Solana
Several things happen all at once. The temperature in the room skyrockets past lethal and keeps on climbing. Luckily, everyone in this room can tolerate it or mitigate it like in Eli's case. Which is exactly what he's now working overtime to do. He's practically standing in his own personal blizzard and it's barely able to offset the furnace that is my mother's fury. While Eli focuses on not being a casualty, Dean concentrates on tempering my parents' moods, and by association their thermostats.
"Give us a moment. Xander," my dad Rohanor nods to Xander to join them as they guide my mother out of the room and onto the balcony just out of our view.
"You have her spirit, you know." Ace teases my thigh with featherlight touches of his fingertips, like he's been itching this entire time to be able to touch me and he's seizing the opportunity to do so.
"So I've been told," I say flatly, searching his eyes like they hold the answer to the multi-million dollar question 'when will this be over?'
Dean's hand takes up residence on my other thigh now, giving me a reassuring squeeze. Or, at least that's how his hand on me started – as an innocent gesture. The longer my parents and Xander take out on the balcony, the pinker Dean's cheeks stain with a blush. His grip on my thigh tightens and now it's my turn to check on him.
"You okay?" I ask him, lacing our fingers together.
"Mhmm," he struggles to manage words. He shifts in his seat, showing off an impressive bulge in his pants. "I'm sorry, Sunshine. Your parents' emotions are very..."
"Disturbing?" I laugh and he returns a small one in kind. Even I can admit that what is normal to my family is truly deranged to others.
"That's one way to describe it, I guess. I was going to say they're very...palpable." He looks at me with an expression I've never seen on him before. I know what hunger and desire look like on him, I've seen him hungry for me. But, this? This is deeper. Like a deep seeded longing. His throat bobs over a hard swallow as he tries to regain composure.
Now it's me having disturbing thoughts. Thoughts about how those same gray eyes darkened like a storm when he watched me and Tate after my sister's party, or how if we hadn't been tied up how easy it would have been to fall headlong into the eyes of the hurricanes he regarded me with.
Squirming in my seat, I suppress the whimper building within me longing for a repeat of that night. When my parents walk in, my mom sporting two fresh bites on her neck that are still bleeding a little, Dean all but leaps off the couch and bolts out of my mom's office in the direction of our room.
Ace and Tate exchange knowing glances at one another and do their best to bite back their smirks. I sigh inwardly. This is so not the time for my parents to be themselves.
Any feelings of desire are promptly extinguished when I realize that because of his gift, Dean must have felt every second of what my parents felt while they were outside. I'm left wondering if he looked at me like that because of biology or if he genuinely wants more of that night.
"Who is betraying us?" My mother takes Dean's place next to me on the couch while my dads and Xander stand like three angry mountains behind Tate.
Tate looks to Ace for confirmation before sharing their theory, and once Ace nods his approval Tate lays it all out for them.
"Alec."
My parents look between each other skeptically before my father Varian speaks. "That's an incredibly heavy accusation to make against one of our family's oldest friends."
"I know it's not what you want to hear, but he has plenty of motive." Tate pushes on.
"Ace has just as much motive to make his brother out to be a traitor, does he not?" My mom volleys back at Tate before swinging her eyes to silently ask Ace the same question.
"I could have believed that my brother would make an attempt on my life, that the poison was meant for me and my pack mates. But the increase on Solana's bounty all but confirms that she was the target. So then the question is why would Alec betray you all like this?" Ace states calmly and nods to Tate again to lay out all the incriminating evidence.
"We don't necessarily believe Alec to be the one to have put the original bounty out on Sol, but he's implicated in a web of shit so deep that his connection to you and therefore to Sol makes it difficult to believe that he's not involved in this, too."
"I'm going to need something a little more concrete before I confront my best friend about this," my dad Ro grumbles.
"Your best friend's name is on the title for a Hybrid Facility north of his pack. This facility doesn't exist virtually. It's not mentioned in the Underdark, it doesn't exist on maps. But it is there. And it's being hidden by an organization known to facilitate and profit from the trafficking of young dragonesses and she-wolves."
"So your theory is that if he's dirty enough to have any part in trafficking then he must be dirty enough to betray his lifelong friends." My mom says to Tate. "That whole theory of course hinges on the true purpose of this facility and still doesn't answer the why. Why would he help go after Solana?"
— — —
Ace
It's proving to be exceptionally hard to sit here and listen to Tate tick off my brother's shortcomings to people who are thoroughly unalarmed to hear of them. Harder still is sitting next to my mate, the woman whose life is being threatened, and having to listen to her own parents defend him.
"Who's to say this is the first time he's gone after her? There was that incident a few —,"
"Tate." Solana and I both speak his name at the same time, stopping him from continuing that line of thought. He was about to bring up what happened to Sol and Hunter four years ago, where she had been kidnapped and brought to be sold.
What he doesn't know is that not even her parents know the full truth behind what happened that day. Solana didn't want them to know back then, and today is not the day to spill the tea on that history.
"What incident?" Her parents ask in unison.
"It's nothing. There was a contract out on Nightshade but it was rescinded." Solana deftly steers the conversation in a new direction.
Her fathers don't seem concerned about it at all. They look more confused than anything, like what could Nightshade have anything to do with the current issues. Her mother, on the other hand, freezes in place for several beats before very slowly turning her head to look at Solana.
"How do you know it was rescinded? How can we be sure someone won't pursue him anyway?" The Queen asks carefully.
Solana shifts to face her mom. "Because they were the ones hired to kill Nightshade," she gestures to me, Tate, and Eli. "And then by a happy accident, I killed the guy who put the contract out."
"And what of Nightshade now?" Her mother presses, treading just as lightly around the topic as Solana had.
"Magnolia," I address her directly and more informally than I'm truly comfortable with. "We had the pleasure of meeting Nightshade."
"Is that so?" She raises a skeptical brow at me and then looks at Solana for confirmation.
Solana looks sideways at her mom and I'm woefully unprepared for what she says next. "Death has no secrets. They know everything." Solana swivels her head my way and I'm certain that the warmth in her eyes could thaw even Eli's frozen heart.
It's not until Eli sends ice down my back that I realize I've been purring at what Solana has said to the Queen, and that Solana's eyes have grown dark and her breathing has shallowed.
"You trust them?" Her mom isn't as curious as she is intrigued by this development.
Solana huffs out a laugh and nods with a smile, "with my life, apparently."
"I see," the Queen hums thoughtfully for a moment. She abandons her seat next to Solana and stands above us, exuding immeasurable authority and power. "Once upon a time Alec was one of two people I could rely on in the world. I owe it to him to erase all doubt of his wrongdoings before I approach him. His name on some paperwork to some facility that you know nothing about save for its name is hardly enough for me to go on."
"Fair enough," Tate's mouth presses into a hard line as he swiftly packs up his computer. "Just understand that we may find things you won't like."
The four of us stand along with the four of them, ready to end our meeting and get back upstairs to Dean and Hunter. Solana's mother gives Tate an indulgent smile and mirrors his words. "Fair enough."
I shake hands once more with her fathers and Xander, then I grab hold of Tate, Eli, and Sol and teleport us back up to our room.