Defender of the Pack by Heather G Harris

Author:Heather G Harris [Heather G. Harris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Heather G Harris
Published: 2022-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

My fighting spirit lasted as long as it took me to march into my masculine office. It was deserted and I had nothing to do; I brightened – I could always do a new spreadsheet. There was always data to be organised.

I pulled out Lord Samuel’s paperwork. It was on actual paper, how quaint. I spent a happy hour transcribing details about the pack into a spreadsheet. Lord Samuel had a file with a sheet of information about each werewolf under his command. The data was woefully sparse: name, address, age and occupation. It had nothing that was helpful, like were they an ice cream or cake person? Did they like Rocky or Die Hard? No conversation starters to help me melt the ice.

I got to Archie’s information and sighed. It was obvious that young Archie was involved in the spate of pranks. He had walked out when I was searching for Bobby’s toy; it hadn’t been subtle, and he might as well have walked around playing a tuba, shouting that he was responsible. I’d let it slide so far because … well, I’d killed his dad. If anyone had killed my dad…

It was unthinkable. Try as I might, I couldn’t begin to imagine what Archie was feeling. I was adopted when I was three, and I had no idea what my birth family had been like because my memory was one big blank and I could remember nothing before the adoption.

The psychologists said it wasn’t surprising because of my age and the way the human brain is designed to protect itself, but I’d always wondered if the massive blank was because I’d been raised in an abusive home for the first three years of life. Maybe I had been, maybe not; the chances were I’d never know. But my adoptive family were everything: Mum and Dad, and their biological son, my brother Ben. They’d had him first and never for one moment had they made me feel like I was less of their daughter than he was their son.

My dad is gentle, kind, soft spoken; he’s often found in the kitchen baking something. Mum is firm, kind, with a no-nonsense attitude; she would happily battle anyone who dared to cross her family. She’s a nurse, so my miracle recovery from near death had been a bit hard for her to accept. I could hardly tell her about magic, so I was left with half-hearted lies about a miraculous health centre with a trial drug that had saved my life. She accepted the story because she wanted to, but deep down my miracle troubled her. I’d kept a little distance from my family recently because I hated to lie to them, but that was only compounding my crippling loneliness.

There was a knock on my door. ‘Come in.’ I called. Sitting up straighter in my seat, I did my best to project calm authority.

I slumped a little when Manners walked in. He was wearing fresh jeans, a painted-on T-shirt and a leather jacket.

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