Jono would say that was probably a good thing.
He shoveled a few bites of his soup into his mouth, not bothered by the heat of the chowder. It tasted great. “Who else knows your alphas are missing?”
“None of the packs under our protection, but that won’t last for long. There’s only so many times I can push off a mediation or a territory fight between packs.”
Wade made a face at the mention of fighting. Most god packs allowed for disputes to be handled in a challenge ring, something his pack had put a stop to. While they couldn’t stop all the packs under their protection from squabbling andgetting into skirmishes, the outright murderous aspects of the challenge ring had been put to rest. Right now, the only thing their underground space in Hamilton Heights was used for was citywide meetings for all alphas.
Wade didn’t think the Boston packs worked like that.
“Okay, so we can assume packs are getting suspicious. Any challengers in the god pack who have tried to take over?”
Ella stabbed at a shrimp and popped it into her mouth. “A few.”
“Are they dead?”
She bared her teeth at him in a hard smile, incisors sharper than they would be on a mundane humane. “They probably wished they were when I finished with them.”
Wade had a feeling Sage might like her. “And anyone else outside the packs? Night Courts? Covens? Hunters?”
Their waitress came back with the rest of their food before Ella could answer. The table wasn’t big enough for all the plates, so Wade ended up piling the lobster rolls together on one and started on his hamburger first.
“I don’t know,” Ella said once their waitress left, sounding frustrated. “I’ve had our god pack searching for any sign of our alphas, but we can’t outright ask people. The binding won’t let us, and even if we could ask, it would put us in a bad position.”
“Sounds like you’re ripe for a takeover, either from a werecreature or something else.”
“Not someone?”
Wade picked up a fry and dunked it in the ketchup he’d squirted on his plate. “In my experience, it’s not always werecreatures gunning for the top spot.”
They’d dealt with hunters and demons and all manner of gods for a period of time before the end of the world. The lure of power drew from all corners of this world and past the veil. The Boston god pack had a power vacuum their missing alphashad left behind, and in a city this big, the fight to fill it or control it was going to be messy when it spilled out of the shadows and into the lives of mundane humans.
“I think I need to know more about this Niall guy,” Wade finally decided.
“My research is back home in our territory, but it isn’t much.” Ella hesitated a moment, catching his eye through her sunglasses. “I’d offer you a place to stay, but you said you had a hotel already, and I don’t want to put you at risk.”
Because that was a surefire way to bring down the wrath of his pack, and these days, no one wanted to face them.
“Nah, the hotel is fine. I’ll swing by to get copies of your research and talk to some other people in your pack. I won’t stay long in case Niall or someone else has your territory under watch. We can make plans to meet tomorrow morning. How about we do breakfast?”
Ella nodded, a cautious sort of relief loosening her body. “That could work.”
“Great.”
They finished their meal in a companionable enough silence. Wade paid for both of them, and they went their separate ways, pretending to be friendlier than they were upon leaving in case anyone was watching.
Yeah, he was definitely thinking like Patrick.
CHAPTER FIVE
Boston Harbor wasa busy shipping corridor that was just as loud above the waves as below. Sound traveled differently through water; an echoing, droning tone from boat engines, propellers, and the indistinct back-and-forth chatter and echolocation of marine life.
Riordan Maguire of Clan Maguire swam through the waters of Boston Harbor in selkie form, nose closed and eyes open, fully aware of his surroundings and the passing ship traffic above. Visibility below the waves wasn’t the best, but his heightened vision helped him to navigate well below the threat of propellers as he bypassed the ships. He had plenty of open water to swim through, all of it familiar, even if the faint, echoing thrum deep in the water was new.
The sonorous vibrations weren’t typical of any animal or supernatural creature Riordan was familiar with in the past few hundred years he’d been swimming in the harbor. The sound echoed from past the islands that dotted the harbor and bays, rising and falling in pitch at the very edge of his hearing. All his instincts told him something out of the ordinary was in the ocean, but he hadn’t found any evidence of what it could be.
He shoved that thought aside and focused on traversing the channel that led to Boston proper. It was late afternoon, trending toward evening, which meant people were out and about still, and he needed to be mindful of being sighted. Some fae were skilled in the kind of magic that would keep mundane humans from noticing them at all. Selkies were decent at glamour, but that wouldn’t make them invisible. Riordan stuck to the left-hand side of the channel, swimming with significant speed toward the commercial piers that dotted the shore there.
The Drydock Green Space was an area of land that tipped into the water between the cruise terminal and a commercial fish processing pier. The space was open to the public, far from the hustle and bustle of Downtown Boston. While it wasn’t the best place to come ashore, it was by far the easiest in the area and a favored launching spot for his clan if they couldn’t be at the beach. As the water grew shallower, Riordan somersaulted into a shift, coming up into waist-high murky water in human form with his deep brown and cream-spotted sealskin clutched in his hands.
