The wererats couldn’t really tell us what was so special about Darren, but when they described him, their eyes glazed over. He had some sort of pull, some kind of magnetic thing about him that other shapeshifters, wolves especially, instantly recognized. Shapeshifters flocked to him. According to the father of the family, Darren could have taken the pack away from Mihail whenever he felt like it, and Ice Fury would back him up.

At the time, I’d guessed that Darren was a First. The legend said that during prehistoric times some humans made bargains with animal deities, and that’s how the first shapeshifters came about. Descendants of those bloodlines were very rare, even during the time of the Old Shinar. I only knew of one—Curran.

The Firsts were capable of remarkable things. Other shapeshifters sensed them somehow and would follow them through fire.

Derek wasn’t a First. Someone would have recognized it by now. It wasn’t a thing one could hide. His dad had gone loup, and the Firsts had the highest loup resistance. According to Erra, they were practically loup-proof. And if his mother had been a First, she would have squashed his dad like a bug the first time he raised his hand to her. Whatever that magnetic thing was, the old Derek didn’t have it.

Becoming a beta of anything was a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn for him. Derek hadn’t just shown zero interest in climbing the shapeshifter leadership ladder, he actively avoided it. Desandra had offered him the beta position repeatedly and he’d declined every time. So, he left Atlanta for no apparent reason, went up to Alaska, and became the de facto ruler of Ice Fury. Why?

I could just imagine Curran’s reaction to it. Why did you have to go across the country to be a beta there? What’s wrong with the Pack I built? Is it not to your liking? What was so bad about it that you had to move to a frozen hellhole and run around the woods with a bunch of crazy people who don’t want to be people anymore?

I dragged my hand across my face. I would not want to be there for that conversation.

When Curran retired from being Beast Lord, a group of people from his immediate circle separated with him. Like Curran, they enjoyed immunity. They had a right to be in the Pack’s territory without being subject to Jim’s authority.

Derek was one of those people. But now he was also the beta of a rival pack.

If he truly was the beta of Ice Fury, his presence in Atlanta was a catastrophe. Shapeshifters, especially high-ranking shapeshifters, didn’t just enter other packs’ territory. There were protocols in place, and Derek hadn’t followed any of them, or Ascanio wouldn’t be chasing him all around the city.

It looked bad. It looked like Derek had snuck into the city to assess the Atlanta Pack for a possible attack. Although Ice Fury was far away, rival shapeshifter packs were known to stage raids. On the surface the idea was absurd because of the distances involved, but shapeshifters were a paranoid lot.

The very act of him entering Atlanta could be taken as a declaration of war. And yet the Pack probably couldn’t do much to him personally because of his immunity. This was a diplomatic nightmare.

I stared at the wall, trying to sort through this tangled mess in my head. Now would be the perfect moment for some wise wizard or a messenger of some god to pop in and explain it all to me.

Derek was in Atlanta illegally, and Ascanio was chasing him all around the city. Most likely, Ascanio hadn’t reported it to anyone because, according to Derek, he had a mysterious score to settle.

Ascanio always had an angle, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it was. How did this benefit him? Was he planning to subdue Derek and bring him in, pulling him out like a rabbit from a hat? Look at who I found!

He probably had no idea Derek was Darren Argent.

It would backfire. Oh dear gods, it would so backfire. If Ascanio somehow succeeded, he would assault and drag a foreign beta before the Beast Lord. If he failed and got hurt, a foreign beta would have injured the beta of Clan Bouda.

The two of them were idiots. What were they even doing? They hadn’t seen each other in years. They were two grown men. There had to be more to this than some teenage feud. I felt like I was looking at a heap of puzzle pieces with all of the corners missing.

And now Nick knew. Nick, who was in love with Desandra and who was the stepfather to her two boys. In a shapeshifter war, Desandra would be on the front lines, and unless the Order gave him their blessing, Nick wouldn’t be able to fight beside her. He would react. I had no idea how, but it would be bad. Really, really bad.

I had to contain Nick. I’d bought myself a little bit of time, but I couldn’t dodge him forever.

If Curran were still the Beast Lord, Derek would have been given about six hours of freedom, and then he would get a formal invitation. Something along the lines of, “We’re delighted that the beta of Ice Fury has graced us with his presence and anxiously await his arrival at the Keep. We’re dying to meet him face to face.” It would have been delivered by Clan Rat, and knowing them, it would just magically appear on Derek’s pillow while he took a shower.

Where were the rats? Clan Rat handled the Pack’s security. I hadn’t seen a single rat operative in the city. They were very good, so I might not have noticed them, but still, they would keep an eye on Ascanio.

What in the bloody hell was going on with Atlanta’s Pack?

Argh. I didn’t have time for any of this. I needed to get to Mark Rudolph and squeeze the information out of him before any more people got murdered or the ma’avirim made their next move.