Seath paced the library, then took a seat with Briar and Luke at the table. It was only them with Serepta this morning. Both he and Luke had slept well last night after hearing how well their patient was doing, and until the meeting with Lycan a few minutes ago, he had been feeling almost optimistic about the day. Seath’s mind replayed what had just happened. The omega had finally been conscious long enough to talk to after almost a week of recovering, only to pass out because of the question Seath asked.
Alpha Greene would be back soon, and he could use his take on the shifter in the medical clinic.
“I appreciate you going to that trouble. It couldn’t have been that easy,” Seath said. While the coven was Pack, witches were notorious for doing things on their own timetable.
“After examining him, it is clear he is spellbound. Or at least, that’s what I would call it. Whatever happened to your shifter had witch help. Part of his mind is spellbound for sure. How or what kind of magic are harder questions to answer. And I don’t think any of us believe that shifter was bound in silver and erased of scent for his own good,” Serepta replied. “Scent and memories. I’ve never seen a weave that could do that, and I can’t give you more answers without a coven convened under the full moon where I can actually examine him.”
Seath grunted. There was the Council, and a million other ways to make consequences for a shifter, if the spellbinding was some sort of punishment. There were pack laws that applied to each pack member and to things that happened under the jurisdiction of their sovereign land. They were a country to themselves, just as non-shifter countries were. Some shifters, of course, lived among non-shifters, but no matter where there was still a law somewhere to be applied.
Brutal treatment like Lycan had endured was not heard of in the modern age. That was the way of a bygone era. Of war-crimes and kidnappings. Not the way of the current world. It was not anything any sovereign Seath knew of would consider justice. Wolfsbane itself was prohibited in every country that was part of the Council and most that were not.
Then there was the Council itself, a voluntary group of sovereigns bound by morality and contract. The largest and the richest were all part of the Council. It had an ability to pull countries together when necessary through mutual accords to which all member sovereigns had taken part in and agreed. It wasn’t binding beyond the sovereign’s own word, but if a shifter was making trouble outside of their own pack and the pack wasn’t doing anything about it, or if the pack was making trouble, then the force of the Council allies could be effective in bringing things back in line.
Not that Seath thought Lycan was capable of an international incident. But, what he had been subjected to was beyond the pale. Such cruelty to hold him, not as some sort of punishment, or at least it didn’t seem that way. Which was odd in itself. The injuries seemed personal, and all Seath or anyone could sense or observe from Lycan in the days he had been there was that he was a gentle omega, but maybe his beauty concealed something worthy of the brutality he had endured. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time someone misread a captivating face.
“Lycan,” Seath said, not satisfied with the name on his tongue. But, it was important to him for some reason for the man to quit being referred to as the “strange shifter” or the “young omega” but be known by his name, or at least, the name they had for him.
“Can we be sure that’s even his real name?” Briar asked.
“I would say fairly certainly it isn’t,” Luke added.
“No body language of deception,” Seath said. “So he believes it is, at least, or knows no other. Plus, if you are his captors, you are obfuscating his scent and his wolf to hide him, binding him in silver to keep him from running, taking his name is extra leverage against escape, or at least an extra insurance to find him if he doesn’t know his own identity. Not that it matters, because the pain of him searching for the spellbound parts of himself is so great he can’t bear it.”
“Can’t exactly send out questions to the packs about a missing wolf named Lycan,” Briar agreed. “Unless we know what pack had him before . . .if it even was a pack.”
Seath shook his head at the mere thought of attempting what Briar was alluding to. Not only would it be dangerous since it was safe to assumesomeonewanted Lycan back, it would be impossible. While some packs were large and established like theirs, many others were not, composed of nomadic bands or loosely connected groups or even lone wolves that floated from pack to pack. And that was just the wolf shifters.
“Unless they left him,” Briar said.
“No,” Seath answered immediately. He had seen some things—death, Pack Leadership changes that were more like a coup, the infighting of all kinds of beings with all kinds of abilities, including darker magic. But nothing, none of that prepared him for the hurt and abused omega he found in the forest, ready to bear his neck and invite his own death.
Whatever had driven Lycan to that point was not simply being left somewhere by his former pack. Of that he was certain. The wolf nature was to embrace the next passage of life, of returning to the earth, of giving back to the larger cycle and balance they were all part of. Suicidal wolves were not a concept any of them were familiar with. And yet, that is what the omega had been driven to.
Seath stilled himself from shivering, remembering the icy presence of Death in the woods as if they were in the room. Did Death still linger near Lycan? Seath did not sense them, and he was one of the few that could see Death and feel its presence. But no, in Luke’s care Lycan had gotten stronger, and Death hadn’t come around again.
Luke shared Seath’s look. “Agreed,” Luke said, no doubt having similar thoughts to Seath’s about the possibility of Lycan simply being left in the middle of nowhere. No. He had put himself in the middle of nowhere. Somehow.
“The coven said that if he is spellbound it is possible it works both ways. To hide him from others and to hide from himself. If he tries to access certain information, they could have woven it where he cannot get to those things without harm to himself, which is what I observed.” Serepta chimed in.
“So did I,” Seath said with a sigh. “I asked him a question this morning, and he passed out trying to answer it. He was clearly in a great deal of pain.”
It hadn’t occurred to him at first, but it should have. What was the point of going through the restraints and the hiding if your prisoner could just tell everything if he managed to free himself? No, someone had taken too many precautions with Lycan. If you could hide his scent and presence from others, which Seath had not ever heard of, then certainly they wrapped up some of his memories and knowledge, something Seath knew was possible.
He needed Greene’s wisdom as the Pack Alpha here. While Seath’s instincts were sharp as the Pack Legate, he was not the full Pack Alpha—a distinction that rarely seemed to matter given Greene’s absences to sit as their representative to the Council, but did in this instance.
That afternoon, Luke, Trav, and Seath tried again to speak to Lycan. Serepta came too, but she made it clear her role was more to observe the magic. The shifter’s wolves could smell the magic that bound Lycan, but it was only Serepta who could see it.
“I’m sorry about earlier, Alpha,” Lycan said, head downcast, neck exposed in submission when they asked if they could try talking again, perhaps with something else he could tell them.
Seath watched as the omega seemed to vibrate under his gaze. Was it nerves? Fear? Without scent, he had no way of knowing. Even without it, his body responded to what it saw, which was a distressed omega. A distressed omega under his protection as Pack Legate and as the one who rescued him. All of Seath’s instincts wanted him to protect this omega. Fiercely.
“No, Lycan, I am the one who is sorry,” Seath said and instantly Lycan’s breath caught and his downcast eyes flew wide. He could not fathom an apology from the Pack Legate. His mind raced to figure out the trick.
“You must not try to answer questions that harm you. We want to know what happened to you, to help you. But, you must not try to get information if it causes pain.” Seath had placed it as an order, reading that Lycan was better at taking orders than requests.
“Yes, Alpha.”
Seath relaxed when the slight tremors stopped racing under Lycan’s skin, and he introduced Serepta to the omega. She had observed him while he was sleeping, but this would be the first meeting.
