Page 118 of A Wolf After My Own Heart
Then.
They’d gone to the meetings, they’d listened to the rhetoric, they’d agreed that the Stables couldn’t be trusted with the planet’s well-being any longer. It wasn’t a superiority thing. It was a survival thing. Not just their survival. Everyone’s. Seven billion everyones.
But this?
“If SAS had a brochure, this wouldn’t have been mentioned. Like how they don’t give you all the details of the timeshare until you’ve signed,” Sue Smalls whispered. She had to whisper; they were in the back of the Shakopee Ballroom, listening to City Councilman Ben Wapiti exhort them to shed blood. There were angry Shifters on all sides, and too many of them sounded like they were one hundred percent on board with Team Mass Murder. “Should have guessed when they planned to start at nine p.m. Who starts something like this at nine o’clock at night? And doesn’t invite the press?”
“So it’s true,” he replied in a low voice. “They’re going to kill every Stable who crosses them ‘for the greater good.’”
“Anyone who says that, I just automatically assume they’re a sociopath. I can’t believe it, Sam was right!”
Jealousy flared, burned a line down his throat and into his chest. “I thought you guys were done.”
“And I thought he was full of shit and apathetic, two things I pretty much can’t stand.” Sue was counting heads while they whispered to each other and inched toward the doors. “We need to find him.”
“Why?”
“So we don’t die, Maggie.”
He grimaced. Sue Smalls was the only woman in the world who could use that nickname without incurring his wrath. She knew and took full advantage.
“We can just leave. Right now. You said it yourself, this was never our intent. So we’ll go. Together.”
Sue quirked an eyebrow at him and half-smiled. “You think it’ll be that easy?”
Chapter 49
Now.
“Pussies back then,” Mock sneered. “Pussies now.”
Berne ignored the critique of his narrative flow. As far as Magnus Berne was concerned, he had an audience of two, neither of whom were wearing turtlenecks. “I followed Sue,” he said simply. “Always. She really was a believer. She genuinely feared for billions if Stables kept up their headlong rush into making the planet uninhabitable. Al Gore’sAn Inconvenient Truthhad just come out, people were starting to grasp how real—and huge—the problem was.”
“I should have known they’d never let a werewolf become president.” Annette shook her head. “I know that sounds like an unhinged conspiracy theory, but Gore was clearly and repeatedly discredited. It’s no coincidence he was considered a national joke for years.”
“My point is, anything Sue was that passionate about, I wanted in. Y’see how it was?”
“In the lady’s defense,” Oz admitted, “she had a point.”
“Aye. But by and by, we learned more about their long-term goals. By then, I was with SAS of my own accord. Even if Sue had left, I’d have stayed, because the movement was about more than reassuring ourselves we were the superior species.”
“It was?” Annette asked, earning a trio of glares.
Why are they letting Magnus narrate?
“SAS favored exposure to the wider world. In my stupidity, I didn’t realize that their idea of ‘coming out’ wasn’t at all the same as mine.”
The exposure question. Again. Weres like David Auberon thought it was long overdue, but then Davey-boy grew up with Stable pals who knew—and kept—the secret of his other self. His default was to trust them, but he was in the minority of a minority. There were plenty of Shifters in the world who would eat glass before trusting a Stable. There were an equal number who told their cubs boogeyman stories about Stables. And when you’rethatafraid of a group, how do you overcome it?
“Our long-range goals—mine and SAS’s—were the same, we just differed greatly on the short-term policies that would get us to that goal. And it was…nice, at first,” he admitted. “Better than nice. Exciting, even. It was great to talk to so many weres who favored coming out and showing the planet what we could do if given the reins. In Scotland, there aren’t nearly as many, and no bears at all save for my family. It’s not the issue it is over here. Here, I knew there were millions who thought the way I did. It’s easy to feel alone in Scotland. It’s impossible here. Or so I told myself.”
“So then what?”
“Then it got verra bloody verra fast.”
Chapter 50
Then.
