“Did we pay for these parcels?” Heads would roll if that was the case—Bo knew damn well the Alliance needed that money for other initiatives. “Are we looking at someone acting without authorization?”
The CFO held up a hand and swiped through several of the flat-screen computers laid out in front of her. “There’s definitely no money missing from our accounts.”
“But why?” Bo’s lieutenant asked, confusion in her eyes. “Someone just randomly buys all this land for way beyond market rates and gives it to us?”
“We’ll figure that out later.” Bo turned to the lawyer. “No question it’s ours.”
“Certified and legal.”
“I want you to start proceedings to transfer it across to the changeling packs who were intending to buy it.” He had to repair the Alliance’s relationship with the changelings—it wasn’t yet solid enough to bear this kind of blow, especially since Bo hadn’t exactly been a prince the last time he’d been in SnowDancer and DarkRiver territory.
“They’ll insist on paying fair market value for it, so take the money and put it in a reserve fund in case we do get hit with unexpected bills.” Frowning, he added, “Place the fund under the conservatorship of me, Hawke Snow, and Lucas Hunter.” If no one turned up to claim the money, he and the alphas could hash out what to do with it.
“We’ll get on it.”
Bo knew that would take care of the short-term problem, but it didn’t answer the underlying questions: who the fuck had bought that land and why?
Chapter 24
ZAIRA LAY IN the dark staring up at the skylight. She couldn’t actually distinguish it from the rest of the ceiling, the aerie under the cloak of night and the world outside lashed by rain. Beside her, she could hear Aden’s steady breathing, knew he’d put himself into a resting state that nonetheless meant he was alert to any threats. She should’ve done the same, but her mind was too full of thoughts that kept circling.
And her self, it was too full of aloneness again.
Curling her fingers into her palm to keep from reaching out to Aden as the feral and violently possessive want inside her pushed her to do, she focused on her breathing, regulating it to the point that she could control her heartbeat; and sometime in the hour after she first began, she fell not into a resting state, but into true sleep.
A sleep so deep that, once again, she dreamed.
Of the heaviness of the cold pipe in her hands, of how the rust had stained her palms, of the wet sound of metal hitting the pulpy mass that had once been a skull. Her arms kept rising and falling, rising and falling, until strong, pain-causing hands hauled her away, her heels dragging on the floor.
In front of her, she saw the crushed ruins of her father’s head, her mother’s, and felt nothing but a vicious satisfaction. They wouldn’t hurt her again. When others tried to take the pipe from her, she refused to let it go, though her hands were slippery with blood from the blisters that had formed on her palms; her skin tore off as the pipe was forcefully wrenched from her grasp. The blood that covered her hands was orangey, mixed with the iron of the rust. More blood flecked her face, her clothing.
Later, when the ones who had pulled her off her parents called her a monster, she didn’t protest. Because they had made her a monster and she owned what she was.
Jerking awake on that thought, heart thumping, Zaira could almost smell the blood, almost hear the sound of the pipe doing catastrophic damage. No, that wasn’t right. The pipe had just finished the job and given the rage inside her an outlet. It was Zaira’s mind that had turned her parents’ brains to soup.
It hadn’t been enough. She’d had to destroy their physical bodies before she could allow herself to believe that it really was over, that they were dead, that they wouldn’t hurt her anymore.
A rustle beside her. “Zaira.” Aden closed his hand over the back of hers, warm and strong.
Blood a roar and her mouth dry, she didn’t speak, just stared up at the ceiling again . . . and then she turned her hand so that her fingers locked with Aden’s. “I was as small as Jasper when I did it.” She sucked in air that hurt going in. “As small as him when they hurt me.”
“You were smaller,” was Aden’s grim response. “They hurt you for years.”
“How could anyone do that?” In her mind, she’d always been the monster; she’d forgotten she’d also been a tiny, scared child fighting for her life.
“Because some people are evil—and some are not. You’re not.”
Bones feeling as if they were shaking within her, she tried to hold her focus, couldn’t. “Aden.” She didn’t know what she was asking him, but when he broke their handhold, it was a brutal shock.
“Lift your head.” His breath against her ear, his body closer.
Able to feel herself devolving into panic, she obeyed his order because it gave her a way to hold off the collapse. He slid his arm under her head and, curling it around her stiff shoulders, tugged her toward him. “Turn in to me, Zaira,” he ordered when she remained rigid.
Touch had never been Zaira’s friend. It had meant pain and abuse when her parents had her, cold-blooded training and more pain when she was with the Arrow Squad. But this was Aden, who had held her so many times already. She was the one who’d done the hurting. Forcing herself to turn, she didn’t protest when he rolled onto his back and tugged her down over his chest, her head on his shoulder and her breasts pressed against his chest and side.