And then they were there, in front of us.
Five of them, all big brutes. But at least they were in human form.
I’d half expected them to bring bodyguards in the shape of their shifter forms.
“I see you brought back-up,” Dex called out.
The agreement had been for three only.
“Well, you never trust a wolf to keep his word,” the big guy in the middle said, then laughed at his own joke.
I heard Grayson’s low growl and stepped closer to him, but didn’t say anything.
I didn’t know if everyone could keep their cool at this meeting, but it was the best chance we had to avoid outright war.
“We kept out word, Trevor. There’s three of us. And we’re here. How about we get down to business?”
Trevor narrowed his gaze at me. “And what business is that, wolf?”
“I’m Tayte. I’m…”
“I know who you are. You’re the guy who knocked up Celeste.”
The bears around Trevor growled all of a sudden, the mood within the group changing. The anger ramping up a notch.
I took a slow, deep breath.
I needed to play this carefully. Cards close to my chest.
They couldn’t know how important Celeste was to me, or we’d all be lost.
Brains over heart, in this case.
“Yeah… that’s me. How’d you know?”
“I can smell her on you, even now. That stench we all had to put up with for years. Ugh.” He shuddered as though my mate repulsed him and the wolf inside of me howled.
But I pushed him down.
I needed to show Grayson and Dexter how to stay calm, even when the bears baited us.
“Back to the business at hand, Trevor. We know you guys have some sort of plan to attack the pack, and we need to come to an agreement before that happens.”
There was a beat of silence.
Yes, that confirmed it.
“Why would I want to do that?” Trevor asked.
I could see his point, but no matter how they played their attack, they’d lose numbers on their side too.
“Because there’s no fight between us. We’ve done nothing to you, you’ve done nothing to us. There’s no reason why we need to fight at all.”
And as far as I knew, it was true.
Even the elders couldn’t understand why the bears wanted a war with us.
Trevor grunted, “My father believed that you wolf shifters were meant to die out. Go extinct.”