Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) (3 page)

The hustings was an opportunity for Pack Leaders across the world to bring issues before the Alphas, who were basically the king and queen of the Shifters and Seers. Growing up in a pack that typically kept to themselves and hadn’t sought audience with the Alphas in more than four generations, Charlie always assumed their world was a fairly small one. It didn’t take long for him to realize he was wrong. Michelle, who had access to every piece of information on every pack in existence, told him there were over seven hundred registered packs in the world, and nearly two hundred of them lived in the United States.

The tall, dark skinned Shifter now standing in front of the Alphas was from a small Mexican pack that numbered only three Shifters and two Seers. Until he attended his first hustings, Charlie hadn’t even considered the existence of Mexican Shifters.

“Your Highnesses,” he said, sinking to one knee as his daughter curtsied.

Liam checked the list of appointments. “Mr. Guzman. What can we do for you today?”

“It’s not me,” Mr. Guzman said. “It’s my girl here. She has something to tell you.” The girl in question looked like she would much rather turn around and run as fast as she could out into the rain than tell them anything. She just stood there, eyes wide and lips trembling slightly, until her father pushed her forward.

“What’s your name, honey?” Talley asked, sounding like a sweet old grandmother instead of a nineteen year old.

Even with the prompt, it still took an encouraging smile and nod from Talley for the girl to answer.

“Gus,” she said so softly even those with enhanced hearing had to strain to understand her. “No, Augusta. I mean, my real name is Augusta, but people call me Gus… sometimes.”

Scout, who wasn’t quite as maternal as her best friend, propped her elbows on the table. “Well, Gus Sometimes, is there something you needed to tell us?”

“Y-y-yes, ma’am. I… ummm…” Gus swallowed, the sound louder than her sotto speaking voice. “My sister Saw something.”

“Was it that I would be cast as the next Doctor? Because I’ve got my fingers crossed.” Jase held up his hands to illustrate the point. “I think it’s my time.”

Charlie kicked his cousin under the table, but instead of bursting into tears like he’d feared, Gus actually smiled. “Sorry, but no. Aurora is in favor of a lady Doctor. And anyway, she only ever Sees evil.”

“Evil?” Scout echoed.

“Evil,” Gus confirmed. “Tragedies. Blood.
Death.
”

Charlie didn’t like the way too familiar path where this was heading.

“Whose death?” Liam asked, leaning forward.

Gus twisted her hands together.

“Gus, whose death does your sister See?”

“There was an angel,” she said, eyes fixed on the floor in front of her. “One of those beautiful angels that are almost too pretty to be a guy. He had giant wings and a sword in his hand. And below him, piled on the ground, were the bodies of those he’d slain.” She looked up and met Scout’s eyes. “Yours was on top.”

“Where is your sister?” Liam asked.

When Gus continued to study the floor instead of answering, Liam turned to her father. “Mr. Guzman, where is your other daughter?”

“She died four years ago, Your Highness,” Guzman said, his fingers fidgeting with a ring hanging from a gold chain around his neck.

Liam narrowed his eyes in concentration.

“Was your daughter a future Seer?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“And she had this vision before she died?”

“No, Your Highness.”

A wave of murmurs passed through the crowd, the sound accented with snorts of disbelief and annoyance.

The crowd wasn’t alone in their skepticism. Scout’s mouth opened, and Charlie braced himself for whatever snarky remark she was about to let fly, but Jase saved them all.

“Is anyone else confused? Because I’m confused.”

Robby, one of Charlie’s distant cousins, raised his hand. “I second that confusion.”

Charlie tried to ignore the they’re-all-idiots chuckles coming from the audience as Guzman turned to his daughter with pity in his eyes. “Explain it to them, my corazoncito.”

“They’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Don’t worry,” Scout assured her. “This is the Alpha Pack. We’re all mad here.”

Gus squared her shoulders and took a deep, steadying breath.

“Aurora was my twin. Two weeks after our twelfth birthday, she received her Sight.” Her voice was still soft, but it carried throughout the large room. “It was horrible. She woke up in the middle of the night screaming about the children covered in blood. No matter what we did, she would not stop crying. The next night the news reported a bus carrying a group of children to the local zoo was involved in a head-on collision. Eight kids were seriously injured. Two died. They showed the crash site on the television. It was what Aurora had Seen.

“It went on like that for three years. Over and over, Aurora Saw blood and death. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore. She ended her life with a razor blade.”

Gus’s expression hadn’t changed, although her father was clearly struggling to hold himself together.

“I thought I was latent, and I was okay with that. I knew what being a Seer was doing to my sister, and I wanted no part of it. But then Aurora died, and I discovered what I can See.”

“What do you See?” Talley asked, her face pale.

“I See Aurora.”

Charlie wasn’t sure he was following.

“Aurora. As in your dead sister?” Jase asked.

“Yes.”

“Can you See her right now?”

Gus nodded to the empty space between her and her father. “Yes.”

Okay. So he was following. Good to know.

“So this vision of Scout and the angel… Aurora saw it recently. As in after death?”

Excellent. Liam was following too.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Scout leaned forward, disbelief etched into the lines of her forehead. “Mr. Guzman, has she relayed visions from her dead sister before?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“It’s ‘Scout’, not ‘Your Highness’,” she said for at least the tenth time that day. “Have any of these from-the-grave visions of the future come true?”

“She Saw a white wolf take down the former Alpha Female in field surrounded by the dead and the wounded.”

Scout’s pale face managed to get even whiter. “Have
all
of them?”

“Yes,” Gus said, finally gaining enough confidence to answer for herself. “In one way or another.”

Scout screwed her eyebrows together. “I’m going to get stabbed to death by an angel?” She looked down the table where Joshua sat. “Do you have you something you need to tell me?”

Charlie’s mind had made the same leap, but even as it did, he knew it wouldn’t happen. Joshua was an Immortal and believed he was chosen by God to be an eternal warrior for heaven. That sounded kind of close to an angel. Add in how he liked to kill things with swords, and you had to wonder. That was, you would if you didn’t actually know Joshua. As far as avenging angels went, he was pretty low key. And not only had he allied himself with the Alpha Pack in a way no Immortal had before, he’d actually joined their ranks. Liam had sworn him in as a Stratego, and Charlie considered him a friend. No way would he try to kill Scout.

Or at least, Charlie didn’t think there was any way he would try to kill Scout. He had been wrong about who might kill whom before.

“I know you,” Gus said, staring at Joshua. “You were there.”

“Was he the angel?” Jase asked. From the corner of his eye, Charlie could see his hand inching towards the gun strapped to his side.

“He was dead.” Gus’s gaze roamed around the table. “And so were you,” she said to Liam. Her eyes locked with Charlie’s, and he felt himself flinch. The light brown eyes set off by thick, black lashes and tanned skin would have been startling enough without the added touch of crazy lurking there. “And so were you,” she told him before moving on to Jase and Talley. “And you. And you. And—“ Gus gasped, and her entire body started shaking. Charlie followed her unfocused gaze over his shoulder to see what could have possibly terrified the girl so much. What he found was Makya.

“Keep him away from me.” Gus’s voice was shaking even harder than her body.

Makya, who had been told at least a million times to never speak during a hustings, shot Scout a look. “What the hell is she talking about? I haven’t done anything.”

Scout ignored him. “Gus?”

“You have to promise me.” She was inching backwards. Her father, who had been standing patiently at her side up until now, didn’t look so much worried as resigned and embarrassed. “Promise me you’ll keep him away.”

“I promise.” To prove it, Scout turned around and addressed Makya, who served as the Alpha Pack’s Omega. “As your Alpha, I forbid you from getting close to this girl. Consider it a Shifter Restraining Order. Get closer than 500 feet, and you’ll be punished.”

“But I don’t even know that girl! I haven’t done anything!”

Scout gave Makya a look that clearly said, “
I know you didn’t do anything to the crazy girl. Just shut up and go with it.”

By the time Scout turned back around, Gus was already gone. She’d finally followed her initial instinct and ran out the door, her father trailing closely behind.

Liam and Scout locked eyes. Neither of them did anything but look at the other, but Charlie knew they were communicating through their bond as mates. He wasn’t exactly sure how it worked since the only explanation anyone would give him was,
“with your mate you just know”
, but there were times when he was certain the two of them were having entire conversations without either ever uttering a single word.

Of course, with Liam’s laconic tendencies, that probably worked out for the best.

Talley nodded, a sure sign Scout was using her ability to speak directly to any Seer through the mind-to-mind connection usually reserved for Seers and Shifters during the full moon. Then, Talley looked at Jase and they did their own mate-to-mate silent conversation thing.

Six months ago the entire Alpha Pack gathered in Romania for the winter hustings. While there, Charlie had ventured into town on his own. He’d been surrounded by people who didn’t speak a word of English, and he didn’t understand a word of Romanian. He’d felt completely detached, almost as if he was a ghost roaming the streets of a place that wasn’t just a different country, but a whole new world.

And yet he’d felt more connected to what was going on there than he did when everyone around him started their wordless communications.

Finally, after what felt like forever to Charlie, Liam called the next person forward.

Five hours later, things were finally starting to wind down, although you wouldn’t have been able to tell from the red-faced man calling Scout every name in the book for telling him his daughter didn’t have to marry the Shifter he’d promised her to when she was only four.

“Listen, I understand you made a promise, but one, this is twenty-first century America. We don’t do arranged marriages,” Scout said, annoyance shining in her pale blue eyes. “And two, she doesn’t even like guys. Forcing her to marry one just so you can have access to…” She flipped through some papers. “Nevada? Seriously? This territory doesn’t even have Vegas in it.”

The man let loose a long line of four-letter words to describe his feelings towards Scout while his daughter looked like she would like very much to crawl into the nearest hole and disappear until the apocalypse hits.

“Mr. Mandel.” The command was quiet and held absolutely no inflection, but the man stopped mid-sentence all the same. Liam had that effect on people. “We’ve reached our decision.”

“She’s my girl,” Mr. Mandel spit out. “She will do what I tell her to do.”

“Imogen,” Liam said, speaking to the Seer instead of her father. “You See sickness, right?”

Imogen pointed to Aunt Rachel, who sat at the far end of the table. “She’s running a low grade fever.”

The old lady, who had been uncharacteristically quiet the entire day, waved away the comment with her hand. “It’s a cold.”

“It’s bronchitis,” Imogen said. “And if you’re not careful, it’s going to turn into pneumonia. I would go get some antibiotics soon if I were you.”

Aunt Rachel glared, but didn’t say anything since she was too busy coughing. As Liam passed her a bottle of water, he and Scout shared a look. At Scout’s nod, he flashed a quick, small smile before turning back to Imogen and her irate father.

“Miss Mandel, we would like to extend to you an invitation to become an Alpha Pack Potential.” Imogen’s hazel eyes widened at the same moment the matching set her father possessed narrowed. “If you accept, you understand you will have to leave your current pack and move in here.”

“My daughter isn’t going to become one of your—“

“I don’t have much. I can be ready to move to Kentucky in a matter of days,” Imogen said, stepping away from her father. The look he shot her was enough to make her flinch, causing Charlie’s gut to scream out a warning.