Page 21 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
Hawk’s mouth wasn’t the only one that dropped open. All around the room, mouths gaped. Eyes rounded. Faces stared back at her in disbelief. There were a few low, horrified gasps, some nervous chuckles, a lone curse from one of the older Assembly members, whose astonished face had blanched white.
“Live with us?” Hawk blurted, dropping his feigned scorn for true incredulity. Was she insane? “Morgan, that’s just crazy. We can’t have a human come live with us—”
“Why not?” She turned to gaze at him in steady self-confidence.
“We’ll be completely exposed, that’s why not! I mean, consider for a minute what could happen. Even if she does agree to it and comes here, there’s no guarantee she won’t tell anyone our location. In fact, why wouldn’t she? Blackmailed and kidnapped—I assume she’d have to be kidnapped; she’s not gonna come waltzing through the jungle on her own—and held against her will, forced to write something she doesn’t believe. You think this woman is just going to keep our location a secret? And even if, for some unfathomable reason, she did keep our location a secret after we released her, there’s a few people I can think of who would have absolutely no problem getting it out of her! In some pretty nasty ways! Don’t forget, there’s a huge bounty on all of our heads! We can’t live with humans.”
That’s when Morgan played her trump card. “The Queen thinks we can.”
Hawk’s jaw closed with an audible snap. The room fell into crackling silence.
Ah yes, the Queen. Their powerful, liberal, half-human Queen, the mere mention of whom had the entire room sitting up straighter in their chairs, soiling their underwear.
Including the Alpha.
Aside from Morgan and Xander, Alejandro was the only one present who’d ever met the Queen. To hear it told, she was so stunning and powerful he fell at her feet and sniveled like a teething baby.
In a quiet, menacing voice, Alejandro said, “The Queen is not here.”
“She will be. Soon,” said Thiago, the young man in charge of building the new compound that would house the Queen and her family. She’d given birth to twins a few months back, and hadn’t been able to relocate to Brazil until the babies were old enough. They were expected within weeks.
Morgan nodded. “And I daresay, it would reflect so well on you, Sire, that you had the foresight and compassion to bring this reporter here in the hopes of giving humans a better understanding of our kind. I know the Queen well. This is exactly the kind of thing that would please her.”
With an air of virgin innocence as false as a pair of wooden teeth, Morgan folded her hands together at her waist, smiled at the Alpha—gazing up at him demurely from beneath a fringe of black lashes—and stood waiting for him to speak.
And Hawk saw the genius in her plan.
Alejandro was now in a pickle of epic proportion.
If he agreed to Morgan’s plan, he’d look weak. Weakness was the one thing an Alpha could never show, because it would call his entire rule into question. But if he disregarded the plan, he risked the Queen’s displeasure. And a creature who could turn not only to panther and Vapor, but also to any animal she wished, to any element, to any thing—including her currently favored form of a fire-breathing, enormous white dragon—was not a creature you wanted to piss off.
Hawk watched Alejandro squirm over the conundrum with a glee he hadn’t felt in years.
“The colony is stretched to capacity as it is,” the Alpha began slowly, thoughts churning behind his glittering eyes. “We’ve already had to assimilate the members of the Nepal, Quebec, and Sommerley colonies because of the threats against us. Not only are we overcrowded, but we are the last bastion of safety for our kind. We’re the only colony that hasn’t been discovered by the Expurgari. And, as far as we know, the only one Caesar hasn’t discovered as well. If we bring this human woman here, we risk not only discovery . . . we risk the extinction of our entire species. If this colony falls, we all fall. Forever.”
Morgan’s reply came in a voice clear and strong. “The risk of extinction is upon us no matter how we proceed with this reporter, Sire. There’s no going back to the old ways of hiding and pretending that kept us safe for so long. The world has shrunk far too small for us to hide any longer. Even the rainforest is disappearing, eaten up by logging and agriculture, by human development. How long will it be before they find us simply because the forest has been devoured by their civilization? How long can we reasonably expect to survive here like this—one generation longer? Two?”
Men moved their weight uncomfortably in their seats. It was the unspoken, gnawing fear among them, the question of what would happen when there were no longer any wild places left to hide. How would they survive as they had been for millennia, in secrecy and silence? What would become of them once Man consumed all the shadowed, untouched places, breached the dark heart of the rainforest that had shielded them for so long?
“Our discovery is inevitable,” Morgan continued. “Even if we move from here, there are few places left on the planet where we can hide. Humans already know we exist; they have the most terrible proof. Caesar—the traitor, the murderer—is who they think we all are. Let’s give them reason to believe we shouldn’t be judged by the worst among us. Let’s give them reason to step back from their hate and hysteria, and consider us not as enemies, but as equals. Let’s give them something more powerful than hate. Something even more powerful, possibly, than love.”
Morgan glanced away from Alejandro. Her gaze rested on Xander’s anxious face, and she looked at him with such unconcealed adoration that a pang of som
ething akin to jealousy twisted Hawk’s heart.
What would it be like to have a woman like her look at you like that?
“And what might that be?” Alejandro prompted.
Morgan turned her eyes back to the Alpha. She said simply, “Hope.”
Silence, loud as thunder. Off in the distance a bird screeched. The cry was cut off abruptly, as if it had been swallowed.
Morgan continued, softer than before. “Humans aren’t so different from us. They want better lives for themselves. They want better lives for their children. They want a better world. They hope for all these things, just like we do, and that’s what makes us the same. That’s why we have to show them we’re better as friends than enemies. That the world can be a better place if we can learn to coexist. But they can’t know about us unless we take the risk and show them. And we have no better opportunity than with this reporter. Here, in a controlled environment, she can see us . . . and she can testify to the rest of the world what she saw.”
Morgan stepped forward from her place at the table, her hands clasped against her chest, her face full of fervent emotion. Every eye in the room was trained on her.
“My Lord,” she entreated in a low voice that throbbed with emotion, “let us lead the revolution. Let us be the ones who finally have the courage to step into the light. Let us be the bringers of hope to a world that so desperately needs it.”
