Damien's Dilemma (Ch 21)

“I think I found it,” Blade said as he approached. Damien was conferring with Hayden as they waited for the last twenty adults to arrive. Only about seventy of the pack had gathered in the clearing for the pack meeting. It wasn’t the full pack, but the stragglers still had a few minutes to arrive before the meeting began. Eight to ten shifters plus the older teens would be hosting a Night Under The Stars outing for the younger kids, while a group of five watched the infants at one of the houses. Another twenty or more were patrolling the perimeter. Callen had increased security after the recent abductions. Having a WSSO lab only thirty miles away was too close for anyone’s comfort.

“What did you find?” Damien asked, as he searched the crowd for Pryce and Tess. Pryce was to escort her here and watch over her while Damien led the meeting. Callen was conspicuously absent, which annoyed Damien more than it concerned him. He liked to have his top shifters at general meetings, so the pack would be assured that everything was fine. A disjointed pack made shifters nervous, and that’s the last thing he needed with the alphas from the other packs coming in less than two days.

“Her pack.” Blade placed his back to the rock wall behind them and scanned the crowd. Blade was constantly seeking anything out of place, always expecting the worst to happen. Damien couldn’t blame him after what had happened to his birth-pack. “She said Florida, right?”

“Apopka,” Hayden said. “That’s central Florida, I believe.”

“I couldn’t find any information about any packs even living in Florida, but there was something in the news nine months back. Police reports of a mass murder-suicide in a state park. Rock Springs Run State Reserve. All the names you gave me, the ones she mentioned, were on the list of dead they found. Some of the bodies had been eaten by gators by the time anyone discovered the site. Her entire pack was wiped out.”

Damien turned his back to the gathering crowd. This was not the place to discuss this, not within shifters’ hearing. He lowered his voice as much as possible.

“Not a suicide. The WSSO got to them. Revenge for whatever damage her pack did to their facilities, perhaps. Whatever the reason, it’s not a coincidence.”

Hayden’s face was stone cold. “No one searched for her or spread news of her disappearance because there was no one alive who knew she was missing.”

“Not a word of this to her,” Damien ordered.

“She needs to know. It’s her pack.”

Blade had said it as if Damien didn’t understand the emotional pain behind losing a pack. Well, he couldn’t know it in the same way as Blade, but he knew Tess well enough to know the news would decimate her.

“She’s still recovering, and her wolf… there are problems.” Except for Hayden, he hadn’t told anyone that she couldn’t shift. He wanted to keep the pressure off of her as long as possible, to give Tess and her wolf a chance to recover.

“Damien—” Hayden began.

“I’ll tell her before the meeting with Liam and Drake. I can’t hide any news involving the WSSO.”

“You’re actually going to tell them about Tess?” Blade asked.

Damien knew what Blade was warning him about. Telling Drake about Tess could put her in further danger. “I’m undecided about that. I may mention the attack in Florida and leave her out of it.”

“He already knows about Tess,” Hayden said. “His shifters we rescued would have told him about her though they’ll believe her human, as we did.”

“I’m moving the meeting to the clearing. I don’t want him anywhere near her. As for you Hayden,” Damien hated what he was about to do, but he couldn’t afford to piss off Drake. Damien and Liam needed Drake, if they were going to take on the WSSO. “You’ll stay in camp as well.”

Hayden growled and stepped away. When it came to Drake, Hayden’s brother and alpha of Hayden’s former pack, he had trouble remaining calm. Keeping him away from the meeting wasn’t fair to Hayden, and it didn’t help his standing with the shifters in Damien’s pack, given how many of them still weren’t sure if they could trust him. Hayden would come to understand the decision for what it was, in time.

Once the last shifters arrived, Damien began the meeting, going through general business starting with the changes in state guidelines on education. He emphasized how all parents were expected to ensure their kids spend as much time studying the human-based curriculum as they did the shifter-based one. Even though they lived apart from humans, shifters still needed to be able to blend in and understand the human world. Uneducated shifters weakened the pack.

By the time Damien finished updating everyone on the changes in security for when the other alphas and their contingents arrived, the pack was restless and agitated.

The shifters knew what topic was next: Tess. The adults all knew of the raid on the research facility. Damien and his top shifters had rescued eight of their own that night, as well as several from Liam’s and Drake’s packs. Many more hadn’t survived. His pack had lost three, an older shifter who worked maintenance and two young females who worked in the cookhouse. All had been well liked, and all still had family in the pack. Bringing a human back—someone the shifters believed was human—had angered them. The area wreaked of the crowd’s anxiety and hatred. He shouldn’t have waited this long to speak with his pack.

As soon as Damien gave the overview of why he’d brought Tess back, the questions started. Where was she from? Why did he bring a human here? Would she bring the WSSO back if the pack let her leave?

He should have led with the fact that she was a shifter, but telling them that the WSSO had robbed her of her ability to shift would cause panic. Tess and Damien still didn’t know the cause behind her inability to shift. Until he had answers to give, he had to let the pack believe she was human.

“Kill her before she endangers the pack.”

“Who said that?” Damien demanded, his voice brimming with rage.

Rinn, one of the wolves on the sanitation crew, stepped forward. “You’ve said it yourself, Damien. Humans are dangerous. We can’t risk having them here. If she finds out we’re shifters, she’ll tell the authorities, and you know what happens then.”

He did. All too well. Stealth teams would come in during the night, slit as many throats as they could while the shifters slept. Once the alarm was raised, snipers in the trees would pick off the runners. He’d heard the stories from all over the U.S. and Europe, even seen the aftermath in one pack in North Dakota last year. While the U.S. government hadn’t declared war or approved of the slaughter of innocent shifters, there were independent groups like the WSSO who took it upon themselves to cleanse the country of shifters whenever they were located.

Murmurs ran through the pack like wildfire. Damien could feel the tension growing, as well as the whispers of “kill her” and “make an example of her.” It was time to end this.