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3: SETH

Seth Tatterskein never knew that werewolves were so good at hiding.

In the three years that Seth had lived at the Wolf King’s Castle, there was always at least one burly Thane guarding the front door. They were in Manhattan, facing Central Park and tucked between museums. It meant that anyone might innocently walk through the impressive bronze doors, from Japanese tourists mistaking the Castle for a museum to the desperate homeless. Then there was a weird off chance that someone who actually knew that it was the Wolf King’s Castle was crazy enough to want to try to take on the king and his Thane. For all those reasons, the entrance was normally kept locked and guarded.

The door had been unlocked and there wasn’t anyone standing guard.

Seth stopped in the marbled foyer, dropping his luggage around him. “Hello? Hello?”

Had something happened while he was in the air? He had assumed that his phone calls, as he hopped from one airport to another, had gone unanswered because no one wanted to tell him that his cousin Jack Cabot was dead.

Thirty hours earlier, thousands of miles away, he’d felt something thrust through Jack with a searing blow that would kill a human. More blows followed as someone or something stabbed Jack again and again. And there was nothing Seth could do other than howl in fear and rage.

It was like all the times Seth had felt strangers die in Boston while he was stuck in New York City. Only worse: this was Jack. His big brother, best friend, fierce protector, loyal follower and only living relative all rolled into one. And now Jack was possibly dead.

Seth closed his eyes and focused on the tenuous connection he had with Jack. Somewhere far away, Jack clung to life. Seth growled in frustration. If Jack had been attacked in Boston, Seth would be able to pinpoint his location, know if anyone was with him and figure out if Jack was safe or not. Jack was somewhere west of New York City, not east. Seth needed someone else to fill in the holes as to what was being done to save his cousin.

Seth opened his eyes and scanned the empty entrance hall. If Jack was still alive, why was everyone avoiding Seth? He sniffed, testing the air for blood and gun smoke. He picked up Eric Hoffman’s scent. Lowest dominance of the Thane, Hoffman often pulled door duty. Hoffman had been standing at the doorway until a few minutes ago. He probably watched through the spyhole as Seth paid the taxi driver. Hoffman unlocked the door and vanished.

“Hello?” Seth slammed shut the front door. It boomed loudly and echoed. “Hoffman?”

Where was everyone? Why hadn’t anyone answered his phone calls? Seth had spent nearly fourteen hours trying to reach someone at the Castle before leaving his grandfather’s funeral early. (His Uncle Efrain, the new Earl of Guadalajara, hadn’t wanted Seth to fly internationally as an unattended minor, but one of the few benefits of being the Prince of Boston was that only the Wolf King could stop Seth from doing what he wanted.) It took another fourteen hours to work his way to Mexico City and then Atlanta and finally Newark. One of the Thanes should have met Seth at the airport with one of the Wolf King’s limousines.

Hoffman had been at the door. Where was he now? Where were all the other Thanes? The Wolf King had thirty-one of them living at the Castle.

The lounge was empty; normally at this time of night two or three of the Thanes would be relaxing in the leather armchairs. The billiards room was dark and silent, as was the music room and the theater. Seth checked the library, the ballroom, the formal dining room and the throne room. No one. Nor was there any sign or scent of bloodshed or invaders.



“Where is everyone?” Seth shouted. His voice echoed through the empty castle.

Seth realized then that Hoffman had to be hiding from him and that the Thane was doing a damn good job. Seth looped back through the entrance hall, opening doors and staring intently into the dark rooms. Listening. Sniffing.

Who knew that werewolves were so good at hiding?

Seth hadn’t played hide and seek since his little brothers were killed along with the rest of his family. Searching for Hoffman made him remember how helpless he’d felt the day they died. The Thane had pinned Seth to the throne room’s floor as his family was torn to shreds in Boston. He could do nothing but scream and beg. When his father died, his power roared into Seth like a supernova. Becoming the Prince of Boston burned out everything that made him Seth; for a few confusing weeks, he was spared the memory of ever having little brothers.

When he started to remember, Jack had been there, keeping him from breaking into a thousand pieces.

“What happened to my cousin?” Seth roared. The coat closet, tucked in a dark corner of the entrance hall, was the only possible hiding place left. He ripped the door off and flung it away from him. The force embedded it into the far wall.

The walk-in closet was cedar-lined and filled with rarely used winter coats. Werewolves only needed outerwear to stay dry, not warm. A light brown tail was sticking out between two camel-hair wool coats. It’d been wagging when he ripped open the door. At the boom of the door hitting the far wall, the tail slung down to tuck between the back legs of a large werewolf.

“Hoffman!” Seth shouted.

“I don’t know!” Hoffman wailed, slinking deeper into the coats. “I don’t know, Seth! Your highness! Please don’t hurt me!”

“I’m not going to hurt you!” Seth growled. “Get the hell out here and tell me what you do know.”

Hoffman had twelve years, three inches and fifty pounds on Seth, but was lowest dominance of the Thanes. The man overcompensated with muscle T-shirts to show off his tribal tattoos. The ink showed through his camel-colored fur as bold black markings, making him look like some kind of weird zebra.

“Cabot forgot his phone in the kitchen again,” Hoffman whined. “You know how he’s always setting it down and forgetting it. When you called, Isaiah picked it up, guessed Cabot’s password, and listened to the message you left.”

Seth cursed. Jack always used the same two passwords: December twenty-eighth and March seventh. They were Seth’s and his half-brother’s birthday. “Why didn’t Isaiah call me? Why didn’t anyone answer the Castle’s landline?”

“Isaiah said, until we found out what happened to Cabot, we shouldn’t talk to you. It would upset you more if you knew that we didn’t know where Cabot was, let alone what happened to him.”

Utter bullshit! Isaiah was the Wolf King’s son, a twenty-nine-year-old going on five. Isaiah didn’t care how upset Seth got. In fact, Isaiah routinely chose the path that annoyed Seth the most.

“It’s been a full day!” Seth shouted. “Haven’t you found anything out?”

“We thought Cabot was in Mexico with you!”

Jack had been an angry ten-year-old when Seth’s parents were joined in an arranged marriage. Apparently he had choice things to say about the ancestry of the Guadalajara pack. When Efrain called the Castle to let the king know that Seth’s grandfather was dying, his uncle made it clear that Jack wasn’t welcome in Mexico. The Wolf King’s lawyer, Bishop, had flown with Seth in a private jet down to Guadalajara. Shortly after they arrived, however, Bishop had taken off with said airplane on some other business for the king.

“Did anyone tell Alexander?” The Wolf King usually knew when something had happened to one of his Thanes. Jack was a special case; Alexander had shifted Jack back into the Boston territory after the rest of Seth’s family had been killed. The knowledge that Jack wasn’t directly under the king’s protection had eaten Seth with guilt the entire way back to New York.

“Alexander is in Belgrade; he left Friday morning. We couldn’t remember who all went; so we called Bishop to see if your cousin was with them. Bishop told us that the king sent Cabot to someplace in Upstate New York. He went with Samuels. We should call Samuels.”

Hoffman made it sound like a collective of Thanes huddled around the phone acting with Borg-like hive intelligence. What most likely happened was that Isaiah made the phone call and told the Thanes loyal to him what he’d learned.

“And?” Seth snapped.

“And what?”

“Did Isaiah call Samuels?”

“He’s not answering his phone.”

Wolves didn’t have pockets. It was possible that Samuels wasn’t answering because he left his phone with his clothes. It was comforting to know that at least his cousin wasn’t alone. How quickly had Isaiah followed up on Seth’s desperate calls? After spending Friday trying to learn something by phone, Seth spent Saturday hopscotching his way back from Mexico on commercial flights. It had been a frustrating twelve hours topped by another hour in the taxi with the awful knowledge that Jack wasn’t anywhere near New York City.

Seth felt Jack get stabbed on Friday. It was now nearly midnight on Saturday. “When did Isaiah try to reach Samuels and how many times did he try?”

“Sometime this morning, after he got hold of Bishop, and then again at dinner, after he found out you were heading back from Mexico.”

Twice. Twice. Two Thanes missing—one of them seriously hurt—and Isaiah had made only two phone calls.

Seth swore, making Hoffman cringe. Seth resisted the sudden urge to hurt someone because it wasn’t Hoffman he wanted to kick hard. It was Isaiah. Hoffman was just one of the many Thanes that expected the Wolf King’s son to rise to power and take them with him. Most of them were the weaker Thanes who were sick of being bottom of the dominance order at the castle.

And most likely the reason Isaiah hadn’t done anything was because losing Jack would devastate Seth.

* * *

Hoffman knew nothing else about what had been done about Jack, which wasn’t surprising. He wasn’t sure where Isaiah was either. The best he could guess was that Isaiah had taken one of the cars from the Castle’s extensive motor pool, thus exiting via the garage.

Hoffman did know that most of the Thanes had left the Castle once they learned that Seth was on his way home. The last fight between Seth and Isaiah that had gone to blows was when Seth was fourteen and Isaiah was twenty-seven. Isaiah started it by ambushing the boy. Seth ended it by breaking five of Isaiah’s ribs, his collarbone, his right arm, and the north wall of the library.

The Thanes might be loyal to Isaiah but they weren’t stupid.

There was one person that couldn’t or wouldn’t hide. Whether Seth could trust him was something he was never sure of.

The Castle’s massive gleaming kitchen, extensive larder and well-stocked wine cellar were the personal territory of Cook. As a man, he was a tall, blond Dane. He was always in the kitchen, dressed in chef whites. Even now, close to midnight, he was setting out bread and meat onto the long stainless steel island.

He glanced up as Seth came through the swinging doors from the dining room. He looked down immediately since he wasn’t dominant enough to meet Seth’s angry gaze. No one but the king was. It didn’t mean that the male couldn’t dig at Seth. Thirty years he’d served the Wolf King but he still spoke with a thick accent. “Was it safe for you to leave your uncle like that—what with him just into his power? Alexander would have normally shepherded him through the amnesia, as he did with you.”

“Efrain didn’t need me.” Seth paced on the other side of the stainless steel island. “My grandfather has been bleeding out his powers for years. My uncle has been the Earl of Guadalajara in every way but name until last week. He had a few hours of amnesia.” Which was nothing compared to the weeks that Seth had been lost to himself when his father died, making him Prince of Boston. “Where is Jack?”

Cook cut a round dark loaf of rye bread into thin slices. “I was feeding Bishop. He’d been tied up expediting a new passport for the king to go to Belgrade; it was being complicated by the normal problem of Alexander being born before all this silly paperwork was invented. Anyhow, I was feeding Bishop lunch when the Ithaca police department called him. They talked to him about a stolen car that had been found in a lake. He made me put a second piece of bread on his smørrebrød so he could carry it and he headed off to see the car.”

Smørrebrød was the Danish open-faced sandwich he was making now. Cook treated it as an insult to his cooking to add more bread to it.

“Ithaca?” Seth seized on the name. The city wasn’t a Source point so it was geologically stable enough that it didn’t require a wolf pack. It was protected by an overlap of three different territories: Binghamton, Syracuse and Buffalo. It made sense that the Wolf King’s lawyer would be called in to handle any large legal mess since it wouldn’t be clear which territory should shoulder the responsibility.

Cook spread a thick layer of liver pâté onto the pieces of rye bread. The rich smell reminded Seth that he hadn’t eaten anything all day. Cook’s food was good but it still struck Seth as strange and exotic. “While Bishop was in Ithaca, the Prince of Belgrade called saying that the situation was worse than he thought. He needed help immediately. The king wanted Bishop in Belgrade, so he had Samuels call him and order him back.”

Alexander was born when humans were still struggling with the concept of forging metal. He did not use phones and barely tolerated things like cars and airplanes. Because the Thanes constantly had to act as go-betweens for the king, everyone ended up knowing snippets of information. The problem was not all the random pieces went to the same jigsaw puzzle.

“Does this have anything to do with Jack?” Seth asked.

Cook shrugged and topped the liver pâté with slices of salt beef and meat jelly. “I’m telling you what I know. After Bishop got back, the king called in Samuels and Cabot. They came through the kitchen, arguing over which of them would drive. Samuels said that since it took nearly five hours, they could take turns. They asked me for something to eat on the road. Cabot put down his phone and forgot it.” He took it out of his pocket and gave it to Seth. “I did not notice until it started to ring.”

Hard evidence that all lines of information had been cut filled Seth with grief. Where was his cousin? What happened to him?

Ithaca matched up to the vague northwest direction he was getting when he focused on Jack. The city, though, was in the middle of nowhere. If he guessed wrong, he could be hours from wherever the two Thanes had actually gone.

Cook added raw onion rings and garden cress to the smørrebrød and pushed one of the plates across the island to Seth. “Eat. You’re scaring everyone.”

A hungry wolf was a dangerous wolf.

Seth picked up the heavily loaded rye bread. After a week of spicy Mexican food like his mother used to make, it was an assault of rich, earthy flavors. He knew the smørrebrød tasted good but it made him homesick for a home that no longer existed. His parents were dead and their house had burned to the ground. All he had left was his cousin, hurt and possibly dying. The smørrebrød tasted of death and sorrow.

“Who did the king take with him?” He went to the drink refrigerator for something to wash the taste out of his mouth.

Cook named the Thanes that had gone to Belgrade. The list made Seth growl in frustration; Alexander had taken everyone that Seth trusted.

“Where’s Isaiah?” Seth asked.

“Out,” Cook stated plainly. Either he didn’t know or he didn’t want Seth to know. Seth wasn’t sure which. Isaiah had been the little motherless boy before Seth showed up. Worse, Isaiah’s mother had chosen to abandon her son when she committed suicide. It was one of the many reasons why Isaiah didn’t like Seth.

“Did anyone call Bishop and tell him that they couldn’t get hold of Samuels either?” By “anyone” Seth meant Isaiah but he was being diplomatic. He was never sure which of them Cook favored. Perhaps Cook was truly neutral as he seemed—if he was, he was the only Thane out of thirty-one.

“They tried.” Cook kept to the plural. Maybe someone other than Isaiah actually acted on the information. “No one could get through to Bishop.”

Seth took out his phone and dialed Bishop. After nearly a minute of silence, a recording cut in, explaining that all circuits were busy. A second and third attempt got the same result.

The king would only send one Thane unless he thought the mission might be dangerous. Alexander would know where they were, even from the other side of the world. He would know, just as Seth knew, that Jack was hurt. He would know, and he would do something.

Unless something on the other side the world had his complete attention.

“What’s wrong in Belgrade?” Seth asked.

“There was a massive breach; larger than the one that killed your family. It leveled part of the city and killed the prince before Alexander arrived.”

“Did Alexander get the breach closed?” The dark, cold tears in the fabric of reality were what Seth hated most about being the Prince of Boston. He’d never been allowed to see one but he could feel them when they happened. Normally they were tiny rips allowing through only small things like growlings and skitterscratches. Jack would sit on Seth in New York as Alexander took Thanes to Boston to close the breach and hunt down anything that slipped through the opening. The Thanes couldn’t feel the breach or sense the monsters at a distance; they hunted by scent alone for creatures that Seth could track from hundreds of miles away. Seth would be stuck in New York as people died in his territory. Seth thought there could be nothing worse before Jack disappeared to some place where Seth couldn’t track him.

“Alexander closed the breach,” Cook said. “He has half the Thanes with him, killing what came through the tear. The biggest problem is that the prince’s nephew inherited his power, not his sons. Those idiot Serbian wolves started to fight over if the boy was the true prince or not. When the heir is lost to alpha amnesia, that’s when he’s vulnerable.”

Seth snorted. “The power goes where it wills.” His uncle Efrain had two older brothers. When the power started to leech out of his dying grandfather, though, it slowly became apparent who was the true heir. Any power struggle was dealt with years ago. “Is Alexander bringing the new prince back to New York with him?”

“No. He’s several years older than you.”

When Alexander arranged Seth’s trip to Mexico, Seth thought it meant that the king was finally going to allow him to act like a prince. There were princes scattered across the world that could have guided the new earl through the amnesia. Seth thought that his other responsibilities would quickly follow; that Alexander would allow him to return to Boston, deal with the breaches, and protect his territory. There would be no more three-hour delays as the Wolf King drove the hundreds of miles between the cities. There would be no more people dying needlessly.

Shortly before Seth left for Mexico, though, Alexander announced that Seth would be attending Columbia University just a few blocks away. Seth growled softly. If he had to sit on his hands and feel people die for the next four years, he was going to go slowly mad.

“If he’s not bringing the new prince here, then the king is staying in Belgrade until the amnesia wears off?”

Cook went still and silent as he realized the logical end to the conversation.

If the Wolf King wasn’t returning, then Isaiah could ignore the situation until Jack was dead.

“You can’t go looking for him,” Cook said quietly.

“No one can stop me.”

* * *

In theory he wasn’t allowed to drive between nine p.m. and five a.m. He only had a junior driver’s license. Nor was he allowed to take the Porsche Boxster, since it was considered Isaiah’s car, despite the fact that the registration only had Alexander’s name on it. He decided that karma gave him certain privileges. If Isaiah was going to put Jack’s life in danger, Seth could take his Porsche.


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