Jude glanced at Cavin, who was watching Summer and listening to the exchange without expression. "Thanks."
"Thanks?" Summer huffed.
Cavin's lips tightened. Without commenting, he turned back to the other shifters. Summer did her best to keep her features smooth, but despite their age difference and the time they'd spent living in separate Prides, he knew his sister. Cavin's indifference affected her. Filing that info away for a more convenient time, he joined the shifters, who stood with their backs to Summer, forming a semi-circle that excluded her from their dialogue.
Jude drew even with Cavin and gave him a sidelong look, willing him to make eye contact. Cavin had the right to refuse connection, might have another time and under different circumstances, but tonight he let Jude in.
As soon as the communication door opened, Jude projected. She doesn't belong at the Jungle.
She's safe here, Cavin silently shot back. She's an unmated female with limited family protection. She doesn't belong. Unless you intend to take responsibility for her the next time she walks through the doors? Upstairs?
"Gentlemen." The smooth, sultry feminine voice interrupting their psychic exchange belonged to a woman with a narrow face, elegant throat and blazing red hair, which she wore twisted into intricate ropes. Cerridwyn. Jude had only encountered the dragon shifter once before, excluding her cameo earlier in the night, but hers was an unforgettable presence. She emitted a fiery heat and her gemstone eyes could pierce glass.
Of the seven of them gathered, Bailey was the only one who didn't possess an alpha's personality, and Cerridwyn's indwelling heat radiated outward, creating a protective sphere around her. Bailey's incomplete clean-up job had left a black smear down Lily's car door. Now it looked baked in like pottery glaze, seared into the paint by Cerridwyn's fire.
"We have no scientific way to analyze the genetic composition of this … fluid," she said, her posture regally straight. "The wolf has explained his theory. We must decide whether we agree that it's plausible or whether we reject the idea and continue our investigation as we have been."
"There's never been any talk about arachnids among the shifting races." Ruark, the bear, crossed his meaty arms over his chest. In any other man, the posture would have been belligerent. For the bear, it was a thinking stance, and it matched the contemplative gaze he fixed on a steel beam overhead. "If this is the route we take, where will it lead? A race so secretive that its existence isn't even discussed among us isn't suddenly acting on a whim. This is an enemy, not a neighbor knocking at the door with an offer of apple cobbler and an invitation to tea. What about their weapons? Their numbers? Have you ever seen a spider's egg sac split open to release hundreds of the little bastards?"
They all stood in silence, contemplating that. The shifter races didn't reproduce in large numbers, and they didn't make a habit of turning humans with a bite. Exceptions existed but as a general rule, when you raided a pack of wolves, you had a good idea of how many strong they were. Seeking that knowledge wasn't cowardice or weakness; it was good damn sense.
"He's right," Cavin said. "We need intel."
"I have an idea of how we can get that." Jude outlined the theory he and Lily had come up with, to thoughtful nods from the avian and bear and statue-like blankness from Cerridwyn.
At some point, Summer had made her way into the circle despite the deliberate exclusion. When Jude finished, she chimed in with, "You'll have to use her as bait."
All eyes swung toward her. Despite her youth and lack of status-her essential humanness-she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and looked Cavin in the eye. "Unless you have a better idea? Some kind of spider-seeking missile that will take you right to the creepy crawly zombie?"
"I'm not the kind of man who conquers from a distance," Cavin replied after a beat of silence.
Summer turned red but held Cavin's gaze long enough that Jude tensed, ready to intervene between his sister and his Pride mate.
But then she shrugged and looked away. "Then you're going to need to put somebody in close. If you all are right and something's targeting lovers and mates in order to get to the Kings, your best bet is to open the way and spring a trap. This guy-thing-isn't exactly leaving scent trails or Post-It note clues or whatever. But you have something it wants, something you know he wants and will come for again. If you want to get your big kitty paws on him … "