Greykin Valley

| 69 | Conference Hall

"I thought we just needed to discuss what to do about Kane?" Jackson questioned.

"Yeah, well, there's more to this than Kane," the white-haired demon mumbled and faced ahead again.

Jackson's anxiety returned. What more could they need to discuss right now that required to use of this kind of place and the presence of Caeletse leaders?

Once they reached the bottom of the stairs, Raphael led them through the colossal stone double doors just ten feet ahead. Instead was a huge, dome-shaped cavern-like room, and there were several rows of seats lined around the walls—it reminded Jackson of Kane's arena.

In the centre of the room was a round table. He immediately noticed Lord Caedis, and sitting on his left was Lucian. The man on his right, however, didn't look familiar, but his aura was just as terrifying as Caedis'. His hair was black, and so were his eyes, but when the light hit them, they shimmered red. He wore dark, elegant clothes just as expensive as Caedis, too—the kind of brands that sold blazers which cost more than Jackson would ever see in his life—so he had to be important, especially if he was sitting next to someone like Lord Caedis.

Both the dark-haired man and Lord Caedis then looked at him as he followed his packmates up to a row of seats. He tensed up, and his blood ran cold. He tensed up so much that he felt as if he might freeze on the spot if Damon wasn't holding his hand so tightly, but even his mate's protective presence couldn't help him shake the intimidation.

And then that man, Caedis, and Lucian muttered to each other. Jackson couldn't hear them over the noise coming from what must be over a hundred people in the room, but he could see their lips moving, and it looked like they were saying his name.

"Sit," Raphael muttered.

Jackson immediately sat in the seat he was standing in front of, as did everyone else.

"Be quiet," the orange-haired man muttered and then headed down the stairs towards the table. He sat beside Lucian, who scowled irritably, and then Cyrus sat beside Raphael.

The room filled up fast; people came in through smaller doorways between each wall of seats, and soon enough, there were probably three hundred or more people staring down at those around the table. Maleki, the vampire-elf, sat beside Cyrus, and two dark-skinned men joined the table, too; one man had orange eyes and a buzzcut, and the other had green eyes and short black hair. Only one of them dressed expensively, though. And the last people to join the table were Idina and three other women who looked a lot like her.

Jackson then shifted his eyes to the wall of seats at the back of the room between two large pillars decorated with the carvings of animals and creatures he couldn't name. Every man and woman sitting there looked important; some of them had inhuman features, and one woman even had a pair of dragonfly-like wings. He assumed that they were all the Caeleste leaders.

All of the doors started closing on their own, and armed men and women much like those Jackson saw at the entrance up in the house stood around the room. Once the doors shut, everyone's voices died down until it was utterly silent, and the atmosphere was so tense that Jackson felt like he might start suffocating.

Lord Caedis stood up, and everyone set their eyes on him. "You all know vhy you've been called 'ere," he started. "Zhe cadejo virus is evolving, and is likely zhat is no long just volf valkers who are in danger of being invected." He pulled a small remote from his pocket, and when he clicked it, a hologram screen appeared in the centre of the room above the table. "Shown 'ere are several variants our operatives 'ave come across in zhe Greykin Mountains," he said as images of prowlers, brutes, and sirens were shown alongside images of infected humans. "Zhe most concerning study so var being zhese sirens," he said as the screens displayed several images of the faceless creatures.