Into the Fog (Fisher's Bay 1) ✅

Trouble Brewing

Remy sat back in his chair in the large meeting room in City Hall as voices shouted over one another, yet heard nothing. His mind was fixed on what he had seen at the coroner's office not but 20 minutes ago with Tate.

Of course, he had seen death. There was the night his father died and then the following battles on the road to revenge. Occasionally, they would have a skirmish with a random rogue on the borders of their land, but those rarely ended in death anymore. Usually it could be solved by talking things over and didn't even involve violence. Most of the time they were just passing by. Sometimes they wanted to stay.

This was something else.

Shifters and vampires could rip their foes to pieces with their hands and teeth. Demons, witches, and warlocks could eviscerate a being with nothing more than a blink or a wave of the hand. But the injuries to George Lightbody weren't like anything Remy had seen before - not from any supernatural creature that he knew. The wolf shifter had put up a fight, but Doc was fairly positive that the main cause of death was drowning. Which had happened before his throat was ripped out.

Which only fed into the paranoia that others in Fisher's Bay were starting to exhibit, including some members of the Council.

"We have to do something. It's clear that it's the sea bitch's granddaughter," Matthew Reynolds, leader of the fox skulk, shouted.

Remy couldn't help the snarl that sneaked out, instantly silencing everyone as they stared at him. He told himself it was because Matthew had referred to Ms. Ingrid as a sea bitch, but he knew his wolf took offense to the insinuation that the culprit was Nadia.

"Easy dude," Tate sent him. "Thought you wanted to keep the whole mate thing to yourself."

Remy shot him a glare, annoyed by his wolf's instinct to jump to Nadia's defense without a thought. The jury was still out on what was going on there and the last thing he wanted was for the Council to know anything about her possibly being his mate before he had answers. Cian hadn't answered his calls last night and then sent an annoyingly vague text this morning about calling him back later.

But even with his own suspicions about Nadia, there was no denying the fact that she was clearly fully human. And a human couldn't have possibly done all that damage on a full-grown wolf shifter. A full-grown Havsfru? Yea, they probably could, but Remy and the rest of the town's knowledge on what exactly they could do was severely lacking. Especially now with Ms. Ingrid gone.

Yes, she had told stories, but she was scant on details about exactly how they hunt and kill. And well, she didn't have her sea form, meaning no one in town had actually seen a Havsfru with their own eyes.

"We don't know who or what attacked George," Remy said coolly. "Doc'll have more after a full autopsy."

"But... drowning? It had to be their kind," sniffed Agatha Fern, the coven's high priestess.

The other priest and priestess of the coven nodded their agreement, though didn't say anything. While technically they were supposed to have equal pull within the coven, Remy knew they often deferred to Agatha as she was the most powerful. Sometimes he wished they wouldn't.

"Even if it was Havsfru, it's not Nadia," Remy gritted out, still fighting against his wolf against saying too much. "She's fully human."

You could have heard a pin drop. Every single member of the Council gaped at him except Tate and the city's lawyer Rob Nichols, who sat calmly with a neutral expression. Remy wasn't surprised he knew, considering he had interacted with Nadia before anyone else in the room.

But it wasn't like it would stay a secret. All it took was one sniff to know the truth. He was honestly surprised that more people in the room didn't know. He was fairly sure everyone at the bonfire was well aware of Nadia's status.