Sad.
During their approach, he hadn’t bothered trying to spot his old cottage because that section of the property was thickly overgrown now. But he closed his eyes and deeply inhaled, trying to remember that last run through the woods, not knowing at the time it’d be his very last time touching paws to the land.
A land he’d very much loved and never thought he’d see again due to Faegan. He now regretted not taking a gun and killing Faegan himself back then—ironically, he would have gotten away with it and then become the head of the pack since Donnel wasn’t a shifter, as well as the lord of their estate in the process—but at the time, he wanted to do neither and didn’t feel it was worth killing over.
If only I could go back in time and save everyone this anguish.
He finally opened his eyes, turning to look. So many vaguely familiar scents, but now overlain with the ever-present hints of modernity and technology—gas fumes—sorry, petrol—various human-centric scents wafting on the breeze, such as food cooking, someone’s laundry, even the hint of rubber that wore off tires and accumulated along the asphalt roads nearby.
And from this very spot, he saw three cell towers and the tops of a line of high-tension electricity pylons marching off into the distance.
Peyton had started toward the house, then turned back when he realized Hamish hadn’t moved. “Are you okay?”
He swallowed hard. “Yeah.” His mouth had gone dry, but still he forced his feet forward, following the others.
They entered through one of the rear French doors that led into the dining room. On the dining room table, which looked like the one he remembered, were laptops and paperwork and a printer, along with various other trappings of a temporary office.
“We’ve made this a secondary command center,” Trevor explained.
Hamish nodded but he couldn’t move, staring around the room.
It was dingier, darker—if that was possible, considering it now had newer electric lighting—and more suffocating than it ever felt back then.
The sour stench of his brother’s scent permeated every breath Hamish took.
“He never even changed the bloody wallpaper,” Hamish said. “Miserly bastard.” Then he looked down. The hardwood floors were clean, but the tattered rug beneath the table?—
“Ha. Same carpet, too,” Hamish noted.
“Do you need a moment?” Peyton asked.
“I’d kill fer a glass o’ water,” Hamish said, no longer trying to suppress his old accent.
One of Trevor’s men silently nodded and disappeared through the doorway that Hamish knew led to the kitchen.
Hamish slowly turned, studying old paintings and portraits on the walls. These, too, were the same, best he could tell. Long-dead people whose names he mostly couldn’t remember, if he ever knew them at all. While there were a few framed photographs scattered around of Tamsin, he noted there were none of Faegan’s other sons, or of Hyacinth. There were a few pictures of a couple of men he didn’t recognize, younger men, relatively speaking. The pictures looked like they were taken after WWII, if he was forced to guess.
“Where was Hyacinth, anyway?” Hamish asked. “When everything happened?”
“She was here,” Trevor said. “The front door wasn’t locked. My men made entry and found her unconscious upstairs in bed. Either she’d taken or been forced to take what for a human would have been a lethal dose of alprazolam. Nearly was for her. Our doctor ended up pumping her stomach.”
“Of what?” Hamish asked.
“Xanax,” Ken said. “Used for anxiety and related conditions.”
Hamish turned to look at him, then Trevor. “She doesn’t know if she took them or not?” The man returned with Hamish’s water, and he forced himself not to gulp it.
“She’s pretty scrambled,” Peyton said. “Serious C-PTSD from the decades of systematic abuse she suffered, the trauma of Faegan murdering Ben and Ben’s mate right in front of her, then losing Tamsin… Yeah. Like I said, I interrogated her, as did several other Primes. She’s not lying and I’d stake my life on it.”
“Was Faegan always an asshole?” Ken asked Hamish.
“My eldest brother had an inferiority complex,” Hamish said. “From when we were children. He was shorter than Father, shorter even than me and Donnel. His first son, Ardin, wasn’t a shifter, and?—”
“Whoa, wait,” Peyton said. “First son? I never heard of a son named Ardin. She never mentioned him when we questioned her.”
“That’s because Faegan drowned him when he was five. Claimed it was a fishing accident, but I know I certainly didn’t believe that, and Hyacinth likely didn’t either.”
“Holy shit,” Ken said. “So that’s two sons he’s killed that we know of.”
