Masked By Danger by Christa Wick

Chapter Nine

"You aren't convening the Witches'Council—are you?" Iris asked, her tone sharpening as she entered an auditorium-like cavern deep within the High Peaks region of the Adirondack Mountains.

"No, I just wanted someplace we could spread out with the files," Esme said, her hand flicking at the massive table that served as the chamber's focal point. "And still have some privacy—to the extent that's possible in a structure filled with shifters."

Iris turned a semicircle, looking at the seating carved into the stone before examining the wooden table and its many chairs. She didn't need to count their number. She knew from childhood stories Andra had told her that there were twenty-seven spots at the table.

One was for The Nakari, mother to all, two for the representatives of the Witches' Council, twelve for the head of each clan, and twelve for what should be the most powerful witch from each clan, but usually was the most senior witch.

Clan leaders and witches from other countries had also visited, but those occasions were rare when Iris was a teen. With human concern over terrorism growing exponentially since then, airport and border security would be more dangerous for shifters than it had ever been.

While current body scanners had a privacy filter on the display that showed a generic figure on screen at the airports, the actual images captured and stored by the government had more than enough detail to expose the existence of shifters to the world. It only seemed logical to Iris that such changes in technology had rendered global meetings obsolete.

Quieting the cop side of her brain for a second, she took a seat and stroked the table's surface. The maker had bewitched its construction—or so Andra had said.

No Wych Elm had ever grown to more than a tenth of the table's size naturally. Even more impossible were how the burlish swirls of black, gold, and reddish browns covered the entire surface.

"My grandmother described this to me," Iris said, her gaze remaining on the stormy pattern so she wouldn't have to look at the overly sympathetic witch. "It was made in the time of All-Mother Zara…."

She trailed off, realizing she should have counted the chairs—or at least glanced at all of them.

"Yes," Esme said, picking up the thread. "No one would sit until she had. She abhorred the custom and ordered wolf and witch to take their comfort if she was running late.

It was the one command they unerringly disobeyed. Disrespectful, they said. What if one accidentally sat in her favored spot? So she had a new chair built, one that was a little bigger, a little more ornate than the others. And still, they stood until she arrived."

Keeping her gaze on the table, Iris vaguely motioned at its scope.

"There are only twenty-six chairs, each the same," she said. "Why is there no seat for The Nakari?"

"All-Mother Riya died a decade ago."

Pain stabbed Iris in the chest, cut off her oxygen. She should have realized the All-Mother could no longer be alive, not with all that she had been told about the missing cubs and Hunter attacks.

"There should have been a successor—"

She shut up and focused on breathing. Esme remained silent until Iris finally lifted her gaze.

"Never located," the witch said. "Perhaps never born, perhaps her nature hidden from herself and to us for reasons unknown. Maybe that all changed today."

It took a few, elongated seconds for Esme's meaning to sink in.

Top lip lifting in a snarl, Iris shook her head. "I would expect the head of the Witches' Council to be more informed about the All-Mother. Like all other alphas, she shifts earlier than most. Worse than merely being a late bloomer, I've never shifted. And the successor's magic is there from the beginning. She is born with a witch's caul. I think my mother and grandmother would have noticed!"

The last bit came out hotter than Iris intended, hot enough to burn her fingertips with the magic she was fighting to contain as her emotions somersaulted through her.

Were the clans so desperate they would irrationally grasp at Iris like some kind of life preserver? First as if she were a female alpha wolf and, now, as if she were THE female alpha.

All-Mother Iris…as if!

"The presence of a caul had always been the case," Esme agreed, her tone hardening as she continued. "Until it wasn't. It could be we are facing the passing of several more generations before a new All-Mother is born. Except for the near extinction of shifters during the Dark Ages, that would be unprecedented. In all other recorded times, a female cub destined to succeed the All-Mother has always been born in time to be tutored and protected by the existing All-Mother as her heir. But, even if you are not The Nakari—and despite what forced you off clan lands and away from any other shifters—we all need you to step up."

Iris leaned back in the chair, her gaze drilling into the witch's skull.

…despite what forced you off clan lands…

"It was painful, I sense that," Esme soothed. "But this war is being waged against every clan in the country."

"Just this country?"

Esme shrugged. "We've lost contact since Riya's death. Calls have stopped coming in or being answered. The envoys we sent never returned and none have visited. Even within this country, each clan has been slowly transitioning toward becoming its own silo because of how dangerous travel has become."

She drew a deep breath then shook her head a little harder, a ring of witch light circling her pupils. "So, yes, we need you to put the past aside and step the hell up."

The double doors on the north end of the chamber opened before Iris could release the torrent of words that had dammed themselves behind her clenched teeth.

Her gaze landed first on Cade. Standing next to him were Denver and two of the many people she had met earlier.

The wolf with them was named Seth. He was close to Iris in age but from the Tennessee clan, so Iris had never crossed paths with him before today. The other was his mate, one of the "latents" she had heard mentioned.

Lana had been holding their son, Dash, when Esme gave Iris a tour of the facility's new school rooms. Judging by the interactions between the witch and the latent, they were best friends.

There were a few other infants around the facility, all of them younger than Lana and Seth's son. Cade had gotten close and whispered in Iris's ear on the tour that Dash was the first cub born on clan lands in more than a decade. The only other shifters born in that lost period were the orphans discovered living in the abandoned spaces of human cities.

She had seen those children on her tour, too, if only through a thick plate of one-way glass that was the same as law enforcement used in interrogation rooms. The fact that every last one was male and had dark hair startled Iris. They could have been brothers, but they were all found in different cities, some in different states, and were all too close in age.

Iris looked away from the new arrivals and the file boxes they carried, her brain trying to process everything at once—Riya's death and lack of a successor, the impossible mating of shifter to human, the orphaned cubs, the confirmed existence of Hunters, and her own changing state and how it might fit with the new, amorphous status quo for the shifters she had fled as a teenager.

"We might as well dig in while we wait for dinner to arrive," Cade said, placing his file box on the table in front of Iris before trying to slide into the chair beside her.

Esme extended an arm at the same time she pushed a generous hip between them. She reached into the box Cade had carried and pulled out a folder.

The box was hand marked L1 in bold, black ink. Lana carried L2. Both boxes contained background information and interviews from all the latents discovered to date.

Snapping the folder open, Esme elbowed Cade away from Iris.

"What part of spreading out does not compute?" she asked, not bothering to lower her voice.

Turning to Iris, she smiled.

"We've tried to be methodical about the files. And comprehensive. The folders for the latents, for example, include family histories where possible." Pausing, she looked at Lana, both women's gazes instantly softening. "Lana had a younger sister. She was murdered a couple of years before Lana moved to Tennessee. The leader of the Hunters kidnapped Lana and…"

She trailed off, her mouth beginning to quiver.

"He said 'your sister Hannah didn't fight half as hard,'" Lana whispered then nodded at the two boxes. "I think about a third of the women in our files have a close missing or murdered female relative—a mother or sister. We've tried to record details on those related crimes, as well."

Stomach churning, Iris gestured at the box Seth had just placed on the table, the one that contained the files on the cubs. He pushed it closer until she could snag one edge. Pulling the lid off, she removed the thickest folder and three of the thinnest.

"I'm sorry about your sister," she said.

Lana nodded but didn't meet Iris's gaze.

Taking the woman's reaction as permission to move on, she tapped the files she had pulled from the box.

"While I am a homicide detective and worked other Crimes Against Persons before that, I thought I'd start with Oscar's file because it is the most developed and also the files for the newest cub rescues because their evidence is the freshest."

Iris pressed her hand to her mouth, several fingers rubbing hard at her lips before she stopped and shook her head. "I understand that recovery of the cubs only began after you discovered Hunter manuscripts. Something about that doesn't feel right."

"How?" Denver asked, his gaze fixed on the thick file Iris held.

She understood the reason. The cub had become Denver's—not just a foster child but as much a part of his soul as the children Esme would one day bear.

Judging by the dark glitter in his topaz eyes, he had no interest in finding Oscar's parents, especially since the cub had no memory that extended past the day Denver had discovered him.

"I can't pretend to understand how casting works." Iris folded her hands on top of the file. "But from what Lana demonstrated earlier, it sounds like a curtain being jerked back each time one of the cubs is located. No parents are found, but the boys haven't been abandoned or lost long enough to get pulled into the human world. No police, no Child Protective Services, no Good Samaritan or, the likeliest scenario of all for a child left on the streets..."

Iris paused, the pulse at her throat accelerating as she closed her eyes and spit out the distasteful words. "A sexual predator."

"If you're suggesting that all the rescues were meant to be ambushes, then they failed." Denver gestured at the box. All total, there were about two dozen files. "We've never had an unsuccessful cub mission."

"Maybe we only found them because Hunters were casting for the cubs at the same time?" Esme's mouth corkscrewed in concentration. "Like the beacon boost I seemed to have had in locating Iris today? Only, with the cubs, we lucked into getting there before any Hunters."

"That's ignoring the possibility that I was also being used as bait." Iris shook her head. "Even if I wasn't bait and some kind of beacon boost explains the curtain effect, it doesn't explain the rest. I mean—the cubs are only more vulnerable without their parents, not more discoverable."

Esme rubbed at her eyes. "So you think the cubs are bait of some kind, even though there were no Hunter attacks during their rescue?"

"I think it's a strong possibility." Reaching out, Iris placed a hand on the witch's.

Catching Cade's eager gaze on the point of contact, she pulled back. His wolf pushed at Iris, probing for something she couldn't pin down.

Did he think she was making a friend? Did he desperately want that to happen?

She'd set him straight later—if there was a later. All she had done in touching the woman was make an effort at developing rapport as an investigator.

Iris shifted her attention to Denver. While Esme led the Witches' Council, she and her mate had arrived during a power vacuum in the New York clan. Denver had filled it. That left him in charge of what happened with the cubs.

"I'd like to interview the children."

"You mean interrogate them," he snapped. A smile that looked forced surfaced and died on his lips in the space of a heartbeat. When he spoke again, he managed a polite tone. "They've been questioned multiple times."

"I thought you wanted a cop—someone with different methods?" Pushing the files away, Iris leaned back in her chair. "How many child abuse cases have any of your teams worked? How many kids have they interviewed with a mother's dead body in the next room naked…stabbed…strangled? How many—"

Denver's growl cleaved away the rest of her argument.

"She's right," Cade intervened. "If the cubs are bait, we need to know. We risk lives each time we leave the protection of our lands."

Esme nodded, as did Lana and Seth. Denver signaled his assent with a small drop in his gaze before he stood.

He nodded at his mate.

"I need to go," he said. "The other clan leaders need briefed. Whatever they decide for their people, the New York teams won't stop rescuing cubs. We'll just take more precautions."

Forgetting her resolution to ignore Cade, Iris risked a glance in his direction. He hooked her gaze before she could look away. And then he pushed his wolf at her. This time it was a gentle nudge, as if he only intended to have his energy comfort her.

The effect was the exact opposite.

"One more question," she said, stalling Denver's departure. Once one of them peeled away from the table, the others might follow until she was left alone with the stubborn wolf who insisted she was his mate. "Is there any pattern in who has been able to locate the cubs while casting?"

Esme looked to Lana.

"Just you," Lana said, her gaze remaining on the witch. "I've found about a dozen latents, as have some of the witches. Camille's casting…well…"

With the conversation threatening to come to a screeching halt at the mention of the traitorous witch, Iris quickly tried to redirect everyone's attention.

"Are all of the found cubs housed here?"

"No, just most of them," Esme answered. "There are three in California and two in Washington State. We didn't want to risk transporting them such a distance. It's impossible to tell, at the moment, if we would find more cubs if our casting location ex—"

Denver stopped his mate with a low growl. Iris glanced between the two, sensed the topic was a frequent sore point with them.

"Who knows how many cubs are being left unprotected on the streets," Esme continued, redirecting the conversation before pinning Iris with her sea green gaze. "I'd like to teach you to cast—and soon."

When Iris hesitated to respond, Cade fixed that intense gaze of his on her and pushed the way only he could. “You gonna fight your witch as well as your wolf, baby?”

How on earth was it that Cade knew exactly what to say to rile her up even after all these years apart?

And why the hell did his challenging her every chance he got turn her on so damn much?