Irish Bear's Enemy (Boston Bear Brothers 4)

“You have some messages, Mr. McNally,” she said politely, passing a handful of notes across the desk to him. “Also, you are due to check out at the end of the week. Is that still correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct. Thanks.”

He took the notes with him to the car and sat down to read them before pulling out of the underground parking garage. They were all from Greyscale, each one more urgent. What could the elder dragon Alpha want with him? Surely he knew that the clans were not yet on solid enough footing for returning any favors. He dialed his number and waited for him to answer.

“There you are. I was beginning to wonder if you’d already been overthrown,” Greyscale said.

“Good afternoon to you, as well,” Ronan shot back.

“Of course. Where are my manners? Good afternoon. Now that we’re done with the niceties, I need to see you as soon as possible.”

“In the north?”

“No. I’m in Dublin. Meet me at Temple Bar in half an hour?”

“I can do that. See you soon.”

“Yep.”

Ronan hung up the phone and sat looking ahead of him for a moment. Parking was a bitch in the city, and he wouldn’t have time to drop off the rental car as he’d intended. Instead, he got out and went back inside the hotel to see the concierge.

“I need to get my rental car back this afternoon, and I’ve gotten called to an appointment. Would you be able to take care of dropping it off for me?”

“Absolutely. Just give me the keys and the name of the rental company. We’ll have them pick it up from the garage.”

“Great.”

Ronan handed him the card the guy had given him when he rented it and wrote the parking slot number on the back, along with his cell phone number in case it was needed. He handed him the keys and said his goodbyes before stepping back out and walking back out to grab the transit to the Temple Bar.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Maeve

Maeve sat down at the head of the table with the Omegas who had been selected as her clan council down both sides. Rebekah, of course, was her right hand. The others had been chosen by the clan based on what they could offer in skills and tenacity.

“Okay. Here is our situation as of this moment. From what I can determine, there are no survivors among the men of our clan. The only one who managed to get out intact was Patrick, and he met his fate in London.”

The women all looked down, somber. She knew that for some of them, it was grief. For others, it was trying to come to terms with their relief at the death of the men they’d been building lives with—men they’d not been happy with but had come to accept as their future.

“We now have money to rebuild. The McNally clan has returned the money taken from Clan Maguire for us to facilitate reconstruction of our compound.”

“Compound? What of our own homes?” one asked.

“First things first, Clara. We need a place to organize, to gather, to be safe. I want everyone to have a say in it, but my idea is that we will build it so that we have a smaller administrative area than the Alphas had and utilize the vast space Sorley and Trill maintained for recreation and personal use in a different manner.”

“What manner?” Rebekah asked.

“A large recreation area for all to enjoy, more family-oriented than the former ‘booze and bitches’ platform the Alphas prefer. The rest of the space would be broken out into single rooms and larger suites for those who have no other place to go.”

“No offense, but I would still like to have my own home back, not live in some Omega dormitory like a halfway house,” Clara objected.

“I understand that, but we have to crawl before we can walk. Once we can re-establish ourselves as a formal clan again, we’ll have more power on the shifter council and improved bargaining skills to get more land back.”

“I thought you just said we have our lands and money back?” Clara asked.

“We have the main lands back, but some of the adjoining lands were lost.”

“What? How?” Clara demanded.

“Because they weren’t our lands to begin with, Clara! Sorley waged war on everyone in this area. They killed their kin and took their land, homes, money. We’re lucky to have gotten what we did back.”

“So, they are gone forever?”

“We’ll see. The McNally Alpha is going to work on the members of the council to see if any of them will be willing to give land back to us, but since most of it was stolen from them in the first place, it isn’t likely. Still, we have our original land where the compound stood, the castle grounds, and a large swath of the fields behind.”