Bound

Observer

XAVIER POV

The casual ease with which Claire commanded the room was a sight to behold. She asked if I was able to sit in on her meeting as an impartial observer, to pick up on that which the others might not see through their clouds of emotion.

I accepted immediately.

Ben's tortured eyes had pleaded with me not to leave as the car pulled over, Xandra had recorded his shenanigans the previous night and was attempting to extort childcare. Issy had apparently scared off the most recent nanny, the latest in a long string of traumatised child care workers.

I left them to it, extracting myself from the SUV and flying to the coastal cliffs. Xandra inevitably got what she desired, and if I tried to intervene I was liable to suffer the same fate as Ben.

This was the perfect place to stare into the hypnotic blue of the surging sea and sky and focus on the conclave. Xandra joined me about five minutes later, and we peered into the inner sanctum of the White Wolf Pack through Claire's eyes.

Two hours into the meeting and tensions had eased to an acceptable level between the exasperating wolves. Ripples of disgruntlement still hummed in the space between, but at least they had ceased intentionally provoking each other.

Pieces of the puzzle were still getting added to the pool of information. As yet neither I or the others could find a way to piece them together into a cohesive picture.

I had genuinely wondered at Claire attempting to reason with all of the hotheads in the room, but they clarified each other's points, or drew out forgotten details which may be integral to the larger picture. This may not have really been the right time for a meeting such as this. But, between politics, trade missions and pack boundaries this was also the only time that all of them were in the same territory at the same time, so Claire had seized the moment and made it right.

The current mess consisted of the following information;

All had seemed at peace with Sandra's pack. Their eco friendly line of beauty and household products had recently launched to an elite clientele willing to pay big money for the use of the idyllic products.

The engineers of the community were working on prototypes of batteries that could store power generated from solar panels and wind turbines.

More money was coming in. The town was building. The pack was expanding.

Trade with the wild territories was opening up. The wolf packs up north spent most of their time as wolves, and dedicated an inordinate amount of time to fighting each other for territory, resources, perceived slights or just because they could. They were generally considered a little insane, but had access to raw materials Sandra needed and were willing to trade in commodities.

As a result of the generations of fighting, some of the best wolf specific medicine men were produced in the area, and their input had lifted the cosmetics line to a whole new level. They were even working on some shifter specific natural medicine products.

Sandra brokered the deals herself. Spending a week here or there with the outlandish packs to establish rapport and trust. One of the closer territories had an Alpha with five male sons, the last of which caught Sandras eye. It was a whirlwind romance, as is so common in the creature world, and she disappeared for a week. No contact with her pack at all, and returned mated with the Fifth Son. At this point Sandra's memories went from patchy to completely blacked out.

At some point during all of this Sandra's business manager had been up to odd things.

After carefully building the cosmetics lines from scratch and fiercely protecting it's integrity, as soon as it really took off he had begun taking risks with the products and investors that just didn't make sense. Not from a business point of view, in hindsight it looked like the creature was trying to go to war with the investors.