Maria knew enough about Shifter encounters to know who had all the power in this room. It wasn’t Marquez with his guys outside and probably weapons hidden everywhere. Dylan ruled, with Sean, Ellison, and Spike tying for second. Marquez was at the bottom of the food chain, and Maria was neutral, an observer, and protected. If Marquez made any attempt to use her as leverage over the Shifters, he’d die quickly, and by the look on his face, he knew it.
“I want to meet this Bradley,” Dylan said.
“No, you really don’t,” Marquez said quickly. “He has ice in his veins. He doesn’t care about family, or life, or even the stuff he buys with his money. It’s all about him being in control. He’s . . . what do you call those people with no conscience? A sociopath.”
“Find out,” Dylan said in a hard voice. “I want to know for certain if he’s behind the attempted abduction, and where he is now, and then I will meet him. He’s made a mistake.”
“Yeah, I know.” Pablo rubbed his forehead. “Austin’s your territory. You said.”
Maria had to lean around Ellison to ask her question. “What happens to the cubs when they get too big to handle?”
Pablo shrugged, looking uneasy. “I don’t know. They keep them on as bodyguards, maybe as servants? I have no idea.”
“You will find out,” Dylan said. Not a suggestion.
Maria knew that no grown Shifter would allow him– or herself to live as a servant or bodyguard against his or her will. Even the smallest of cubs could be difficult to manage—she knew how much she struggled to make Olaf mind her, and he was one of the more docile cubs. She watched Spike chase little Jordan around Shiftertown every day, and Spike was . . . Spike.
Cubs went through Transitions to adulthood at some point. Scott, another of Ronan’s brood, was going through his Transition—hormones flooding his body and filling him with mating frenzy, which made him crazed and dangerous. And whenever humans thought a Shifter endangered them . . .
“They kill them,” Maria said, her mouth stiff. “Don’t they?”
“Maybe,” Pablo said.
The sword definitely shimmered that time. Dylan fixed Pablo with a gaze that had become white blue. “Find out every single person who’s bought a captured Shifter and what happened to that Shifter. I want names and locations. I want them soon.”
“I don’t work for you,” Pablo said. “You know that, right?”
Dylan flicked his gaze up and down Pablo, and Pablo’s face lost a little color. “Do it,” Dylan said. “As a favor.”
“You’re asking for a hell of a favor. Does that mean you’ll owe me one back?”
Dylan held his gaze a moment longer then turned and walked away in silence, fading into the shadows.
Spike and Sean followed, their rigid backs betraying their barely contained rage. Ellison pivoted but remained as a shield between Maria and Pablo as he started to walk her out.
“You’re Maria Ortega, am I right?” Pablo asked in Spanish.
Maria stopped. Ellison did too, turning to face Pablo but again keeping himself a protective barrier for Maria.
“Why?” Maria countered.
“You’re the one they brought back from Mexico,” Pablo went on, switching to English, which meant he wanted Ellison to know what they were talking about. “From the feral pack. I heard how your brother treated you when you tried to live with him. If you want, I could always explain to him that he needs to be kinder to you.”
Maria thought about her brother and his old-fashioned ideas about how women should fit into the family. They were to be pure angels, married off to men of their parents’ choice, to produce children to strengthen the line. A ruined woman was of no value at all, except to be unpaid help to her brothers and sisters and their children.
Maria had put up with that at her brother’s house until she couldn’t anymore, but that didn’t mean she hated her brother. He was caught up in his own life with his wife and children, ignorant of what Maria had truly gone through. She could never make her brother understand, and she knew it.
“No,” Maria said sharply.
“He’s an officious little bastard,” Pablo said. “I could make life very hard for him.”
“No,” Maria repeated. Pablo wasn’t wrong about her brother, but she wouldn’t wish harm on him. If she became nasty and vindictive, Miguel would have won. “Please leave him alone.”
“You heard the lady,” Ellison said, still standing like a pillar between Maria and Pablo. “Touch her family, and I’ll make you regret it.”
Pablo eyed Ellison a moment, then his severe expression softened into a grin. The smile made him go from hard-ass to almost friendly in an instant. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Ellison growled then ushered Maria out to the lot where Dylan and the others waited, Pablo chuckling behind them.
***
Maria paced back and forth on Ellison’s porch, the breeze of her passing touching Ellison where he leaned on the porch rail. Deni had joined them, folding herself up in a porch chair, watching Maria work out her distress.
Ellison couldn’t stop looking at Maria—her dark hair mussed from the ride home in the open-windowed truck, her body swaying as she walked back and forth, back and forth, her face flushed, her agitation uncontained.
“We need to do something. I need to do something.” Maria shook out her hands as she walked. “Mr. Marquez can possibly raise an army, and so can Shifters. We go after these men before they hurt the cubs.”