A laugh, worse than the smile and the lament put together, but cut from the same cloth wheezed past the man’s bloody, bluing lips.
“Do it,” the man whispered, voice bearing out the last energy he had. With an exhale of breath, the man slumped to a boneless heap, seeming to drift off after the effort of offering himself to die.
“Yes. Do it, Legate,” the Reaper said, black robes billowing despite the lack of breeze.
Seath covered the body, almost shifting back to his wolf form in defense. The Reaper stayed at the edge of the broken woods, not coming any closer to Seath or the man.
“He’s mine, Death.” Seath eyed the Reaper straight on. He didn’t fear Death, but he didn’t go looking for them either. “I beat you to him.”
Death smiled enigmatically, leaning against their scythe. “He has time, not much, but he’s been seeking me for a while. Might be best to just give him what he wants, Alpha.”
“What happened to him?” Seath demanded. He took his eyes off the Reaper to study the man a beat longer. “Do I know him?” The man seemed familiar, but he had never seen this shifter before in his life.
“I only convey souls, not their stories. And answers to questions will cost you,” Death turned their head, as if listening to something and then made a small sound in their throat. “Well, well. What do you know, Alpha, you are right. He is yours.”
Seath was too busy trying to get a scent, trying to get anything off the broken man to figure out Death’s puzzles or the quiet joke he seemed to be making. He barely registered Death still standing there until they went quiet, still even for a Reaper. The black robes billowed, but the stillness was beyond eerie. Unnatural to Seath’s senses, even in the periphery of his vision.
Death looked up, sensing the pack members Seath had called to him and with a nod to Seath, the Reaper was gone. Dissolved into the air as if he had never been.
A cold seeped sharply into Seath’s bones, but he ignored it for trying to determine how to get the man to the Pack House with the least amount of harm. He wished for portal dust, but he had none and neither did any of the Pack gathering to his location.
In the next moment, Seath’s pack mates were there, and Seath quickly gave orders.
“We just beat Death, so let’s give them no reason to come back around.”
The Pack lifted up the broken man and made toward the Pack House.
The man never stirred.
Chapter two
A Disturbing Onion
Briarputacomfortinghand on his shoulder, but Seath could barely muster the focus to thank her for the effort at comfort. As always, a brush with Death had left him gloomy. As the Pack’s Second, he knew Briar was someone he could—should—lean on, but he paced the large glass walls that lined the back of the Pack House.
He sipped his tea, trying to warm away the chill left in his bones from his talk with Death. It would take more than tea, but Min ran a tight kitchen downstairs and if anything could get close to chasing away Death’s chill, it was likely blended by Min’s mortar and pestle in the Pack kitchens.
The Pack was large enough for a true hospital and had several in other towns, but Pack mates recovered better and faster when close to the Pack Alpha, so the clinic remained and expanded in the East Wing. The library, his offices, and Greene’s, remained in the middle. Residences on the west, services on the east, and the Alpha and business of the Pack front and center and accessible to the Pack as a whole.
It had been a full day since they had brought the mysterious shifter from the woods and Seath was pacing as he waited for reports. It felt like a day of nothing but tea and pacing, waiting for reports and then reading them as soon as they arrived.
Reports from the patrols he had beefed up out in the woods after finding the strange wolf without him tripping the perimeter alarms or anyones senses, and reports on the injured man himself. Reports on anyone declared missing lately.
And that’s where his mind stayed. Concerned about the wolf and concerned for the Pack. Hanging there all day, between the two in a churning cycle he couldn’t seem to move past except for the most rudimentary tasks.
Luke entered the study, nodding at Seath, and he and Briar took their places on each side of him at the round table. His Enforcers stepped in, each sitting in chairs that had long been designated to those who took a seat around the imposing table. It could hold almost twenty shifters.
There was no head to this table. Even if Greene was not away on Council business as he so often was, leaving Seath in charge, there would be no head to the table. Seath was going to be Pack Alpha by virtue of being the most dominant wolf in the pack. There was no need for a show of authority of a biological imperative their natures all recognized. He had passed the tests and the magic had chosen him. He led, from wherever he sat.
“I want the report from the guards, first,” Seath said. Undoubtedly, the well-trained Enforcers reporting on patrols would be the quickest item of the two on the agenda that evening. He nodded to his Enforcer Ronin and the witch Serepta.
“We found no disturbance of the boundary, Alpha,” Serepta said. “The threshold allowed the wolf in, simple as that.”
“But, we can track the shifter’s tracks to a point beyond the boundary,” Ronin supplied. “There is a beginning point, and it looks like he was running. The crossing of the boundary may have been accidental. However, his path was somewhat straight. If he had kept the course, he would arrive at the Pack House.”
“Is that supposed to be good news?” Seath’s Alpha voice carried easily without the need for any artificial amplification. His eyebrows arched. “The fact that someone could pass without our knowledge. Or that he may have done so in an attempt to seek help? Either way you cut it; it is disturbing. Whether accidental or intentional to be here, here he is, and the boundary threshold alarmed no one.”
Seath thought of the way the omega had exposed his neck for a death-bite. He had only told Luke what had happened in the woods. It haunted him. The lament, the beautiful omega driven to invite Death. Disturbing. The whole business was a disturbing onion, layers upon layers of causes for concern.
