mate lightly in the arm, laughing as Cass groaned. “Say thank you, and then maybe we can finally get to the business of what has gotten you so stressed in the first place.”
“That part’s easy enough. I don’t understand what we’re doing here.” Cass dropped the peas on the table. The bruise had already healed. “You know what me and Wes do.”
Ra nodded. Wesley was a former FBI agent who used to be a member of the Cloverleah pack. He’d been captured by the dark elves and held for months in the underworld. Cass was the demon sent to find him. Ra didn’t know the full details of why Wes wasn’t comfortable returning to his pack, but Hades and Zeus cooked up a scheme whereby Wes and Cass would be sent to different places, to help paranormals in trouble. Zeus’s mate Paulie was one of the first shifters Wes and Cass saved.
“There’s no innocent victim, not one that we can find anyway.” Wes sat back as a middle-aged lady dropped three plates on the table without a word. She was back in the kitchen before Ra thought to ask for a clean knife.
Cass was already eating. “All we’ve got is a wolf pack and a coven of sorts,” he said between mouthfuls.
“A witches’ coven, or vampire.” Ra ate more slowly. Eating food cooked by someone always tasted better than the efforts he summoned up with a wave of his hand. His cheesy omelet was just on the right side of cooked and it’d been well seasoned.
“Vampire.” Wes grimaced. “Vadim, the one back at Cloverleah, he hasn’t heard of this mob before, but according to the notes Zeus gave us, this has been their territory for decades. The pack is new, not even a proper pack, or rather, it hasn’t been registered with the council, but at first glance it seemed the pack were encroaching.”
“You think there’s more to it.” Ra took another bite. Yum, melted cheese.
“Territory disputes are not our thing,” Cass said, scraping his plate and then licking his knife. Pushing his plate aside, he reached for his large mug of coffee. “I was all for calling in the council, but when I mentioned it to Zeus, he said no. Paulie wanted us to get the two heads together and work out a solution so they could all stay and live in harmony.”
“Hmm. Paulie does see things that others don’t.” Ra picked up his last forkful. “Do either of the heads know each other? Maybe they’ve had issues before and the pack has come after the coven for a reason.”
“That’s what’s giving us the headache.” Wes was rubbing his forehead. “We can’t get close to the coven leader. I’ve tried making an appointment, Cass has tried as well. They get one whiff of us and we’re met by a wall of muscle, with no leader in sight. He won’t even take our calls.”
“And the other weird thing is, no one’s been hurt, no property damage, nothing.” Cass rested his hand on Wes’s shoulder. “The pack haven’t touched any of the vampires and from what we can gather, from the limited rumors we have been able to find, the vamps haven’t hurt any of the pack either. They’re just both here in the same town. Which is why we, that is me and Wes, don’t understand why we’re here.”
“There’s no case to solve, no innocents to save,” Wes agreed. “But him up there won’t let us leave and yet he’s not giving us anything else. All he says when we ask him, is that Paulie wants us to work it out. There’s nothing to work out.”
“Which you’ve already told him.” Ra was intrigued. “Have you spoken to the pack alpha at all?”
Wes nodded as best he could. Cass was rubbing up and down his neck which struck Ra as an intimate gesture. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched him… “The alpha’s a straight up guy. He said he wasn’t doing any harm, which is true, but he wouldn’t tell me why he was in vampire territory. He just said he had a gut feeling, he had to be here, and so he was.”
“And his pack just followed him, followed his gut feeling?” Ra thought wolf shifters had more brains than that. They were usually hellishly protective over territory and didn’t like leaving it, which is what made Wes’s personal situation so interesting.
“This is where my mate and I have a difference of opinion,” Cass said, looking at