a pain in the ass it was. Where the alpha went, the entire pack went—always, not just during the height of the lunar cycle. River did things a bit differently than anyone else, probably because it was the ancient pack. It was unusual for the whole pack to move somewhere, unless....
River had mobilized as an army. What in the world did Amberguard do? Analie wished she’d seen the new River alpha. Gavin had really wanted to go to his coronation. River was the only pack that still did leader coronations, rather than just an announcement, a party, and a speech.
“Analie, that’s big, right? I don’t know as much about River as you do.”
“Yeah, it is. Amberguard is going to be a stain when this is over.” Analie frowned. “It sounds like they’re going to—”
“Don’t say it,” Kimmy squeaked.
“—call for a pack-kill.”
Kimmy let out a little scream and Analie heard Omar snap, “They deserve it, the cowards.”
Analie remembered she was using up someone else’s minutes. She felt bad leaving Kimmy with un-Walker-like thoughts. “Uh, maybe they’ll just give ‘em a beating and keep it at that. I gotta go.”
“Stay safe,” Kimmy said.
Analie felt a little dizzy. River’s new alpha had brought his pack south to merge with Goliath, and both were ready for war with full-scale, inter-pack cub-hides. LA was going to be a crater.
Analie gave the phone back to Royce. “Thank you. She’s okay.” 'As okay as you can be during a cub-hide. Damn it, I need to call Freddy. Damn it, I need to run.' “And… thanks for offering to help her out.”
Really, the vampire didn’t seem that bad aside from drinking blood, being invisible, and generally being terrifying. Hell, he’d brought her the best fish sticks in the whole world. And offering to shelter Kimmy? Offering shelter to cubs from someone else’s pack was an unheard of gesture of generosity.
Royce pocketed the phone and leaned casually against the door frame, not a thing about his demeanor giving away his concern or that he had been hanging on every word he could pick up from both ends of the conversation.
He knew most of the packs she mentioned only by reputation. They were all ancient, but also from territories he had never been to. When he chose New York as his city to claim in the early 1700s, he’d driven out or negotiated peace treaties with a number of Weres and some of the few Others that had settled here, destroying any sign of competition. There had been a handful of Amberguard, but he’d driven them off and they’d presumably settled somewhere in the west. He hadn’t given them much thought since.
As time passed, the city prospered and grew, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep all Others out. So he did what he could to control the population explosion instead of work against it. When other packs came to the city, he didn’t threaten them unless they damaged his people or properties first. Quietly smearing the offenders into a fine red paste on the walls for the rest of their brethren to find kept the newcomers in line quite nicely.
That the alpha of the Goliaths showed up on his doorstep after the entire pack was banned from the city worried Royce. The alpha wasn’t intimidated by his reputation and was willing to break the rules. The ones willing to break the rules were usually the same miscreants who didn’t mind harming his interests, killing his people, and “liberating” the humans under his protection. The girl before him could be invaluable in this time of unrest for the Goliaths, if only for the information she could provide to help him prepare to face the pack later once this war of theirs was under control. Perhaps he could mop up the remains before they could rebuild and fortify themselves against him, if it came to that.
Royce accepted the phone back. How could he use this? How?
“It sounds like something bad must be happening out there. Perhaps that explains Christoph’s inability to hold his temper, hm?”
Analie shrugged, mind awhirl with the new information Kimmy had provided.
“Guess so. We keep Amberguard in line most of the time, but they’re a bunch of jackals.” She tugged her jacket around herself a bit tighter. “I wish I was old enough to fight.”
Age, rank, and gender had little to do with whether you knew how to fight. She lacked coordination and balance—something Christoph loved to point out—and Gavin had been lax in teaching her