"He sold me to Brass."
I grunted when Rad's arm tightened around me.
"He sold you to Brass?"
"Like I said, he doesn't take the kids until they are at least five years old. He made a deal with Brass for him to take care of Sy until he was five. In exchange, Brass got me. Brass used Sy to keep me in line. If I acted out or refused an order, not only did he beat me, but he threatened to beat Sy."
Rad sucked in a shaky breath. "Did he ever touch Sy?"
"Only once," I replied. "It was right after that that we escaped."
Watching Brass hit my three year old brother would be forever etched in my mind. It was a horror that I never wanted to see again. It had been the main motivating factor for being on the run. I refused to ever allow my baby brother to be hit again.
"That's why you were so terrified of Brass."
"It's one of the reasons," I answered Rad. "I also knew that there was a strong possibility that Brass would tell Payne where we were, which is one of the reason why I knew we couldn't stay at the ranch very long."
"You think those men that wanted to search the ranch were sent by Payne?" Rad asked.
I nodded because I knew they were. "Is there any other reason a bunch of soldiers would come to search the ranch?"
"Since they have already tried to search the ranch, do you think it's safe for you and Sy to go back there?"
"I'm not sure any place is safe, Rad. Elder Payne has a lot of contacts. He also has a lot of power."
"That's one of the reasons I was undercover," Val pointed out. "Elder Ridge discovered that Payne was using council resources to search for a man he deemed a danger to shifters everywhere, one that had kidnapped a small child. He said he wanted to find the child and return him to his parents."
I snorted as I rolled my eyes. "Oh, I'll just bet he did."
"Why is Payne sending all these kids to a military academy?" Rad asked. "What's the point? If he's sleeping around and getting women pregnant, so what? It might be scandal material, but—"
"Every kid that is sent to Greenville Academy is a dire wolf."
"Holy shit," Rad gasped. "He's building a dire wolf army, one kid at a time."
"I suspect that the number of kids Elder Payne has out there is double if not triple the amount that is sent to the academy," I said. "Only the dire wolves are sent there. They are trained to be soldiers that are totally loyal to him."
I let out a little laugh. It was a bitter sound. "As a plan, it's a pretty good one, even if it will take him years to achieve it. The kids I know about at the academy are all varying ages, but it's not them I'm worried about. It's the ones that have already graduated from Greenville Academy that concern me. Where are they and what are they up to?"
Val rubbed his hands over his face before dropping them down to his thighs. "I need to report this to Elder Ridge."
"And what are you going to report?" I asked. "With the exception of my mother, what laws has he broken? And eventhen it's my word against his. I didn't actually see him kill my mother. I arrived afterward. He could swear on a stack of bibles that he just came to see his son and found my mother on the kitchen floor."
"Elder Ridge still needs to know about this," Val insisted. "If Payne is building a dire army, we need to stop him. He could take over the entire shifter world."
I was pretty sure that was his plan. I just refused to allow Sy to be a part of it. Sy might be a fire wolf, but he wasn't going to be forced to fight for a man with no morals.
"I have a question," Val stated. "How does Payne even know these kids are dire wolves? Until we transition, no one knows if they are a dire wolf or not?"
I shook my head. "I don't know, but he has some way to figure it out. At least, I think he does. Maybe he sends all of his kids to the academy, but the only ones that were there when I investigated were dire wolves."
I frowned as I thought about it and then shook my head again. "No, that doesn't make sense either. Those kids were all different ages, some too young to transition."
"How do you know they were dire wolves?" Rad asked.
"It was in their records." It had been hard as crap to find the records. I'd had to have a friend hack into their computer system to find what I needed.
Luckily, it had been a friend that was a shifter with a rebellious streak a mile wide. He had been so excited at the prospect of hacking the academy's system that he'd even rubbed his hands together and let out a maniacal laugh.
