Oath Sworn - K.N. Banet Page 0,9

even have a human daughter? Did he adopt her?” The woman didn’t leave, and I finally looked over to see who it was.

“Kelly, it’s public knowledge that werewolves and humans can breed. Their children can be either. Some are born werewolves, some are born human. They’ve done DNA tests before to prove it.” The same could be said of werecats.

“Who would ever want to breed with a dog?” She was laughing as she walked away.

I wanted to whack her on the side of her pretty blonde head. Werewolves weren’t dogs and it wasn’t illegal, though some states and countries were trying to make it. In my mind, as long as whatever was going down happened in human bodies, I didn’t care. Werewolves were out and they had always been more lax about their secrets than werecats. They never had the rule to not fornicate with humans, and it was something that’d been going on for hundreds of years, if I remembered my history lessons from Hasan right.

It was near midnight and Kick Shot was as packed as it would ever be. I had nearly forty people in the bar, and the music was turned up louder than the TV now, much to my chagrin. It was still giving updates on the situation in Dallas-Fort Worth, updates I desperately needed.

There was a faint knocking for a moment and I frowned. I had better hearing than any other supernatural race, and that included the weird cousins I had in werewolves. Their sense of smell was a touch better than mine, but my hearing outclassed theirs by miles.

So the faint knocking I heard coming from the back of my building stood out to me like a siren. I tensed up, wondering what could possibly be making the noise. It wasn’t something I had ever heard in my little bar. Ignoring my patrons, I started walking.

“Hey, I need a drink!” someone called out.

“Hold on!” I snapped. “If you reach for a freebie, I’ll take the hand. Clear?” I turned and pointed at the guy who yelled for me. “Two minutes. You can wait two minutes.”

“Yes ma’am,” the man said, settling into his seat. Normally I would never leave the bar during the busiest time of night, definitely not on a Friday, but the knocking was still going, and it wasn’t just getting louder because I was getting closer. Whatever it was, it was hitting harder.

I swung the door open to my staircase and found nothing, so I looked at my back door. Someone was knocking on it. That someone now seemed desperate. I closed the door to the stairwell and opened the back door. I didn’t see anything for a moment until my eyes trailed down to the eye level of my visitor.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I muttered.

I knew the face the moment I saw it. I felt the nearly undeniable urge to close the door immediately and without regret, but resisted it. I waited in silence, hoping I didn’t hear the words I knew I was going to hear.

She searched through a backpack, the little human missing thanks to the turmoil in the big city. She couldn’t be more than ten. I watched her pull out a wallet, obviously not hers—or maybe it was. I had no idea. Maybe it was a go-bag. I couldn’t tell, but it was her size and that was troublesome for some reason. She pulled a business card out of the wallet and looked back up to me, big grey-blue eyes looking terrified.

“I am…I’m Carey Everson.” Her voice trembled and shook, but she had to say it all. She had to. It was the only way she was going to be able to drag me into a small war I wanted no part in. There were questions I needed answered once those words were said, but she had to first get through the ritual. If I acted without the ritual, a war would start, one much bigger than the one her father was probably dead to. “I’m a human. Uh…I am eleven years old…”

“Just get to the important parts,” I whispered softly. There was no reason to give me her life story yet. “I know you’re human.” I could smell it. There was a faint scent of werewolves on her, but she was human. There was no doubt in my mind about that.

“I need protection from the super…supernatural community. I am at risk of losing…” Tears began to spill from her eyes. “My life through…no fault of my