Page 5 of A Gathering Storm
He considers this, that storm-scent intensifying as he weighs options. Finally, he nods—once, sharp, the gesture of an alpha who's made his bargain and will stand by it. "Done."
"Pleasure doing business, MacRae." The mockery in my tone is light enough to ignore, sharp enough to sting. "Try not to let your cubs know you came begging favors from the Spanish panther. Might undermine that alpha authority you're so desperately clutching."
His eyes flash—wolf-gold for a heartbeat before returning to human grey. "We all do what we must to survive, Vega. Even panthers who pretend they don't need anyone."
He turns and walks away, footsteps heavy on wet planks, leaving me alone with the sound of waves against pilings and the efficient fear of my workers below. I watch until his silhouette disappears into the maze of warehouses and shadows that make up the harbor district, then return my attention to the operation at hand.
But something pulls my focus across the water, toward the warm glow spilling from Flynn's Inn. The windows cast golden rectangles on the harbor's black surface, and through them I can see movement—the fluid grace of someone who knows every table, every corner, every hidden space in that salt-weathered building.
Moira Flynn.
Even from here, with wind and distance between us, I catch something on the air that makes my panther suddenly alert. Not just the obvious scents of her inn—whiskey and wool, peat smoke and seafood—but something else. Something that clings to the edges of perception like morning mist on water.
Salt-magic.
She hides it well, better than most. To the humans she serves, she's nothing more than what she appears—beautiful innkeeper with tragedy in her past and steel in her spine. Even to most supernaturals, she'd pass for purely human, maybe touched by fey blood generations back but nothing more.
But power recognizes power, and what I sense from her is old as these islands, deep as the trenches between them. Sea-born magic that flows with tides and storms, the kind of power that shaped coastlines and swallowed ships before humans learned to chart waters.
My panther purrs again, different this time—not satisfaction but interest. Intrigue. She moves between tables with purpose, serving drinks and conversation with equal skill, but there's something in her movements that speaks of deeper currents. The way she never quite turns her back to the windows that face the sea. The way her fingers sometimes trace patterns on the bar that look random but feel deliberate.
A couple stumbles out of the inn, drunk on whiskey and each other, and in the brief moment when the door swings wide, I catch more of her scent. Definitely salt-magic, but controlled with iron discipline. She's hiding something beyond just supernatural heritage. Secrets layer her like shawls, each one concealing the next, and I find myself wondering what would be revealed if those layers were peeled away.
One of my workers drops something below—not a crate but tools, the metallic clatter sharp in the night air. I don't need to look to know they're all frozen again, waiting to see if this mistake brings consequences. But I'm distracted by the way Moira's head turns toward the sound, just slightly, her attention changing from her customers to the darkness beyond her windows.
For a moment—so brief I might have imagined it—her eyes seem to find mine across the distance. Impossible at this range,in this darkness, with purely human senses. But that's the point, isn't it? Whatever Moira Flynn is, purely human doesn't describe it.
She returns to her work, dismissing whatever she sensed, but my interest is thoroughly caught now. In five years of building my empire here, I've cataloged every supernatural on these islands, marked every potential threat or asset. But I missed her, or rather, missed what she truly is beneath those careful masks.
That's either impressive control on her part or dangerous oversight on mine. Either way, it requires investigation. Not tonight—tonight I have cargo to process and accounts to settle, networks to maintain and fear to cultivate. But soon.
My panther agrees, already imagining the hunt. Not for prey but for answers, for the truth beneath those layers of concealment. What kind of power requires such careful hiding? What secrets would make someone bury their nature so deep even other supernaturals can't sense it without looking carefully?
CHAPTER 3
GRAYSON
The first wave hits Deepwatch broadside, sending me stumbling against the wheelhouse as forty feet of solid fishing boat lurches like driftwood. Salt spray lashes across my face, stinging eyes already narrowed against the sudden squall that came from nowhere—no warning on the radio, no darkening on the horizon, just instant fury dropping from a clear morning sky.
My nets are still out, three hundred pounds of weighted mesh dragging starboard as the boat pitches into another trough. The winch screams protest as I fight to haul them in, muscles burning even with my bear's strength lending power to every pull. Wind tears at my oilskins, finding every gap, every worn seam, driving cold salt water against skin that's weathered worse storms than this.
But not many that came without warning.
The net snaps with a sound like a gunshot, tension releasing so suddenly I nearly go over the rail. Half the mesh tears away, disappearing into the churning grey along with this morning's catch. Thousands of pounds worth of fish gone in an instant, but I barely register the loss because something else has caught my attention through the sheets of rain.
Whales.
A pod of humpbacks, moving in perfect formation through waves that should scatter them. Their massive bodies cut through the chaos like it's nothing, like the storm exists in a different world from wherever they're swimming. Seven of them—no, eight—all heading the same direction with purpose that makes my bear suddenly alert beneath my skin.
They're heading for the sacred coves.
Their songs reach me even over the wind's howling, even through Deepwatch's groaning hull and the crash of water against steel. But it's wrong, all wrong. Humpback song should flow like deep currents, ancient and peaceful. This is synchronized in a way that makes my teeth ache, harmonies layered wrong, like someone playing a tune backward. Like a warning siren pitched too low for human ears but clear as breaking glass to anyone with the blood to hear it.
My bear pushes closer to the surface, not to shift but to sense, and through him I feel what's disturbing the water. It ripples outward from the whales like shock waves, like something fundamental has broken in the deep places. The ancient harmonies that have hummed through these waters since before humans walked upright—they're fractured, discordant, wrong.
The whales circle the hidden inlet where I learned to swim in both my forms, where generations of shifter young discovered what they were under watchful eyes and protected waters. Through driving rain I watch them form a living barrier around the cove's entrance, massive bodies breaching in patterns I've never seen. Synchronized leaps that send walls of water twenty feet high. Tail slaps that echo like thunder. They're not playing or feeding or mating—they're standing guard.
Warning and warding both.
