Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1)

Chapter 21

James Wright
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah

Alec had called a meeting of the Fab Four, as Jasmin sometimes called us, but even just talking to him on the phone I'd been able to tell that this wasn't a normal meeting. I knew it probably had something to do with Brandon and Vincent flying up from the border, but beyond that I had no idea other than to hope that he'd come up with some way to break the story about the murders along the border without getting us and everyone we cared about killed.

I'd been home for three days and I'd spent all of four hours with my mom. There wasn't any way to hide the fact that I'd been ducking her, but I couldn't afford to have her figure out what I'd seen with Alec in Naco. Mom has had a mouth on her for as long as I can remember, but that doesn't change the fact that she's submissive to practically everyone else in the pack, it just means that she gets into more trouble than she should.

I could trust her not to spill the beans if I told her what was going on and asked her not to say anything, but it was just a whole lot safer for her if she didn't know anything about what we'd seen down there.

There wasn't any way for me to un-see what Vincent and the others had done to those people, and I wasn't sure I'd choose to un-see it even if it was a possibility, but I was going to try very hard not to take down my mom as a result of the stuff that Alec and I were tangled up in.

We were meeting in a cave that we'd found years ago on the extreme west end of the estate. It creeped Jess out a little, so it wasn't somewhere that we came often, but it was a good place to go if you didn't want anyone to overhear you. All we had to do was go in a hundred yards or so to the end of the cave and then put up three privacy boxes twenty yards before we got to our destination. The cave was straight enough that we could keep an eye on the boxes and it was narrow enough that the white noise generators completely masked the sound of us talking. The fact that we could sit a little ways away from the noise generators meant that the conversations were less strained than what you otherwise got when you crammed two or more shape shifters inside of a small room and made them talk to each other while listening to the constant hiss and pop of privacy boxes. We could still hear the background hum, but it was much less overpowering with some distance between us and the boxes, which meant that everyone tended to be much less on edge.

We'd all staked out rocks that were more or less comfortable over the years, so once everyone was seated, Alec cleared his throat and then got right to it.

"Kaleb has agreed to give Rachel to Vincent in return for Brandon's continued support. Brandon and Vincent will be here tonight to collect her and take her back down to Arizona."

I wasn't sure how many more shocks I could take without some serious time in between them. First Naco and now this. It defied belief. I'd always known that Kaleb wasn't a very nice guy, but unlike Alec I wasn't in line to inherit any money, and according to Mallory I wasn't ever going to develop any kind of power either. That meant that worrying about the fact that Kaleb was a real jerk didn't really do any good. It was like worrying about the weather. You could spend a lot of time thinking and fretting about it, but at the end of the day nothing you did was going to actually change anything.

That had bothered me for as long as I could remember, but I'd kind of grown resigned to it. This was different. Rachel was too nice and good to deserve this kind of treatment.

"What's your plan, Alec?"

He looked surprised, but he shouldn't have been. I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't just sit by and let Rachel be turned into some kind of sex slave.

"I'm going to try and get her out. I have a couple of different plans depending on how involved you guys are willing to get. There are risks obviously and I can respect the fact that you might not be willing to go all the way on this thing with me."