Magic Rises(8)

“Sounds fun. Did you kill anyone?”

“No. But I really wanted to. A werejackal from one of the packs approached me to make a deal to sell panacea, and the next day we found his corpse outside with a rock the size of a car tire where his head used to be.”

“Fun.”

“Yeah. I brought ten people with me, some of the best fighters in the Pack. I thought all of them were solid and loyal. I went home with four. Two died in ‘unfortunate accidents,’ three were lured away by better money, and one got married. The Pack was still young. Losing every single one of them hurt, and there wasn’t anything I could’ve done about it. It took months for the power vacuum to sort itself out.”

Old frustration laced his voice. He must’ve spent weeks thinking it over, dissecting every moment looking for what he could’ve done differently. I wished I could reach through time and space and punch some people.

“We came in outnumbered and outgunned, and went home empty-handed. I said never again.”

I waited. There had to be more.

“One of the alphas I met was Jarek Kral. Tough, vicious sonovabitch. He owns a chunk of the Eastern Carpathian Mountains and has been steadily expanding. The man is obsessed with his legacy. He thinks he’s some sort of a king. Most of his children died, either from going loup or from being his children. Only one daughter survived to adulthood, and he tried to give her to me.”

“He what?”

Curran faced me. “When I got back to our ship, there was a seventeen-year-old girl named Desandra waiting for me with a note. The plan was that I would marry her, and he’d pay me each year, as long as I agreed to send one of my sons his way. Jarek preferred two, as an insurance against one of them dying, but would settle for one.”

Charming. Fifteen minutes in a room with Curran would tell anyone with half a brain that he couldn’t be bought and he would never sell his children.

“You didn’t take him up on his generous offer, I take it?”

Curran shook his head. “I didn’t even talk to her. We sent her back where she came from. Jarek married her off to another pack, the Volkodavi from Ukraine.”

Wolf Killers, huh. Interesting name for a shapeshifter pack.

“Desandra lived with the Volkodavi for a few months, and then Jarek changed his mind, so she had to get a divorce. Later Jarek sold her off into another marriage, this time to a pack from Italy, Belve Ravennati.”

“He’s a kind and loving father.” I hopped on the parapet. I could write a book on bad fathers, but Desandra would probably give me a run for my money.

A corner of Curran’s mouth rose in contempt. “He isn’t her father. He’s her pimp. He got into some sort of dispute with the Belve Ravennati during the last Iberian Summit and they pissed him off, so he ordered Desandra to come back home again. Desandra had a fit. Her current husband and her ex-husband were both at the summit, so she slept with both of them. Now she’s carrying twins, and the amniotic tests are showing DNA from both men.”

“How does that work, exactly?”

“That’s what I said.” He grimaced. “I had to ask Doolittle. There is a term for it, hang on . . .” He pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of his jeans and read it. “Heteropaternal superfecundation. Apparently, it means twins from different fathers. I’ve never heard of it, but Doolittle says it’s a real thing and it happens with shapeshifters more often than with normal humans. From what he says, there are identical twins and then there are fraternal twins. Fraternal twins occur when two eggs inside a mother are fertilized at once. The super-whatever happens when they are fertilized by different fathers.”

“I still fail to see how any of this epic mess is our problem.”

Curran grimaced. “Jarek controls a large chunk of the Carpathians. He was trying to make marrying Desandra more attractive, so he set up Desandra’s firstborn to inherit a profitable mountain pass. Apparently during the fight at the summit, Jarek told Desandra’s current husband that if she got pregnant, he would rather kill her and not have any grandchildren before he would let Belve Ravennati get their hands on the pass.”

Killing a woman to murder the child in her womb. Now that sounded eerily familiar. “Would he?”

Curran growled under his breath. “It’s complicated. Jarek always had a big mouth, and he did kill one of his sons during a challenge. But the Jarek I remember was also hell-bent on making himself a dynasty. Now he’s supposedly making public threats and considering killing his daughter, who is his only chance at getting that dynasty going. He’s got no kids left—Desandra is it. Something else must be going on. But anyway, Desandra must’ve believed it, because when she realized she was pregnant, she freaked the hell out. She hid her pregnancy until the three packs were together again and then sprang it on them in public. Jarek tried to attack her right there and almost started a war, because the other two packs piled in to stop him.”