CHAPTER 3
When Curran and I got down from the roof in search of breakfast, Barabas ambushed us with stacks of paper.
“What is this?” I pondered the two-inch stack.
“This is everything you have to do before you can leave for the Black Sea.” He pointed to the nearest conference room. A breakfast had been laid out. Plates with scrambled eggs, heaps of bacon, piles of sausage, and mountains of fried meat shared space with pitchers of coffee and towers of pancakes. The smell swirled around me. Suddenly I was ravenous.
“Does the whole Keep know we’re leaving?” Curran asked.
“I’m sure a few people are still asleep, but everyone else does, yes.” Barabas placed a stack on the table and held the chair out for me. “For you.”
“I’m hungry and I don’t have time for this.”
Barabas’s eyes held no mercy. “Make time, Alpha. You have two hands. You can eat and sign simultaneously.”
Curran grinned.
“Enjoying my suffering?” I asked.
“I find it hilarious that you’ll run into a gunfight with nothing but your sword, but paperwork makes you panic.”
Barabas put a thicker stack in front of him. “This is yours, m’lord.”
Curran swore.
The shapeshifters enjoyed high metabolisms, which helped them blast through nutrients and save up energy for changing shape. But that same metabolism made them gorge themselves. Watching Curran go through food was a frightening experience. He didn’t rush or devour his food with his hands. He just ate a very large amount of it. I thought I’d get used to it with time, but when he went in for his third heaping plate, I blinked. He must’ve skipped dinner last night.
The door to the conference room opened and Jim strode in, like an impending storm. Six feet tall, with dark, smooth skin and a gaze that made you want to back away and look for the nearest exit, Jim served as the Pack’s chief of security. He and I knew each other from way back, when we both worked for the Mercenary Guild and we occasionally teamed up. I had needed the money and Jim couldn’t stomach working with anyone else.
Jim leaned on the table. “I’m going.”
“No,” Curran said. “I need you here. You have to run the Pack while we’re gone.”
“Make Mahon do it.”
Mahon Delany, an alpha of Clan Heavy, served as the Pack’s executioner. He’d raised Curran after Curran’s family was murdered, and he was probably the most respected among the fourteen alphas of the Pack. He was not universally loved, however.
“The jackals would riot and you know it,” Curran said. “You can hold the clans together. Mahon can’t. He’s old-fashioned and ham-fisted, and if I put him in charge, we’d come back to a civil war.”
“And who’s going to watch your ass while you’re over there? It’s not just about what they are doing, it’s thinking about what they could do and how they could do it. Who’ll do that for you?”
“Not you,” Curran said. “I need you here.”
Jim turned to me. “Kate?”
If he thought I was getting in the middle of that, he was crazy. “Oh, look at all this paperwork I have. Can’t talk now, very busy.”
Jim landed in the chair, looking like he wanted to strangle someone.
Barabas put another piece of paper in front of me. Oy.
“You should let Kate handle it,” Jim said. “You’ve never done a large-scale bodyguard detail. She has more experience and she’s decent at it.”
I pointed a piece of bacon at him. “I’m not just decent. I’m damn good and you know it.”
“We’ve talked it over,” Curran said. “She guards Desandra, I snarl and run interference with the packs, and when she tells me to push, I push. We’ve got this, Jim.”
“Or at least they think they do.” Barabas took the paper I’d just signed and blew on the ink.
“Take Barabas,” Jim said suddenly. “If you won’t take me, take Barabas. He’s devious, paranoid, and obsessive. He’ll be perfect.”
Curran looked at me. I looked at Barabas. He bared even, sharp teeth. “Well, after that recommendation, how can I say no?”
“Who do you want for support?” I asked.
“George,” Barabas said.
George’s real name was Georgetta and she threatened to murder people who dared to actually use it. She was Mahon’s daughter, and she served as the Pack’s clerk of court.
“She knows the laws,” Barabas said. “And she’s the exact opposite of high-strung.”
“If you take George, Mahon will want to go,” Jim said.
“That’s not a bad thing,” Curran said. “Mahon is a hell of a fighter, and it will get him out of your hair. Besides, he’s a bear. The Carpathians will respect that.”
“Since I’m going,” Barabas said. “Jezebel will also want to go.”
“No.” Jezebel, my other bouda nanny, had a hell of a temper.
“May I ask why?”
“Did you have an argument with Ethan on Wednesday?”
Barabas drew himself back. Ethan was his guy and their relationship had started out great but now was going off the rails fast. “It wasn’t an argument. It was a heated discussion.”
“Do you know how I found out about it?”
“I’m sure you will tell me.”
“I saw Jezebel marching off with a determined look on her face, and I had to spend the next half an hour explaining to her that breaking Ethan’s legs would not help your relationship. She reacts with overwhelming force to any insult. We’re going to a place where we’ll be outnumbered, insulted, and constantly provoked. One wrong punch from her and we’re done.”
“Point taken,” Barabas said. “I’ll break it to her gently.”
“How about Keira?” Jim said.
Curran raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s Keira?” I asked.
“My sister,” Jim said.
“You have a sister?” I knew that Jim had a family. I’d just never met or seen any of them.
“He has three,” Curran said.
“How come I never met her?”
“You have,” Jim said. “You just don’t remember because I didn’t tell you who she was.”
“Oh, so your family is only on a need-to-know basis, huh?”
He gave me a hard stare. “That’s right.”
When a joke flies past a sulking werejaguar, does it make a sound? “Are you sure you want to send your sister off across the ocean with us? Since I don’t even rank high enough to meet her and all that.”
“Keira is an Army vet,” Jim said. “She’s good and she won’t turn on you.”
I tried to picture a female version of Jim and got Jim in a dress instead. The image was disturbing.
“Did you at least ask her?” Curran asked.
“I know she’ll go.”
“Well, then she’s in unless she says no.”