Second Fate

24

I didn't have to smell the glass to know that the golden-brown liquid in it was whiskey. Pleasantly surprised, I took a small sip. It was strong. Too strong for the image I held of Neal.

After a few moments of silence, in which he drank, he placed his glass on the drawers and sat back down.

"So, you want to have Vine meet with Meredith, but you want to plan for the worst-case scenario?", he asked, while his icy eyes were wandering over my face.

"Does that surprise you?"

"Something could happen to him, even if we're prepared for a fight. If it were Cara, I'd react differently I think."

"It wasn't exactly my first impulse to send him into battle", I argued because I felt judged. But of course, I had nothing to say about Vine's decision with the way things were between us; if he were to go and meet Meredith, I just wanted him to have the pack in his back to save him. "Don't you think that, at least in their minds, they've gone too far now to give up? They'll keep on trying to hurt him – and if he shows up to that meeting mentioned in the letter, you'll at least know where the next attack is taking place."

His gaze was drilling holes into my head, while he was thinking about my words, and I felt like a tiny insect trapped under a microscope. With mild amusement I noticed that I'd been under the same sort of scrutiny when I'd been presented to Victor. Even though I'd met him only once, the intensity of his gaze had imprinted on my mind.

Neal must be spending a lot of time with the old man.

"I agree with you", he suddenly said, and the corners of his mouth lifted. "We just need to decide how we'll move forward. Maybe we can get the hunters to ... support us."

There was little pause in front of the word, as if he'd been looking for a more fitting one unsuccessfully.

"As long as it helps", I said.

He nodded. "Thank you, Nina. It was smart to come to me with this."

We looked at each other and for once, we knew exactly what the other one was thinking: Vine would've never come to his alpha for help with Meredith.

*

NEALS POV

As I heard a motor start in front of the house, followed by the sound of crunching gravel, I started to massage my temples.

Nina had always been a risk, but a necessary one, because Cara wanted her company. However, after the fate bond between her and Vine had been exposed, there was a sense of unease I felt when I heard her talk of the pack's matters.

I couldn't deny her right to know about them, not rationally anyway; it followed directly from her involvement with Vine and the fact that she'd been bonded to him despite the odds of fate between a human and a werewolf.

However, Nina had always been a wildcard. When I'd met Cara and her, the fifteen-year-old had been in a constant state of disconnectedness mixed with insanity, either by her choice or by the consequences of her choices.

And now she was reading letters which weren't meant for her and talked about fighting another pack to protect Vine.

I had no idea if I could trust her. She certainly hadn't earned my trust by any grand gesture. Moreover, she'd been poking around in our business, asking too many questions and giving her opinion without being asked to ever since Cara had told her about us.

But she hasn't gone around blabbing about the pack to other people, I reminded myself. It had been seven years and Nina hadn't let our secret slip to a single outsider so far. Perhaps I should be more lenient with her. People could change.