The Wolf's Witch (book 1)

6. Turn a Blind Eye

Kaitlin:

I twiddled my thumbs in the hot seat across from Gabriel's mighty oak wood table. I'd managed to avoid passing out, and asked him to speak somewhere private. He'd sent me to his office to wait for him and I was playing along with his power move. Gabriel had sent a surprisingly lanky looking werewolf to fetch me some orange juice so I waited, more patiently than I'd normally be capable of. Devlin had disappeared from decorating the living room sometime after Sethan's heartbeat began to stabilize. Whatever consequence he was now dreaming up in response to me having kicked him out earlier was keeping me in place for longer. 

Should I cook Devlin brownies? He liked brownies. I shook my head and relaxed my hands when Gabriel walked in. I'll worry about Devlin later. First I needed to protect Javier. The werewolves hadn't pieced it together yet but the fae had been there to seek revenge on Javier. Sethan and Jared had simply been in his way. 

For all the twisted things Javier has done in the past, he was doing better now and I'd be damned if the new life I'd fought to give him would go to waste now that he found Jared. If I ever got the chance to forget and start over like him... I released the breath I'd been holding and took in another one. I wouldn't want my past creeping back to me when I'd finally managed to become a different person, a better person. 

Javier didn't need this. He'd done his penance in the fae realm to the point that his brain did it's own erasing. That wasn't an easy task and required a lot of suffering to get there. I knew because I'd seen him. 

I'd fought to free Javier. 

I recognized the fae in Sethan's memories. I remember scaring him off after reminding him about the oath I made with the Queen that included Javier's freedom. I was aware that he had lost someone because of Javier and that it was beyond difficult, however, he did not have a right to take Javier away from the people who cared about him. To do so would be hypocritical and this meant that I was in the right to stop him. If he couldn't beat me, that was his problem. Javier owed him, not me. After all these years of forcing myself not to care about someone and evidently failing with Javier, I was not going to stand by and not do anything about it. 

And I was already unpopular. What did I have to lose? Rather, I'd be gaining a strange level of respect and fear from the fae if I took one of them down.

A lot of rage too but I doubted that fae would stop at one attempt.

The issue would be the Queen's pride when she found out I went behind her back and acted on my own. It was nothing new but the fae numbers weren't what they used to be. Fertility rates were low. 

I waited until Gabriel sat. 

"Will you let me take care of it?" I asked because even if I hadn't spoken to Devlin, I knew he'd be glad to have this issue disappear without involving himself further. His people wouldn't let themselves side with the werewolves regardless of who was right or wrong. The fae wouldn't care enough to punish Sethan's attackers themselves. To them, maintaining their numbers were more important than the werewolves' hurt and angry feelings. Sethan was alive and technically the crisis had been averted. Most fae also weren't strangers to what Javier did years ago even if Javier was. For quite some time now, he's been unable to access his memories.

"You have nothing to do with this and paying you to take care of him will implicate us. It'll also only be a matter of time before the fae finds out we hired you. We might as well kill him ourselves." he said the last like he didn't want to. 

"You don't have to pay me." I waved the idea away, "Call it a favour."

"What do you want in return?" he questioned. I hadn't planned on asking for anything but realized it was better if I did. If I didn't, it was likely he'd assume something was up and that I was hiding something, which I was.