“You think this is witchcraft?” Seath asked Serepta, unable to be anything but direct.
“We need the coven,” Serepta confirmed. “Maybe Caine,” she allowed, not willing to give the vampire too much credit. “If I could examine this omega, then I could tell you if magic was used to suppress the scent. It would make the coven more productive if I could examine the omega first.”
“And the Wolfsbane?” Seath asked.
“If he was kept, we can guess someone wanted him to be compliant. Wolf healing wouldn’t help with that. Wolfsbane ensured he couldn’t heal himself, nor could he shift,” Briar mused, working through the puzzle that had landed at their feet. “Maybe he’s strong—a threat?”
The table was full of scowls, working through the same concerns. Omegas were built just like the strange shifter, slighter than Alphas, but they were still strong wolves, and often faster healers than Alphas. Many were gifted. Omegas were rare, and usually protected. Male omegas, the rarest, were the most likely to be gifted if turned into shifters rather than being born that way, although they were the least likely to survive a turning. So much so that most wouldn’t bother to try, despite the low number of male omegas. They were also the most likely to be sought after and protected. Most likely to be fetishized. Seath thought back to the trauma, and the beauty of the omega. Kept like a prize? For whom? And at what price?
There had to be more to this equation, because the numbers they had simply didn’t add up.
“Serepta, is it possible this cloaking, if magical, cloaks him from even the people who administered it? As in, perhaps if he got away, they couldn’t track him?” Seath asked.
Serepta nodded as she contemplated the question. “It would be very much possible, Alpha. In fact, such a spell that binds him, if that’s true, would be complex and thus the nuance of not cloaking these things—his scent, his strength—to certain people and not others would be impossible to weave. It would likely cloak it or not, unable to be selective.”
“Which is fine, if you are keeping him weak with Wolfsbane and in silver,” Briar said. “He can’t leave, and no one knows he’s there.”
“But hedidleave,” Seath reminded them. “And someone very much wanted to keep him.”
The Enforcers gave the reports on the other happenings in the Pack, although the strange shifter was the most pressing issue. Seath gave an order to report any new people in the Pack territory. People passed in and out of their several port cities, but each would have Pack members on alert for anyone asking questions.
They were a small country, the NorthWest pack. Named so due to their location geographically on the continent. A peaceful continent. They were well-liked. They were well-off, having natural resources and a major trade port that kept them self-sufficient and well-funded as well as being strategically important. Greene had seen to that, as Alpha he had raised them to a time of prosperity. They had no enemies Seath knew of, but Greene was often gone to the Council, and perhaps one of their alliances was not as strong as he believed it to be.
A question he should ask.
Before long, the group dispersed. Briar and Luke lived at the Pack House and stayed behind, but most of the other Enforcers lived in their own homes on the compound of the Pack House, and a few even in the town of Lupine, which abutted the Pack House campus.
“I don’t think those extra patrols will yield anything, Alpha,” Briar said, and Seath nodded. He felt the same, but until more was known, it wasn’t worth the risk of not having them.
“I know. We don’t have any open disputes with anyone. But, if someone is looking for him, and they have some ability to not trigger the threshold, to not alert us to their presence . . .”
“I think they are definitely looking for him,” Luke said. “But I think the cross-over to our territory didn’t register because of whatever is obscuring him in general. It may be coincidental that it didn’t trip the perimeter, and that coincidence may not be known to whomever did it. Or. . .”
“Or?”
Luke shrugged, “Or, for some reason, the barrier wanted to let him in. Something for Serepta and her coven to consider, I suppose. But, I don’t think getting through the border was the goal of the strange magic. He certainly was not sent over the boundary lines just to see what would happen.”
“I agree. Everything suggests whatever was done to him was to hide him, not to cross borders with impunity,” Seath agreed.
‘Then who is he?” Briar asked.
Chapter three
John Doe of the Wolf World
Run.
They found you.
Run.
The thought forced Lycan’s eyes open immediately, and even though he couldn’t adjust to the blinding light he knew he was wrong.
They hadn’t found him.
If they had, he would be dead. Or hurting more than this.
And that was odd, because he did hurt—deep physical pain existed across all parts of his body that he could catalog. His brain felt too heavy to be held up in his head. But the pain didn’t seem like the pain he usually knew. It was different somehow.
