The Boy in the Woods (boyxboy)

Chapter 16

I look up to see Galen snickering, Dad smirking, and Jeremiah not reacting beyond a twitch at his mouth. I sigh and scratch my neck with my free arm as my face starts flushing.

"Sorry, he's... possessive. Quite frankly, we all are here," I admit with a small embarrassed smile. Dad flashes another smile before looking around the foyer with a frown. The pack members who'd stuck around out of curiosity have left, leaving just Dad, Samuel, Spencer, Sammy, Itiri, and Danny. And Yuki and Galen, of course.

He speaks up before I can. "Let's all head to my office. There's an attached meeting room with chairs so everybody can get comfortable," he announces. Jeremiah nods before nodding his head at the people behind him. About 20 or so men and women file into the foyer completely. Charlie jumps out the awkward-looking man's arms and skips ahead of all of us. Jeremiah and Dad roll their eyes at the same time before exchanging smirks.

We all head into the meeting room and take our places. It's a plain room with semi-comfortable chairs scattered throughout the room in something of a circle. Galen and I sit next to each other, but Yuki immediately heads to the massive map covering the left wall.

The map shows the positions of all the registered werewolf packs, vampire covens, fae communities, etc. in the world that are affiliated with the Council and some of those which are not. It's something that the pack has had for generations, passed down and updated for each change that is witnessed. It's definitely a bad idea to have something like this, but it makes life a lot easier when needing to contact another place without having to go through the Council. Thankfully there are not that many hunters out there anymore, so it shouldn't be a problem any time soon. I suspect that Dad doesn't mind these strangers seeing it because Charlie trusts them.

Jeremiah gives it a curious look but otherwise doesn't look at it, sitting with his back to it and his lover sitting next to him.

As we all get seated, sans Yuki, Dad clears his throat to speak, but Charlie jumps in before he can say anything.

"Thanks for helping us with this, Jerry-poo!!" Charlie bursts out with, swinging his feet as they can't touch the ground. Galen snickers quietly, but loud enough for Charlie to hear. He whirls on us, his feet stopping their motion. "Fuck off, asshole! I know you just made a short joke in your head!" Galen shrugs but doesn't say anything. Dad sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Okay, okay, calm down. It's time to talk seriously," he says, looking to Jeremiah. "Charlie said he had friends coming to help but he didn't say what that entailed."

Charlie snorted and leaned in next to me to whisper "Entailed? Get it? Cuz' wolves have tails." He wheezed.

Jeremiah ignored Charlie and nodded. "Yes, he said you were being hunted and that most of your pack couldn't fight to save your lives. He asked if we could help train the ones who will fight back. And although he didn't ask us to contribute to the fighting, we'd like to join in."

Dad considered that before speaking. "And what do you get out of this? I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but people don't offer to fight bloodthirsty hunters on a whim." Yuki looked over from where he stood at the map.

"Horsey?" He asked with a very confused expression on his face. A feminine laugh echoed in the room and Maxine tilted her head to look at Yuki.

"It's an expression. "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" means "don't look for a problem in a gift that is given to you", cutie," she smoothly said. Yuki's eyes widened at this new information as his mouth opened in an "O" before he went back to studying the map. Maxine giggled at him and turned back to the circle. Jeremiah ignored this interaction and continued.