Leader of the Pack (68 page)

Jenna flinched.
You for one,
she thought angrily. “Look. I know that I’m in trouble here. I also know that I could have made things much worse for you last night and didn’t. What’s the chance that you as the supposed good guy will meet me half way?”

Aislinn shook her head. “I’m not real inclined to be overly helpful to you. I happen to think that the fact you being in this room instead of strung up somewhere is half way.” Somewhere in the hall, back to his usual self, Keith chuckled.

“Fine. You know what? I’m tired and don’t really want to play mental chess right now,” Jenna sneered. “How about you take me to talk to my father again, and I’ll tell you where the books are?”

Aislinn smiled. She was glad to be done playing games with Jenna anyway. “No. How about you tell me where the books
and
the notes
and
anything else that might hint at the fact that a druid ever existed in or near the manor is, we go get them to make sure you’re not lying, and then I’ll take you to talk to your father?”

“Damn,” Keith said a little too loud. “She’s tough.” Cullen half-heartedly glared at Keith to be quiet. He was pleased that she was doing so well. He hadn’t been entirely sure this was a good idea.

Jenna shifted her attention toward the door and smirked at the men standing there through tears. “Fine, whatever,” she said. “You’re the good guys right? I’m supposed to trust you. Most of the notes and papers are locked in my father’s desk in his bedroom. The books and all the information the druids used is in a workroom in the basement, on a table, out in the open,” Jenna said with a note of sarcasm.

Keith snorted. “So you’re saying that if we had raided the place, we would have found it all no fuss no muss.”

A real glare from Cullen stopped Keith’s commentary.

“Something like that,” Jenna replied to the voice in the hallway.

Cullen stepped through the doorway. “Aislinn, we’re done here for now,” he said, obviously wanting her to leave with him. “Given that we find everything, we’ll see about granting your request, Jenna. I suggest that you remain cooperative until then.”

“What else am I going to do,” she sneered.

Aislinn joined the others in the hallway and Jenna’s door was closed and locked. “You know if she shifts that door won’t do any good right?”

Keith harrumphed. “You think we should leave it open for her? Though that might save the cost of replacing the door, should she decide to break out.”

Cadifor growled. “For now let’s leave the door and place some more guards now that the prisoners have had a good night’s sleep and time to consider escape.”

“I’m already there,” Cullen said. He signaled one of the betas and gave a short set of instructions for pulling stun guns out of the armory in the basement and tripling the guard.

When Cullen turned back to his friends, Cadifor had a thoughtful gleam in his eyes. “I suppose you’re going to have to tend to pack matters?”

“I would have thought that a given,” Cullen replied.

“Oh sure,” Keith taunted, “I do all the work while you sleep in. That’s really important business to deal with.”

Makeda laughed, “I’m surprised you didn’t stick your tongue out at the end of that statement.”

Grinning, Keith couldn’t resist the opening. “Like this,” he said, and added some stomping feet to the pseudo-tantrum. His little display was received with a group eye roll.

“Okay,” Cadifor said with authority. “That’s enough. How do put up with this all the time?”

Cullen shrugged. “I got used to it a long time ago. Besides, everyone needs a comic relief side kick.”

“Side kick,” Keith pouted.

The sincerity in his tone had everyone snickering.

A deliberate cough from Cadifor ended the laughter. “Seriously, Makeda and I will deal with the Tairneach issue. You have enough going on here.”

“Normally I would argue,” Cullen said as Aislinn sidled up beside him and slipped a hand into his. “But I think I’ll let you have this one.”

Makeda winked at Aislinn. “Consider it a gift for your mating. Besides, Cadifor has been playing the sedate politician too long now. You should have seen his face during that battle. It’ll do him some good to be off the phone and moving around.”

Cadifor scoffed at the comment, but didn’t argue the point.

“Then tomorrow,” Cullen replied, “we’re heading back to Madadh-Allaidh Saobhaidh.”

* * * *

The month passed quickly. Cullen couldn’t believe how much he missed the standard, nobody’s life’s at stake, everyday paperwork that he dealt with before all the bullshit started. A pleased smile on his face, he sat at his desk in his office on the13th floor and opened another bill. Sure he could have had an accountant or someone take care if this stuff, but then what would he do all day?

Momentarily he was tempted to get involved with the mess Cadifor was trying to resolve. Unfortunately, when he had arrived at the Tairneach manor to collect the books and notes, the feds had already been there. For the last couple weeks, he had been dealing with phone calls and private meetings. He tried to talk to Cullen about it at one point, but Cullen had stopped him. He didn’t want to know about it unless he had to be involved in it. Cadifor laughed at him and moved on. He figured that Cullen had earned a reprieve for a while.

Even Sarah was in a good mood. With Aislinn around to take some of the load off, she’d been spending more time with Drake. That was always good for her mood. Cullen took some of Keith’s workload. He still had Keith dealing with the internal morale issues Terrick caused, but for the most part he left Keith to help Jaylyn with the new babies. Thinking about that had him chuckling. Jay called that morning and asked Cullen to
please
find Keith something to get him out of their room and away from her for a little while. Apparently he was trying to be helpful with the babies, and he was driving her nuts.

In between diaper changes, Keith managed to track the last leak within the pack back to Terrick. That was no surprise. The problem ended up being that there wasn’t anything solid to get Terrick with. He had been talking with the Tairneach, but he hadn’t leaked anything that he had been
told
not to say. So they were keeping an eye on him, and he was removed from the elder council, but he was still around and still causing problems. Oddly enough Cullen found that he didn’t care. Dealing with Terrick was better than dealing with the other caoch that had been dominating his life lately. Besides Terrick had never been a loyalist or a good friend. If there was anyone in the pack who Cullen could have expected to stab him in the back, it was Terrick.

After it was established that there would be no fighting, Makeda stayed around the Madadh-Allaidh Saobhaidh to spend time with Aislinn while Cadifor took care of the Feds and the Pack Council. That first week had been something else. Makeda’s influence on Aislinn was interesting. Aislinn couldn’t behave more like an alpha’s mate than she did under Makeda’s diligent tutelage. For all of Makeda’s effort with helping Aislinn she was repaid in her favorite way. Cullen had never figured Aislinn for being that enthusiastic with a woman, but she was always surprising him with something.

Cullen finished with the bills for the casino and hotel. Liam was possessive of the bills for the Taigh-O
è
sda, so Cullen didn’t get to take care of those. But he took a moment to look over the last of the arrangements for the mating ceremony. It was set. All the guests outside of the pack had received actual invitations. Nora was invited. There would be fewer druids present, but enough to make a showing for the groups of lycans who were only attending the mating to meet the druids. The guest list actually got larger after word spread about the first mating attempt and all the things that happened.

At first, Cullen tried to talk Cadifor out of doing the diplomatic thing, and make it a nice small mating ceremony. Aislinn was the one who said she wanted the druids there, and Keith pointed out that Cullen had already told everyone that they would reconvene in a month. They were stuck with the big party. Sarah went to extra lengths this time. There seemed to be more of everything. Liam came to Cullen’s office complaining about the food she wanted, twice. The kitchen at the reservation apparently wasn’t sufficient for his people to make it all out there in the quantities Sarah wanted, and Liam refused to bring it all in cold and heat it up there. Cullen finally conceded to buying some additional kitchen equipment for the cabin. He told Sarah that she was getting out of hand, but she smiled at him and told him that after all the trouble the first time, they owed it to everyone to make this a night to remember.

Aislinn helped Sarah make most of the arrangements this time, and she seemed okay if not pleased with all the fuss. Every time Cullen began to sound annoyed with the way things were turning out, Aislinn reminded him that he had said the two of them wouldn’t get a chance to do anything in a small way. With Makeda around doting on Aislinn, and Sarah pretty much using Aislinn as her right hand the rest of the pack stopped questioning Aislinn’s rank and motivation. It was as if she had been part of the pack all along. She decided to put off exploring her druid half until after the mating was finished. She wanted to make sure she was accepted by the lycans before expounding on anything that would make her more distinct than she already was. The only druidic thing she did was take a couple trips out to the reservation to speak with Brinah.

Cullen put the last of the papers aside and pushed back from his desk. He felt a bit disappointed that there were no phone calls today to interrupt his nice normal morning with more normal hassles. It would be a while before any of the standard day stuff would bother him again. He got up and left his office. It was time for lunch, and he wanted to eat with Aislinn. That meant tracking her down, though.

Ringing from his pocket drew Cullen’s attention. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and read the caller ID, smiling when he saw Cadifor’s name. “Yeah,” he said into the receiver.

“Hey, is Aislinn still willing to take Jenna out to talk to Brennus?”

Cullen stopped in the middle of the hall. That wasn’t what he had been expecting. The last thing he wanted to do two days before the mating ceremony was revisit the last time. “I take it that you finally got the books back?”

“For the most part. We got the books back, but the suspicion is that the Feds already took what they wanted out of them. This isn’t over. The only reason I asked about the Jenna thing is because when we turned the books over to the Circle they seemed to think there’s something missing. The Feds insist they don’t have it. I’m leaning toward believing them, if only because they would have just copied the information and given us the original back. The Tairneach are the only ones who could have it, if it’s still out there.”

Cullen growled unhappily.

“You’re too overprotective of her,” Cadifor said in annoyance. “Jenna isn’t going to tell us anything until Aislinn takes her to Brennus. I guarantee that she’s been sitting on this card since the beginning, in case we went back on the arrangement.”

“Fine,” Cullen agreed. “I’ll talk to her about it. You’ll need to arrange to have Jenna at the reservation tomorrow, so we can get this out of the way and over with before the mating. I’m not going to have any more ceremonies. This is it.”

Cadifor laughed. “Alright. I’ll see you there tomorrow round noon.”

“We’ll be there. Make sure you have enough guards to deal with Jenna in case she decides to go dire and try to kill people again.”

“No problem. I don’t think that will happen, but I’ll have the men to deal with her if it does.” There was silence for a minute. “Are we sure that Aislinn’s going to be able to do this?”

“Yeah, remember Peter?” Cullen sighed.

“No. Who’s Peter?”

“Was,” Cullen said sadly. “Peter was the only one of my guys that Rafe had gotten to who tried to tell me what was going on. Rafe tortured and killed his mate. When we all got back and things settled down Peter asked Aislinn to help him talk to Zoe. We thought it would help him. He had been so depressed since Zoe died. We went out to the reservation and Aislinn managed to bring Zoe. Shortly after that Peter killed himself.”

“Caoch,” Cadifor said softly. “Well, it’s not that surprising. Too bad for the loss of a good man.”

Cullen let the air out of his lungs in a long slow breath. He had been in such a good mood. “Yeah.” He paused. “Anyway, make sure Jenna brings that ring. I suppose it should be expected, but just make sure she has it. Aislinn finds it easier to do if there’s something that was important to the soul she’s trying to contact.”

“Consider it done. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

* * * *

Aislinn sat in the infirmary of the sub-basement, down the hall from the gym. She hadn’t been feeling well all month, and she was pretty sure she knew why. Rhona came into the room smiling at her. Aislinn nodded back. She had figured. She sat there trying to decide how she felt about the situation. It wasn’t like the entire pack didn’t know they were already mated at this point. They were all playing along with the pretense that Cullen and Aislinn still needed the ceremony. It had really come to the point where it was entirely for appearances. Most everyone was grinning and laughing about it when they thought no one was listening.