“Do we have the wrong village?” But even as I said it—somewhat hopefully, given the wrong village meant the woman might not be the drug maker she seemed—I knew it couldn’t be. Dante echoed my ensuing thoughts.
“Granny has a residence here, as does her chief dog.” He held onto the clipboard. “She cut this place off from society and keeps it in hiding. Most importantly, she stays in a tiny cottage and forces her dog to stay in worse conditions. This place is important. It’s not like this is any sort of vacation home for her.”
“Agree. But...” I shook my head again. “This just doesn’t add up.”
“The queen started in a little shack at first, didn’t she?” Dante said. “She was able to work miracles from a home garden.”
Tanix shrugged. “That’s true. I’ve heard the stories. But that was only for her village at the time, right? She had help with larger areas. Now?” He blew out a breath. “She has a team of people and a huge, well-organized garden. The faeries do, too.”
“And both of those produce double what Granny is.”
“Still.” Dante lifted his eyebrows. “Four or five times the staff and garden space but only double the output? Maybetriple?One sober person and a few high minions shouldn’t be able to produce what Granny is putting out there.”
“Let’s check out that product storage area.” I motioned for Nova to lead the way.
Walking through the village was a surreal experience. No one lay damaged in the streets, having attacked to protect their home. No one had even shifted. Some stood on porches and others at windows, watching us pass, mostly blank expressions. It was as though it didn’t really matter that we’d come. Like it didn’t change the trajectory of their lives. I’d never seen anything like it.
On the way to the product storage area, Nova had me stop in to see the person they surmised was Mr. Poet.
The man had been beaten to shit. His jaw was newly healed after being dislocated, his eyes were still mostly swollen shut, and his limbs were healing from obvious broken bones. He had access to his animal—Nova reported that everyone besides the woman had—and so his healing was progressing, but an incredible amount of damage had been done. He’d be down for several days.
He had no problem talking.
“You guys here to take that dud?” he asked immediately, his busted lip curling. “I knew she was trouble. People like her have no respect for normal shifter society. She dragged us all in with her, that’s what she did. Ask my mate, Mindy. I said it as soon as Granny let that no-magic cur stay here. ‘She’ll drag us into the dirt,’ I said. And she did.” He’d huffed, wincing with the effort. “Lifted us out of poverty, my ass. I’d rather be poor and barely make ends meet than be trapped here by that old woman and her prized dud, doing shit I hate, punished for every Gods-damned thing. Take her. Get her out of here. Kill them both. Just leave us be.”
I’d barely been able to breathe by the end of his tirade, shaking with rage. Everything might’ve been true. Certainly seemed so, at any rate. But calling the woman a dud, her suppressed wolf a natural pair to my own—calling her a cur, the biggest slight to a shifter there was—the primal part of me recoiled. I’d wanted to strike out to silence him. To do worse damage than the person before me, to teach him a lesson about how one should speak about my true mate.
Instead, I’d held my composure with everything I’d had, thanked him for his information, and left the rest of the questioning to Tanix. It was the best I could do. I knew no one would fault me for it. The strange bond of true mates might not make rational sense, but the primal element of it couldn’t be denied. I would suffer her punishment for the crimes she’d committed, but I would not force myself to endure a small-minded narrative from someone who’d never given her a chance because she didn’t have access to her animal.
I let Nova lead me to the village center and a small supply shed in the corner. Imagine, being distrusted and hated from the get-go, the sentiment never thawing even though two people worked in close proximity. What must her life have been like if the person closest to her fundamentally despised her for what she represented—a shifter without magic. When her entire person, from day one, was reduced down to something she couldn’t control.
Somethingshecouldn’t control. Granny damn well could’ve.
Granny had a good amount of power. Plenty to pull out the woman’s animal, at any rate. The woman wouldn’t need much, just a gentle tug from any decent alpha. Granny would’ve known that. She would’ve felt it. She’d purposely kept the woman suppressed, and in so doing, ensured the woman would be despised by her co-worker and likely many others in this backwards village.
What a fucking life.
With my heart now beating too fast—a warning that I needed to stop thinking about this or risk softening toward her too much—I took in the village center. There was a small play structure for the children amid a thick pelt of grass. That was nice, at least. A few benches ringed around the edge, all empty, and sheds lined the north side. Those appeared to be better built than the houses and were newer as well, a few with windows and counters, as though used to sell something.
“Is this what passes as their village market?” I asked as we headed to the end of the row.
“Granny supplies what they need, remember?” Dante said, shadowing Nova and me. “She buys in large quantities and ships it here.”
“Yes, given that was how we found the location of this place, I am aware,” I said semi-patiently. “But they must have a market for personally made items, little things to trade to keep their community going.”
Dante grunted. “Probably, since they have a small setup for it. No idea what they’d trade, though. I looked over the supply manifests we managed to grab from Granny’s estate. She had all the necessary needs met. Not a lot of any one thing, but enough. They wouldn’t have needed to trade for supplies.”
“Maybe just to keep people busy?” Nova offered. “Make them feel like they were still part of an active society, trading with their neighbors, offering some sort of value to their community?”
“Given the tirade of Mr. Poet,” Dante said as Nova opened the supply shed, “it didn’t work.”
“Maybe not for him...” She stepped aside. “It didn’t have a lock.”
I paused before stepping up. “It didn’t have a lock?”
“No. The doors had been closed, the contents as you see, but no lock.”
“How does that make sense?” Dante asked, peering in. “It’s in the village center where children play. Anyone could wander over and start up an addicting and potentially deadly habit, willy-nilly.”
