Casey, page 10
part #8 of Safe Haven Wolves Series
Every head in the room jerked around to stare at Gabby, who was holding her hand to her mouth, eyes wide. The outburst seemed to have startled Gabby as much as everyone else in the room.
Before anyone could say anything else the door opened and Trey walked in followed by the four Reliants. Everyone froze. Casey, who had gotten her shirt untangled but was still holding it in her hand was the first one to move as she gave a small squeak of surprise and fumbled to get dressed. She wasn’t modest, not really, she just didn’t want the ass hat alien to see the tattoo and run his mouth about anything.
It was Rimi who broke the silence as he crossed the room to her side and grabbed her hands before she could button the shirt. Holding both wrists in one hand, he reached a finger out to touch the pulsing symbol. Before his finger could touch her skin, chaos erupted in the kitchen.
“NO!” Dacron shouted while diving toward his brother.
Kate and Craig stumbled back as their golden wolf rose to stand at Casey’s side, hackles raised, a silent snarl upon its maw.
The table crashed into Nathanial throwing him onto his back, dishware falling around him. Near the door where Conall and Sibeal stood their copper wolf rose to stand between them and the others in the room. Trey grabbed Gabby and thrust her behind him as Dacron’s dive sent Rimi crashing to the ground. Dracula and Talbort still stood in the doorway with mouths agape at the chaos. Half eaten food lay strewn on the floor, syrup dripped from the cabinets, Nathanial’s impeccable dress and hair was a disheveled mess. Gabby was screaming while Casey was trying to back away from the golden wolf. She knew what the touch of the wolf could do from reading the book, and she was desperate to put as much space as possible between her and the wolf, but the wolf kept pace with her until she backed into the wall.
Dacron turned on his brother furiously as he struggled to untangle himself from one of the chairs. “Are you crazy? What the hell were you thinking? You don’t touch a Heart-Bond Calling Mark belonging to another.”
While everyone was still trying to figure out what had happened, Dacron grabbed his brother by the arm and slung him toward Dracula and Talbort. With chairs in the way all he accomplished was to cause Rimi to trip and roll, coming to a stop on his back looking up at Trey. The look of confusion and astonishment on his face was mirrored by most of the people in the room. Casey took the time to button her shirt while Rimi struggled to his feet. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but apparently, the ass hat did indeed know what the mark on her chest was for and wasn’t going to let his brother touch it.
“Fuck, you could have just said don’t touch it. Damn bro, what the hell is your problem?”
“My problem? You stupid, ignorant ass, you could have gotten yourself killed just then. Which part of you don’t touch the mark belonging to another did you miss?”
At some point, Craig had forced Kate behind him and was currently holding her captive with his body. She managed to get her head around his blockade so she could see Dacron. “Why? What do you think would happen? I touched it, Sibeal touched it, you might want to notice we didn’t die.”
“You’re both females. Why the hell do you think you would die?”
“You just said if you touch the mark you die.”
“Again. You’re female.”
“What is that?” Kate pointed to Dacron’s chest. No one had noticed in the scuffle that his shirt had torn. Every eye in the room followed Kate’s finger to see a mark similar to Casey’s pulsing on his chest.
“You bastard. What did you do? You gave me some kind of fucking alien rash, didn’t you?” Casey screamed the last couple of words.
Everyone’s attention swung to Casey before turning back to Dacron. Unfortunately, Dacron’s focus was now firmly on her, and his eyes blazed red. His fangs dropped as he pointed to the golden wolf. “Where did you get that?” He turned, so his body was between his brother and the golden wolf and used his body to back Rimi into Dracula and Talbort and kept pushing backward.
“It isn’t mine.”
“I didn’t ask you if it was yours, princess. I asked you where you got that abomination.”
“Whoa. I know you did not just call our wolf an abomination. Boy, you don’t know who you’re messing with. You need to get back on your little ship and fly back where you came form.”
“Shut up Box Boy. If you haven’t noticed, he is the only person in the room who knows what is going on.”
“Whew, damn man, your mate done demoted you to boy.”
“Talbort?”
“Yeah, Drac?”
“Shut up.”
“Just trying to break the tension a bit. In case you missed it, the spines are out.”
Dracula slew his head around so fast his neck popped, and it was then he saw the small poisonous spines all Reliants had were barely protruding from Dacron’s spinal ridge and shoulders. He realized all of Dacron’s attention had shifted from Casey to Kate and Craig and knew he had to do something before events spiraled out of the range of recovery.
“Dacron? Have you forgotten the Krauant?” Dracula watched as the spines slid out of sight and breathed a sigh of relief. They needed to get Dacron out of the area. He turned a thoughtful look toward Kate and Craig before looking at the golden wolf still guarding Casey. “Ah, I see, a Golden Warrior.” He gave a last glance at Casey before he reached behind him and opened the door. “Trey, can you give us a ride back to the ship? Maybe this wasn’t the best time to come.”
“Are you serious? Like Kate said, your friend there seems to be the only one who knows what is going on so until the rest of us know, nobody leaves this house.”
“Princess you don’t tell me what I can do. I should have killed you when I had the chance. Don’t push me now because I will still find a way to kill your warrior without disgracing my brother, and when I have your warrior down, you will follow.”
“Whoa, easy there killer. I don’t think you realize what we can do. We don’t back down, and we don’t threaten easily.”
“Princess, I don’t think you are in any position to be sending threats my way. Your kind went under our weapons once before, and the kill order has never been rescinded.”
“The kill order? What are you talking about?” Trey held up his hands. “Everyone just calm down for a minute and let’s see if we can get this straightened out. First off, do you know what the mark is on Casey’s chest?”
“I personally want to know more about this kill order and what he means by my kind going under their weapons once before.” Casey moved but immediately stilled when the golden wolf moved with her. “Kate, can you get your wolf to leave me alone?”
“I would, but they aren’t listening to us right now. We have been trying to recall them.”
“You can’t recall your warrior abomination as long as the Princess is in danger.”
Casey frowned down at the wolf before looking back at Dacron. “I wouldn’t be in danger if the wolf would go away.”
“By the Great One you really are clueless about your kind, aren’t you?”
“Look, ass hat, I am getting tired of you calling the wolf an abomination and accusing me of being ignorant and wanting to kill me. We are witches, she” pointing at Kate, “is currently the most powerful witch on the planet, and I can assure you that you do not want to piss her off any more than you already have. It won’t end well for you.”
Dacron snorted, “No Princess, she is not the most powerful if the Golden Warrior is at your feet. How you managed to breed a Golden Warrior to a wolf, though, is a mystery. She may be the most deadly witch on the planet if she is your Golden Warrior, but the most powerful would be whoever the Golden Warrior guards. From where I stand, that would be you.”
“Whoa, your mate is the missing princess?”
“Rimi? Remind me to kill you later.”
“Back the fuck up. His what? I am not his mate. Rimi, have you been drinking?”
“Stop it!” The words rolled with the power of the Alpha and caused Craig and Conall to whimper.
Dacron turned his head to look at Trey as he took a deep breath. “That is fascinating. You changed the flavor of the air around you. What did you do?”
“He does that sometimes. Usually, when he is pissed off. All the leaders of the packs can do it. The shifters feel it inside somehow. They can’t smell the change.”
“Remarkable. When we get time, I would love to study it.” His attention was again on Craig and Kate, so he missed his brother’s nod of agreement. Rimi had been trying to figure out how the Alphas could change the flavor of the air around them for years.
“Before we get distracted again, did anyone see where Nathanial went?” Trey addressed this question mostly toward the older couple still standing near the door into the rest of the house.
“I went to change bitches. And shower, Dacron’s mad dive across the table destroyed my clothes. Did you get everything straight while I was gone? What did we find out about the strange marking on Casey’s chest?”
Dacron studied Nathanial for a moment before his lips twisted into an evil smile. “Have you felt it? Can you see if the marking feels differently from the rest of her skin?”
“Wow, evil much, ass hat? No, he hasn’t touched it. No one is touching it again until we find out if you were lying about it being deadly for another male to touch it.” She looked around the room of destruction before she whispered, “And I am going to guess you weren’t lying if you did all this to keep your brother from touching it.”
“Yes, but he is neither male nor female, is he? And I must admit to a morbid curiosity.”
“He is most definitely male.”
Dacron sniffed the air before shaking his head. “No, you lie. He is both and neither at the same time. He prefers his own sex to your sex, does he not?”
Casey sniffed the air. “How can you tell that from smelling the air? I don’t smell anything different. Trey?”
Trey drew in a deep breath of air before shaking his head. “He smells the same as any other witch to me. I don’t notice a difference.”
“You didn’t answer. He prefers his own, doesn’t he?”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
Dacron raised his eyebrows, “Nothing is wrong with it. Why would you think that? I only stated he is both and neither, and because of that, I want to see how the mark reacts to him. If it kills him, well that is one less Calian for the Coalition to concern themselves with finding and destroying.”
“Do you think it would kill him?”
“Hey, I’m right here. Appreciate it, pumpkins, if you stop talking about me like I am somewhere else.”
“No, I don’t think the mark would sense danger from him. But I can’t help but wonder how deeply the mark can see.”
With the tempers in the room calm again the golden wolf drifted back toward Kate and Craig and split as it reached them, each wolf fading into their other half. The copper wolf had long since returned to Kate’s parents. Dacron watched until they were utterly gone before he turned his attention back to Casey.
Trey rubbed his temples, he could feel a headache coming on, and it felt like it would be massive. “Alright. No testing marks, no killing anyone, no fighting, no arguing. Dacron, I would appreciate it if you would start at the beginning and tell us what you know.”
“The best way to do that would be to show you. I can’t show you from here. I would need the link set back at Dracula’s house and to run the link set I would need their computer.”
“I have one of their computer setups here. So you only need the link.” Trey slapped his hands together, “Alright, this is what we are going to do. Dracula, you take my jeep and drive Dacron to the landing field so he can go get the link he needs. While you are gone Rimi and I will move the computer we need into the meeting room and get it set up with the screen so everyone can see.”
Dacron grimaced, “I can get the links, but the reports are in our language. The best I could do would be to show you videos we captured of the carnage.”
“The files had videos? I didn’t see them.”
“That’s because you didn’t get that far. We captured the death of an entire race and wrote up the reports on the history we found, you can’t get through that in one night.
“Why would you kill an entire race?” Gabby asked in a hushed whisper.
“To keep them from destroying us all.” Dacron turned and pushed past the others. Dracula shot a glance toward Trey.
“Keys are in the jeep. Don’t wreck it in the snow.”
Dracula nodded as he followed Dacron outside.
Chapter Seventeen
Casey followed Trey and Rimi as they walked across the hall to the office. “Rimi, you know what’s going on don’t you?”
He mumbled a reply and stepped away from her.
“No, you don’t get to turn and walk away. I didn’t turn and walk away from you sixteen years ago. I opened my door to a creature more dead than alive, and I did everything I could to make sure it lived. That creature was you, and you owe me. I have never asked you for anything in all these years. I have valued our friendship, and I am proud to have been part of saving your life. I never considered you owed me for your life, not once. I always believed our friendship was worth every minute I spent wrapping bandages around you and staying up to stop the bleeding. But our friendship has to be worth something to you. I have a tattoo that started out as an achy itch and has grown to a pulsing burn in the last day. Why? What is it, and why has your brother gone from calling me that little Calian to Princess? What is going on?”
“Yeah, the rest of us would love to hear the answers to those questions also.” Kate’s voice sounded from behind Casey.
“Fine. I don’t know a lot. Witness my stupidity in trying to touch the mark, but I will tell you what little I do know. Let me help Trey get everything hooked up. In fact, I will talk as we work. Move and let us through, everyone, meeting room if you want to know what I know.”
“Alright. Let’s see, where to start. First, you have to understand my brother is well over three thousand years older than I am, so he lived through what I am about to tell you. All I did was read about it last night and more this morning.”
“That’s fine. Just tell us what you do know. I hate being in the dark while the ass hat knows everything.”
“Some time in the past other races came into contact with your race. Things didn’t go well. In order to protect themselves from your people the Coalition, which is a group of many races, agreed upon an extinction order. They ordered the deaths of your race. Apparently, your race doesn’t play well with others and are prone to cursing them and creating death and destruction in their wake.”
“Holy shit! Princess!”
“Dammit Trey, not you too. Don’t call me princess. I don’t know what made ass hat call me that but I hope we are friends enough for you to not copy that ass hat.”
“No, I wasn’t trying to be mean. I asked Dacron yesterday about the curse. He said the person who cursed our race had to be powerful and the only person who could break a curse like that would be a member of the royal family. He said the royal family was dead but what if you are a princess?”
“He was being an ass hat. I am not a princess.”
“Um, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we have reason to believe a traitor got a member of the royal family away. The royal family had special guards, planet-killer guards called Golden Warriors. The Golden Warriors could have been trained down to a manageable level of power if they had wanted to, but they chose not to do that. The instructions for training a Golden Warrior were contained in a golden book. A golden book that no one ever found when they stripped your people’s planet. Does any of this sound familiar at all?”
“But that’s impossible. Casey is weak compared to many other witches. She can’t be a powerful witch, she would know if that were true.”
Rimi scrubbed his hand across his face, “Look, Nathanial, I don’t know but what I read and I didn’t get to read that much. I can tell you that by the oath I took I should be helping kill you all, not explaining why I have indirect orders to kill you.”
“Fine, the mark, what can you tell me about this mark on my chest?”
Rimi looked at Talbort, who shook his head. “No, man, you tell her. Don’t get me involved. She didn’t help save my life.”
“The mark on your chest is called a Heart-bond Calling Mark. Basically, as I understand from the others, it is like a shifter finding his true-mate with one major difference.”
“Your brother is not my mate.”
“Well, no, he isn’t. And if he has anything to do with it, he never will be.”
“So he can make it go away? Why didn’t he do that when it first happened?”
“Would you die to get rid of the mark? Would you die to release my brother from the mark?”
“No, of course not.”
“That’s why you are still alive. No, wait, you are still alive because he wasn’t sure if you helped nurse me back to health and he didn’t want to move until he knew; plus you are under Trey’s protection, and he can’t kill you without bringing dishonor to Trey. I mentioned the major difference? The only way to get that mark off if for one of you to die. Death releases the other from the calling bond.”
“That’s insane. Who would do that?”
“The gods and they are some sick fucks sometimes.” Talbort offered this latest observation with a bitterness Trey had never heard him use.
Chapter Eighteen
“So what are you going to do? You can’t kill her without bringing dishonor upon the family. You hate her, so bonding with her would be a terrible idea.”
Dacron gave a deep sigh and buried his face in his hands. “That isn’t exactly true. I don’t hate her. I don’t know her to hate her. I hate what she represents. I admire her for saving my brother’s life. Think about it. You are on a planet you believe to be your world. Your world doesn’t have visitors from other worlds. You think you are possibly the only planet with intelligent life and on your planet are exactly two races, humans, to include witches, and shifters. One night a young shifter shows up at your door with something other than what should be on your planet. They worked together to save Rimi, not knowing if he meant them ill, not knowing what would happen to them if he lived. I admire that kind of courage. I also admire the fact she hasn’t got a clue what is on her chest, but she isn’t screaming and crying and falling down in some kind of fit. She is angry, she is lashing out looking for answers, but she is doing it with courage. In the last day, her life has been threatened, she has gained a heart-bond mark, which doesn’t mean anything to her, all she knows is that it hurts, she has found out the Golden Warrior protects her and yet she stood defiantly daring me to harm her. Yet, she is Calian, I can’t bond to her. I could never take her home. I could never have a family with her without endangering my family. I can’t kill her, and I can’t let her live. What would you do in my shoes?”
