An incident like this would need a thorough investigation. Callum being critically injured didn’t change that. Depending on what they discovered, he might end up being detained indefinitely if deemed a risk to humans. And just like Yates had said, much as I hated to agree with him, that was a fate many shifters considered worse than death.
Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
After helping Falon get Callum to the waiting car of one of his pack members, I led Talis back to the car park. I didn’t speak to Gabriel—Mase—again. And that was perfectly fucking fine with me.
I had nothing to say to him, and he had nothing I wanted to hear.
But that didn’t mean I got out of talkingabouthim.
Talis waited until we were out of earshot of the others before the questions started.
“So,” he began, glancing at me as we made our way through the trees. “How do you know Gabriel Mason? And who is he?”
Fuck, where to start? And how much to tell him?
Talis was my best friend. Had served as my beta from the moment I took over as alpha of our pack. In those six years, we’d kept no secrets. Couldn’t when trust was everything in my pack. But that didn’t mean I’d shared everything that happened before then.
Especially not when I was so fucking ashamed of what I’d done.
Who I’d trusted.
“Rys?”
With a sigh, I met his gaze and managed a shrug, like it was no big thing. “Someone I ran into when I visited my mum’s family in Cornwall.” I might not want to tell Talis the whole truth, but I would never lie.
“Oh.” That ‘oh’ held a wealth of meaning. My mum died when I was five. I didn’t remember much about her, but talking about her always left me a little raw. Even now.
Talis was quiet for a few minutes before deciding to broach the subject again. “Was he a hunter?”
I felt his gaze on me, but I kept looking straight ahead. Not ready for him to see anything in my eyes that would give me away.
“Because the way Yates talked about him and Tombs, it kinda felt that way.”
“Yes, he was a hunter. I’ve not seen him in a long time. I assumed he still was.”
Talis didn’t say anything more, and we walked the rest of the way back to the car park in silence. It didn’t feel like this was the end of the conversation though.
Talis liked to mull things over in his head, sort out what he knew already and what he wanted to find out. I didn’t want to relive that particular time in my life, but I’d tell him the truth if he asked the right questions.
I prayed to the Goddess he’d let it drop.
By the time we got back to Clumber Estate, it was fully dark and late enough that a lot of my pack had already left the main house for their own homes. Pack nights were held between full moons, a way to keep morale up and check in with everyone and make sure no major problems went unnoticed.
They also provided a great opportunity to share information.
As alpha, I tried to be as transparent as possible with the way I ran my pack. Keeping secrets only built suspicion, not trust. Everyone would need to know that hunters were in the area. One group for definite, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others.
Hunters weren’t supposed to enter pack territories without either permission from the alpha or an official request from the paranormal police department. That went for human/non-human homes too. Most hunters followed the rules. They might try and bend them, but never outright cross a line.
But then there were others who didn’t give a fuck about lines or laws where non-humans were concerned. They thought nothing of using any means necessary to bait a shifter into losing control. The friends they had in high places meant they got away with a warning most of the time.
Those were the ones I needed to warn my pack about. And everyone else who lived in my territory because Clumber Park wasn’t home to just my pack. With almost six square miles of land to play with, keeping it for just us would be the height of selfishness.
Plenty of others needed a place away from the city and town centres where humans had migrated over the years. So we opened up our land and invited other non-humans to find refuge in the forests and around the lake. Plenty of room for us all to find as much privacy as we wanted and yet still find a connection if we needed it.
Having allies with different supernatural abilities was never going to be a bad thing.
As Talis turned off the engine, I pulled out my phone and sent out a group message, calling everyone back to the main house.
