He leapt to the ground, keeping his hands in the air, making certain to land away from his weapons. Zev hadn’t so much as moved, but the stake in his hand was in a throwing position and Zev never missed—not anytime Damon had heard of. He landed in a crouch and slowly stood, his arms up, palms showing his hands were empty.
Zev dropped down beside him. “Do you have any other weapons on you?”
Damon even kept his nod slow. “In my boot. Taped to my back.”
“Put your hands down, you look ridiculous,” Zev snapped. He had no idea what he was going to do with Damon. He wasn’t going to take him before the council members to judge for his actions, not until he had a chance to look into Damon’s mind.
“I honestly don’t know what the hell I’m doing here,” Damon said. “I have no idea why it sounded so logical to me. Then, when I’m up in that tree and the wolf poked her head through the brush, everything in me just rebelled at the idea of wounding her.”
“I could cut off your head and read your memories,” Zev offered, half serious.
“You’re pretty pissed with me, aren’t you?” Damon said.
“You have no idea. I need people I can count on. We’ve got a war brewing and assassins running around. Lycans have always been the peacekeepers, the protectors, and this time, it looks as if they’re the ones starting the war. I was counting on you and Daciana to have my back while I’m trying to straighten this out. The last thing I ever expected was to find you here with a gun in your hand about to murder Skyler or Dimitri.”
The Lycan alpha male, pack leader mentality got the best of him and Zev cuffed the back of Damon’s head hard enough to make him stagger forward.
Damon rubbed the back of his head with a wry grin. “I guess I had that coming. Where’s the rest of my team?”
“They’re dead, Damon. What did you expect? You go hunting Carpathians in the forest at night, they’re going to come after you, especially if you’re trying to kill their women. You’re lucky I was the one who found you.” Zev glared at him. “I’m still thinking about killing you on principle alone. Don’t think you’re out of the woods yet.”
Damon turned to face him. “They’re dead? All of them? Lycans don’t get killed that easily.”
“The wolves warned us that someone was hunting. Did you think the Carpathians were going to roll over and just let you kill their women?”
“Stop saying women. I wasn’t going to kill a woman. She was targeted because she . . .” He trailed off, looking confused.
“She saved the man she loved from death by silver. He was tortured. I saw him. The council didn’t pass sentence on him; in fact,” Zev stated, “the order was to keep him safe while they tried to reach an agreement with the Carpathians on the Sange rau.”
Damon scowled. “That’s right. The prisoner . . .”
“Dimitri,” Zev corrected. “He’s a good man, call him by his name.”
“Dimitri is Sange rau. He’s a bad blood, a mixed blood, fully capable of wiping out our entire species.”
“He’s not Sange rau, any more than I am. He’s Hän ku pesäk kaikak, which, in case you’re actually interested, is guardian of all. He protects all of us, Lycan, human and Carpathian alike. He saved Gunnolf and Convel, both of them, and to repay him they went against the council’s orders and convinced everyone that he had been sentenced to death by silver. Had Skyler not come for him, he’d be dead and we’d be at war with the Carpathians. If anything, the Lycans owe that girl a debt of gratitude.”
Zev couldn’t quite keep the note of anger out of his voice. He was furious with Damon. Lycans didn’t behave this way. They had a code of honor they lived by—he had lived by it. So had Damon.
“Tell me again who told you I was dead.”
Damon rubbed his temples. “I don’t know. I was at a meeting. A service. I was worried about Daciana. There had been trouble in the forest at the summer cabins. I couldn’t get ahold of her and I thought I’d try to get some news. You know all that talk they do bores the hell out of me.”
“They?” Zev prompted. Overhead the storm clouds sizzled with whips of lightning. Thunder boomed, shaking the ground. Branka, that’s too close, pull in your power a little bit, he cautioned. She was going to light up the entire forest if she wasn’t careful.
I’ve got this, Branislava said. No worries.
Zev sighed. When a woman said not to worry, that was clearly the best time to be worried.
Damon scowled again, trying to recall who the speaker was. “He’s there at the meetings all the time with Arno and Lupo. They give motivational speeches all the time. He’s in Lupo’s pack. Why can’t I remember his name?”
Lupo Wolfe was one of the oldest council members who had been locked away to protect the existing council should any of the traveling members be lost.
Zev noted that Damon pressed his fingers to his temples again. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. My head feels like it’s splitting in two.”
“Don’t think about this anymore,” Zev suggested, suddenly suspicious. There was a hint of blood, just a small trickle near Damon’s nose. “Let’s go find your sister. She can fill you in on what’s happening. It will be good to have you around while we try to sort things out. We need help protecting the council members from our own kind. We don’t know who the enemy actually is.”