“I don’t know.” Zivko frowned, his brown-skinned face thin in that way of youths who hadn’t finished growing and filling out. “It just came up while we were talking. We figured since your pack protects this landscape, it’d hurt if you lost a couple of the big trees.”
Selenka put her clawed hands on her hips to control the urge to slice his face to shreds. “I can’t figure out if you’re just brainless or a cold-blooded killer.”
Zivko flinched with his whole body, but there was a withheld anger to him that was dangerous—Blaise had done Zivko no favors by allowing that anger to build. Dominant wolves who got that edgy did violence sooner rather than later.
“It was only trees,” he retorted, his face flushed and muscles knotted. “It’d just have left an ugly empty patch in your land.”
“It hasn’t rained in this area for three weeks,” Selenka said with a quietness none of her pack ever wanted to hear from her. “The trees are old and their roots draw from deep within the earth, but the land is dry. This territory is full of wolves, including the old and the very young, many of whom can’t run faster than flame.” Fire could spread like water across a territory. “Fire is classed as a deadly weapon among changelings. You’re a would-be assassin.”
Zivko had gone paler and paler as she spoke, the anger buried under a sudden horror. “We didn’t want to kill anyone,” he whispered, his face stark. “We just wanted to mess with you.”
Selenka believed him—Zivko wasn’t dominant enough to tell her bald-faced lies. However, someone had placed the idea of fire as a mechanism for revenge in their minds. Someone very clever. Either one of this young group was a psychopath, or they were being manipulated by an older individual.
“Why tonight?” she demanded. “Why here, at this location?”
Shattered by her quiet recitation of the possible consequences of his actions, Zivko didn’t bother to fight his wolf’s need to answer her. “It’s a clear night and we heard that a ton of your pack would be in a far-off place, celebrating an event.”
The growls that emerged from multiple throats had Zivko freezing. Selenka barely kept her own wolf from ripping out the young male’s throat. “Who told you?”
He swallowed hard. “What?”
“Who told you we’d be away from our den?”
“I—I don’t know.” A frown, natural intelligence pushing past the fear and anger and aggression. “I should know. But it was another thing that just kind of came up—and it was like a few of us had heard it.”
“Is there anything else you think I should know?”
He swallowed again and, though he was drenched in sweat by now, found the strength to say, “We really didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
Selenka’s wolf felt both anger at those who’d let this pup down—and anger that a wolf this dominant and intelligent hadn’t stopped to think about exactly what he was about to do. “Intent doesn’t matter when the consequences of your actions were foreseeable and could’ve been devastating—your punishment will reflect that.”
Those who committed a crime on predatory changeling lands were subject to justice by those same predators. Human or Psy rules didn’t apply here. “Furthermore, you came onto our land on a day when we are grieving one of our dead.” The words were a hard slap. “You brought with you the specter of more death even as we buried a beloved packmate. We will not be merciful.”
Zivko completely crumpled at this point, well aware that she was within her rights to execute him. But he raised his head enough to say, “I’m to blame.” A rasp. “The others followed me.”
Well, perhaps this one was salvageable. She would see. For now, she nodded at Margo and Ethan to haul him back to sit among his compatriots, all of whom had heard the conversation. Terror marked each and every face, a long-delayed awareness that they had fucked up beyond anything they could’ve imagined.
“I’ve got a goddamn headache,” she muttered when Ethan, Margo, and Gregori came to talk to her in the aftermath. “I don’t think Zivko’s group came here with deadly intent, but someone else in that church does have such intent.”
“No one else will dare anything like this if we summarily execute the intruders.” Ethan’s voice was black ice.
“I’m with Ethan,” Gregori said, folding his arms across his chest; he’d pulled on a pair of pants the healers had brought down but was otherwise naked. The in-progress tattoo on the left side of his chest was angry and red—it took special DNA-bonded ink for a tattoo to remain on changeling bodies, and it wasn’t exactly gentle on the skin.
“I’m happy to rip their heads off with my bare hands,” he added.
Shooting her brother a long-suffering look, Margo stayed silent. But Selenka knew her security specialist was just as pissed as Gregori.
As for Ethan, it was becoming clear to her that he had very hard lines inside his head—and because her pack mattered to her, it now mattered to him. “Ethan,” she said, squeezing the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger, “the two of us need to have a discussion about levels of punishment. Execution is reserved for the worst. In the interim, come to me for any such decisions.”
“I would regardless,” he said, as if that was self-evident. “It’s an alpha’s call.”
“I think you’re slightly crazy,” Margo said to Ethan while Gregori rumbled disagreement. “But I like that about you.” Hands on her hips, she curled her lip. “I want to kill them, too, but I can also see that they’re idiot pups.”
“Zivko isn’t a child.” Ethan’s tone was flat. “I’d assassinated fourteen people by the time I was his age.”
Rage burned hot against Selenka’s eyes, and this time, she didn’t fight it.
Thrusting her hand in the thickness of his hair, she fisted it tight and tugged him to her for a kiss. He kept his arms crossed throughout, and she had the feeling her once-emotionless Arrow was irritated with them all for not simply chopping off the intruders’ heads. His protective drive was a powerful beast, a creature with serious teeth.
Maybe others would’ve worried about his homicidal tendencies, but as he’d proven more than once, he’d back Selenka’s decisions even if he disagreed with them. The only exception, she knew without asking, was if it was her life at risk. She couldn’t really disagree with him on that point—she’d rip out the throat of anyone who came after him, too.
Her lieutenants were grinning at her—and her mate—when she broke the kiss, the unrepentant moment of joy an unexpected light in the darkness. Yes, Ethan had fans for life in Margo and Gregori, and the other lieutenants would follow their lead. “So,” she said to all of them, “since execution is out, what do you suggest as punishment?”
Gregori stirred, his features settling into a scowl. “For the wolves, hand-to-hand combat against pack wolves of their own age. We’ll make sure our people know not to go lethal, but these wolves will come out bruised and battered.”
Selenka considered that. Physical punishment might not work among the other races, but they were predatory changelings. Their wolves thought differently, viewed power and redemption differently. “But we don’t want it to be a humiliation.”
The entire reason Emanuel had lobbied in favor of Haven’s Disciples was because of worry for powerful lost wolves. A humiliation would ruin them . . . and destroy what her friend and lieutenant had sought to create. “Each bout takes place one-on-one, with no audience—though one of us will monitor it from where we can’t be seen or scented.”
“For the humans,” Margo said with a twist of her lips, “it’ll have to be incarceration in the local jail network.” Her dour tone made it clear exactly how happy she was with that option.
“No, they’re not getting off that easy.” Human and Psy jails were far too comfortable as far as Selenka was concerned. “I want them doing hard labor on our land until I decide they’ve done enough. Their wolf friends can join them after they recover from their bouts.”
“Yes, I like that much better.” Margo’s smile was all teeth. “Ethan, any recommendations for the Psy? Aside from execution since Selenka says we have to be civilized.”
“Hard labor.” Ethan’s pale eyes were glimpses of light in the dark. “But you also need to corral their minds so they can’t travel the PsyNet. I can handle that as all four are apt to be anchored in the same general psychic area.”
It was a good point and one Selenka might not have considered without Ethan. But she shook her head at his offer. “I don’t want you wearing yourself out doing the monitoring on your own—especially as it’s going to be a couple weeks at the least.”
A change in Ethan she couldn’t pinpoint, a savage twisting of the coldness inside her.
Clenching her gut on the promise she’d get to the bottom of whatever was happening, she said, “I’ll talk to Kaleb, get us psychic backup from one of his private security teams.” It was a considered political decision. “Having him in play will make it crystal clear what Psy risk when they decide to mess with this territory.” No one in the psychic race wanted Kaleb’s attention.
Selenka had gone toe-to-toe with the cardinal telekinetic more than once, but she appreciated him as another alpha. A deadly one. Peace held in Moscow because she stayed on her side of the line and he on his. Same with Valentin. All three predators keeping a respectful eye on each other—and cooperating on matters that affected more than one of them.
“But that’s all for tomorrow.” She waved over the senior healer in the team. “Will any of the intruders die if left to spend the night here?”
“No,” Tana said at once, her husky voice even rougher after the emotional intensity of Emanuel’s funeral. “The cauterization was incredibly precise. It sealed off the tiniest of blood vessels.” She looked at Ethan with a definite glint in her eye. “You’d be handy to have in delicate operations.”