Vane looked less than convinced. "Yeah, but if he doesn't listen-"
"Come up with your plan," Maggie said, "and I'll make sure he listens to it."
Fury laughed at her. "Don't be so cocky, human. Wren isn't the kind of beast you manipulate."
Aimee shook her head at him as she exchanged a knowing look with Fang. "No, Fury, you're wrong. With her, Wren is different."
Fury moved over and took Maggie's hand into his. He turned it over to see her palm. "They're not mates."
Aimee looked at Fang and her heart pounded. She loved him with every part of herself. "You don't have to be mated to care deeply for someone. I think Wren will listen to her."
"All we can do is try." Vane moved closer to Wren. "Lend us a hand, guys."
Aimee pulled Maggie aside as the men picked Wren's tigard form up and carried him down the narrow hallway to a lush bedroom.
"Do you really think there's any way Wren can prove his innocence?" Maggie asked Vane as he covered Wren with a blanket.
"I don't know. Hell, I'm not even sure he didn't kill his parents. His cousin made one hell of an argument to the council."
Aimee had to fight the urge to shove Fang's hardheaded brother. Now she knew where Fang got it from. "He didn't kill them. I was there when they brought him in. He was too traumatized by it. He sat in a corner for three weeks solid with his arms around himself, just rocking back and forth whenever he was in human form. As a tigard, leopard or tiger, he stayed coiled up."
Vane frowned. "Was he wounded when he was brought to you?"
Aimee hesitated at the question. Vane wanted to know if he'd been in a fight with his parents. Honestly, he'd looked like hell. But she didn't want them to know that because she knew in her heart and with her Aristos powers that Wren was completely innocent. "He was a little scuffed up."
Vane looked skeptical. "A little or a lot?"
"Okay, a lot," Aimee admitted reluctantly. "But had he been in a fight with two full-grown Katagaria, he would have been a lot more injured than what he was."
"Unless he poisoned them," Fury said. "Zack didn't really say how he'd killed them."
Maggie stepped forward. "I still don't believe it. It's not in him."
Fury let out a mocking laugh. "Yeah, and you are delusional. Babe, news flash, with the exception of you and the pirate, we're all animals here. And we all have a killer's instinct."
Yes, but they killed to protect and for food. They didn't kill for profit.
Aimee sighed as she looked wistfully at Wren's unconscious form. "He did have a really hard time in puberty. He couldn't maintain his forms and he did have extremely violent outbursts over minor things."
Vane arched one brow. "Such as?"
"Well, the first night he was working in the kitchen, Dev startled him and Wren cut Dev's throat with the knife he had in his hands. Luckily Dev pulled back fast enough that it was only a small wound, but had his reflexes been slower or if Dev had been human, it could have been fatal."
Fang still knew the truth. Thanks to Thorn and his "gifts," he had no doubt about what happened. "That doesn't mean he killed his parents."
Jean-Luc made a noise of disagreement. "It's rather damning. Normal people don't do things like that."
Maybe not in the pirate's world, but Fang knew what it was like to be feral. It'd taken him a long time after Aimee had dragged him out of hell before he'd stopped having night terrors. Before he'd stopped striking out at people in a panicked frenzy. But for Aimee, he'd still be like that. "No, but someone who's been severely attacked and who was powerless to stop it would do it."
Fury shook his head. "I don't know, brother. I think you're projecting what happened to you onto Wren."
No, he wasn't, but he couldn't tell them about his powers or the fact that he'd sold his soul.
Maggie looked at Aimee. "When was the last time Wren ever attacked anyone without them attacking him first?"
Aimee didn't hesitate with her answer. "Just that one time with Dev, but like I said, he was scared and shaking when it happened."
Maggie nodded. "That's what I thought. Wren is innocent in this. He told me that his parents killed each other and I believe him. Now we just need to put our heads together and think of some way to prove it."