A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(13)

And just how long would she be able to resist? The question tantalized.

“Where are the new Ferals?” Hawke asked, hooking his arm around Falkyn’s shoulders, pulling her close against his side, a look on his face that had all of them straightening. Tensing.

“Lepard is down in the gym with some of the others,” Paenther replied. “Grizz took off on foot into the woods a while ago.” He glanced at Tighe. “Rikkert?”

“Vhyper took him back to the dining room to settle him down.”

Hawke nodded. “We need to talk.”

“Lyon’s office.” Paenther turned and started down the hall, Hawke, Falkyn, Kougar, and Tighe close behind. When Jag stepped forward, Fox hesitated. Technically, he was one of the new ones, if not one of the seventeen.

Jag glanced at him. “Come on, Foxylocks.”

Fox flipped him off, grinned, and followed. It was odd, and sometimes awkward, to be straddling the two camps. He might be a new Feral, but the animal spirit who’d marked him had been one of the nine never lost, never infected.

As they started back to Lyon’s office, a shiver stole through him from out of nowhere. An odd shiver more of the mind than the body. A moment later two words formed in his head.

West Virginia.

Had his gut offered up a truth at last? Though what kind of truth West Virginia presented, he had no idea. Usually goose bumps preceded his intuitions, but he knew the nature of gifts tended to change after one was marked by the animal.

So, was his gut telling him to go to West Virginia? Was that where the Mage had taken Kara? The thought teased him, lifting his pulse with excitement, then dropping it just as fast. His intuition more often than not offered up relatively useless information. For all he knew, his gut was trying to tell him that West Virginia was the current location of his next car.

Hell, he didn’t even know where in West Virginia.

Lyon, standing by the window rigid as stone, turned when they entered.

“Hawke has information.”

At the flare of hope in Lyon’s eyes, Hawke held up his hand. “Not about Kara, Roar. I’m sorry.”

The Chief of the Ferals nodded, his body turning once more to marble.

When all eight were pressed into Lyon’s office, Paenther closed the door and turned to Hawke expectantly.

The hawk shifter lifted one steepled brow. “We’ve been acting under the assumption that the new Ferals were marked by accident, that the dark magic hampered the animal spirits’ abilities to mark the best of the line, leaving the ones marked a random selection. We were wrong.”

Grunts and groans peppered the small room.

“The dark magic,” Hawke continued, “was designed to force the spirits to choose the morally weakest—the most evil—of each animal line. The falcon spirit fought hard against that dictate and managed to choose the one she wanted. Others probably did, too. But we already know Maxim was pure evil, so some of the animal spirits failed. Bottom line, there were no accidental markings. The new Ferals are each either the best or worst of their respective animal lines.”

“How do we know which is which?” Lyon demanded.

Hawke shook his head. “We don’t know.” He glanced at Jag. “As we’ve seen, you can’t always judge a man’s soul by his actions.”

Jag gave a rueful shrug. From what Fox had been able to piece together, Jag had been the resident bad boy, driving his Feral brothers to murderous intent on a regular basis, until he met Olivia.

“Then we have no choice.” Kougar’s voice was cool as ice. “We collect all seventeen in the prisons.”

Hawke’s hold on his mate tightened.

Kougar’s gaze slid to the female Feral, a cutie with dark, blue-tipped hair and a killer smile. “Sixteen. Not Falkyn.” Though Falkyn was one of the newly marked seventeen, she was soon to be Hawke’s mate, and there was no doubt in any of their minds that she was the one meant to be marked.

Kougar turned to the others, meeting each man’s gaze, one after the other, ending with his chief’s. “Then we start over.”

Start over. Kill them.

Falkyn wrenched free of Hawke’s protective hold. “Grizz fought the darkness to help you. You voted to trust him.”

Jag grunted. “That was before Rikkert accused him of murder.”

Three heads jerked toward Jag, then Paenther as he explained the altercation in front of the house a short time ago and how Grizz hadn’t lifted a hand against his attacker.

Hawke frowned. “What makes a man take a beating like that without defending himself?”

“Guilt,” Jag, Fox, and Kougar said simultaneously.

Hawke nodded. “The evil don’t feel guilt. Not like that. Only those with a fully functioning conscience. We’ve seen his anger-management issues. It’s probably no surprise that he’s caused trouble before. But we’ve seen evidence of honor in the male.”

“Are you willing to stake her life on it?” Kougar’s gaze flicked to Falkyn. “And ours. Because if we make one mistake, if we allow one evil Feral to remain within our ranks, we’re compromised. Inir will find a way to use him to destroy us. And if we go down, the Daemons rise, and the world as we know it will be over. Everything we’ve fought for will be lost.”

Lyon lifted his hand, drawing all attention back to him. “We can’t start over until all seventeen are accounted for.”