about Wadim tying me to a bed right now?”
Wadim couldn’t help but grin. “Does that mean we can talk about it later?”
“Ooh, he got you there. You sort of walked right into that one.” Jen crossed her arms in front of her and leaned against the wall closest to the computer monitors on his desk.
“Earlier you said, ‘Why are we so stupid?’,” Zara said, completely changing the subject. “Why do you think we’re stupid? What did you find?”
He winked at her, making it clear that he didn’t miss her evasion of the topic. He turned back around to face his screen and began scrolling quickly through the text. “Not there, not there, not there, wait … and boom. Got it.” He pointed to a paragraph and then began reading out loud. “There is a new threat facing our race. The Order of the Burning Claw is a new radical organization that has grown in numbers at an alarming rate. We have been attempting to find their headquarters with no success. We do know the organization is led by a vampire named Sincaro. We are still trying to determine the group’s ultimate goal. They haven’t exhibited any violence so far, but vampires aren’t known for their self-control. For now, we will wait and watch.” Wadim looked up from the screen and spoke to the others.
“We’re stupid because we should have recognized that a radical organization of supernatural beings would not remain harmless. We should have struck while they were still relatively small. But we didn’t. We waited and then it was too late,” Wadim explained.
“What did they do that made the leaders of the packs realize they’d waited too long?” Zara asked.
Wadim scrolled through more text until stopping again and then reading out loud. “The Order of the Burning Claw began as an organization that a supernatural could join voluntarily. However, five years after the start of TOBC, they resorted to attempting to force compliance. The fae have contacted us to let us know they are beginning to receive reports of supernaturals being murdered if they refuse to join TOBC. At this time, it is unclear as to how many people the organization has killed. The fae are looking into it, and the Alphas in the United States will be joining in the hunt. We realize we should have acted swiftly in stifling their message and cause. Now we are reaping the results of our inaction.”
“Whoa.” Jen breathed out. “That’s intense.”
Wadim nodded. “According to the date on this record, this happened before the werewolf wars.” He printed off a copy of the text and turned to face Jen.
“I think it’s time for you to take this to Vasile,” Jen said.
“Agreed. And I think we are going to be paying the Alphas in the U.S. a visit,” Wadim added.
“Road trip,” Jen sang out.
Zara snorted. “Wouldn’t it be more of an air trip?”
Jen laughed. “That sounds like some sort of drug reaction.”
Wadim stood up and reached for Zara’s hand. He pulled her up from her seat and placed his palm against her face as he looked down at her. “You don’t have to come if you’d rather stay down here.”
“I disagree wholeheartedly,” Jen said.
Wadim rolled his eyes. “You aren’t invited to this conversation, Jen.”
“I want to come,” Zara assured him. “If I’m a member of this pack, and mated to the historian, then I need to step up and help.”
Jen held up a hand to her. “High five, little Z,” she said. “You’re a woman after my own heart. When we get kicked, we don’t stay down for long, and when we get up, we come up snapping sharp fangs at the idiot who kicked us.”
“And who, exactly, kicked us?” Zara asked as they headed for the stairs.
Jen shrugged. “There’s been several but we’ve taken them out. You, on the other hand, have been kicked in the balls repeatedly by life, most recently by a dormant gene that has been hibernating in your DNA. But you aren’t going to let that pesky bit of wolf DNA make you cower in a corner. You’re going tooo,” Jen drew out the word and raised her eyebrows at Zara.
