“I don’t know. I think she is. She had no reason to tell me any of it, so I don’t see why she’d lie now.”
“To make it easier on herself than you might otherwise be?” Niall replied.
“I don’t think so,” Olcan told him.
“Yeah, but I don’t know if we can trust your judgment when it comes to this bitch. You fell for her shit hook, line, and sinker,” Ronan replied.
Olcan jumped up without thinking, grabbing him by the collar and pinning him to the wall. He could see the surprise in Ronan’s face. He’d never attacked any of his brothers before, but he was furious.
“Don’t you fucking talk that way about her. You don’t know why she did what she did. She had reasons you’ll never understand,” he hissed.
“Olcan, you’re mad at the wrong person. It’s not Ronan’s fault. Put him down,” Niall said, trying to be the voice of reason.
Instead, Olcan turned on him, letting go of Ronan in the process. He heard his feet clunk back down on the floor behind him.
“Don’t you tell me who to be mad at, little brother. In case you forgot, I’m the Alpha of this clan until Fergus comes back. I won’t be talked to any such way.”
“Alpha or not, Ronan is still your brother. You’re taking out your frustration on him when he’s not the one that got us into this situation.”
“She didn’t get us in it either. Not really. If it hadn’t been her, they’d have sent someone else. They’re gunning for us, and they aren’t going to stop. We need to prepare instead of bitching and moaning about what she did or didn’t do. Come on. We’re going to the office.”
Neither tried to correct him again. Instead, they followed him out and got in their cars, going downtown to the large corporate building that served as headquarters for their business dealings. It was a safe space, much safer than where they were right now, not knowing who was coming or when. If she’d not gotten them the information on Fergus, they’d find it elsewhere. It wasn’t like it was that hard to find out. Fergus hadn’t taken any extra precautions.
The other families knew better than to fuck with them. The Maguires were a different matter. You’d think they’d have been satisfied when they’d murdered most of their clan and run them out of Dublin. They’d been lucky to escape at all. Now, after all these years, they were gunning for them on another continent? They thought they could just come over and take everything his family had worked to build because they were the only ones able to take them on?
His family had always made it a practice to fight other humans on a human level. They’d only shifted to bear form when absolutely necessary, and it had served to keep them from being too obvious in this concrete jungle where they reigned. Another bear clan coming in would upset that balance, endangering not only their family, but the families they had made peace with over the years.
You could bet that Maguires would have no problem taking down whoever they wanted without regard to exposing their bear side, and without the benefit of the ability his immediate family had for erasing memories, there would be no hiding it.
His mind drifted as they made their way down to the basement of the building in the elevator. He wondered where she was. Had she left already? Had she gotten away safely? He wished he’d offered her help, money, or contacts, but he’d been too furious to even think straight.
Now that things had settled in with him a bit, he had time to consider what might become of her and found that it bothered him knowing she might be in the wind, alone and afraid. Was it going to be easy to just let that go? He wasn’t so sure and knew that once he’d dealt with the trouble immediately at hand, he’d look for her. He could never accept what she’d done, but some part of him needed to know she was okay, wherever she was.
Inside the large open room that held only a center table for family meetings, he gathered with his brothers and the members of their clan. It was embarrassing to admit that their own Alpha had allowed them to be compromised, but he’d never been one to back away from taking responsibility. He stood at the head of the table and addressed them with a calm exterior that didn’t match the chaos he currently felt inside, giving them the details of what had transpired.
“Make no mistake that this is only the beginning. Many of you have joined us since we came to Boston; we are all outcasts or runaways, but we’ve found a new family in one another. I take full responsibility for putting this family at risk but make no mistake in thinking these efforts were limited to just me. The Maguire Clan is farther reaching than anticipated. I’d have thought them content with what they took from us in our homeland, but they aren’t.”