“I’m well aware,” Trip replied in a similarly docile tone, even though his eyes made it clear that at that moment, he was currently trying to gauge where Shawn got his intel and if the man had more panther ties than initially represented.“What have you heard?”Trip followed up, his voice making it clear that it wasn’t so much what Shawn heard as where he heard it that mattered at that moment, which Shawn, being as overprotective and hyper-aware of his surroundings as he always was, seemed to take in stride.
The fact that the man didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow probably meant that the two of them could later on become good friends, considering the fact that Trip was never much for dramatics or anything of the sort.“One of my old military buddies has ties to the Pantera via an old fling,” Shawn explained, immediately dismissing the suspicion that it was very obvious that Trip had that he may or may not still be closely interacting with the Pantera long after his mother had passed away.“Turns out that his old fling just so happens to have her own side fling with the leader of the Pantera, largely on account of the fact that he's unmated.”Unmated shifters tended to be a little more promiscuous, largely because all that energy had to go somewhere.It wasn’t a surprise that Luis was keeping a side piece in the shadows, but what Shawn said next was a surprise.“She says that Luis has been off lately, less decisive.It's not like him,” Shawn proclaimed, turning his attention back to the stove if only so that he could make a new round of miniature flapjacks for his daughter, who had since finished her finger food and was beginning to roar for more.“Normally, I wouldn't take note of any character changes, especially in a high-stress situation such as this.God knows that negotiations have been difficult from the very start, but the way that he was phrasing it made it sound like something more is off like he's not acting like his old self at all.More than that, I've been monitoring Ryan's correspondence with him, largely for security reasons, and his requests have grown larger and bolder.He's not willing to settle on anything, but the things that he's asking for are hardly anything that the Pantera need,” Shawn proclaimed, pouring another few silver dollar pancakes on the pan to feed Destiny.
“And so, you think someone else is involved?”Trip stated, his brow barely lifting at the notion.It was far from a surprise for him.After all, these were the two biggest shifter clans looking into a potential merger, centralizing their populations to one location and moving both of them underneath one government.That wasn't exactly anything to sniff at.There were a whole number of people who would be interested in stopping such a merger.And more than that, he had his own news as well.“Adam thinks there’s been hunter activity in these parts,” Trip said, his voice surprisingly easy despite the fact that the thing he just said was hardly the kind of news that anyone would want to receive.
Especially considering the way that Shawn froze, his shoulders lifting and his back going rigid as he processed exactly what it was that his brother said.
Hunters.He knew of them.
Actually, he knew a lot about them, considering that was something that the military was concerned with after discovering shifters, their golden ticket to winning just about every war.Hunters were regular humans who knew that shifters had existed and weren't exactly fond of the idea.They went out of their way to kill shifters left and right, stating that they were doing it so that they could maintain some sort of order.What order came from senseless violence?He didn't know.What he did know was that it wasn't the kind of thing that he wanted to think about with his daughter just feet away, having recently moved on to eating the occasional treat here and there instead of subsisting just on baby food, mush, and milk.
If there was one thing that hunters hated more than anything in this world, it was hybrids.In their eyes, they were a threat to society, an unpredictable integer, and a hybrid that could potentially lead to the merger of the two largest shifter clans in one area?Yeah, Shawn couldn’t exactly see them going with that.
But there was more to his distrust, to the heavy swallow and averted eyes that he provided Trip with, hoping that the man had not yet learned all of his tells.
Because you see, Shawn hadn't always been on the shifter side.There was a time when he was young and angry when he realized that the operatives on the special forces with him were getting opportunities that he wouldn't get just because he was a human.It was a time in his life when he was an angry young man, one who was already ruined by the horrors of war.He wasn't the guy that he was now; he wasn't someone who would be worthy of his current mate or the life that he had now.
Shawn had almost fallen through the cracks, then into a world of horrors.One that made the man that he was now flinch.
He had found a faction of hunters amongst the military, people who agreed with his point of view, the fact that shifters shouldn't be rising through the ranks as fast as they did, that was unfair to men like him, who worked hard and tried their best.The only problem was those weren't their only points of view.The further and further Shawn got into their organization, the more he felt like he was losing himself.When he joined the military, the idea was to protect and serve.He wanted to do what was best for this country, so how could talking about killing whole families of shifters be what was best?Weren't the people in those families some of the people that he should be protecting as well?It wasn't fair that they got a leg up in the military.That much was for certain, but it also wasn't fair to talk so heartlessly about murdering them.They were people, too.
And now Shawn was one of those people.
And a better man as well, but that was beyond the fact.He could hardly disclose to anyone of the triad that he had once been close to hunters, that he had once considered hunting shifters at all.They wouldn't understand.Hell, he was pretty sure that his mate wouldn't understand as well.Admitting that you wanted to hunt and kill other people for some sick sense of fun wasn't exactly something that many people found appealing.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Shawn started off slowly because that was the best way to disclose this sort of information without outing himself for what he had been.The best thing to do was to treat it like it was the sort of info that he had heard through the grapevine and then give it to someone else to piece together.He did not admit that he knew all the hunters’ tactics because he’d pretty much attended Hunter 101 when he was young in the military.“You know, I’ve heard rumors about hunters,” Shawn said, doing his best to distance himself further from the truth as he kept his back turned from Trip.
He knew that the moment that he turned around, the game was over.Anyone could read the lie in Shawn’s features; it was his one weakness.For all of his years working in the military, being a bodyguard, and collecting intelligence, he had never been overly good at lying to the people that mattered.To superiors and his fellow soldiers, yes.But two people who were actually close to him and knew him?Yeah, there was not a chance in hell that he would ever be capable of being so heartless that the wise would come out fluently.
Thus, he kept his eyes down on the pancakes and tried to focus on making his daughter a good breakfast.If he put most of his energy into that, then he could at least keep his back turned from the lion shifter and the truth a little further out of reach.Or at least that's what he told himself.
God knew with the kind of freaky shit that he’d been learning far too recently about shifters.There was a very good chance that the triad could smell when he was lying to them.
“Some factions of hunters happen to keep operatives on the inside, finding shifters who are hungry for power and feel like they've been overlooked in this world and then capitalizing on them.They take good men, and they flip them, turning them against their packs and using them as a weapon, all while promising that they can get them anything that the men want.Women, money, power; the typical stuff, shit that any man worth his salt wouldn’t trade his Pride for—but they’re not exactly looking for men worth their salt,” Shawn said, licking his lips as the sweat pooled on his brow.“With the state of affairs regarding the Pantera, it’s not exactly a leap to think that it might be possible that they were able to bribe one of them into playing spy,” Shawn stated, flipping over the pancakes once more, this time a little quicker because he knew that his little girl wasn’t exactly a fan of anything she thought to be too crunchy.“It’d be very easy for them to hear about the unification plans…” Shawn trailed off and only breathed the moment that he heard Trip sigh, obviously coming to his own conclusion.
“But if they're so intent on interfering with things, then why are they moving so obviously?”Trip posed, his voice high with uncertainty, very clearly leaning a little further into the table to try to peer around and get a good look at Shawn's face.Shawn tensed.“I think we all know that hunters can move in the shadows when they want to.If they couldn't, then we would have wiped them all out years ago,” Trip posed, and he had no idea how close he was to someone who had previously been moving in the shadows.
For a moment, as his face flashed with the image of El and her beautiful features, her rounded thighs, and that smile that she had that always made Shawn feel like the luckiest man in the world—he almost asked himself if he should tell Trip if it was worth it to have the man look at him in disgust.
But El wasn’t in trouble yet, was she?Neither was Destiny.
The people that were really in trouble at that moment were Ryan and Luis, both of whom he liked to believe were capable of handling themselves.No one would bother with El yet, largely because the majority of the outside world didn't even know that she existed.Outside of the Pride, she was still tied to her father's name, still an interest in that sense, but nothing for hunters to look twice at.Not unless they had some way to discern exactly who she was.They would need a man inside the Pride for that, and while Shawn might not have trusted every motherfucker he came across on that compound with his life, he still refused to believe that one of them would be that willing to out their Luna.
No, he reassured himself.The threat was for Ryan and Luis so far, and them alone.He didn't have to work as hard in that case.You just had to put the seed in someone else's ear.The only problem was that the person that he had chosen to plant the seed in, or rather was forced to plant said seed in, was someone who could be a little dense, considering the way that things panned out with the original healer and El.
“Hunters, they don't really have a central organization.They have several clans, but those clans don't really collide with each other,” Shawn started slowly, knowing that if he was careful about the way that he said things, then it was very likely that Trip wouldn’t even begin to think of questioning him.“A lot of hunters are free agents, to be honest.Bodies for hire, if you will,” Shawn stated, holding the pan in his hand a little tighter as he continued to mull over the words in his mind as he moved forward.“The hunters would need to know that she exists to even care to attack our mate, and if they knew that she existed and wanted to attack her, then there would be ways for us to figure out that it was put out on her, as well as who exactly is responsible for it,” Shawn said.
“And what exactly would those ways be?”Trip posed, his voice sounding a little amused and semi-interested but not wary or suspicious.Thank God.
“Let’s just say that the Pride isn’t the only organization that’s recently branched out into apps and websites,” Shawn said, and with that, he began to take the path that would undoubtedly lead to his outing just about every secret he knew about hunters to the shifter community…
But for El?
For El and his daughter, Shawn was more than capable of pushing down the dozens of faces of young hunters that he had met over the years and focusing on what mattered—family above all else.
Chapter4
El was pretty sure that if you asked Marcus what mattered at that exact moment, he would likely say that making El regret wanting to lose weight above all else was the answer.
